Vote Here for the Indie NES Game Hall of Fame!

[Seth | 172]

Hi all,

My publication RETRO has been publishing a free, link-laden archive of all NES homebrews ever made for a few years now (the listing sits at around 1,600 titles in the volume of the series about to be released) and in 2022 I held a vote for the Indie NES Game Hall of Fame that resulted in five NES homebrews—Böbl, Dungeons & Doomknights, Micro Mages, Spacegulls, and Witch n’ Wiz—getting voted into the Hall.

The second round of open voting (which allows everyone to repeat or change their votes, the only rules being that you should avoid voting for games already in the Hall, need to vote for ten games, and cannot vote for any game you were involved in making) is happening right now, and the three voting sites are NESmakers (on Facebook), the NESDev Forum, and here.

I thought VGS would be a great voting site because I saw that back in 2020 you guys had an amazing thread about the best homebrew games out there. I thought maybe you'd like to have a go at it again? It takes just a few moments to vote—you can literally just list the games in a comment on this thread—and it helps to answer the age-old question: what NES homebrews would I recommend to someone I'm hoping will get into retro-homebrew gaming? The Hall voting (like the homebrew archive it is part of) is very much a community-service project.

I really hope you'll consider participating! Just let me know if you have any questions. The free RETRO archive listing all known NES homebrews (minus the 100 or so about to be added in the next volume of the series, and the 25 I've already found so far for the volume after that, which will likely come out this summer) can be found here.

All the best to all of you,
Seth
(PS) I am hoping to wrap up voting by May 15 if enough votes come in, and May 31 if not.

[fcgamer | 4,732]

Vote: Mr Lee's Alishan Tea Collector

Unique theme, fun gameplay reminiscent of early Famicom / NES games, with hints of Donkey Kong 94 thrown in.

[a3quit4s | 4,108]

Even though the dude was up in here trying to sell NFTs and shit 

Star Keeper. The OG

Micro Mages is a solid choice and a 6502 gangsta. Witch N Wiz is also great but he might surpass it with Super Sunny World if it ever gets released lol

Edited April 24 by a3quit4s

[wongojack | 217]

This is pretty cool.  I had no idea this "publication" existed.  I will likely use the archive.

I do get confused with all the "Retro" magazines and such.  Retro Gamer Magazine, Old School Retro Gamer Magazine, and of course the infamous magazine simply known as Retro that was run by that dude who tried to fool us all with the chameleon.  I have a hard time remembering which ones I've backed on kickstarter etc.

Edited April 24 by wongojack

[Gloves | 11,800]

My joke response is ShmupSpeed, which I'm sad to say isn't on your list at all.

My actual response is Blade Buster.

[Seth | 172]

I love and will take these votes! (But do know that you get ten games per voting slate, if you want!) 

Edited April 24 by Seth

[CT | 96]

Super Russian Roulette

[erac | 78]

fcgamer, isn't that your own game? The rule was not voting for something you made.

[fcgamer | 4,732]

40 minutes ago, erac said:

fcgamer, isn't that your own game? The rule was not voting for something you made.

Oh I didn't see that rule, in that case please disregard my vote.

[fcgamer | 4,732]

On a different note though, it would be nice to see votes for more recent games than Star Keeper and other old ones that have been around forever

[Tulpa | 3,520]

15 hours ago, Gloves said:

My actual response is Blade Buster.

Seconded. 

[Gloves | 11,800]

13 hours ago, Seth said:

I love and will take these votes! (But do know that you get ten games per voting slate, if you want!) 

I'll take this in mind and make a new, better post.

[Gloves | 11,800]

@Seth Can I ask you to make a slight adjustment when referring to VGS in your publications? 

I noticed that on your article, The Top 500 Indie NES Games, Vol. 9 - by Seth Abramson (substack.com), you refer to VGS as an "indie NES marketplace" and that's not indicative of what we represent. We're a community of gamers, on which you could say the core group has a primary affinity for retro gaming. I'd never call us a marketplace, nor would I say that the NES (or Nintendo in general) are our focus. 

[RH | 4,924]

I've not been much of an indie/homebrew guy for the NES but I have to say Full Quiet has looked amazing to me and I definitely am tempted to buy one.

[Gloves | 11,800]

Here's a list of 10 nominations. No particular order.

1. Blade Buster
2. Nebs n' Debs
3. NEScape!
4. Gruniozerca (note: your link to this in your listing of games is a 404)
5. Astro Ninja Man
6. Super Tilt Bro.
7. Alwa's Awakening
8. Anguna: Scourge of the Goblin King
9. Gotta Protectors: Amazon’s Running Diet
10. Cowlitz Gamers’ Second Adventure

[a3quit4s | 4,108]

5 minutes ago, Gloves said:

Here's a list of 8 nominations. No particular order.

