Arcade Archives Nintendo Collection Goes On Sale For The First Time Ever, 30% Off

Great games, but they are still overpriced, even after the 30% discount. Like come on, they are ancient games.

@beartown You'll be surprised if I told you Arcade Archives VS. Super Mario Bros. was a consistent top seller for some time. I'm sure the others on this list sold good as well.

@keiichi-desu it doesn't surprise me that much. It's because there's no other choice if you want them (legally) on Switch. But I think these prices are not cool.

You basssssss----------culin.

For a second there, you got me thinking that there was a physical collection on the way with all of the 8/16-bit Nintendo arcade games on a cart. Grr...

I'll probably end up buying all of these though.

I'd already bought a few, but I couldn't see myself playing much of the others. Golf was surprisingly fun, and Sky Skipper really impressed me for a game of its age.

@beartown A good game is a good game, even if it's "ancient".
Though only some of those can qualify as "good games".

I remember in early 2018 when VS Super Mario Bros was consistently a top selling title on the eShop. Feels like a completely different time, the Switch library has come a long way.

@KingMike well, sure. But a great game from the 80s is like 500 times "smaller" than any modern game. And these prices after the discounts are almost 10% of the biggest Switch titles. Not sure if my reasoning makes sense, but I hope you get my point.

Still way too much for those games

if they brought those down to 2.99 I'd buy a handful.

I had 5 of them on my wishlist!

Might be tempted by the rest...

Are any of these worth picking up even with the NES versions available? I haven't played any of the arcade versions, so I don't know if there's a point in getting these when I have a lot of the NES games available through the NES Classic Edition and Wii U/3DS Virtual Console.

I have nothing against these games being sold, but I do think its just weird that in 2022, these arcade versions of games that were mostly ported to NES and thus you could buy for 5 bucks on Virtual Console 15 years ago, are slightly more than 5 bucks even when on sale. Like I get the Punch-out games and maybe Donkey Kong because it has that 4th level, but otherwise, there's infinite better deals out there. If you can play your games online on the Switch right now, you have the NES versions of most of them anyway.

As one of the few people on Earth who both likes Clu Clu Land and didn't grow up with it, I'd still never buy it for that price.

@NeonPizza

Is Urban Champion confirmed for EVO this year? I hope so!

I'd buy some SNES games I think around that price. Though I already bought them for 3DS and Wii AND Wii U already.. so hmm...

maybe not.

That said, I never liked NES generation much.

Don’t I remember buying these on my Wii for .99 cents…. Don’t I remember buying these on my Wii U for around .99 cents…. Am I or am I not now renting these for the cost of a new game a year with online services…. Pretty sure I had about all of these on cartridge’s at a point in time in life or two…. Lol it feel like I’m taking crazy pills on how this is a deal…. Aren’t most of these on my mini’s (lol well they are on mine anyways) but still…. I’ve paid for these games so many times…..
My wish is that the next system Nintendo puts out it is 100% backwards compatible with downloads and switch game cards. Unless it’s something totally different like a VR system…. There is no reason on earth it couldn’t be.
Lol anyways lots of deals to be had out there right now… but lol these should all be free forever….. cuz come on Nintendo…
Back in the day Mario was a pack in….. now days a Nintendo collection should just be a forever pack in. Anyways back to sonic and no man’s sky…. Happy holiday deals

Would be nice if they just put all these in a physical collection for $20.

@Mjoen it's very unlikely you had any of these games on cartridges. You likely had the home ports of them on cartridges but the way I played most of these back in the day was on systems where you paid per life or you paid for a period of time to play them.

Still though, with all of the other offers on sale right now it's hard to justify paying 5e for one of these when there's games like ni no Kuni reduced to around 15e

Still no Paperboy! XD

@ReaperMelia from what I can recall:

Vs. Wrecking Crew is more of a classic arcade game rather than a puzzle game.

Vs. Balloon Fight has slightly different mechanics and spans 2 screens.

Ice Climber has a level select screen and with the Arcade Archives suspention points you can "save" your progress. (This version was ported to the Famicom Disc System, but hasn't been re-released)

Vs. Super Mario Bros. has some levels slightly redesigned and seems to be based on The Lost Levels.

Excitebike is Vs. Excitebike with regular Excitebike music.

