The New 8-Bit All-Stars Bundle is a wonderfully curated love letter to a classic era and the modern devs who keep it alive.
The New 8-Bit All-Stars Bundle, curated by devs Dale Coop (SkateCat) and John Brobst (Pelusa Saga: Kaji’s Trials), is one of the most interesting projects I’ve seen in years. It’s thirty fully-fledged NES/Famicom homebrew roms across a ton of different genres. It represents thousands of hours of development, hundreds of hours of gameplay, and (at the time of posting) you have about two days left to get it all for $30 via their itch bundle page.
Unless you already own the majority of the included games, I think this is as close to a “must buy” as a bundle can be. Everything here is hand-picked for inclusion – a deliberately selected hall of fame of some of the best games in the retro development space over the last decade. The variety and talent on display is top notch.
Looking over the games in the bundle was a little like going to the video store as a kid and trying to pick something out based on cover art. It also reminded me of how cool it used to be to go over to a friend’s house for a sleepover and see a bunch of great games you’d never even heard of before.
A lot of the creativity of the New 8-Bit All-Stars games comes from the tension that exists between vision and what the hardware is capable of. The collection brings to mind Retro Game Challenge and UFO50, but instead of just being in a classic style – they’re actually NES games. If you have a way to flash carts, you can play any of these on the actual hardware. Otherwise, you can run them on any modern NES emulator.
Many of the product pages for the games have safe links to top class emulators, so you don’t have to guess what works or click around weird sites. I hadn’t explored that space in a long time and it’s nice to see that those programs have come a long way. You’ve still got stuff like save states, but they also support all sorts of modern game controllers.
I don’t love to spend a lot of time talking about “value.” But in this case, I feel comfortable saying that this is a tremendous value. If you’re even somewhat interested in the retro development scene (or just playing a bunch of good games) but haven’t really dug into it, this is an amazing primer. Even though these are newer games, I think there’s also a really cool preservation element to keeping old hardware fresh. If you were to try and come up with a top 100 NES games list – that list has actually been changing this entire time and most of us really had no idea. Perhaps most importantly – they’re just really well made and fun to play.
As is often the case – my pitch is “at least try the demo(s).” Friday night we plugged the laptop into the TV and took turns passing the controller on a few and had a really great time. A little over a third of the games have a demo on their individual itch page, which you can get to easily from the bundle landing page. I also ended up buying the bundle and trying a few of the full versions as well. Here are a few quick takes, in no particular order.
Dungeons and DoomKnights (demo)
Dungeons and DoomKnights (demo) is a Zelda / Castlevania hybrid with a great horror-fantasy style and a sense of humor. It seemed like you didn’t get much in the way of i frames when you get hit, but on the flipside many enemies could be effectively stunlocked by your melee attack. I assume they get more sparse as you continue, but the demo had a lot of save points and no real penalty for dying other than having to redo a few screens. One of our favorites from what we sampled.
Alwa’s Awakening (demo)
Alwa’s Awakening (demo) is a bit like a non-isometric Solstice. I’ve always been intrigued by Solstice, but find it a bit hard to parse. Alwa’s Awakening is a bit like a fantasy Mega Man in terms of how the individual screens look and how the boss’ health is displayed. I found it a lot easier to dig into. The top right corner of the screen lists your coordinates, so it’s a little easier to navigate than a lot of exploration heavy games.
The first real tool you get is a green block you can stand on, push, and use to trigger some buttons. Even in that very first dungeon, it felt like you had to get a little creative. Looking forward to digging into the full version.
Doodle World (demo)
Out of everything we sampled, Doodle World (demo) felt the most immediately familiar. It’s like playing a Mario game drawn right into a spiral notebook. A really cool concept based on the lead dev’s child’s drawings.
Soko Banana (demo)
Soko Banana (demo) is a play on the classic puzzle game Sokoban. The tools at your disposal are pretty straightforward, but you have to think ahead carefully. One person handled the controls, but we were all calling out suggestions from the couch on this one. Given the difficulty curve in the demo, I could see the full game being very challenging.
Slow Mole+ (demo)
Slow Mole+ (demo) has a really interesting gimmick. You can get a checkpoint on any screen in the game, but only if you can traverse that screen within a strict time limit. The risk-reward of playing aggressively for a checkpoint vs playing safe to stay alive creates challenging, split second decisions. You have to decide in about half a second if you’re going for a checkpoint or just a clear on any given screen.
The Trial of Kharzoid (demo)
The Trial of Kharzoid (demo) is a self-described arkanoidvania. The game where you move the bumper back and forth to bounce your ball and destroy bricks, but with exploration and combat (even full boss fights). I am very bad at it, but intrigued enough that I want to try and get better. I’ve never seen anything like this concept.
Knight on the Moon (demo)
Knight on the Moon (demo) reminded me of Blaster Master visually, but plays much more like a classic Zelda. It’s a little dark, but it works well, and the demo includes a full dungeon to try out.
The Adventures of Panzer Frontiers
The Adventures of Panzer Frontiers is Nintendo Hard ™. But it was also a lot of fun to practice and get better. It’s a space-cowboy themed autoscroller where you have to avoid obstacles and take out varmints. There is a demo for this one, but it didn’t fully capture the charm of the characters or story.
The Storied Sword
The Storied Sword is a storybook inspired action platformer that I had a lot of fun with. It’s Princess Bride with wall jumping and subweapons, and it’s pretty forgiving in terms of how much progress you lose on a retry.
Courier
Courier reminds me of all the games I thought looked super interesting as a kid, but that I couldn’t figure out how to actually play. But now I’m an adult, so maybe I can survive the cyberpunk adventure experience. The hacking is simple, but challenging. And pretty much anything can kill you at the start of the game. But the little bit I was able to power through got me hooked.
Accessibility
Some elements of the games were color coded, but had unique iconography.
The puzzle games I tried did not have any specific timing element. The NES emulator save states could be helpful for more action oriented games, but some challenges will simply not be possible to complete without a certain level of timing and mobility. The full version of Slow Mole+ offers a difficulty select that changes the amount of time available for checkpoints.
None of the games I tried had any elements where hearing was required.
This is based on mostly demos (which are not always fully featured) and a small selection of the full games. Players with accessibility concerns may want to review the individual product pages for more details, but overall there didn’t seem to be many accessibility features in these titles.
Verdict
The New 8-Bit All-Stars Bundle truly has something for everyone. Even if you aren’t interested in buying the full bundle, take a look at the games list. Check out the trailer they put together for the bundle, maybe watch a few of the individual product trailers. Download some demos. You will definitely find something that resonates with you. I think this holds true even for players with accessibility concerns, given the breadth and depth of what the bundle has to offer.
