Video Game / NES Remix

Now you're playing with power.

NES Remix is a Minigame Game released for the Wii U on December 18th, 2013. It features NES games such as the original Super Mario Bros., but challenges players to complete specific tasks in a way similar to Nintendo World Championships or 9-volt's stages of WarioWare. The "remix" stages take it a bit further by also inducing an Interface Screw, or actually changing the behavior or look of the game itself; in other words, ROM hacks made commercially by Nintendo themselves.

The game features Miiverse support and has a collection of stamps earned by getting "bits". The Wii U controller's screen always shares the TV display in this game.

NES games featured (an asterisk indicates it's also present in Ultimate NES Remix for Nintendo 3DS:)

• Balloon Fight*, Donkey Kong*, Donkey Kong Jr*, Excitebike*, Mario Bros.*, Super Mario Bros.*.
• Unlockable games: The Legend of Zelda*, Wrecking Crew, Ice Climber, Pinball, Golf, Clu Clu Land.
• Games only in the bonus stages: Urban Champion, Baseball, Donkey Kong 3, Tennis.

A sequel, NES Remix 2, was released on April 25, 2014, featuring another set of NES titles. Features in the follow-up include (an asterisk indicates it's also present in Ultimate NES Remix for Nintendo 3DS:)

• Starting NES games: Dr. Mario*, Kirby's Adventure*, Super Mario Bros. 2*, Super Mario Bros. 3*, Wario's Woods.
• Unlockable games: Kid Icarus*, Metroid*, NES Open Tournament Golf, Punch-Out!!*, Super Mario Bros.: The Lost Levels*, Zelda II: The Adventure of Link*.
• Game only in the bonus stages: Ice Hockey.
• Super Luigi Bros., a remixed version of Super Mario Bros. featuring only Luigi (using his Lost Levels physics), and has him going right to left like in one of the NES Remix levels.
• NES Championship, a new mode based on the Nintendo World Championships and Nintendo Campus Challenge 1991, where players go through a challenge from each of Super Mario Bros., Super Mario Bros. 3, and Dr. Mario, aiming for a high score. It is only available to players who have a save file of the first game. It is also available on Ultimate NES Remix.
• Players can view video replays of their completed challenges (which are automatically saved) and the replays of other players.

A pair of compilation re-releases, NES Remix Pack for Wii U and Ultimate NES Remix for the Nintendo 3DS, release in late 2014. Pack contains NES Remix 1 and 2 and Ultimate only has the best challenges and features from the two NES Remix games, as well as a brand new remixed version of Super Mario Bros. called Speed Mario Bros., in which the game is twice as fast. Ultimate also features improved online leaderboards.

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This series contains examples of:

