HDMIfy your Old Consoles - Console Specific HDMI Upgrades

If you want high quality input from classic consoles to a modern flat screen TV, you need to use an HDMI converter like the X-RGB Mini Framemeister.  This converter will take high quality RGB or Component video signals and convert them to HDMI-compatible 720p or 1080p with excellent results and minimal lag. I played with a Framemeister some months ago, and wrote up my impressions of the device here : http://nerdlypleasures.blogspot.com/2015/05/fun-with-framemeister.html  Unfortunately, some classic consoles have difficulty displaying high quality video signals due to their lack of high quality video outputs.  Some enterprising individuals have made mod boards that will directly convert the video to HDMI with less lag than a Framemeister, more features and more reliable results.  Here are the projects that, as of the date of this writing, actually have been released in some form to the public.

NES - HiDef NES Mod & the AVS

The NES is one of the most important of the post-crash consoles and one of the few without a native RGB solution.  There has been a NESRGB mod board released for two years now, which works wonders with a Framemeister.  Before that people harvested 2C03 chips from Playchoice-10 PCBs and made do with the differences in the color palette, compatibility issues with color emphasis and sometimes video jailbars.

Kevtris' HiDefNES mod has already been mentioned in this blog, and it adds a whole host of features over the NESRGB + Framemeister solution.  I lay them out in detail here : http://nerdlypleasures.blogspot.com/2015/07/analogue-nt-nes-as-luxury-retro-console.html
It is the board found in the Analogue Nt HDMI version and has been sold in pre-modded systems on ebay and on the http://www.game-tech.us/ website.  The kit will be available for purchase so you can attempt to mod it yourself.  However, it requires desoldering both the CPU and PPU without destroying either chip or the PCB, so it is not a beginner mod.  Virtually all the compatibility issues with the HiDefNES mod and certain MMC5 games and the EverDrive N8 have been eliminated through a firmware update, so now is the time to consider taking the plunge.

The only obvious issue is that its FDS audio emulation is less than perfect.  The mod will not work in an original Famicom, a Famicom Twin or an AV Famicom with laser-marked CPU and PPU chips.

The basic principle of how the HiDefNES obtains the color values of each background and sprite pixel is the same as used in the NESRGB.  See here for my explanation : http://nerdlypleasures.blogspot.com/2015/06/nes-hardware-explained.html
There is now a 2600RGB board for the Atari 2600.  The 2600RGB board uses similar principles to discover the colors of 2600 pixels as the NESRGB board does for NES pixels.  Theoretically, it is quite possible for someone to develop an HDMI mod for the 2600.

bunnyboy, who runs the RetroUSB site, has displayed his AVS replica console at the 2015 Portland Retro Gaming Expo. His AVS has a 72-pin and a 60-pin connector for NES and Famicom games, and is designed as a front loader for the former and a top loader for the latter.  It uses a completely new board and an FPGA chip to provide hardware emulation for the NES.  It only outputs HDMI video and has separate power and reset buttons in the shape of NES front loader buttons.  It has built in four NES controller ports that can be set to function as a NES Four Score or Famicom 4-player adapter.  It also has a 15-pin Famicom expansion port for Famicom peripherals.

Because the console only supports HDMI output, it will not work with any Zapper or compatible Light Gun device and it will not work with the Famicom 3-D Glasses.  The FPGA inside the console does not emulate any cartridge hardware or expansion audio.  Expansion audio from Famicom cartridges is digitized and then mixed with the internal audio.  However, because the AVS uses an FPGA, it can load updated firmware to fix any compatibility issues.  Reports from the Portland Retro Gaming Expo were very positive, one person said the system ran Micro Machines correctly, which is a hard game to get right.  bunnyboy is also designing wireless RF controller without lag to go with the console via an controller port adapter.

The console can only be powered through its USB port.  The console has a scoreboard reporting function via the USB port, it will save high scores for certain known games and report them to NintendoAge.  The idea is that you play a supported game, the high score is saved and then you plug in the system to your PC and it send the score to NintendoAge.  The AVS only supports 720p while the HiDefNES can do either 720p or 1080p.  The AVS is not for sale at the moment, but bunnyboy is aiming for a just under $200 price point.  The best place for updates seems to be here : http://nintendoage.com/forum/messageview.cfm?catid=7&threadid=92557

N64 - Ultra HDMI

No N64 natively outputs RGB, but some early consoles can be modded with a simple amplifier board. Most consoles, however, have a video encoder chip that only outputs composite and s-video.  These consoles require the N64RGB board.  This board acts like a custom DAC, taking the digital signals from the N64 and turning them into analog RGB video.  This will make it truly Framemeister worthy, although the s-video output from the N64 is pretty good compared to composite video.  PAL N64s need a special cable to boost the S-Video signal from the console, NTSC N64s can use standard Nintendo or 3rd Party cables.

Today, if you want to bypass the Framemeister option, you can have an UltraHDMI board installed in your system.  It works with NTSC and PAL framerates (up to 1080p for both) and not unlike the HiDefNES it comes with filters.  The Ultra HDMI filters can simulate a CRT TV.  Without the filters the lag is truly negligible, with them there is about a frame of lag.  It supports all standard digital SD and HD resolutions, as shown here : http://ultrahdmi.retroactive.be/

The mod is very involved because you have to solder a flexible mylar-like ribbon cable to the finely spaced pins of the surface mounted graphics chip, the Reality Co-Processor (RCP).  The RCP sends out 7-bit digital RGB values along with sync information.  This allows for direct digital to digital conversion to the 8-bit RGB values HDMI supports without quality loss.    The kit uses a mini-HDMI cable and only needs a small hole cut into the back of the N64.  Because the mod is very tricky and not for the beginner, the board and kit is being sold only experienced mod kit installers.  If you want your N64 modded with the Ultra HDMI, you need to send it to someone.  This site is authorized to perform the mod : http://www.badassconsoles.com/ultrahdmi/

Game Boy - hdmyboy

In one sense, it is not too difficult to obtain a good quality HDMI image from a Gameboy.  You use a Super Gameboy or a Super Gameboy 2 (for accurate speed) on a SNES that supports RGB and send the video and audio through a Framemeister.  Alternatively, you can use a Game Boy Player and a Gamecube with the component video cables through the Framemeister, but that requires running custom software to make the Game Boy Player output at a true 240p speed.

