Not worth the aggravation, terrible sound design. Feels like a bootleg copy of a Famicom Game, terrible.

This is a collection of minigames. Some people will enjoy this, but it's not my cup of tea, and I figured I'd share why. The biggest problem for me is that these are very "middling" games. The games are simple enough that I don't want to devote the time to mastering each one, but are more complex than a simple arcade game. The difficulty is above what would be considered a "casual" game, but not actually hard enough to give satisfaction for moving ahead.

My thoughts on each game follow:

Super Clew Land: Mario meets Darwin meets Dr. Mario. You have to search around to find food to eat, and then have to use arrow keys to assign that food based on color to different directions (for multiple colors, order matters). Once you "fill up" your stomach, it increases your evolution bar towards jumping, swimming, etc. Most of the movement is slower than is typically fun for this kind of one-touch kills platformer. Especially annoying is that you lose all evolution progress between save points, despite that multiple prey items are typically found between save points. Platformers like Mario at least have a sense of frenetic pace to your ability to move quickly and time quick openings. The sluggish pace of the character in this, however, feels like Mario in molasses.

End of Line: This is my favorite of the mini-games. It's a simple'ish puzzle game around robot suicide. Your goal is to die. There are several medical robots around that will repair you, though, so you have to figure out how to off all the other bots on the level, and then off yourself. The puzzle aspect is fun, but after a while it becomes more about timing than strategy, and like many minigames, the character is sluggish enough that this is more frustrating than satisfying.

Gaia-ttack: A tower-climb fighting game, but with janky controls. This character finally platforms more like a Mario game, but in a genre that really shouldn't, as you slip and slide right into the enemies. Your attacks are a punch smaller than your body and distinctly in front of you, while enemies hurt you just by touching you. Enemies also parachute in from the ceiling, even when you're trying to climb a small scrolling screen that has insta-death at the bottom - that is, with zero reaction time to dodge as they spawn basically on top of you.

Paradox Lost: Metroidvania inspired by the original Metroid. It's slightly frustrating that you don't get any kind of gun until after the first boss (who drops his gun). I would have played it more if not for the insane control of having a button to reset to the last save right where the map button usually is on other games. Just finished the boss and want to check the map? Oops, you just reset to before you beat the boss. Have fun replaying it again. That control alone made me stop playing this minigame.

Wub-Wub Wescue: Again with the ultra-sluggish characters! This one's dialed up to 11! Even on top of that, fall damage is so exacting that even dropping from one platform to another (a standard distance to just jump between in most platformers) is instant death. I suppose this isn't unrealistic for a pug (as dogs aren't exactly built for jumps/falls), but since when has realism been a concern in Platformers of all genres?

Brains & Hearts: Simple card game, nothing to write home about. It's kind of like a cross between checkers, scrabble, and traditional playing cards. Your goal is to capture the opponent's cards via making runs (ascending or descending), with only 2-7 (and "Wormhole" cards, W, which act like Aces in being both high and low). Making runs removes your opponents cards but not your own. Like much of this pack, it's very "middling" - the rules are complex enough that it's not easy to just pick up and play, but it also doesn't have the depth to really capture my interest.

Shuten: A shmup/bullet hell minigame, but flavored as fighting off ninja and oni. It's not a terrible game, but suffers from again being a bit more sluggish than is typical of its genre. The ability to deflect enemy projectiles with your sword, and the ability to "steal" enemy powers to get new attack types (instead of being random powerups) is an interesting twist. This is one of my top two for this minigame pack, but given a choice between this and a dedicated Shmup, I'd take the dedicated game any time.

Conclusions:
For $10, this game is a good deal. You can potentially get a lot of game time out of a pretty cheap game, given this is basically 7 games for less than $2 each. That said, to some degree, you're getting what you pay for. If you're tight on cash or want a quick variety pack, this is a good option. If you particularly like any of the given genres, I'd recommend buying a dedicated game in that genre, as they will no doubt have longer/deeper gameplay and generally have more responsive controls.

Personally, I probably won't play this game any more now that I've sampled each minigame, and that's why my overall review is a negative one. Maybe some day I'll come back to it, but nothing in any of the seven games caught me enough to go into any greater depth. Paradox Lost is the most likely candidate to bring me back eventually, though I'm much more likely to go for a dedicated metroidvania title that doesn't have a "shoot yourself in the foot" button.

