Last week LEGO announced a brand new upcoming set; a NES made entirely out of LEGO and I was really excited about it! Me and many other fans with me. I always said that once LEGO would collaborate with Nintendo, I’d go bankrupt. I have to admit that I didn’t really like the first announcement with the Super Mario sets, because they’re not what I had hoped. I mean, Mario just seems a bit off and I’d hoped for minifigures. Instead, the “playsets” are really aimed at children and less at a more broad audience. That doesn’t mean I won’t buy the set when it comes out, it just means that I’ll wait for some reviews to pop up first before deciding what to do.

It does have its charm, but I would have loved to see Mario and friends as a classic LEGO minifigure instead.

Now, when it comes to the NES set, I have to make a confession. One I think I made earlier, but still. I never owned a NES myself. When I was a kid my parents bought me a SEGA Master System instead. I did play on the NES at my schoolfriends places though and they always loved to visit us to play Sonic and other SEGA games. But I always wanted to have a NES myself. Once the SNES came around I begged my parents to buy me one of those for X-mas, since I didn’t really like the Mega Drive all that much.

This set just really kicks you right in the childhood, doesn’t it?

I’m also a subscriber to Nintendo Switch Online, which gives you access to the Virtual Console and that collection of games just keeps growing as well, allowing you to replay all those old moments from years gone by. Sometimes, however, nostalgia is just best left for what it is. I did restart some older games and if you compare those to the games you play nowadays, it’s a big difference. Especially NES games can be ruthless when it comes to their difficulty, hence the term “Nintendo hard“.

Seeing things like this really make me want to play some retro games, or a good remake. I’ve been considering getting the Final Fantasy 7 remake for some time now. Maybe this is a good time to delve into my nostalgia for a bit and see if things really hold up as well as I think they do in my memory. A few games still do, and probably always will and those are:

• The Legend of Zelda: A Link to the Past (SNES)
• Super Mario World 1 & 2 (SNES)
• Super Mario Bros 3 (the SNES remake version)
• Zeliard (PC)
• Mega Man X (SNES)
• Wonder Boy 3: The Dragon’s Trap (SEGA Master System)
• Donkey Kong Country 1 & 2 (SNES)
• Might & Magic IV & V: World of Xeen (PC)

I’ll try and dig into some of those soon and tell you why I think these games are timeless classics. But maybe I should pick the less popular of these, then, for a change.

For now, I’ve got some Pokémon eggs to hatch in Pokémon Shield, since I’m still chasing a shiny Mawile (also for nostalgic reasons). Once I manage to do that, I’ll get back to you all and share my experience with you about that whole thing. Because breeding Pokémon is a strange (and sometimes shady) business. 😉

Happy gaming!

~Jeffrey