Some time ago, there was a Kickstarter for a product called the hdmyboy.  The campaign is archived here : https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/507669971/hdmyboy-a-full-hd-power-up-for-your-game-boy-class
This is a fully assembled kit that you insert between the two halves of a DMG-01 Game Boy.  It adds half an inch or so to the height of the console when laid flat. It has an HDMI cable port and can support 720p or (preferred) 1080p.

Unlike the NES and N64 mods, this mod is easy to install.  It requires no soldering.  All you have to do is unscrew the shell, remove the ribbon cable that attaches the LCD PCB to the CPU PCB and insert that ribbon cable into the hdmyboy.  The hdmyboy comes with a NES controller attached internally so you can control your Game Boy.  It essentially becomes a consolized Game Boy at this point.

The Game Boy's LCD can only support four shades of one color, its video signal is fundamentally 2-bit digital monochrome signal with sync information.  This information, along with mono audio, is available through the ribbon cable.  The hdmyboy converts the digital video and the analog audio and sends it through the HDMI cable to the TV.  The hdmyboy only supports mono audio because only a mono audio signal is necessary for the single speaker connected to the LCD PCB.

Unfortunately the Kickstarter campaign was not successful.  However, the hdmyboy team still has some prototypes left here : http://www.hdmyboy.com/play/.  They are very expensive however, (a bit too expensive for what it does) but should represent the best solution to obtain true Game Boy output without using an emulator.  If they try another Kickstarter campaign again, then hopefully more people would be willing to contribute and get the price of this fine idea down.

Given a 1080p display, the hdmyboy can by default do 7x nearest neighbor scaling to give razor sharp graphics at the Game Boy's original aspect ratio.  It can also do 12:7 scaling to give razor sharp widescreen graphics and occupy almost the whole screen if you prefer.  Like the Super Game Boy it has 32 color palettes available to colorize the graphics.  While the Game Boy's sprite and background tiles have 10 valid palette selections to choose from, the Super Game Boy (unless the game is enhanced) and hdmyboy only apply colors based on the actual color value of the outputted pixel.

The Shareware Publishing Concept - Challenging the Big Box Publishers

Shareware grew out of the "disk magazine" concept popularized by Softdisk.  For the price of a monthly subscription, Softdisk would send you a magazine with a disk or two every month packed with articles and reviews, small applications, utilities and most relevant to our discussion, games.  Softdisk made these disk magazines available for most of the popular home computer systems of the day, including the Apple II, Commodore 64 and Macintosh.  The IBM disk magazine was called Big Blue Disk, which had its debut in 1986.

Apogee Software, at that time in the person of Scott Miller, began the genesis of the Shareware concept in his Kingdom of Kroz series.  He built an engine that relied on ANSI text-based graphics for a game series called Kingdom of Kroz.  He published the initial games in this series in Big Blue Disk in the following issues :

Kingdom of Kroz - Issue 20
Dungeons of Kroz - Issue 29
Caverns of Kroz - Issue 35
Return to Kroz - Issue 47

The cover price for the magazine was $9.95, and every few months if you bought the magazine or subscribed to it, another game in the series would be available to you.  Eventually, it appears that Miller got tired of distributing through Softdisk and decided to distribute on his own through Apogee.  He struck upon the model that the first game in a series should be free (over a BBS) or available at nominal cost (for packaging and media) and the other games should be sold for retail prices.  The idea began to bear serious fruit and Apogee replaced Softdisk as the dominant publisher of low-cost PC games.

Eventually Softdisk brought out a game-specific subscription service called Gamer's Edge where the games would be provided by id Software.  A three month subscription to this service could be had for $29.99, sixth months for $49.99 and twelve months for $89.99 in 1991 dollars.  id Software, consisting primarily of John Carmack, John Romero and Adrian Carmack in the beginning, would fulfill their contract to provide a game every other month for Gamer's Edge as well as develop and release Commander Keen: Invasion of the Vorticons.  Keen was released as shareware and published by Apogee.

The shareware aesthetic initially went to the lowest common PC hardware denominator.  Early games supported CGA 4-color graphics or 80-column ASCII/ANSI text modes, just like many programs that were simply shared from user to user in the 1980s.  In 1990, John Carmack had discovered how to make EGA cards perform pixel-perfect horizontal and vertical scrolling without consuming a ton of CPU time.  The EGA hardware was far more advanced than the CGA hardware, even though the resolution stayed the same and the color palette did not increase for most people. When Softdisk did not want to publish Commander Keen for fear of alienating all its CGA customers, id went to Apogee, which was not.  EGA was already an old graphics standard, but in 1990 and 1991 it had a mini-renaissance due to games like Commander Keen, Duke Nukem, Crystal Caves, Major Stryker and Catacomb 3-D.

Eventually, the shareware market was dominated by three companies, Apogee Software (later 3D Realms), id Software and Epic MegaGames (later Epic Games), even though id Software was only a developer.  id Software is known for its milestones, Commander Keen, Catacomb 3-D, Wolfenstein 3-D, Doom and Quake.  Epic MegaGames had the well-known Jill of the Jungle, Jazz Jackrabbit, Epic Pinball and Xargon. Apogee continued with Duke Nukem, Monster Bash and Rise of the Triad.  Softdisk hardly bowed out, it continued to publish games in the Dangerous Dave and Catacomb series.  Apogee and Epic published some well-known shareware titles like One Must Fall 2097, Tyrian, Raptor and Blake Stone developed by third parties.  Even some big box publishers associated with shareware developers, Interplay released Descent despite its status as shareware.

Shareware games are typically broken down into Episodes or Chapters.  The first of these was made available "for free" to encourage the player to purchase the full game.  This encouraged the established companies to start releasing playable demos of their new games, nothing advertises a game like a free playable sample of the gameplay.  Previously, most demonstration programs were just trailers showing gameplay footage running in a loop not unlike the attract mode of an arcade machine.  They were usually intended for a PC being displayed by a store.  However, whereas the commercial demo usually offered an hors d'oeuvre, a shareware version of a game contained a full episode, a free continental breakfast.  When you look at any shareware release, you could typically be guaranteed several hours of playtime, depending on the difficulty of the game.  Typically the full game would contain three episodes of roughly equal length. The later episodes would typically be a bit more difficult, maybe a little longer and sometimes offer new enemies, weapons and items.

