NES Remix 2 (Wii U)

The first NES Remix game carved out sections from classic Nintendo Entertainment System games and turned them into quick challenges while also providing “remixes” where new rule changes and mechanics were added to shift up how they play. Despite featuring 16 different games, only two challenges experimented with the idea of having elements from one game appear in another. Luckily, NES Remix 2 would embrace this concept more often as well focusing on more bold alterations to the new batch of 12 NES games it features, this sequel more surefooted in how it executes this interesting approach to a retro throwback.

NES Remix 2 is almost a minigame collection, the way it chops up NES games able to turn segments from longer games into bite-sized challenges you are meant to complete quickly and efficiently. Most of the classic games featured in this sequel are platformers, but there are appreciable differences between the kind of action you’d find in a sliver of Metroid’s battles against alien creatures and Zelda II: The Adventure of Link’s fantasy adventure. It does mean you can usually count on similar basics like moving left to right and jumping around even if the exact way it will control or feel changes a bit based on the title you’re playing excerpts from, but there are a few featured games that play quite differently. Two block-dropping puzzlers are part of the collection, the virus-busting Dr. Mario and the bomb-matching play of Wario Woods ensuring some diversity, but the boxing game Punch-Out!! is perhaps the oddest inclusion. An enjoyable game in its own right, it is also a game that involves a great deal more reflexive play and longer learning periods than the other games in the collection. NES Remix 2 does make sure before you play more difficult challenges it uses a few of them to teach you the games and since a quick bit of text introduces each new challenge, you can also get any necessary primers to understand what you’re meant to do or if a new mechanic is at play. NES Remix 2 does err on being snappy and condensed though, meaning that even though Punch-Out!!’s boxers are meant to be gradually learned and overcome you instead need to figure out the precise timing or strange quirks of your opponents in segments that take seconds to unfold.

Luckily, there are a few ideas in place so that even Punch-Out!!’s more demanding play can still thrive in this format. Challenges can either consist of a single task to complete or multiple different ones strung together, there usually being a pretty wise balance in having the more difficult ones isolated so they can be easily retried. Popping open the pause menu to hit restart is quick and easy, but in some of the challenges where you complete multiple tasks in a row, you might not want to go back to the very beginning. There is room for failure though, the player provided a set of lives that is usually proportional to the expected level of challenge. If it is a challenge where you can be expected to fail many times trying to get things to line up just so though, the game instead gives you no lives and you can just repeat the segment you’re on again and again, the limitation instead being the timer. Every challenge in the game is timed to some degree and often doing things quickly is where the difficulty comes from rather than just doing them at all, and these tie to a post-level rating system that is quite important. Players can earn up to three stars from a challenge and these go towards unlocking more remix and bonus stages, there even being rainbow stars to earn if you’re particularly quick if you really wish to test your mastery of a particular trial. Sometimes the star system is a good way of showing you should think outside the box a bit too, a few challenges easy enough to complete but finding out a better method to solve them the only way to earn the full star rating.

As for what you can expect from a typical challenge, it naturally will change depending on the source material. It can almost feel like the different challenges created from a game are a highlight reel, a game like Super Mario Bros. 2 having segments devoted to its object throwing mechanic, running away from the mask Phanto while you steal its key, fighting bosses, and engaging with memorable level concepts like digging down large shafts of dirt or riding a bird out across the sky. While you’ll never get the full breadth of what the originals had to offer, these games can often have their slower or less effective moments trimmed so you instead get a quick burst of the best parts, although since the game does include some of the NES’s longer adventures this won’t always be the case. Kirby’s Adventure is a game with many great powers and levels, and while certain games get more challenges than others, NES Remix 2 still averages out to around 10 challenges per game (although again, some of these are made up of multiple quick trials). This does benefit some of the games included, Dr. Mario’s gameplay is more conducive to long, admittedly similar sessions so it isn’t as easy to split segments out of it that would make for unique quick challenges.