7 games built around nostalgia vibes, but the gameplay just isn't that good.

best to play them for a few minutes and not ever try to finish any of them for the best experience.

So to me, "8 bit games" don't mean much. Either it's a good game or it's not. If it's not, it better have nostalgia that is relevant to ME, otherwise I won't like it.

These games are games that are not old, they are just made to look like they are old. They are not incredible works of art that captured the imaginations of millions in the 80s. This is, just some games that look like they came out during the Nintendo era. Lots of ♥♥♥♥♥♥ games games out on Nintendo, so just having old graphics isn't enough to make a game worth buying.

Short version? Skip.

This is a bundle of 7 NES like games made to feel like true retro games. It wouldn't be a proper review if I didn't discuss all of them, so here they are in the game's listed order:

1. Super! Clew Land Complete 👍
A 2D sidescrolling platformer built around exploration that unlocks new areas through evolution aspects.

I liked this game! It has a functioning map with a minimap overlay for your main screen. The evolution minigame in the bottom corner was interesting and added an extra layer. The exploration felt fresh throughout the entire game. The endgame was fun and different from the rest of the gameplay. The hitboxes felt fair. The only qualm I had was not being able to damage any enemies throughout the game to get them out of my way sometimes, but it was obviously made that way to make it just a little bit more challenging.

2. End of Line 😶
A top down puzzle game where you're a robot spending your time wrecking repair bots so you can commit suicide.

This game has a very interesting concept where you spend your time trying to kill youself to progress. The problem is that it got very repetitive very fast, and there wasn't constant fresh additions to what was happening to keep it intriguing.

3. GAIAttack 👎
An arcade sidescrolling game where you kill enemies to progress up to fight a boss at the end of the level (I looked it up because I had no clue what the lore was, and apparently you're warriors fighting against sky pirates). After you kill the enemies on screen, the screen auto scrolls up and kills you with spikes if you stay on the bottom.

This game was so boring that I literally played it for two levels just to see if the second level was any more engaging than the first. Spoiler; it wasn't. You punch enemies/containers then climb up until you get to a boss fight, then you punch him about 50 times, then you get transported to the bottom of the second level. I never got hit except by the boss in the middle of a juggling combo, and it didn't damage me when it hit me. It was super easy, very bland, and just not enjoyable at all. The screen scrolled up so slowly that I jumped into the spikes at the bottom to make sure they killed me, then the round continued from where I died but my points had reset to 0.

4. Paradox Lost 👎
A metroidvania adventure where you play Abby, a pilot that crashes her plane on a strange planet. While exploring, she finds a time machine gun and shoots between the past, present, and future saving captured people.

Sounds interesting, right? Well that's about all this game has going for it. You have platforming capabilities where the levels are a bunch of landforms and that's about it. They make you shoot into crystals to reflect the shots into yourself to transport between timelines, all just as bland as the last. I ran into a couple of enemies and they were overly easy to take care of. I was excited when I saw this game start out, but it felt so hollow playing it.

5. Wub-Wub Wescue 😶
A music rhythm arcade sidescrolling puzzle platformer where you play a pug trying to save your owner from an unforgiving environment.

I can't really knock this game... it's not the game's fault that this isn't something that piques my interest. I feel like if this game came out in the arcade era of the 80s, it would've been a hit. You solve little puzzles as you try to save your owner. The problem is that I build complex levels in Levelhead that involve far harder puzzling techniques and require a substantial amount of switches working together to make the level work, so lighthearted puzzle platforming is just boring to me.

6. Brains & Hearts 😶
A one or two player card game that's a mix of Rummy and Cheat (aka BS) where you make runs or sets of 3 or more to clear your deck first.

This is the same to me as the last game; I find regular card games boring. The way the game is set up is good, the character design is nice, and the game is very easy to understand and works exactly how it should... but I wouldn't chill online with a friend and play this game.

7. Shūten 😶
A co-op shoot em up style game where you play as samurais fighting against enemies that fly at you like Galaga ships.