In the DOS days, almost nothing was specifically for free, there was always a cost for acquisition associated with software.  If you purchased a shareware title in a store, you may have had to pay $5.00 because the retailer expected a profit.  If you downloaded it over a BBS you typically had to pay long-distance charges.  Downloading 1.44MB over a 9600 baud modem takes a lot longer than you think.  Services like Prodigy and CompuServe were accessed by fee-subscription only if you were using them to obtain games.   If you wanted to send away to the company for a disk, you had to pay shipping and handling.  Even if you copied a game from a friend, you were still paying for the disk, which usually ran to $1 per disk in the first half of the 1990s.  The shareware versions of the game were freely distributable as far and wide as they could go.

While sometimes the full game could be bought in stores, more frequently you had to purchase the game from the company directly by mail order. In today's world, where 2-day shipping from Amazon is considered good service, having to wait 2-3 weeks for delivery must have been miserable.  In the 1980s and 1990s, mail order was a major means of acquiring computer software.  Sometimes you could get deals and othertime you had to use mail order because your local Babbages, Electronics Boutique, Software Etc. or Computerland just did not have a copy of that particular game or application in stock.

In the EGA shareware era, platform games dominated.  These games were in short supply from the big box retailers and frequently did not compare to games being released for the NES, the dominant home video game device of its day.  NES games were very expensive, retailing around $50 and big box PC games were often priced at $50 and sometimes more.  By offering a similar product to the NES at a far lower cost, shareware games became sufficiently successful to fund small development houses.  However, none of these games had quite the magnificence of Super Mario Bros. 3 or Kirby's Adventure.  The NES could display more colors than EGA cards in 200-line modes, but in some games like Commander Keen 4-6 and Keen Dreams, the graphical objects were colorful and well-drawn and animated, making for a lively game.

However, eventually EGA became long in the tooth and everyone had VGA graphics, and developers began to follow suit by almost exclusively supporting VGA only.  Around this time, the success of Wolfenstein 3-D meant that more and more shareware games were going to be first person shooters.  Wolfenstein and especially DOOM caught the attention of the world to the shareware distribution model.  Whether legally or illegally, Wolfenstein and DOOM became nearly ubiquitous.  Who doesn't like to kill Nazis with a Chaingun and hear their dying screams?  I bet when someone killed Hitler in Episode 3, they may have said something like "Take that you Fascist pig, that's for Auschwitz!"  Established companies had to bring out their own first person shooters to compete.

Shareware games frequently pushed technical limits of the hardware they intended to be run on.  Big box PC games of the early 90s were typically relying on VGA Mode 13h 320x200 and its single video page.  Shareware VGA games used unchained mode to provide for four video pages, tweaked Mode-X-style resolutions like 320x240 and high refresh rates.  Most shareware games preferred to work within the hardware capabilities of VGA cards, I cannot think of many that supported SVGA resolutions and color depths.  Eventually shareware games like Wolfenstein and DOOM were ported to home consoles with wildly varying degrees of success.

Another issue with shareware games is that they tended to avoid less-common graphics and sound hardware.  No shareware game using 16-color graphics supports Tandy Graphics, even though games that did support Tandy and EGA almost always looked identical.  If you were looking for support for audio devices other than Adlib like Tandy sound, Game Blaster or even Roland MT-32, look elsewhere.  Adlib music quality was frequently first rate compared to strictly retail games which tended to focus more on the dominant MIDI devices of the time, the MT-32 then the Roland Sound Canvas.  Games supporting digital sound typically did not support anything beyond the Sound Blaster series and clones at first.  Eventually, however, there was some support for the Gravis UltraSound (often buggy) and General MIDI devices.

One hugely important development spurred by shareware was licensing game engines.  When id created Wolf3D, they licensed the technology out to Apogee to create Rise of the Triad, Capstone for Corridor 7 and Raven Software for ShadowCaster (published by Origin Systems).  Its DOOM engine found even more widespread support and id quickly became known for the quality of its 3D engines.  Of course, id had a secret weapon in John Carmack, who understood what was possible with hardware and graphics engines and has continually pushed boundaries for decades.  It was rare for big box companies to license their technology to its competitors, but eventually many of them would license the engines from id and Epic (Unreal) for their games.  One positive aspect from the shareware era was the policy of companies like id Software to release the source code to their hardware engines to allow others to make source ports of these games and design custom maps.  Many shareware games from this era have been made freeware compared to big box companies that will sit on their decades-old IPs.

Quake was the last great shareware game.  It may have been too successful because with the shareware release you could play multiplayer as you liked with anyone else.  DOOM had begun the process of players making custom multiplayer maps, but it was Quake where things began to explode.  Quake offered easy internet multiplayer through QuakeWorld, which was a Windows 95 executable with support for TCP/IP multiplayer.  It is no accident that Quake II and its successors were distributed on a strictly demo/retail basis.  However, where shareware began by catering to users or lower-end hardware, DOOM and Quake required 486s and Pentiums for any real playability, and those CPUs were still new and expensive at the time of those games' releases.

Windows 95 foretold of the impending doom of the shareware model.  Shareware games had to compete with a platform that was far more friendly to cheap, casual games than DOS ever was.  In addition, Windows games frequently came on multiple CDs and ran to hundreds of megabytes in size.  Most commercial versions of shareware games were not copy protected and were frequently pirated. Development costs had skyrocketed for quality products, as had support obligations to match.  In the end, the successful companies like id became a big developer with Quake II-4 and DOOM 3 and Epic a big publisher with its Unreal and Unreal Tournament series.

The closest thing to shareware today in terms of its distribution is the chapter/seasons releases from companies like Telltale Games.  In the Telltale Games commercial model, a complete story in a game was released as chapters or episodes over the course of several months.  One some platforms, now mainly mobile, you could usually obtain the first episode for free and then decide if you wanted to pay for later episodes.  If you knew you wanted the full game, you could buy a full season pass and receive chapters automatically as they were released.  On PC platforms, typically the season pass was the only option available and you just have to wait for the next episodes to be released.

