CatFoxA mock up of what a NES/Famicon launch title of one of Nintendo's old arcade titles Helifire. Back before they hired artist and just used a close up of the game for the cover. The black box games were the style of box art used launch titles for the NES here in North America. The first box has the arcade logo while the second has a standard font like the one Nintendo used.
Not a lot of people know about them but Nintendo did make a gaggle of arcade titles before & outside of Donkey Kong games (Block Fever,Monkey Magic, Head on N, They list goes on) unfortunately Nintendo didn't seems make console versions or re-releases of those early titles, and hasn't made very many reference or Easter-eggs to them either (the most we got was Sheriff being an assist trophy in smash) which is why they fell into obscurity.
From the research I did Nintendo's first big break was the Donkey Kong titles in both Japan & North America and they wanted to focus on what worked, however I feel like Nintendo could squeeze one or two of those old games as titles for their NES/Famicon which yea they honestly should have, they had so many titles they could have chosen from for an easy title to sell, like this one Helifire.
Helifire was kinda in the same vein as a lot of other early 80's games, basically a variation on the Space invaders formula, move around the bottom of the screen & blast enemies up above you, the gimmick here is that enemies can come from the side of the screens. They game looks like a fairly fun time for an early 80's console game.
Last year Nintendo added an unreleased early 80's title called Sky Skipper to their Arcade Archives on the Eshop even the VS variations of NES games so I guess there is some hope we could see Helifire and some of the other forgotten pre Donkey Kong games.
2020-07-27 13:20:12 +0000