This game has a certain appeal to it; it's interesting to see a shoot em up that isn't a spaceship. Having a store to upgrade is a nice concept, and using a world map to level select was a cool touch as well. The way you can take the enemy attacks to use them is a fresh concept... but the problem is that aside from those few things, this is just like every other generic shoot em up. You get hit once and you die but you can deflect enemy bullets so it makes it too easy. Most of your challenge is to not physically run into enemies, but when you're attacking short range they can still glitch through your attack while they're dying and kill you, so there's just no point to use short range unless you're deflecting.

Now when I was looking this up to find out what the heck that GAIAttack game was supposed to be about, I found out that these were all made in a month each, and by only three people... I think? Makes sense why most of the games feel like they lack content and they're shells of games that could be packed with so much more.
I bought this on sale for $2, so I definitely got my money's worth on this... the problem is that I wouldn't want to go back to any of the games except Super! Clew Land Complete, and that's only to show people it because I beat it 100% in around 35 minutes. Having this sit in my Steam Library for one game I enjoyed for less than an hour is going to be more annoying than the two hours I spent finding out I didn't like any of the other games.

Developers... I suggest selling your games separately as add-ons to the Retro Crunch base, because you'd attract a better fanbase with a lower pricetag (even if you sold them at $1.50 a game, that would make up for the $10 price), you could add more games to it if you decide to make more and it would be easy to add to a OS you already have (this isn't an idea I came up with, it's what The Sega Collection/Tabletop Simulator does for their collections and I think the concept would work well for your product), and when people find a game they enjoy, they'll rate it well... as opposed to when they like one and they have a bunch of others they're stuck with (I read a couple other negative reviews and there's not one game that seems to shine above the rest, but everyone seems to like at least one game and they're rating the product down as a whole). Individually, I would have reviewed at least one of these games as a positive, probably one or two others as well because I put into account my tastes as opposed to someone that would be looking for that type of game when I don't like something that was well done... but as a whole, this isn't worth it imo.

A bunch of different 8-bit style games bundled up together. After one game where my color blindness made the game unplayable (color matching was a core component), another where I couldn't figure out what the goal of the game was, and another where I couldn't figure out the controls at all, I decided to play something else.

One of the games of the seven in this bundle are worth the "authentic NES classic" title. The others are "authentic NES" chaff. Like many people have said, this is a remix of old game mechanics from the NES era with the contemporary benefit of infinite lives.

Wub-Wub Wescue is a blatant Donkey Kong arcade knock-off, terrible controls included.

Brains & Hearts is a dull card game.

End of the Line is a somewhat interesting suicidal puzzle game that ends up becoming a chore due to button control precision in later levels.

GAIAttack is a cut/paste climb-and-slash arcade rehash.

Shuten has potential, but is held back by the self-set NES mechanic limits.

Super Clew Land is an exploration-based ability lock game; a metroidvania. Its controls are the best of all these games, really a nice natural feel, and playing the game gives you a real sense of progression. There's an interesting "evolution" gameplay mechanic at the start as you unlock all the powers, and then it passes to a traditional find-the-key platformer. The final boss is a huge difficulty spike, though.

Paradox Lost is the second metroidvania. By contrast, the controls are NES-classic (no firing down), which is a huge pain. The time-travel exploration mechanic is exciting in its novelty, and deserves further fleshing out (though navigating can be quite complicated at times). The in-game progression, however, is very uneven compared to Clew. I finished out of the blue without even realizing I was "fighting" the final boss.

I really only enjoyed Super Clew Land, but I'd like to see an "update" to Paradox Lost and Shuten.

This is a collection of 2D retro pixel puzzle platformer/shooter games with an ultra low-fi theme, trying to ape the NES platform, but on PC. Which is what emulators are for.

On the upside, the controls kind of work, but they're fixed and can't be remapped. The games all feature retro pixel graphics that can't be improved, and display at 4:3 pillarboxed, you can't increase the resolution and there's no widescreen support. This is all far beneath minimum acceptable standard for any PC game today.

They're charging $14.50 for games that are not quite as good as the games available on the NES, that you could play for free in an emulator. That kind of money would get you a single AAA game like Dragon Age 2 or Bioshock: Infinite. I'd take one high quality game with modern graphics over 7 outdated, obsolete retro pixel throwbacks.

neat games but