Unlicensed NES Part 2 - The Unworthy Publishers

In my last post, I discussed the two brightest stars of the unlicensed NES companies, Tengen and Codemasters.  They could have stood tall with many a licensed developer, maybe not at the Konami or Capcom level, but definitely in the middle.

In this post, I am going to discuss the rest of the unlicensed companies, who never reached the more lofty heights of the above.  These companies may be able to compete with the worst of the NES licensees like LJN and Acclaim.  Their games provide a lot of fodder for the AVGN and other people who want to bash crap games, and most of the time the criticism is justified.  A common theme is the interconnected nature between these companies, with games being release by one company, then another.

Color Dreams/Bunch Games/Wisdom Tree

Color Dreams was created in the wake of Tengen's break from Nintendo in 1989 and some of its employees came from Tengen/Atari Games.  It released its own titles and quite a few titles from Taiwan.  Color Dreams used a label called Bunch Games to distribute some of their lesser titles to avoid the lack of quality reflecting on their main brand.  Color Dreams was ambitious and made a prototype Hellraiser game with extra hardware in the cartridge to significantly improve the graphics capable on the NES, but the product was too costly and was abandoned.

Color Dreams games were fairly abysmal.  The company liked to reuse game engines, thus Challenge of the Dragon, Operation Secret Storm and Secret Scout all use the same engine.  Baby Boomer's engine seems very close to AGCI's Chiller, which would make sense because they are the only two unlicensed games that use the Zapper.

Eventually, Color Dreams found it difficult to get their games marketed in stores.  Nintendo threatened to pull the supplies of games to any stores that sold unlicensed games.  However, Christian book stores did not carry NES games, and Color Dreams decided to break into that market and changed their main label to that of Wisdom Tree and their focus to Christian games.  Their views tended to conservative, mainline Protestant denominations and used the NIV Bible in its games.  After porting some of its NES titles to the Genesis and the Game Boy, Wisdom Tree left the console market after creating Super Noah's Ark 3D for the SNES.

During the Wisdom Tree phase of the company, the creative well, never overflowing, had seriously run dry.  Exodus and Joshua are very similar games and both are derived directly from Crystal Mines, a Boulderdash clone.  King of Kings and Bible Adventure also share a common engine.   Sunday Funday, which has the distinction of being the last NES game to see a general release, in 1995, was a reworking of Menace Beach.  Spiritual Warfare is actually a very passable Zelda clone, and is probably the highlight of this company's somewhat meager legacy.  All these games would ask bible questions at certain points.

Games from Color Dreams, Bunch Games and Wisdom Tree cartridges can be found in baby blue or black cartridge shells, but the company tended toward blue in the early carts and black in the later carts.  In their later games, they would advise the player to wait up to nine blinks from the NES while its lockout chip defeater tried to do its work.

Here are the origins of these games :

NES Title	Releasing Label	Original Developer	Notes
The Adventures of Captain Comic	Color Dreams	Color Dreams
Baby Boomer	Color Dreams	Color Dreams	Very similar to Chiller
Bible Adventures	Wisdom Tree	Wisdom Tree
Bible Buffet	Wisdom Tree	Wisdom Tree
Challenge of the Dragon	Color Dreams	Color Dreams
Crystal Mines	Color Dreams	Color Dreams
Exodus: Journey to the Promised Land	Wisdom Tree	Wisdom Tree
Joshua & the Battle of Jericho	Wisdom Tree	Wisdom Tree
King Neptune's Adventure	Color Dreams	Color Dreams
King of Kings: The Early Years	Wisdom Tree	Wisdom Tree
Master Chu And The Drunkard Hu	Color Dreams	Sachen/Joy Van
Menace Beach	Color Dreams	Color Dreams
Metal Fighter	Color Dreams	Sachen/Joy Van
Operation Secret Storm	Color Dreams	Color Dreams
P'radikus Conflict	Color Dreams	Color Dreams
Pesterminator: The Western Exterminator	Color Dreams	Color Dreams
Raid 2020	Color Dreams	Color Dreams
Robodemons	Color Dreams	Color Dreams
Secret Scout in the Temple of Demise	Color Dreams	Color Dreams
Silent Assault	Color Dreams	Sachen/Joy Van
Spiritual Warfare	Wisdom Tree	Wisdom Tree
Sunday Funday: The Ride	Wisdom Tree	Wisdom Tree
Castle of Deceit	Bunch Games	Color Dreams
Galactic Crusader	Bunch Games	Sachen/Joy Van
Mission Cobra	Bunch Games	Sachen/Joy Van
Moon Ranger	Bunch Games	Odyssey Software
Tagin' Dragon	Bunch Games	Sachen/Joy Van

Games sharing a color share the game engine.

American Video Entertainment, Inc. (AVE)

AVE was an ambitious 1990 spinoff company of the chip manufacturer Macronix, who wanted Nintendo's business, but Nintendo did not want them (at that time).  AVE was a publisher, it did not develop its own games.  Much of its catalog came from Taiwan companies Sachen / Joy Van (labels used by Thin Chen Enterprise) and Computer Entertainment, Inc (C & E).  C & E 's best claim to fame is the original version of Beggar Prince for the Sega Genesis.

Most of the games this company released had little to distinguish themselves.  Two decent games (one really) are Dudes with Attitude and Trolls on Treasure Island.  These simple games are actually pretty fun.  Krazy Kreatures is a fun, simple match three game that can get pretty intense as game really starts throwing the creatures at you.  AVE's more ambitious releases like Deathbots and Wally Bear and the NO! Gang are LJN-quality crap.

Like all the unlicensed companies, except for Tengen, AVE relied on discrete circuitry and and a charge pump to zap the lockout chip in the NES with a negative voltage spike, which would disable it.  Nintendo reacted to lockout defeating methods like these, and in the NES Rev-11 board, introduced in November, 1990, installed a resistor to prevent these methods from working.  Some companies like Codemasters and HES resorted to plug-through cartridges that used a licensed game to communicate with the lockout chip. AVE sent the player instructions to install a jumper wire over R18, and offered to modify the player's console for the price of shipping and handling.