• 100% Completion; 2 has several rewards for achieving different stages of full completion:
  • All of the other stars need to be earned before NES Open Tournament Golf is unlocked.
  • Obtaining all the stars in that game nets you Bonus stages 21 and 22. Bonus stage 21 is a custom version of level 1-1 from Super Mario Bros. 3 with coins that spell out "THANK YOU", and Bonus stage 22 is three endings in a row: Super Mario Bros. 2 and 3, and Dr. Mario.
  • Obtaining all rainbow stars nets you a Palutena stamp and a "NES Remix 2 Complete!" stamp, as well as a background change.
• Advancing Wall of Doom: The sequel contains Boos that will close in on you when your back is turned.
• Anti-Frustration Features: If you choose to "end" rather than continue a stage after a Game Over, the next stage for that NES game will be unlocked anyway.
• Ascended Glitch: Small Fire Mario from Super Mario Bros. (see this video for how this glitch works). One of the SMB challenges in NES Remix is using Small Fire Mario to defeat a number of enemies as fast as possible without taking damage.
• Author Appeal / Pandering to the Fanbase:
  • In the first game, there are more Super Mario Bros. challenges and remixes than any of the other games. The Legend of Zelda is not far behind, and is the first substantially hidden game revealed.
  • Additionally, 6 out of 16 of the games featured star Mario. In the second game, Super Mario Bros. 3 gets the most challenges and 5 of the NES games star Mario, with a sixth featuring a pair of supporting characters from the Mario universe.
  • In the second game, Kirby's Adventure is just behind Mario 3; in fact, it has the second-most amount of challenges.
  • The Ice Hockey remixes, referencing the 2014 Olympic Games, task USA with defeating Canada and Finland. Cue Miiverse snark.
  • In the second game, all of the Remixes involving a character from another game in a Mario underground environment^note Remix I Stage 4, Remix II Stage 6, Remix II Stage 10-4, Remix II Stage 11, and Remix II Stage 20-5 clearly take the graphics from the original Super Mario Bros. instead of using the equivalent graphics from The Lost Levels. Likewise, Remix II Stage 7 takes place in a frozen version of World 1-1 from The Lost Levels (similar to a couple of remix stages in the first game with frozen Super Mario Bros. levels), but the frozen graphics are clearly based on the original SMB1 ones.
• Blackout Basement: Some levels make everything except sprites flicker in and out of visibility. Others lower the visibility of the screen to the area immediately around the character.
• Boss Rush: Several stages consist solely of boss battles. For example, one Super Mario Bros. stage tasks you solely with defeating the Bowser decoys of Worlds 1 through 7 using fireballs.
• Classic Cheat Code: One is hinted at at the end of the records screen in the second game, as well as in a Miiverse post: Hold down Start, Select, A, and R to unlock all the NES games.
• Compilation Re-release: In addition to the digital format, there is a physical disc, NES Remix Pack, containing both games. A 3DS version, Ultimate NES Remix, contains a mashup of the best challenges and features from the NES Remix games.
• Crossover: Kirby, Link, and Samus have to collect coins in underground areas from SMB: The Lost Levels.
  • One challenge forces Toad to fight enemies in Zelda II.
• Continuing is Painful: If you choose to continue from a Game Over after finishing the first challenge in a multi-challenge stage, you'll keep going from the middle instead of the beginning, but you'll only get one star for finishing and your best time won't be recorded.
• Cutscene: There are "challenges" that involve just watching something, such as watching the memetic scene of Doc Louis training Little Mac from Punch-Out!! in NES Remix 2.
• Cosmetic Award: Getting Three stars on every stage in Ultimate NES Remix (except for Bonus 27 and 28) will unlock Famicom Remix, which is basically the exact same game again, but a few games have changes present. Most prominently would be Kid Icarus, Zelda 1 & 2, and Metroid having Famicom music/sound effects.
• Deliberately Monochrome: Some remixes make everything gray and black, giving some background objects the effect of an Obstructive Foreground.
  • One Wario's Woods challenge forces Toad to clear out all of the pink enemies. Everything else is various shades of white, black, and gray.
• Distressed Dude: Mario, in one particular remix, has to be rescued by Luigi in a mirrored level of Donkey Kong. When Luigi reaches Mario, however, the next task is to ditch Mario and go back to the start.
• Escort Mission: A couple of the remixes task you with completing something while keeping Player 2 protected. Player 2 moves timidly and randomly like a three-year-old who has just been handed a controller for the first time.
• Exact Words: One remix has you play through a mirrored version of World 1-2 from Super Mario Bros. as Luigi. The instructions are "Get to the Goal Pole!" If you decide to get clever and use the Warp Zone instead, it counts as a loss.
  • One challenge for The Lost Levels tells you to enter the second pipe in an underground level. You would be forgiven for thinking this means "take the warp zone pipe," only to see the "MISS" text shortly afterwards.
• Fake Difficulty: Not withstanding the "golden stars"/"rainbow stars" mechanic in and of itself (which is another trope, though they do overlap), or the glitches and bugs the NES games originally had, when trying to actually get those rainbow stars, some of the challenges (and even meeting some of the rainbow star times) are based more on luck rather than actual skill, especially the ones in Golf and Pinball. As a result, it's possible to be forced to constantly retry a challenge simply because the odds weren't in your favor.