The games that get the greatest benefit from NES Remix 2 pulling out only specific sections of their gameplay are the ones that weren’t actually all that good. Games like the angelic adventure Kid Icarus and Zelda II: The Adventure of Link were very rough in their original releases, Kid Icarus often having its platform harmed by rigid demands for your slippery movement while Zelda II: The Adventure of Link had its hero battle knights where often you are just doing guesswork as you stab high and low and hope for a hit to land. NES Remix 2 reproduces the games it features authentically outside of the Remix sections, but the issues of these old games often arose more from the hero’s sustainability. When you take a small section of Kid Icarus out of context, you don’t have to be overly careful with your health, and if you slip off a platform to your death, you can easily immediately retry the level. Without the long-term goals to make each failure frustrating, these bite-sized segments from flawed classics can instead have some rougher sections finally shine. Hopping around a small set of platforms in the sky in Kid Icarus is suddenly an interesting challenge of carefully adjusting your landing, and while the knight fights from Zelda II still aren’t enjoyable, you don’t have to agonize over any hits you take since they’ll be wiped away after you win and you’ll quickly pop on to the next challenge. With games like Super Mario Bros.: The Lost Levels where being obtuse was kind of the point, NES Remix 2 will even give you slight nudges with on-screen indicators so you can find the invisible blocks necessary to complete a challenge, the difficulty meant to come more from being quick and efficient rather than figuring out what you’re event meant to do.

Unfortunately, there are a few moments in NES Remix 2 that feature slowdown. Admittedly, Kirby’s Adventure on NES had its technical problems, but both it and Metroid have a few of their segments here feature quite notable moments where the game starts to struggle. This can lead to the occasional moment where a jump input isn’t read properly and of course, with speed being emphasized so much in how you’re judged, having a sudden shift in game performance can disrupt your performance a bit unfairly. These segments are a bit bothersome when they arise but not exactly deal breakers, especially since the goals of these are often fairly simple still so you can push through and then move onto a smoother experience afterwards. It seems some of these issues are unique to NES Remix 2 rather than authentic reproductions of issues from the source games, and in a game that can sometimes redeem segments of rough NES titles, it’s a shame it introduces its own little problems here and there as well.

Luckily, the creativity found in the remix section more than makes up for those rare stumbles. There are 40 Remix stages to unlock as well as 22 Bonus levels, and while a few of those Bonus levels instead introduce the NES game Ice Hockey for a quick diversion, mostly these are shake-ups of the 10 NES games the game features most prominently. NES Open Tournament Golf is oddly enough a late unlockable and so it doesn’t feature in the remixes, but you can expect reimagined challenges from games like Super Mario Bros. 3 to take the spotlight here and take on many different forms. NES Remix 1 unfortunately had many remixes where the added effects were just zooming in or out or applying a strange color filter, but NES Remix 2 utilizes this concept less often and with more purpose. For example, Dr. Mario’s color-based pill matching briefly shifting to black and white actually requires a quick change in how you identify matches, and in some of the challenges where the camera zooms in or out, collecting something like a coin or heart in the game will cause the perspective to fix itself a bit so you can make the judgment call on whether you play quickly and tolerate the distraction or snag some aides to prevent things from being difficult to see. Remixes can take on a good range of forms, like having to face an invisible boss character, timing your jumps as your character moves forward automatically, or persist despite visual distractions like false versions of your playable character. These Remixes can sometimes tighten up small things like letting Pit jump up through platforms in Kid Icarus to make movement smoother and interestingly enough you’ll sometimes first encounter elements of certain games in these segments like the minigames from Kirby’s Adventure only appearing in group Remixes which are more about bouncing between multiple games in quick succession rather than any experiencing major alterations.

Of course, some of the most fascinating Remixes are those mentioned in this review’s opening paragraph, certain challenges featuring elements from two games mixing together into a truly unique experience. You can find yourself fighting Whispy Woods as Kirby only for a giant wall of the Boo ghosts from Super Mario Bros. 3 to press in from the left, the usually easy boss now having a unique form of backup to make for an interesting battle. Toad from Super Mario Bros. 2 can find himself up against the Octorocks that Link usually faces with a sword, the mushroom-headed hero now having to use his throwing skills to take them out instead. The mixes are usually helped by the fact that most of the featured games are side-scrolling platformers so their elements can easily transfer and the game never goes for anything that would be too difficult like trying to figure out how to adjust characters to crossover with Punch-Out!!’s boxing action, but even if you’re just collecting coins in a small Super Mario Bros.: The Lost Levels segment as Metroid’s Samus Aran, it is nifty to be able to approach a challenge with a different set of powers and play something that makes this a bit more like a crossover. The game doesn’t go too overboard in featuring these, able to mix in more typical remixes between them so they don’t lose their luster, and admittedly some like having Super Mario Bros. 2 and Super Mario Bros. 3 elements interact doesn’t feel too special, but since the remixes are experimental and usually have some clear vision behind them, unlocking new ones makes diving right in exciting and special.