One of the most ambitious cartridges released was the Maxi-15.  This was the largest cartridge released for the NES until Action 52.  This 1 Megabyte multi-cart contained fifteen games, and fourteen of those games were released as standalone cartridges.  There are games originally published by AVE, Color Dreams and AGCI on the cartridge.  The games on it are : F-15 City War, Puzzle, Pyramid, Tiles of Fate, Krazy Kreatures, Double Strike, Dudes with Attitude, Venice Beach Volleyball, Stakk'M, Deathbots, Rad Racket: Deluxe Tennis II, Chiller, Solitaire, Menace Beach and Shockwave.  Stakk'M was almost but never released as a standalone NES cart, so this multi-cart has unique value.  Stakk'M was a port of the Idea-Tek game Poke Block.  When re-released and later released in Australia by HES, Pyrmaid and Double Strike were replaced by BlackJack and Death Race.

NES Title	Original Developer	Notes
Blackjack	Odyssey Software
Deathbots	Odyssey Software
Double Strike	Sachen / Joy Van	Originally released in Taiwan as Shuangying and later Twin Eagle
Dudes with Attitude	Michael & Cam Crick
F-15 City War	Idea-Tek
Impossible Mission II	SEI/Epyx	Originally released as an unlicensed cart by SEI
Krazy Kreatures	Bitmasters
Maxi 15	Various
Mermaids of Atlantis: The Riddle of the Magic Bubble	C & E	Non-porno version of Bubble Bath Babes
Puzzle	Idea-Tek
Pyramid	Sachen / Joy Van
Rad Racket: Deluxe Tennis II	Idea-Tek
Solitaire	Odyssey Software
Tiles of Fate	C & E
Trolls on Treasure Island	Michael & Cam Crick	Uses the Dudes with Attitude game engine
Ultimate League Soccer	C & E
Venice Beach Volleyball	Idea-Tek
Wally Bear and the NO! Gang	AGCI

American Game Carts, Inc. (AGCI)

AGCI released Chiller, Death Race and Shockwave under their own label.  Chiller uses a Color Dreams board, and Shockwave uses the same mapper as Color Dreams games, but both it and Death Race use AGCI PCBs.  Chiller and Death Race originally were arcade games created by Exidy.  AGCI also developed Wally Bear and the NO! Gang, which was also released by AVE.

SEI

SEI released a port of Impossible Mission II for NES, originally created by Epyx and Novotrade.  The game was later re-released by AVE.  While both versions use different cartridge shells, they use the same AVE PCB.

Active Enterprises, Inc.

Active Enterprises had exactly one cartridge to their name that saw a true release during the NES's lifetime, Action 52.  The Action 52 cartridge holds the record for the largest NES (non-Famicom) cartridge produced during the console's lifetime at two megabytes in size.  By contrast, the largest licensed NES game, Kirby's Adventure, is only 768 kilobytes in size and the largest licensed Famicom game, Metal Slader Glory, 1 megabyte.  Action 52 cost $199.00 and seems to have been available mostly via mail order.  It also released an unlicensed Action 52 cartridge for the Genesis at the same cost.  The 52 including games were very basic, pretty terrible, glitchy and in some cases really did not work.  Active Enterprises hired some college students to program their games.

Among the 52 games was The Cheetamen, which was the most sophisticated game on the cartridge and inspired by the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles.  Also, Battletoads (also inspired by TMNT) seems to have been an inspiration for the game.  Active put a sequel into development, Cheetamen II, but never released it.  However, 1,500 copies of Cheetamen II, using the same boards as Action 52 (but only with 384KB of ROM), were found in a warehouse and auctioned off in the late 1990s.  Unfortunately in addition to being a buggy and terrible game, only four of the six levels are playable on the released cartridge unless a rare glitch is exploited involving continuously powering on and resetting the console until you start on level 5 or 6.

However, while Active failed to achieve success in the marketplace, it has achieved legendary status in the collector community, due to the rarity of its cartridges, and in the retro-gaming community due to the legendary awfulness of its games.

Caltron/Myriad

Caltron released one cartridge, the six-in-one, and unlike the cart from AVE, the six games on this cartridge were unique, they did not have standalone cartridge releases.  Apparently, Caltron was the alter-ego of the Taiwan pirate outfit NTDEC.  NTDEC, and its California offshoot or partner Mega Soft developed all the games on the six-in-one.  When Caltron went out of business or was no longer used by NTDEC, the remaining inventory of six-in-one cartridges were bought by a Texas company named Myriad, which simply stuck their label over Caltron's.  The cartridges were unaltered and even the Myriad label leaves a sliver of the Caltron label showing.

Panesian

This company was notable for releasing the only known pornographic NES cartridges, Bubble Bath Babes, Hot Slots, and Peek-A-Boo Poker.   Panesian was a Taiwanese outfit that somehow was able to distribute these products in North America. Bubble Bath Babes looks nearly identical and plays similarly to AVE's Mermaids of Atlantis.  Both games have their genesis in a C&E game called Magic Bubble.  Bubble Bath Babes is an early version of Magic Bubble which shows nipples but loses some options  Magic Bubble has the same gameplay modes as Mermaids of Atlantis, but the breasts of the mermaid are fully uncovered except for some suds that hide the nipples.  Bubble Bath Babes was also released by Hacker International in Japan as Soap Panic.  Peek-a-boo Poker was originally developed by Idea-Tek and released it as Poker Jingling.  Hacker International released it in Japan as AV Poker and Hot Slots as AV Pachislot.

Panesian is connected to AVE, which released other Hacker International games, because the Panesian games use AVE PCBs.  The AVE, AGCI and Panesian cartridge shells are very similar to one another.  Panesian releases are holy grails due to their rarity because few stores would sell pornographic video games during the late 1980s and early 1990s.

RacerMate

This company made only one "game" for the NES, the RacerMate Challenge II.  It is not really a game, it is an exercise tool.  This device came in a kit with several pieces of hardware as well as a game.  You could use your regular bicycle as an exercise bike with it.  It will measure the speed and has other devices to measure heart rate.  The device communicates with the NES via the cartridge ports, and you could see graphics showing your bike moving on a track, the speed, revolutions per second, etc.  There are some early versions of the software that use Tengen cartridge shells and lockout chips, but later versions use a unique shell and no lockout chip.  However, the PCB with the Tengen lockout chip looks nothing like real Tengen boards, so they may have acquired a limited license from Tengen or just found a cache of cheap Tengen carts.  The instructions informed the purchaser that they had to use a top loader or have their front loader modified by RacerMate.  RacerMate is still around today and sells kits for bicycles.

