Hey, remember Tetris on the NES? When I say this, you’re probably thinking of one of two different games — the Nintendo version or the Tengen version. What you’re likely not thinking about is the Bullet-Proof Software version of the game, which was only released in Japan. But now, it’s actually on GameTap.
While researching an article about the service for the magazine, I was scrolling through the list of games and saw under the Systems tab a category called “8-Bit.” “Hmm,” I thought, “there’s no game system called 8-Bit.” As it turns out, it was NES games. The selection’s rather slim. In fact, apart from Tetris, which is really blurry, there’s just a bunch of Konami games — both Contras, and all three Castlevanias.
And in fact, what they don’t tell you is that it’s actually Konami Classics Collection, a 2002-vintage Windows release that featured all five of these games. So when you think you’re just downloading an NES game, you’re actually downloading a whole big-ass Windows app. And when you try to run a game, it takes you out of GameTap and just runs the original Windows code.
That’s not really bad, though, as it was a pretty good compilation. You can save your game anywhere you want, the graphics are perfect, and… yeah. Hell, it’s NES Contra, which beats the hell out of that Xbox version.
Shouldn’t GameTap try to add some more NES classics to their lineup? I’d definitely like to see Virtual Console get some competition. While we’re waiting for Nintendo to take their sweet time getting these five masterworks on the service, you could just log onto GameTap and play them all you want for $10 a month. It’s appealing, although I’d much rather use the Wii controllers than this POS USB gamepad I have.