Clu Clu Land has different music (this version was later ported to the Famicom Disc System, it's the version available on the Japanese Famicom NSO app and it was also available on the west in Animal Crossing for the Gamecube)

Punch-Out!! and Super Punch-Out!! are more like the SNES Super Punch-Out!!.

Vs. Baseball and Soccer feature a points system: you start with a set of points, which decreases as time goes by but can go up if you score or down if the other team scores. If the points reach zero, the game is over but it allows to continue by inserting more credits. If you win a match, naturally you can continue playing.
This means a grand slam in Baseball can cost you all of your points. Soccer may have the distinction of ripping off soccer fans before FIFA/EA did.
I don't have them, but I'm guessing it's the same for Vs. Tennis and Vs. Mah-Jong.

Really hope eventually we can have Popeye (along with the NES version on the NSO app), Vs. Mach Rider (the one that shows the woman with a dagger, who seemingly is Mach Rider), Vs. Ladies Golf and Vs. Duck Hunt (the one where you can shoot the dog in one cutscene)

I may use this chance to get the Nintendo Arcade Archives I'm missing (VS. Tennis, VS. Mah-jong, Donkey Kong Jr., Donkey Kong 3 and Urban Champion).

@Mjoen These are the original arcade versions, not NES/SNES ports.

@Mjoen These are not part of the online pass, these are digital purchases.

These are not NES games, these are arcade games, a few of which were not released on Wii virtual console.

@ReaperMelia Donkey Kong had a level that was removed from the NES version for cartridge space reasons.
Though Nintendo made an official ROM hack of the NES game in 2010 to restore it (called "Donkey Kong: Original Edition"), they have been incredibly stingy about making it available.
It was released on the PAL "Super Mario Bros. Anniversary Wii", and has been available on the Europe/Australia 3DS eShop for some years, but in North America it was ONLY legally available as a bonus for those who bought certain 3DS retail games digitally at the end of 2012. If you didn't partake in that offer, then that's too bad for you!
And Nintendo wonders why their games get bootlegged...

£3.14 each from the South African eShop is tempting for a good few of these.

Might be time to finally pick up the Punch-Outs!
Hopefully they have some non-Nintendo games on sale, too.
I was tempted to get Taito’s Metal Black last week.

Nice, but Nintendo, don't you do more than 30% even in the case of old classics? Come on...

@Moroboshi876 : Nintendo never let "old" get in the way of charging exorbitant prices for their games. Case in point, the plethora of Wii U ports, and hell, even Wii ports, like The Legend of Zelda: Skyward Sword.

AU$10.50 (full price) for each of these is pretty steep, especially when there are games developed from scratch that are cheaper at launch.

Even at 30% these are excessively priced, but I'm just glad that we got any kind of discount at all, as Nintendo games have previously always been excluded when it comes to sales on Hamster Archive titles.

@KingMike Some hackers already dump that rom online so even if Nintendo made it hard to get that game, you could always find the free rom version within torrent all over the web. Most of the people who provide NES roms in torrent online had replace the old inferior one with that updated one which had the extra cement factory level intact.

@HammerGalladeBro I don't think we're gonna see anymore Nintendo games in this line. Its been a long tme since the last one.

Honestly, I just wish that they did a bit more of Nintendo's arcade back catalogue. Where's Sheriff, where's Space Firebird, where are the rest of the officially liscensed VS. games? I just wish that those were available somewhere.

No Mach Rider, no deal...

Sky Skipper is one die hard Nintendo fans should pick up. It serves as a really interesting piece of history as the game was so poorly recieved that Nintendo turned all the machines into Popeye cabinets. There is now only one Sky Skipper machine left in the world which sits in the Nintendo of America headquarters. The fact that this game got a release at all on the Switch is really quite something. The game itself isn't gonna blow anybody away, but it's just a nice little curio that has some rather cool history behind it! 😁👍

Nintendo still milking their classics for all they're worth I see. Not much of a discount.

Excellent, just what I wanted. I've bought way too many Arcade Archives games (and ACA Neo Geo) at full price, but I haven't got any of the Nintendo ones so far and really wanted one or two.

I prefer the sega ages games

I've ultimately decided to download Vs. Wrecking Crew, Vs. Balloon Fight, and Super Punch-Out.