Home Entertainment Suppliers Pty. Ltd. (HES)

HES was the Australian version of AVE.  They functioned as a publisher, not a developer.  Their cartridges often used a plug-through system, requiring an official NES cart to bypass the lockout chip.  They also tend to use EPROMs on their carts, making them more likely to lose data to bit rot.  Sometimes their carts contained Taiwanese 60-pin Famicom PCBs, so they included the HES Dongle to allow them to be used in a 72-pin NES.  They also sold standalone adapters that could convert Famicom games to the NES and vice versa.  Some of the Taiwan games never saw a US release, making them unique to HES.

NES Title	Original Developer	Notes
4 in 1 Funblaster Pack	Various	Pipemania, Twin Eagle, Metal Fighter, Little Red Hood
4 in 1 Mindblower Pack	Various	Math Quiz, Jackpot, Artic Adventure, Galactic Crusader
4 in 1 Total Funpak	Various	Pac-Man, Sidewinder, Duck Maze, Othello
6 in 1 Real Player's Pak	NTDEC	Released in US as Caltron/Myriad 6-in-1
Arctic Adventure, Penguin & Seal	Thin Chen Enterprises
Chiller	AGCI/Exidy	Released by AGCI in US
Death Race	AGCI/Exidy	Released by AGCI in US
Duck Maze	Bit Corporation
F-15 City War	Idea-Tek	Released by AVE in US
Impossible Mission 2	SEI/Epyx	Released by SEI and AVE in US
International Ultimate League Soccer ("Magexa Soccer")	C & E
Jackpot	Bit Corporation
Little Red Hood	Sachen/Joy Van
Maxi 15	Various	Contains 13 of the games from AVE's Release
Othello	Bit Corporation	Not the same as the licensed Famicom Disk and Famicom cartridge
Pac-Man	Namco	Released by Tengen and Namco in the US
Pipemania	Sachen / Joy Van	Unauthorized clone of Pipe Dream, not the same as the licensed NES cartridge
Pyramid	Sachen / Joy Van	Released by AVE in US
R.B.I. Baseball	Namco	Released by Tengen in US
Raid 2020	Color Dreams	Released by Color Dreams in US
Side Winder	Sachen / Joy Van
Silent Assault	Sachen / Joy Van	Released by Color Dreams in US
Super Sprint	Tengen/Atari Games	Released by Tengen in US
Toobin'	Tengen/Atari Games	Released by Tengen in US
Twin Eagle	Sachen / Joy Van	Not the same as the licensed NES cartridge
Vindicators	Tengen/Atari Games	Released by Tengen in US

Unlicensed NES Part 1 : The Worthy Publishers

There were several developers who made unlicensed cartridges for the NES.  In this series, I will describe these companies and their games.

Tengen

The story unlicensed NES cartridges begins with Atari.  Back in 1984, Warner Communications had sold off the home console and computer divisions of Atari Corp. to Jack Tramiel, who formed Atari, Inc.  This company would reintroduce the 2600 and 7800 consoles in 1986 to compete with the NES.  The remnant of Atari Corp would be known as Atari Games and comprised Atari's Arcade video game business.  Warner sold it to Namco, which had sold it to a group of Atari Games employees by the time the NES started to become phenomenally successful.  Atari Games approached Nintendo and requested a license to develop 3rd party games for the NES.  Nintendo allowed them to become one of their first true overseas licensees.  Atari Games would publish their home video games under the Tengen publishing label because the original deal between Warner and Tramiel forbid Warner from using the Atari label in the home consumer market.

Tengen published three games for the NES as a licensed 3rd party publisher, Gauntlet, R.B.I. Baseball and Pac-Man.  However, Nintendo had overstretched its ability to manufacture ROM chips for its cartridges in 1988, no doubt due to the fact that it was making cartridges for Asia, America, Europe and Japan and the Famicom Disk System was not going to replace ROM cartridges as Nintendo had hoped.  Its competitors, including Sega, Atari, and NEC, also had orders at the same chip factories Nintendo had to use.  Third parties' orders of games for the 1988 Christmas season were slashed, and Tengen hated it so much that they started looking for ways to sell NES games without having to pay Nintendo's licensing and manufacturing fees.

Nintendo had a lockout chip in every console intending to prevent unlicensed third parties from making NES games.  If this chip could not communicate with an identical chip inside the cartridge, then the console would continuously reset.  Tengen almost had the technical abilities to clone the lockout chip, but it was not successful until it was able to secure the necessary information from the U.S. Patent Office by falsely claiming it was in litigation against Nintendo.  It was able to clone Nintendo's lockout chip, and Nintendo retaliated with a lawsuit.  Tengen's clone lockout chip, found in all the cartridges made, will work in any NES front loader.  By contrast, all other unlicensed companies defeated the lockout chip by sending negative voltage spikes to the lockout chip.  Nintendo eventually obtained a judgment against Atari for patent infringement for using the code of its lockout chip in 1992, but by that time, the NES was clearly on the decline.

Tengen re-released the games it had produced as a licensed NES developer and ultimately published 20 games.  8 other of their/Atari Games games were published by licensed third parties.  Some of Tengen's unlicensed games reached Japan but none reached Europe.  Virtually every one of their games were either a port of an arcade game (not just from Atari) or closely related to one.  Rolling Thunder and Fantasy Zone are probably the best ports, although Alien Syndrome, After Burner, Pac-Mania and Shinobi are serviceable ports of their arcade machines.  Rampart is a lot of fun and Tetris has a two player mode.  Gauntlet is okay as an adventure game with an end, but is best played a little at a time.

