NES games that will not be missed if destroyed

[tepples]

Nobody in their right mind wants to destroy a Legend of Zelda to make a random SNROM game. Yet Dwedit recommended destroying Winter Games to make UNROM games. Even with Infinite NES Lives starting to sell preassembled PCBs that you program through a Kazzo, there's still a need for cases until someone ponies up beaucoup bucks for injection molding. So I'd like to see examples of reasonably common but unloved NES games for people to buy and sacrifice as donors for reproductions. By "unloved" I don't mean cult classics that need more love or even "so bad it's good"; I mean crap games (Japanese: 糞ゲー, kusogê) whose gameplay isn't even worth the board, CIC, and case they're soldered on.

I've heard in the past:

• Ultima: Exodus (SNROM)
• Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde (SFROM)
• Most of LJN's output, such as Friday the 13th or Back to the Future
• Yoshi (SFROM) (far more mindless and chance-based than games such as Dr. Mario or Yoshi's Cookie)

Or are some of the NES games listed on Your Weekly Kusoge actually worthwhile enough not to destroy?

[ccovell]

Bases Loaded. Please kill it!
BL2 as well.

[Dimeback]

Just a few I can think of off the top of my head:
Rollerblade Racer (I actually want this game to cease to exist and be replaced by better games, I hate it that much.)
Every game developed by Bethesda
Every game developed by Radical Entertainment
Every game developed by Micronics

[strat]

But if we start destroying these games, they'll become rarities themselves and the only copies will belong to James Rolfe! (I wouldn't destroy my copy of X-Men anyway; since as a kid I was good about avoiding seriously bad games, that's one of the few I have).

[tokumaru]

People who see value in crappy games just because few copies exist are stupid. I say let them hoard that crap.

The main reason I'm against destroying games is that even the bad games are going to end some day. So the sooner we find an alternative affordable source of boards/mappers/cases, the better.

[strat]

That's why I marvel at those who pay hundreds-thousands for MIB games. They're buying a collector's item that can't be preserved and will cease to function eventually (Well, I'm assuming the pcb/rom chips/battery/pins/whatever won't last forever).

[Sik]

Those components will most likely outlive the people owning them (unless actively damaged), except maybe the battery in games with save RAM but that can be fixed (unless the battery leaked, which ruins anything around it). Then again if you're doing it for collecting chances are that you won't even turn on the game in the first place.

As for cartridge cases, huh, how long before 3D printing becomes cheap enough that you can get custom molds without much cost? (unless the prices are artificially kept high) Although even then the cartridges still have to be assembled manually so that will increase the cost of the cartridge no matter what.

[lidnariq]

3D printing is really not the magical thing people want it to be. And it's definitely the wrong way to make a mold: the amount of effort and time to make a positive in some plastic using a 3d printer is basically the same as the effort to mill a negative for injection molding. Lost master casting would have no benefit beyond transforming the (relatively) soft or fragile material 3d printers use with something more robust, but that's a lot of sacrificial material for each instance.

The hard thing about making an injection mold is the number of moving parts and the precision of each of those moving parts, and that you need accuracy far above what any of the extruder printers can manage. (Probably accuracy above the plaster-based ones, but I'm less certain of that. Should be in range of the expensive laser sintering/annealing printers)

If there's going to be a "right" cheap way to make something comparable to the normal plastic shell, there's not many options... woodworking or papercraft, both with their tricky bits; or something like a a solid tray below the PCB with a single flat non-printed layer attached on top (or vice versa).

[thefox]

woodworking

I've always wanted to make a wooden cart.

[Myask]

• Ultima: Exodus (SNROM)

And yet I know people who like this one.

As for from Weekly Kusoge, Color a Dinosaur is kind of a joke among TASers, Super Monkey Daibouken got featured on GCCX...

Every game developed by Bethesda
Every game developed by Radical Entertainment
Every game developed by Micronics

Hmm...wait, Super Pitfall was Micronics.

but it makes some of us sad when it happens.

[tepples]

Every game developed by Bethesda

TIL Bethesda was around in NES times. But if you throw out every Bethesda game, you'd have to throw out Wolfenstein 3D and Doom on the Super NES now that Bethesda's parent company owns Id Software. And given those games' iconic status, even despite NOA's censorship, they're unlikely to be cheap enough to use as donors.

Every game developed by Radical Entertainment

Hey, I liked Mario Is Missing. But Mario's Time Machine could have used more Morlocks. And I agree with you on the rest.

Every game developed by Micronics

If Bethesda and Micronics had a baby, would it be Super Pitfallout?

Ultima: Exodus

And yet I know people who like this one.

I wonder if it'd be good to just let the market decide. If it's real cheap and there are multiples of it at your local retro game store, buy them for the cases. (The multiples are to keep strat's fear from coming to pass.)

Color a Dinosaur is kind of a joke among TASers

Case in point: Color a Dinosaur is a joke, but it's an expensive joke. Do people collect it for the same reason people collect Action 52?

[Myask]

Every game developed by Radical Entertainment

Hey, I liked Mario Is Missing. But Mario's Time Machine could have used more Morlocks. And I agree with you on the rest.

There are multiple platforms' versions of both, and my understanding is that they are very, very different. Mario is Missing (SNES) is fun, certainly.

Color a Dinosaur is kind of a joke among TASers

Case in point: Color a Dinosaur is a joke, but it's an expensive joke. Do people collect it for the same reason people collect Action 52?

Well, I'd consider getting Color a Dinosaur if I happened upon it. I think people collect Action 52 for a few reasons. It has unique hardware, it is (in)famous, and Cheetahmen has pretty good music.

[mikejmoffitt]

Mario is Missing on NES is an interesting case of multi-layered sprites being used to render Mario or Luigi with a fully colored outfit. The closest official Nintendo case of this is either the Yoshi's Cookie title screen (mario's overalls are drawn with color 0 allowing the sky to be the blue component, pretty cheap) or the sprite being the whites of Mario's eyes in SMB2.

[Punch]

Those components will most likely outlive the people owning them (unless actively damaged), except maybe the battery in games with save RAM but that can be fixed (unless the battery leaked, which ruins anything around it). Then again if you're doing it for collecting chances are that you won't even turn on the game in the first place.

Game collectionism, the Nintendo Age kind of VGA grading, is in many ways dumb in my opinion. Not only you won't actively use the item you bought (since it is sealed), preventing another person actually interested in having the game to play, but also placing carts in plastic coffins DOES NOT guarantee that the items will be preserved. In fact I think that battery gamepaks in VGA cases are all going to crap out and damage the PCB internally. Also you will die someday and all your hoard will be most likely scattered around the world much like your mortal remains in ash form. What's the point to hoard all those items if you're not even preserving them properly (i.e. proper museum work)?

As I always say, people should stop playing pretend museum and enjoy what you have while you can. And if you're really interested in preservation of game items, either donate your rarer ones to a proper museum, or start your own (with the proper training and courses, and whatever else! VGA boxes are not magic).

[Sik]

And if you're really interested in preservation of game items, either donate your rarer ones to a proper museum, or start your own (with the proper training and courses, and whatever else! VGA boxes are not magic).

Or dump the ROMs so we can preserve them with emulation, although the big problem there is that copyright law gets in the way =/ (also undocumented peripherals need to be reverse engineered, I did that with some unusual Mega Drive peripherals that are never emulated but there's still a lot missing)