QCF: Trophy

o matter how many times I’ve seen it, I still think it’s BUCK wild to see a brand new game for the NES get commercially released over 30 years past the system’s prime. The Homebrew scene for these legacy platforms are further bolstered by the flexibility of the Digital Marketplace hosted by every notable name you can think of, like Nintendo, Sony, Microsoft, Valve, or hell, even Atari.

One of the latest releases for the most popular 8-Bit machine is an homage to Mega Man by developer Gradual Games named Trophy, and it’s not only been made available on Cartridge for its original hardware, it’s also available on Switch eShop and Xbox Marketplace via a proprietary NEW Emulator to boot. The technical chops on display are nothing of impressive, as the game seemingly uses every MMC Mapper to push the most out of the system to run it, but the core design of the game hardly does anything to impress beyond the sheer novelty of it being a new Action Shooter you can grab for the NES.

Tophy is certainly no Mega Man, but it isn’t even a Darkwing Duck, or a Krion Conquest, or hell even a Whomp ‘Em—it’s just a another retro game with some bizarrely outdated design by comparison.

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QCF: Nescape

hen most think of the NES, they'll likely imagine platformers, side-scrollers and turn-based RPGs. Nintendo's premier console did, after all, introduce us to the very roots of these genres as we know them today while also restoring our faith in video games as a whole after the 1980s game crash.

Some titles, however, were more experimental than others – more specifically, those of the point-and-click genre. Two that immediately come to mine are the console ports of King's Quest V and Shadowgate, in addition to Manic Mansion from Lucasfilm Games.

One could consider NEScape! a faithful ode to any of these titles now available in the Nintendo Switch and Xbox Live libraries, albeit with a much more docile feel. In short, it truly is an "escape room" for the NES.

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