Seth

The Indie NES Game Hall of Fame is now live! https://retrostack.substack.com/p/the-indie-nes-game-hall-of-fame

No, this one takes most of my free time as is alas

@Scrobins is candidly one of my heroes. I have the utmost respect for those who have toiled in this space for years cataloging and curating and educating. I don’t know where NES homebrewing would be without him—I think he’s that much of a hero for the work he has done, and I’m not just saying that. It’s deeply felt.

It is called exactly what it is: the largest archive of its kind in the world, and an archive that includes all games presently detectable by the only New York Times-bestselling journalist working in the field. It is professional work product being given to you for free so that you can complain about the most significant act of service journalism in the subfield rather than simply enjoy the hundreds and hundreds of homebrews I have found for you that (in fact) you most certainly did not know about previously. If you were in this for the games rather than the drama you would go play some of the games rather than act the way you have acted here, which is fabulously shabbily. My semipro take, as someone who used to work professionally with antisocial people as a public defender, is that you have some sort of oppositional defiance disorder-adjacent or anxiety-group condition that causes you to want to be cantankerous and stir the pot. But again, if you actually cared about homebrews—as your efforts to produce them suggest you in fact do—a better use of your time right now, and specifically in this thread, would be to make a list of what the archive is missing rather than mischaracterize my hundreds and hundreds of hours of free labor as a professional art critic and video game journalist. But you are not going to do that, are you? Because that would be productive and drama-reducing and a service to your peers rather than spiteful and petty and noxious. I do not mind the fact that I am an attorney, journalist, editor, academic, and nonfiction author and that other people are doctors or engineers or homebrewers or fighter pilots. Meanwhile, the fact that I am also a professional art critic and art historian and you are not appears to upset you to the point that you want me to mislabel the product of years of professional research as nothing more than a blog entry. I am not going to do that, anymore than I would pretend that your homebrewing efforts are a Cabbage Patch Kid. I can only take solace in the fact that I have met many people like you before; you are fueled by conflict and drama and the unhappiness of others, a vampiric tendency I realize I have fed here. My own inclination is to work on projects that benefit other people, as I have been in public service in various manifestations for 30 years now. I hope that, having feasted on this drama you have worked so hard to create, and the disrespect for my professional work you have so gleefully spread throughout this thread, you can move on to being toxic in someone else’s perimeter. Your particular act may be extremely lucrative in this subcommunity as a matter of transient cultural capital, but it does not do anything for me or the serious work I am doing in an effort to benefit homebrewers like you.

Hey there all, last chance to vote! I’ve completed the next volume of the archive of every NES homebrew game ever released—the current tally is 1,750—and would like to bring it out soon, so since votes have dried up here I’m planning to wrap up the open voting period early. That said, I’m happy to take any additional votes that come in in the next 24 hours or so. It’s really easy to vote, just give me (in a comment in this thread) 10 NES homebrews you would recommend anyone new to the scene play. The next open voting will be in 2026. Thanks to everyone who has participated in this one, or will participate over the next 24 hours.

Hey there all, last chance to vote! I’ve completed the next volume of the archive of every NES homebrew game ever released—the current tally is 1,750—and would like to bring it out soon, so since votes have dried up here I’m planning to wrap up the open voting period early. That said, I’m happy to take any additional votes that come in in the next 24 hours or so. It’s really easy to vote, just give me (in a comment in this thread) 10 NES homebrews you would recommend anyone new to the scene play. The next open voting will be in 2026. Thanks to everyone who has participated in this one, or will participate over the next 24 hours.

It has to be theoretically playable on a standard NES (I only add the word “theoretically” here because of your second question, the answer to which is that yes, ROM-only homebrews are fine, provided that they could in theory be put on a cart and played in a standard NES).

Great list, thank you! It has been added to the votes. I think people will be very excited to see the Hall when it comes out in May. (And keep those votes coming, all!)

Understood. Thank you for the feedback.

