Ultimate NES Remix (3DS) Playthrough - NintendoComplete
1,202A playthrough of Nintendo's 2014 retro minigame collection for the Nintendo 3DS, Ultimate NES Remix.
I thought that it might be nice to begin the new year with a romanticized look back at something - anything - far removed from 2020, and Ultimate NES Remix struck me as the perfect vehicle to do just that.
It's a game built of rapid-fire challenges that drop you into several classic NES games. If you've played any of the WarioWare games, you'll recognize the format, sans any sort of overarching story. It features challenges built from 16 separate games, all culled from the two NES Remix games on the Wii U.
There is a lot of creative variety in these challenges. You'll have to take down Bald Bull in the middle of his charge, find hidden one-up mushrooms, kill Ganon with the silver arrow, escape from Zebes before it self-detonates, or even push Luigi into a crab... the list is endless. There are also Remix and Bonus stages that mess with and mix up elements between the games to create unique, sometimes weird, situations - for example, you'll have to throw Luigi down an elevator shaft to retrieve Mario's hat, or use Link from Zelda 2 to kill a hammer brother.
And my favorite has to be the challenge that exists solely to make you watch the training scene from Punch-Out!!
I got rainbow ratings on every challenge for this video. It was excruciatingly hard to get some of these challenges... I liberally abused the reset option in the pause menu as I was playing, but since I didn't think anyone wanted to see hours worth of failed attempts, I cut those out. Once you've gotten the max number of stars, you unlock the Japanese version of the game, Famicom Remix, which features the Famicom versions of the games.
But seriously, some of those challenges perfectly recapture that "NES hard" feeling. I don't think I've raged this hard at a game since I was a kid playing NES games in their heyday. Some require infuriatingly precise timing (like the unlimited lives challenge for SMB), while others (like the Bonus stage that flips Mario Bros. upside down, or forcing you to play Donkey Kong without a jump button) can be outright cruel and demoralizing. One of the Balloon Fight minigames actually made me never want to play the damned thing ever again. Playing it made me feel like I was eight years old working my way through Ninja Gaiden for the first time, what with the angrily turning it off and walking away, only to be back five minutes later for another try.
If you grew up playing NES games, Ultimate NES Remix will bring back a whole lot of memories. It can occasionally get a bit obnoxious with its challenges, but if you were able to handle these games back in the day, you'll be able to clear them with a bit of practice. At least, you will once you've blown the cobwebs off of some long-buried muscle memory.
Happy New Year, everyone!
Timecodes:
0:24 Remix I, Stage 1
1:49 Donkey Kong (7 stages)
8:28 Excitebike (10 stages)
19:54 Donkey Kong Jr. (7 stages)
26:03 Super Mario Bros. (23 stages)
48:30 The Legend of Zelda (17 stages)
1:09:03 Kid Icarus (8 stages)
1:17:13 Zelda II: The Adventure of Link (10 stages)
1:27:40 Punch-Out!! (7 stages)
1:34:45 Super Mario Bros. 2 (12 stages)
1:46:55 Dr. Mario (6 stages)
1:52:15 Kirby's Adventure (13 stages)
2:04:12 Metroid (12 stages)
2:18:11 Balloon Fight (13 stages)
2:26:48 Mario Bros. (10 stages)
2:34:28 Super Mario Bros.: The Lost Levels (7 stages)
2:43:15 Super Mario. Bros 3 (16 stages)
2:59:25 Remix I, Stages 2-25
3:18:08 Remix II (25 stages)
3:42:58 Bonus Stages 1-26
*At this point I realized that I hadn't gotten rainbow rankings on every stage, so I go back and fix that in order to the unlock the final bonus stages.
4:13:32 Excitebike, Stage 10
4:15:26 Balloon Fight, Stage 6
4:16:25 Bonus, Stage 27 and 28 (The Ending)
4:26:29 Records showing all challenges with rainbow ratings
4:30:22 "Speed Mario Bros." - a special version of SMB that runs at 2X speed. This is just a quick demo of the mode. I'm clearly terrible at it at this speed.
4:31:12 "Nintendo World Championships Remix" - a new take on the 1990 Championship cart challenges, featuring Super Mario Bros., Super Mario Bros 3., and Dr. Mario.
4:38:34 Famicom Remix title and menu
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No cheats were used during the recording of this video.
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