Nintendo has added four very real first person classics to Nintendo Switch Online. These are Game Boy, Super NES, and NES games so you get them even if you don’t have the Expansion Pass.
The most historically significant game in this lineup is Xevious on the NES. Originally released in 1982 in arcades, Xevious is described by historian and YouTuber Jeremy Parish as an industry and cultural touchstone in Japan. It introduced a level of complexity that hadn’t been seen in shmups at that point, with a changing colorful landscape replacing Space Invaders’ and Galaxian’s black backgrounds, intelligent enemies that react to you and whose patterns can’t just be memorized, and the addition of air and ground enemies for a layer of tactical complexity.
Xevious was ported to the Famicom in 1984, but didn’t arrive in the US until 1989, meaning the West had missed out when it was most important. But if you didn’t know this shmup was that important, you can certainly catch up now. The original arcade version is also on the Switch as a separate release by Hamster.
Burgertime Deluxe on the Game Boy is the Burgertime game to play if you don’t like Burgertime. Or rather, if you don’t like the original version of Burgertime. Its rules are the same; you walk over burger buns and patties to make them drop down and build a burger. At the same time you run away from inanimate food items with legs chasing you around, but you can squish them with the patties and buns.
What makes Burgertime Deluxe is its delightfully compact but well thought out game design. The enemy AI is not as relentless, so you have a fighting chance. Instead of the five maps of the original, there are 24 inventive and short levels. It’s not a long game but it also won’t frustrate you too much.
Also on the Game Boy is Kirby’s Dream Land 2, one of many of Masahiro Sakurai’s small masterpieces before he became known as the Super Smash Bros guy. This one is not as critically acclaimed as the first Kirby’s Dream Land because it recycles too much, but that doesn’t make it a bad game at all. The big additions Sakurai made are the three animal friends Kirby can ride that have special abilities of their own, albeit a year after Donkey Kong Country came out. This is probably the best game in this lineup.
Lastly, Side Pocket on the SNES might not appeal to everyone, but it’s worth trying out. It’s a pocket billiards simulation game, again based on an arcade original.
This game’s appeal is mostly in the ball physics, so that’s a very small niche, but if you haven’t tried a game like this yet, you might surprise yourself and find it fun. As an aside, the SNES version has an extra layer of presentation, with detailed full color portraits of the in-game characters. Some of these characters have more than a passing resemblance to Tom Cruise and Paul Newman from that slick billiards movie, The Color of Money.