I will just add this: The project I’m working on is about celebrating those who are keeping the NES alive after its lifespan. That includes developers, gamers, collectors, critics, journalists, publishers, composers, archivists, and many other groups of persons working really hard to do a very hard thing: keep a dead console alive. That is an idiosyncratic and surprising and arguably even unprecedented (at least in its present scope) task that they have taken on, and an honorable one, entirely different from the project that small independent NES publishers took on during the lifespan of the NES in the 1980s and 1990s. Anyone who wants to run a completely different project that celebrates unlicensed NES games released during the lifespan of the system is free to do that. Second, under the definition of “homebrews” both hacks and original aftermarket games qualify. We cannot say that the difference is in artistic merit because I have played the very worst indie aftermarket NES games and the very best homebrewed NES hacks and there is infinitely more artistry present in the latter. The difference, and I say this as an attorney, is in the legality of hacks versus aftermarket indie games. But from a cultural standpoint, there is natural crossover between the hacking and hack gamer community and what is somewhat erroneously referred to as the “homebrew” community (erroneously because that term is being used more narrowly than its definition) that is actually not happening because of a soft mutual contempt. Homebrewers of original games view hacks as easy to make, disrespectful of gaming as an enterprise, and generally of lower quality than any decent entirely new game. Meanwhile, because those working on hacks are working with some of the top IPs in the history of digital art, it is easy for them to look down on original games as being inferior by and large in their gameplay, level design, and so on (particularly given that a good hack takes an already incredible game to an entirely new level). What I said here was that there are probably thousands of hacks out there, and that my historical archive has identified 30—such a vanishingly small percentage as to almost be a rounding error—that have added so much custom code to existing code, well beyond mere sprite hacks, that they deserve to be seen as original homebrew *equivalents*. For that to be seen as objectionable in a community that had no problem accepting as “homebrews” all manner of illegal ports like Ultimate Frogger Champion and E.T. and the literally scores of additional ones listed at RETRO is a little rich. I understand that gatekeepers want to pretend that we are not working on a spectrum here but in two entirely different camps. But with respect, I have played more homebrews and hacks and ports and demos and music carts and tech demos and utilities and on and on and on for the NES than anyone here, and there is no question about the fact that what we are discussing is a spectrum and not a binary. And that is a good thing, because by recognizing that we are working with a spectrum we can bring two communities together that have a lot in common. So please understand how little interest I have in the gatekeeping that I think some people are interested in here. Not because I think I am better than that gatekeeping, because gatekeeping is something we all do and find enjoyable when it is appropriate to the task before us. But I’m doing the work I am doing as a historian and journalist and gatekeeping of the particular sort being discussed here is not appropriate or useful for the task before me, especially not when it is predicated on all sorts of historical inaccuracies. I am happy discuss all this at more length in a thread that is not intended for a completely separate purpose. I really hope we can return to people voting because that is going to have much more of a long-term impact on the community. Why? Because it celebrates the work of others rather than our own ability to craft an argument.

There is just too much factually incorrect about this statement, both in terms of changing what I said to you and changing what I said to others and then adding things I never said that I think I am just going to keep my focus on the purpose of this thread, which is compiling votes. If you ever find yourself creating a Hall of Fame that is an attempt to both bring multiple communities together and advocate for those communities and evangelize to those outside those communities about why they should pay attention to those communities, I think you will understand how frustrating it is to have the very careful statements I made about what is or is not allowed and why turned into whatever it was that you just said. But again, given that this is a community service project, and given that the purpose of that community service project is to promote something we all care about to other people, I really would appreciate it if we could focus on what this thread is about in this thread, and then if there are other conversations people want to have have those in a different thread that is dedicated to those conversations. But me repeating things I have already said and explaining why I am being deliberately misquoted and misconstrued is not a good use of my time, particularly in this space.

30 NES games that have often been called hacks—out of the 1,500+ NES hacks out there—have been ruled Original Homebrew Equivalents by RETRO due to their significant code additions. Deadpool and Legend of Link are on that list, but 99%+ of hacks are not.

Any more voting slates for the Indie NES Hall of Fame, gents? Seriously, loving these slates! I am seeing so many games we are not seeing at the other voting sites, so your input is absolutely critical. (For instance, Blade Buster may well make the Hall purely due to input from this group; it’s rarely mentioned elsewhere—I mean on U.S. NES homebrew community chats in 2024—which is truly unfortunate). Also, I can update you all and say that a shocking total of 132 (!) different NES homebrews have now received at least one HoF vote between the first open voting period (2022) and this one! That is such a testament to how incredibly vibrant the NES Renaissance is!

Ah, I see now that I misunderstood your question. It *does* have to be aftermarket (released 1996 or after), so I think at least MC&DH would be ineligible?

You gotta like Nintendo Hard, tho.