NES Remix 2 offers a few more little extras as well. A full remake of the original Super Mario Bros. game is included except with its own little twist: you now move from right to left. Called Super Luigi Bros. now and featuring Mario’s brother in the starring role instead, mirroring the levels of the classic NES game doesn’t exactly change how the action fells to play too much but does introduce a unique perspective if you want to play a familiar game with a new twist, which is in essence the entire point of the NES Remix series but here it applies to an entire game rather than just small segments of one. If you happen to own NES Remix 1 though, you also get another special blast from the past, Championship Mode meant to evoke the 1990 Nintendo World Championships which had players trying to earn as high a score as possible across three different games. NES Remix 2 does not feature Tetris or Rad Racer though, so instead it strings together Super Mario Bros., Super Mario Bros. 3, and Dr. Mario, the player needing to collect coins in the first two games and then just trying to get as many points as possible before time runs out in Dr. Mario. The overall challenge has a set timer as well and at the end your points are weighed differently based on which game they were earned in, and while its simplicity means even some of the Remix levels provide more interesting and varied play, it does add another extra enjoyable activity to a game that feels like a good fit for its nostalgic melting pot concept.

THE VERDICT: NES Remix 2 cleverly excises enjoyable moments from a batch of classic retro games and even helps redeem a few of them by removing some of the context that lead to decent gameplay moments being frustrating. Quick and snappy minigame-styled excerpts turn such segments into easily replayable challenges that are fun to try and master while other selections are already entertaining on their own merits. While a few slowdown issues or moments where a game’s more complex moments aren’t easy to boil down undermine some of its efforts, you also have the Remix stages that mix together games or introduce new mechanics to breathe new life into otherwise familiar experiences. Toss in extras like Super Luigi Bros. and NES Remix 2 is a strong package that usually has a sharp eye for what it should include and alter from Nintendo’s past.

And so, I give NES Remix 2 for Wii U…

A GOOD rating. NES Remix 2 is more consistent than its predecessor and more creative in how it approaches its remixes, but it also bumps up against a few issues from trying to integrate more advanced and complex NES games like Metroid and Punch-Out!!. However, for each moment of slowdown or segment that can’t quite get across the original game’s appeal, you have many more featuring that game that can pull out some interesting moment and perhaps even help it shine brighter than it originally did by sanding off the rough edges. Some older games like Zelda II: The Adventure of Link really struggled when you were persistent in trying to see the end, but individual segments work well on their won and the entire premise of the NES Remix series is pulling out a brief portion to enjoy. If it had been an entirely smooth experience perhaps this could have been easily identified as far superior to the original, but instead it has many of the improvements one would hope for while occasionally tripping up as it faces new small problems. If necessary you can settle for less than three stars if a stage bugs you and the game has many different challenges available to you at once as well, but even at its roughest, it’s never like you’re slogging through a mire and the quick levels can make it easier to accommodate the little slowdown problems. For the most part though it will be smooth sailing as you move through the tasting menus of a game’s most interesting moments or remixes that draw something new out of old material. There are some games that would be better to play in full like Kirby’s Adventure and Super Mario Bros. 3 while others might be more wisely experienced in these condensed forms like Kid Icarus, NES Remix 2 pretty smart in how it chooses to represent each game so that none outstay their welcome while the ones with more to show get the space to do so.

NES Remix 1 and 2 would eventually be combined into a game called Ultimate NES Remix, but despite its name, it’s not quite a complete collection. It trims out a good deal of the games featured, alters some of the challenges, and even includes some unique content like Speed Mario Bros. where you play Super Mario Bros. at a much quicker pace. It does leave the series in an odd spot; NES Remix 1 and 2 get their appeal from selecting interesting moments from NES games and then Ultimate NES Remix chooses its moments from the two NES Remix games to feature, but there are elements you’re missing out on unless you play all three releases. Ultimate NES Remix does focus on the better known NES games in what it chooses to feature though, but one of this series’s strong points is providing slivers of games that might not be great to go back and play today. It can dig in and find the kernel of what makes a game good or could have made it better if not surrounded by some issues caused by design ideas from when it was released. Ultimate NES Remix got a physical release and in some regions the Wii U got the NES Remix Pack that combines 1 and 2, but it still leaves the totality of content split in an odd way where you’ll get overlap if you want to play everything this series has to offer. This fun experiment on how to rejuvenate old titles, both with alterations and with clever windows in on their best moments, at least got to better explore its concept in NES Remix 2.