Thread by @SethAbramson

(🔒) RETRO: The Top 100 Unreleased Nintendo Entertainment System Games—All of Which You Can Play Right Now

Most who follow this feed are politicos, not gamers, so the significance of this report may be unclear. Gamers know—and I hope will share it widely. retrostack.substack.com/p/the-top-100-…

1/ The gaming world is facing the loss of some of its most important artworks: unreleased NES prototypes (the NES being the most important video game console in history, and gaming being the top entertainment industry in the world) that are bought by investors and *hidden away*.

2/ There's been a massive effort by preservations like @FrankCifaldi to rescue these artifacts before they disappear forever. And I mean *forever*: in many cases only one prototype cart of an unreleased NES game exists. This effort is advocated for by experts like @PatTheNESpunk.

3/ What I wanted to do, as part of my series of NES-oriented video game curatorial journalism at RETRO, is create the largest list of *currently playable* unreleased NES games available anywhere, *and* to also—as a video game critic—give a sense of which ones are worth playing.

4/ Some of these games are instant classics—which means that their discovery is like discovering a major artwork never previously known to exist, and not just an artwork you can look at but one you can interact with for many, many hours. These games can be meaningful to millions.

5/ I recognize this list may attract some controversy—as there's some dispute over exactly what constitutes an "unreleased" NES game. In certain respects I have handcuffed myself by *excluding* games others deem unreleased, and in some spots I likely included games others do not.

6/ Either way, this is the longest list of its kind ever published by any media outlet in the gaming industry, and I think it is notable not only for its length but for the fact that it is limited to games that anyone reading the list could start playing in the next five minutes.

7/ In this respect, I think this RETRO report can be a valuable doorway to a new world of retro gaming many gamers had no idea of previously. The Top 100 ranking is preceded by a long essay, many gameplay videos, lists of still-being-hunted-for unreleased NES games and much more.

8/ The upshot: I believe that, when the dust settles, the NES will have the largest game library in the history of gaming—larger, even, than the 2,000+ title PlayStation 2 library. Emulators, ROMs, localizations, homebrews, and unreleased "archival" finds will make this possible.

9/ If you ever loved the NES; if you love retro gaming generally; if you consider video games art; if you're interested in seeing how curatorial journalism applies to spheres besides the political; I hope you'll check out my ongoing NES reporting at RETRO. retrostack.substack.com

10/ As the many of you who are full RETRO subscribers know, RETRO doesn't only focus on video games—or even mostly on gaming. The publication looks at any and all art from the past (book, film, toy, comic, music) that's still of enormous value. Thus, this: retrostack.substack.com/p/retro-recomm…

(PS) If you are a gamer and have played any of the 100 unreleased NES games in this ranking, please let me know what you think of them—and whether you think I have them ranked too high or too low. I'm already prepared to be told that Street Fighter II (for the *NES*!) is too low.