I decided not to bother with Vs. Tennis, Vs. Baseball, Soccer, and Vs. Mah-jong, as I'll likely never play them for more than a few minutes, and I have most of these types of games in superior form elsewhere (Mario Tennis, FIFA etc.), and the lack of English support in the ROM for Vs. Mah-jong will probably make it a little too annoying to play (and I already have Mahjong in the form of 51 Worldwide Games).

I had already downloaded the rest of the games before the sale.

Or maybe just emulate??

When the switch eshop inevitably shuts down. These games will be on the list of “grab them before it’s too late!” They are for people curious about Nintendo history. I like donkey Kong and the punch out games for the Tate mode feature as well

Not bad, but the Archives series is just overpriced, even with a discount. Perhaps if there were minimal special features or something. It's a shame Nintendo doesn't put all of their arcade titles in one compilation and give it some polish

@Angelic_Lapras_King Not really sure how many are left. Nintendo mostly abandoned arcade games to work on NES.
What we got after the NES launch was the VS. series (NES games modified for arcade play) and the PlayChoice 10 (which was simply a 10-slot NES console with a coin-based lock).

@KingMike Regardless, I think what we got was what Nintendo allowed them to release. They probably made a few bucks from it, but probably not a huge amount for them to allow Hamster to do anymore additional titles, whatever was left.

@KingMike

Lets say, the Content you get it very very limited compared to newer Games.
For Example, Super Nintendo Games offer much more to keep you entertained and can be concidered ancient nowadays.

With Nintendo Tax 20€ and 10€ as a reduced Price for such limited Games.

Finally! Caught this randomly last night in the eShop browsing some Black Friday deals. I purposely waited this long for these to finally be discounted, and alone for that this makes it a big deal to swoop in and get those titles on your Wish List. Definitely taking advantage of this sale.as I doubt we won’t see the 50% sale in another two years if that.

I was hoping the other non Nintendo Arcade Archives would be on sale for Black Friday! I Guess not but for $3.99, I’d pick up a whole bunch and trim down my wishlist a great deal too lol 😝

So why won't Nintendo release their Nintendo games individually? Their existence in this collection clearly demonstrates that they're OK with selling content outside of their subscription service. And yet, the only way to legally own their NES games is through an overpriced Hampster collection.

@Mjoen Yeah, if I'm remembering correctly (which I might not be), I'm pretty sure NES games on Wii were like $5 a pop, and never went on sale. Whatever the price for NES games was, I kind of recall that even back then, the price for NES games in particular were widely considered to be bit on the high side.

I was disappointed that they never did Arm Wrestling, especially since it never had a home port. I played an actual machine of it and it's a fun timing-based game with similarities to Punch Out. It's also played with a standard joystick.

@fox_mattcloud What's even crazier is that there's an Atari 2600 version of the game that had a wider release than the actual arcade game.

@fox_mattcloud There had to be at least one other machine (or at least PCB) in existence at some point, for the game to have been in MAME. As there's no way Nintendo was going to let the MAME devs dump their machine.

@Andy_Witmyer Cartridge games were always expensive, because that was an expensive format to manufacture. Final Fantasy: Mystic Quest was a "budget" game when it was released, and yet it is more expensive than most modern games when adjusted for inflation.

Having more memory doesn't necessarily make games better. It's only as good as the actual game design is.
I haven't played a new Final Fantasy than X. Because X might have been a pretty impressive movie, but in actual gameplay it was worse than previous games. Because that disc space was used to make such impressive graphics that the artists couldn't afford to make maps that weren't functionally just simple hallways.

Still way overpriced. I might be interested at 70%.

I have a lot of Arcade Archives on my Wish list. I normally pick these games when they randomly do a 50% off sale.
Typical Nintendo, could not go to 50% off like the Non Nintendo Arcade Archives, had to do 33%. Tighter than a Duck’s ….

@Gerald

"Tighter than a Duck’s …."

?

@Mario500 you gotta be kidding me?

it has a hole and it is watertight

@Gerald

"you gotta be kidding me?"

Answer: no.

I got so excited when I saw Arcade Archives on sale..... Then I saw it was just the Nintendo ones-- I have the Nintendo ones I wanted, unfortunately. Those "other" Arcade Archives games just will never go on sale I reckon...

@sleepinglion
Some people have really weird ideas about pricing.

They couldn't even put them physically? They can't take that much room