This SNK-developed helicopter combat game proved to be a surprisingly intense experience during our playthrough. Designed to work with the short-lived LaserScope voice-activated headset peripheral (where players could literally shout “Fire!” to shoot), the game throws you into aerial combat missions with an overwhelming amount of HUD elements—a radar, a full map, missile warnings, and multiple weapon systems all competing for your attention. Despite the visual chaos, Jake was impressed with the lack of sprite flickering even during intense action sequences, a technical achievement worth noting on the NES hardware. I struggled with the beeping missile lock warnings and the sheer amount of information to process, but ultimately gave it a solid recommendation, calling it a “definite one out of one.”

Sony Imagesoft’s movie tie-in for the Arnold Schwarzenegger film falls into the familiar trap of rushed licensed games. This side-scrolling beat-em-up reduces the movie’s meta-commentary and genre-hopping premise to repetitive punch-kick-punch-kick gameplay. While the music earned some praise during our play, the combat is painfully limited—your kick attack is weaker than your punch, and there’s no evolution to the moveset. The game does attempt to recreate various scenes from the film, including a medieval sequence where you don Robin Hood garb, but as I noted, “that little pathetic punch is all you get.” It’s a zero—playable but utterly forgettable, leaving players wondering if they’ll just be “punching, kicking, punching, kicking” through reskinned levels for the entire game.

Here’s something different: a homebrew game released in 2011, decades after the NES era ended. This addictive little gem tasks you with mowing grass while collecting fuel and avoiding obstacles like mushrooms and rocks. The game cleverly adds tension through fuel management—you need to grab fuel cans to keep going, and hitting obstacles drains your tank quickly. During our session, the “soothing nature of just mowing all around” was compared to modern games like PowerWash Simulator, tapping into that same dopamine-releasing satisfaction of systematically clearing an area. Jake managed to master the tricky 180-degree turns needed for efficient mowing patterns. As one of the early homebrew titles to get proper distribution, it’s a testament to the NES homebrew community and earned an easy recommendation from both testers.

Despite its aggressive title, there’s no actual fighting in SNK’s golf simulation—the name likely stems from a translation quirk where “fighting” means “competitive.” The game features decent graphics and standard power-meter-based shot mechanics, but the interface is confusing for newcomers. Jake and I struggled initially to figure out how to even swing the club, fumbling through camera angle adjustments before accidentally triggering the shot meter. The game doesn’t automatically select appropriate clubs based on your aim point, requiring players to understand golf club mechanics. I tried explaining to Jake that higher-numbered irons create higher arc shots that don’t go as far but stick better, showing off what little golf knowledge I had. I magnetized my ball directly into a sand trap at one point, while Jake noted the “fighter nuances are yet to be absorbed.” Still, Jake called it “the best golf game I played on Nintendo,” though that may have been damning with faint praise given the NES’s limited golf library.

This Falcom-developed dungeon crawler is a sprawling family affair where you explore a massive underground labyrinth with five different family members (plus grandpa, who just keeps passwords). Each character has unique abilities—dad can push rocks and has good jump distance despite weak strength, mom can pass through special symbols, the pet monster can walk safely among enemies but can’t attack, and so on. The game features an innovative inventory system where you physically walk into items to equip them, and inns that fully heal you for 10 gold pieces. Jake picked dad as his character after I accidentally trapped myself talking to the password keeper, and during our playthrough, he fell repeatedly into deeper dungeon levels, discovering new music, enemy types, and increasingly intense atmospheres. I explained how the game demands you know which character to bring where, as certain doors and obstacles require specific family members to progress. It’s complex, robust, and encourages the sense of exploration that defines the best NES adventures—earning an immediate “one out of one” recommendation from both of us and proving to be one of those hidden gems many players never discovered during the console’s original run.