Here are the origins of the games Tengen published :

NES Cart	Original Developer	Nintendo Developer/Porter	Original Nintendo Release	Origin	Notes
After Burner	Sega	Sunsoft	Famicom	Arcade	Appears to be a Port of the Licensed Sunsoft Famicom Version of After Burner II
Alien Syndrome	Sega	Sunsoft/Sanritsu	Famicom	Arcade
Fantasy Zone	Sega	Sunsoft	NES	Arcade	Appears to be Significantly Reworked or Heavily Inspired from the Licensed Sunsoft Famicom Version
Gauntlet	Tengen	Tengen	NES	NES	Licensed Version published by Tengen, Based off Arcade Game
Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom	Atari Games	Tengen	NES	Arcade	Licensed Version published by Mindscape
Klax	Atari Games	Tengen	NES	Arcade	Licensed Version published by Hudson Soft for Famicom
Ms. Pac-Man	Namco	Namco	Famicom	Arcade
Pac-Man	Namco	Namco	Famicom	Arcade	Licensed Version published by Tengen and later Namco
Pac-Mania	Namco	Namco	NES	Arcade
R.B.I. Baseball	Namco	Namco	Famicom (Pro Yakyuu Family Stadium )	Famicom	Licensed Version published by Tengen
R.B.I. Baseball 2	Tengen	Tengen	NES	NES
R.B.I. Baseball 3	Tengen	Tengen	NES	NES
Road Runner	Atari Games	Tengen	NES	Arcade
Rolling Thunder	Namco	Namco	Famicom	Arcade
Shinobi	Sega	Sega	NES	Arcade
Skull & Crossbones	Tengen	Tengen	NES	NES	Based off Atari Games Arcade Game
Super Sprint	Atari Games	Tengen	NES	Arcade	Licensed Version published by Altron for Famicom
Tetris	Elektronorgtechnica	Tengen	NES	Electronika 60 / IBM PC	Based on the Atari Games Arcade Port
Toobin'	Atari Games	Tengen	NES	Arcade
Vindicators	Atari Games	Tengen	NES	Arcade

These are the origins of Tengen games published by other companies :

720°	Atari Games	Tengen	NES	Arcade	Licensed Version published by Mindscape
Cyberball	Atari Games	Tengen	NES	Arcade	Licensed Version published by Jaleco
Gauntlet II	Atari Games	Tengen	NES	Arcade	Licensed Version published by Mindscape
Marble Madness	Atari Games	Tengen/Rare	NES	Arcade	Licensed Version published by Milton Bradley
Paperboy	Atari Games	Tengen	NES	Arcade	Licensed Version published by Mindscape, Licensed Famicom Version published by Altron
Paperboy 2	Tengen	Tengen	NES	NES or SNES	Licensed Version published by Mindscape
Rampart	Atari Games	Tengen	NES	Arcade	Licensed Version published by Jaleco, Not Related to Licensed Famicom Version published by Konami
RoadBlasters	Atari Games	Tengen/Beam Software	NES	Arcade	Licensed Version published by Mindscape

Codemasters/Camerica

Codemasters was a U.K. company that found success in publishing budget cassette tape games for the popular 8-bit computers in that country, namely the Amstrad ZX Spectrum and the Commodore 64. However, they had higher ambitions and sought to develop games for the 8-bit and 16-bit consoles.  They believed they could break into the lucrative U.S. market by publishing games for the NES, which was not very popular in the U.K.  For the NES, they released 14 games through the Canadian company Camerica.  Camerica had marketed some licensed IR wireless controllers for the NES prior to their entry into the unlicensed game market.

Codemasters also had two very notable peripherals to contribute to the NES.  Codemasters first innovation was the Game Genie.  This device's release was held up by a Nintendo lawsuit until April, 1991.  The Game Genie sat between the cartridge and the NES.  It intercepted and modified values in ROM, thereby modifying the connected game in various ways.  A booklet that came with the device gave cheat codes that could be used to gain an advantage or modify the gameplay in some way.  Updates could be obtained via subscription.  Codemasters' device only supported three codes.  Before the cartridge started up, the Game Genie screen would appear and allow you to enter codes if you wished.  The Game Genie only modifies a cartridge's ROM, a device like a Pro Action Replay is required to modify the contents of the NES's RAM.

The design of the Game Genie meant that the pins in the front loader's slot would be pushed back by the thick PCB.  This was necessary because the slot typically made contact with the cartridge by pushing the cartridge down.  This increased strain on the cartridge connector and was very hard to fit in a NES top loader. Camerica marketed and sold the the Game Genie in Canada while Galoob did the same in the U.S.  They sold an adapter with a thinner contact PCB to allow the Game Genie to fit in a Top Loader.  With the cartridge, game genie and adapter, things were very precarious.  Someone walking by the console could upset the delicate balance and cause the game to crash.

The second major peripheral from Codemasters was the Aladdin Deck Enhancer.  The base device, the Deck Enhancer provided the CHR-RAM, the mapper chip and the lockout defeating circuitry.  Each game would plug into the top of the Deck Enhancer and only contained the ROM chip needed to play the game.  The Deck Enhancer provided identical hardware functionality to the standalone cartridges released by Camerica (except for Firehawk).  Unfortunately, the Deck Enhancer was not released until 1993 when the NES market was nearly dead and Camerica was virtually bankrupt, so it did not sell well.

Despite being a U.K. company, not all Codemasters games were released in the U.K.  The Deck Enhancer was not released in the U.K.  Because Nintendo kept revising the lockout circuitry to defeat the simple bypass protection schemes, Codemasters eventually resorted to plug-thru cartridges in Europe that required a licensed cartridge (for its lockout chip) to work.  These connect and function like a Game Genie.

One important contribution of the Codemasters-Camerica distribution deal was that it introduced the Dizzy series to North America.  The Dizzy series, created by the Oliver twins, was a very popular non-scrolling U.K. adventure game series which originated on the ZX Spectrum.  Ports of the Dizzy games to other home computer systems were confined to Europe and PAL speeds until Camerica released The Fantastic Adventures of Dizzy (Fantastic Dizzy).  They also released Dizzy the Adventurer (an enhanced version of Dizzy Prince of the Yolkfolk) and Treasure Island Dizzy (in the Quatro Adventure cart).  Go, Dizzy, Go! is a spinoff game found on the Quatro Arcade cart.

