I've been playing a bunch of NES and Famicom games lately.
I haven't played many NES games for a very long time, and I was avoiding the machine for a while since I thought a lot of the games wouldn't hold up, although I guess that was a dumb thought since the NES library aligns heavily with my pick-up-and-play arcade sensibilities.

Here's what I've been playing:

* 3-D WorldRunner (USA)
reasonably fun, but the sections where you can't control your movement speed suck dick
a lot of the game feels a little bit slapped together like they weren't sure what to do with the engine they had made, which is probably literally true
it is absolutely the first 3D platformer

* Attack Animal Gakuen (Japan)
cute space harrier clone that suffers from not shooting directly into the screen from the character's position like in space harrier itself (a sin that the famicom release of space harrier itself also has)
she instead shoots directly along the Z axis so it's much harder to actually hit anything
she changes her outfit every level, which is quite nice

* F-1 Race (Japan)
it's just a reasonably good Pole Position clone
played this on a famiclone when I was younger so I didn't know it never came out in the US
why the fuck didn't it come out in the US anyway, it's just good

* Kidou Senshi Z Gundam - Hot Scramble (Japan) (Final Version)
it's like Star Luster but with all the complicated bits removed
hunt down up to 9 enemy mobile suits in each level and blow their asses up
maybe a little bit easy, I've made it to the "mission clear" screen like thrice now, although I haven't survived very far past in the (randomly generated?) levels past that point, maybe like 2 levels past there
this version didn't pass its playtest with the kids very well apparently, so they changed it into the game below and released this as a limited run promotion
I'm 90% sure this is a reasonably complete prototype they released as a bonus
it needs a little bit of extra polish to be a great game, but it's good

* Kidou Senshi Z Gundam - Hot Scramble (Japan)
it's very different from the above, apparently the nipponese children weren't really gelling with the gameplay of the "Final Version"
massively simplified, no hunting down mobile suits, it's a straight-forward rail shooter now (levels do have more than 9 enemy mobile suits now at least)
has these really slapped-together side-scrolling bits with a really lame boss core you have to shoot that reflects a spray of bullets back when you hit it
just a much worse game than the above, and it's a total shame
it isn't bad, but it could have been so much better (and literally was)

* Kirby's Adventure (USA)
what a fantastic game, seriously
I don't remember there being quite this much slowdown, but I think the last time I played it was the 3DS release, overwriting any memories of how it actually ran

* Metro-Cross (Japan)
fairly decent (but much uglier) port of the arcade game

* Pooyan (Japan)
part of me likes this version more than the arcade release, but maybe that's because I played this specific one as a kid on a famiclone

* Seicross (USA)
had this as a kid on my NES and was fucking terrible at it, I don't think I ever made it to the second level back then
it's honestly pretty fun now that I'm not 7 anymore lmao

* Shatterhand (USA)
fucking love this game so much
not much else to say, you go around and fucking punch the shit out of everything
you can punch bullets out of the air lmao

* Slalom (USA)
played this on a famiclone as a kid
reasonably fun

* Star Luster (Japan)
hunt down enemies as they try to attack planets and bases
vaguely like what Star Fox 2 is, but way earlier, and not nearly as in-depth
arguably a little too complicated for its own good (and it isn't very complicated)

* Super Mario Bros. (World)
it's Mario 1, it's great
nothing else to say

* Trog! (USA)
not a great port of the arcade game
not the worst, but it's just kind of ugly and feels wrong
it's weird how you can punch fast enough that you stop moving completely too


also there were a few games which I copied into the folder and haven't played
(at least, not recently, since I've played every one of these games before)
* Mega Man (USA)
* Mega Man 2 (USA)
* Super Mario Bros. 2 (USA)
* Super Mario Bros. 3 (USA)
* Mach Rider (Japan, USA)
* Rad Racer (USA)
instead of going through the entire no-intro set one-by-one (pure torture), I've just copied games I like and games that seemed interesting

Have you been playing anything for the NES lately?