• Fake Longevity: One would think just clearing the stage would be enough. Nope, in order to truly "clear" each challenge, one must get three rainbow stars, which are the games' only way to grade your performance and can be obtained by clearing the stage fast enough. The only thing that matters is just how fast you clear the stage and can be frustrating if one doesn't know what to do, or if one one knows what to do and did everything well with all lives intact...just not fast enough, even if it's just 0,1 milliseconds more than the arbitrary required time.
• Fog of War: A display effect in some of the remix stages that reduces your visibility in the stages.
• Forced Tutorial: While the first game featured optional demo videos explaining the controls to each game, the second game instead forces the player to watch the in-game demos for Kirby's Adventure and Wario's Woods as part of their first stages, every time the stages are played.
• Guide Dang It!: The 1-up trick challenge mentioned below doesn't tell you how to keep it going. If you just let it be, it stops after 8 1-ups.
• Infinite 1-Ups: One of the Super Mario Bros. challenges starts with the player in perfect position for the classic staircase-shell exploit. From there, it's up to you to get ten 1-ups.
• Interface Screw: A large number of the remixes has some sort of interface screw like the screen randomly undergoing pixelization in a Fog of War effect.
• Kick the Dog: One Mario Bros. mission is for you to make poor Luigi lose a life.
• Leeroy Jenkins: A remix of the dreaded World 2-3 from Super Mario Bros. (the bridge with jumping Cheep Cheeps) holds the dash button and right on the d-pad for you.
• Letterbox: The actual NES game screen is letterboxed on all sides, with interface elements around it.
• Level in Reverse: Both flipped levels (a stage's level is mirrored) and flipped paths (start from the goal and go to the start) are present. In one remix, the level is both flipped and you have to take a flipped path. Super Luigi Bros. is an entire flipped game.
• The Load: Luigi is this in a Mario Bros. mission in which you have to defeat all the enemies while protecting Luigi. His AI goes either the direction opposite to yours or in the same direction as yours, switching randomly, and stubbornly refusing to budge if you run into him. Needless to say, this makes the challenge about ten times harder than it has to be.
• Luck-Based Mission: There's a few examples, but one major example is a Remix stage where you play as Link in the first level of Donkey Kong. You can't jump, so you're essentially at the mercy of how DK tosses the barrels.
• Marathon Level: The final level in the Bonus section of the first game has 44 stages, all of which require collecting Super Mushrooms (and one Fire Flower) in Super Mario Bros.
• Moment of Awesome: Invoked; some of the challenges task you with reliving some of the more memorable moments of a game. Some of these are extremely short and/or simple to execute.
• Museum Game: Take a tour of some of Nintendo's earliest NES games by playing their challenges and remixes!
• Nintendo Hard: If you thought some of the original games and their respective challenges are difficult, some of the remixes take this trope up to eleven.
• No-Damage Run: Some of the challenges require you to not get hit at all.
• Nostalgia Level: All levels come straight from the NES, but with conditions added, and further alterations in the case of remixes. An exception comes with regard to Excitebike and Wrecking Crew, since those games have a built-in level editor, and thus their challenges usually take place on unique courses designed around that specific challenge.
• Rank Inflation: The player can earn up to 3 stars in each stage, but a really fast time yields 3 rainbow-highlighted stars.
• Remixed Level: Some of the remix stages, though very few actually change the structure of the level itself.
• Retraux: Actually inverted in some of the remix stages, where most the graphics look closer to 16-bit.
• Screw This, I'm Outta Here: One Remix stage has you rescuing Mario as Luigi in the 75m stage of Donkey Kong in the first part. The second part, titled "On second thought... back to the start!", has you ditching Mario and going back to the beginning of the stage.
• Shout-Out:
  • One remix has the player controlling two Marios in Mario Bros., similar to the Double Cherry in Super Mario 3D World. Another level does this in Ice Climber. Although both climbers are in blue, it's still reminiscent of Super Smash Bros..
  • In the second game, there is a remix level in which you must play Dr. Mario while the screen flickers between color and monochrome. While this happens with several levels, this particular remix references the Game Boy port of Dr. Mario.
• Significant Anagram: STAR TEST CLEAR!
• Slippy-Slidey Ice World: One remix makes World 4-1 from Super Mario Bros. into this, both functionally and graphically. In the second game, a similar effect is applied to World 1-1 from The Lost Levels, this time including a winter-themed remix of the Ground Theme as well.
• Stylistic Suck: Often complained about in reviews. The dev team didn't make any attempt to improve the NES versions of the games; therefore, things such as an Arcade-Perfect Port of Mario Bros. and the Factory level of Donkey Kong are not present.
• Timed Mission: Most of the missions have a time limit, and all of them reward more stars for finishing them quickly.
• Unreliable Narrator: There are challenges that refer to "Bowser" when it's actually a fake. A later level has you revealing the fakes.
• Variable Mix: The menu music changes based on the level of completion of the currently highlighted game.
• Video Game Cruelty Potential: Invoked in one Mario Bros. level, where every instruction is to "Make Poor Luigi lose a life..."
• Wrap Around: One of the many Interface Screws takes games that have this and zooms out the camera, the screen repeating itself many times.

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