1. Blade Buster
2. Nebs n' Debs
3. NEScape!
4. Gruniozerca (note: your link to this in your listing of games is a 404)
5. Astro Ninja Man
6. Super Tilt Bro.
7. Alwa's Awakening
8. Anguna: Scourge of the Goblin King

My dude Tilt Bro ain’t even out yet  

[Gloves | 11,800]

1 minute ago, a3quit4s said:

My dude Tilt Bro ain’t even out yet  

The rules stipulate only:

1. avoid voting for games already in the Hall,
2. need to vote for ten games, and
3. cannot vote for any game you were involved in making

The only rule I've broken is #2, looking back on it.

Please ignore that the Sage is a character in Super Tilt Bro..

[Seth | 172]

Gloves, just to be clear, that categorization I gave for VGS related *only* to the part of this site I linked to—the pinned three posts on Homebrewpedia: the marketplace, homebrew almanac for collectors, and alerts on upcoming games to buy(!) I would never have thought to call all of VGS a marketplace. I have been lurking for years, and very much know it is not that! I hope you will click the link to see what I mean, but if you want the link further clarified or narrowed I will do that. I did not limit it exclusively to the marketplace post because I didn't want anyone to sleep on the excellent other work Scrobins is doing to catalogue games that folks can buy.

Edited April 24 by Seth

[Gloves | 11,800]

1 hour ago, Seth said:

Gloves, just to be clear, that categorization I gave for VGS related *only* to the part of this site I linked to—the pinned three posts on Homebrewpedia: the marketplace, homebrew almanac for collectors, and alerts on upcoming games to buy(!) I would never have thought to call all of VGS a marketplace. I have been lurking for years, and very much know it is not that! I hope you will click the link to see what I mean, but if you want the link further clarified or narrowed I will do that. I did not limit it exclusively to the marketplace post because I didn't want anyone to sleep on the excellent other work Scrobins is doing to catalogue games that folks can buy.

I did see that you'd linked to a relevant section (I might argue that the "Share" section isn't a marketplace regardless), but given your explanation I'm arguing semantics; your point is fair. I just want to make sure people aren't getting the impression that this place is solely about buying old (or new old) games, especially when honestly not THAT many transactions take place here compared to, say, Facebook Marketplace.

[fcgamer | 4,732]

22 hours ago, Gloves said:

My joke response is ShmupSpeed, which I'm sad to say isn't on your list at all.

My actual response is Blade Buster.

Have you tried any of the homebrew, indie, or aftermarket shooters that have been released over the past few years, generally coming out of Japan? Seeing Blade Buster on the list is really sad, imo. Let's throw Battle Kid up on the list too along with Solar Wars and call them hidden gems.

[Gloves | 11,800]

1 minute ago, fcgamer said:

Have you tried any of the homebrew, indie, or aftermarket shooters that have been released over the past few years, generally coming out of Japan? Seeing Blade Buster on the list is really sad, imo. Let's throw Battle Kid up on the list too along with Solar Wars and call them hidden gems.

How is seeing Blade Buster sad? It's fucking phenomenal. Show me a better shmup on the NES. 

[AverageOliver98 | 719]

Little Medusa

... thats all I got. LM is the only NES homebrew I've played and own and I feel like voting for stuff I never played isn't a great idea.

[fcgamer | 4,732]

22 minutes ago, Gloves said:

How is seeing Blade Buster sad? It's fucking phenomenal. Show me a better shmup on the NES. 

The game was released in 2011 or whatever, as a ROM, though from my understanding the author did give people their blessing. 

I feel it's sad that we've been doing homebrew this long yet in 2024 so many of the games being mentioned were around in the NA days. To me it demonstrates that either homebrew hasn't come that far since about 2014 or so, or that people aren't playing the new games. And that I feel to be quite sad. 

[Gloves | 11,800]

7 minutes ago, fcgamer said:

The game was released in 2011 or whatever, as a ROM, though from my understanding the author did give people their blessing. 

I feel it's sad that we've been doing homebrew this long yet in 2024 so many of the games being mentioned were around in the NA days. To me it demonstrates that either homebrew hasn't come that far since about 2014 or so, or that people aren't playing the new games. And that I feel to be quite sad. 

I play a LOT of homebrews. I also play a LOT of shmups. 

Making a GOOD shmup is not that easy especially on the NES with sprite flickering and slow down, both of which are almost non existent in the game which is basically a miracle. 

There's not a ton of shmups coming out and those that do aren't great. The other one on my nominations is the exception - Astro Ninja Man is excellent, it's just not my favourite type of shmup. 

Again, you alluded to there being games out of Japan which are better. Name some. 

[fcgamer | 4,732]

50 minutes ago, Gloves said:

I play a LOT of homebrews. I also play a LOT of shmups. 

Making a GOOD shmup is not that easy especially on the NES with sprite flickering and slow down, both of which are almost non existent in the game which is basically a miracle. 

There's not a ton of shmups coming out and those that do aren't great. The other one on my nominations is the exception - Astro Ninja Man is excellent, it's just not my favourite type of shmup. 

Again, you alluded to there being games out of Japan which are better. Name some. 

That's quite strange as there's a ton of talk on other forums about the shmup offerings coming out. I'm not a shrimps guy personally (I prefer roaches), but surely some of the recent shump homebrews are worthy of a vote? 

Never said or alluded to any game being better or worse than Blade Buster. You totally missed the point.