Codemasters was like the rogue version of Rare.  Rare partnered with Nintendo very early in the NES's lifecycle, its first game developed for the NES was Slalom.  Rare would continue to work closely with Nintendo until bought by Microsoft in 2002.  Rare's games varied quite a bit in quality, but they did release some classics like the R.C. Pro-Am, Battletoads and the Wizards and Warriors series.  Similarly, Codemasters games were also hit or miss, but Micro Machines is proof that they could have stood tall with the licensed companies.  Codemasters eventually decided to become a licensed developer for the 16-bit consoles.  Here are the origins of their games :

NES Cart	Original Developer	Nintendo Developer/Porter	Origin	Notes
Bee 52	Codemasters	Codemasters	NES
Big Nose Freaks Out	Codemasters	Codemasters	NES	Also Released for Aladdin Deck Enhancer
Big Nose the Caveman	Codemasters	Codemasters	NES
Dizzy the Adventurer	Big Red Software Company	Codemasters	ZX Spectrum (Dizzy: Prince of the Yolkfolk)	Exclusively Released for Aladdin Deck Enhancer
Fantastic Adventures of Dizzy	Big Red Software Company	Codemasters	NES	Also Released for Aladdin Deck Enhancer w/Changes
FireHawk	Codemasters	Codemasters	NES
Linus Spacehead's Cosmic Crusade	Codemasters	Codemasters	NES	Also Released for Aladdin Deck Enhancer
Micro Machines	Codemasters	Codemasters	NES	Also Released for Aladdin Deck Enhancer
Mig 29 Soviet Fighter	Codemasters	Codemasters	ZX Spectrum
Quattro Adventure	Codemasters/Big Red Software Company	Codemasters	NES/ZX Spectrum (Treasure Island Dizzy Only)	Also Released for Aladdin Deck Enhancer; released in U.K. as Super Adventure Quests
Quattro Arcade	Codemasters	Codemasters	NES/Commodore 64 (C.J.'s Elephant Antics Only)
Quattro Sports	Codemasters	Codemasters	NES/Commodore 64 BMX and Pro Tennis Simulators Only); released in U.K. as Super Sports Challenge	Also Released for Aladdin Deck Enhancer
Stunt Kids	Codemasters	Codemasters	NES
The Ultimate Stuntman	Codemasters	Codemasters	NES

Titles in yellow saw release in the U.K., and most could be found in Brazil as well.

Games found on both a U.S. standalone cartridge and released for the Aladdin Deck Enhancer are identical except for the Fantastic Adventures of Dizzy and Micro Machines.  Aladdin Fantastic Adventures of Dizzy has 250 stars vs. the 100 starts of the cartridge version and Dizzy walks much faster in the Aladdin version. The Aladdin version of Micro Machines works in PAL consoles, the cartridge version won't get past the title screen.

NES Female Protagonists

This blog entry will identify and discuss the various heroines of the NES.  The NES was the first console released in the West known to allow players to play female human or humanoid characters in a non-offensive way.  While some NES games included a female character (Super Mario Bros. 2, Shadow of the Ninja, Dragon Warrior II-IV, The Adventures of Lolo 3) very few used a female character as the main protagonist.  This blog post will not include the considerably larger number of games only released in Japan that featured female main characters.  Spoilers abound here, so if you want your NES game experience pristine, read no further!

Vs. Mach Rider

Including this game is a stretch, in more ways than one.  The cartridge version of Mach Rider did not give any indication of the gender of the Rider.  Neither the box, the manual or the in-game text use any personal pronouns.  They only say "You are Mach Rider!"

However, Mach Rider, like many other early NES titles, was released in the arcades as part of Nintendo's Vs. System.  The Vs. System was an arcade cabinet with NES hardware inside.  Typically two games could fit on the motherboard, and each game was released as a package of ROM chips.  Some of these games have been hacked to work with NES emulators or even the NES via reproduction or flash carts.  If the individual ROMs are dumped and complete, you can make almost certainly make it work in a quality NES emulator.

There are two sets of Vs. Mach Rider ROMs in existence.  One set is the "Endurance Course" portion of the Mach Rider NES cart.  The second set is the "Fighting Course" portion.  Both are considerably more challenging than the cartridge versions.  Unlike the cartridge version, you can continue where you left off after you lose all your lives at the cost of a credit.  With either ROM set, you will see a picture of Mach Rider standing in front of the bike with the words "Insert Coin" and "Push Button 1 to Start".

As you can see, the Rider is in full-body armor and wearing a helmet, making his or her gender uncertain. The Rider's build suggests that a man is inside that suit.  However, as after you finish the first level, the screen shows the bike without the rider.  A few tiles are then displayed that show a different image, like so :

As you complete the next nine stages, more and more titles are revealed until you see this image after you beat course 10 :

Unfortunately, there is no additional text in the game which may explain exactly who this character is supposed to be.  Is this Mach Rider without the suit or a female survivor that Mach Rider has rescued?  The best evidence to suggest that it is Mach Rider is that the suited image of Mach Rider does not appear in the frame and that arguably Mach Rider's identity has been slowly revealed during the course of the game.  The text does not indicate any survivors have been found until very late in the game.  Perhaps the slow reveal demonstrates the extent to which you have saved the survivors.  If the character is Mach Rider, why would she hold a knife instead of the machine gun?  In Super Smash Bros. Melee, there is a trophy of Mach Rider that can be earned, and the explanatory text uses the male pronoun throughout.

There is another issue with Vs. Mach Rider's inclusion in addition to its arcade-only release.  The best evidence I have seen is that only the Endurance Course ROM set was offered for sale overseas.  The Fighting Course ROM set appears to be available in Japan only.  If this is the case, then the case of Mach Rider's inclusion in this list is even more strained.

Athena

While Metroid was released before Athena in Japan, in the US it was not released until August, 1987 (not 1986 as some sites and even the official NES game list state).  However, Athena was released in the US in June of 1987, which makes it the first official NES game with a female protagonist.

Athena is a terrible game, mainly due to its awful hit detection and poor controls.  Athena herself is portrayed (outside of the US cover) as child-like seeker of adventure.  For more on Athena, read on here : http://www.hardcoregaming101.net/athena/athena.htm

Metroid

By far the most famous game on this list, the gender of the character was a surprise reveal at the end of the game.  The manual is deliberately misleading in this instance :

"The space hunter chosen for this mission is Samus Aran.  He is the greatest of all the space hunters and has successfully completed numerous missions that everybody thought were absolutely impossible.  He is a cyborg: his entire body has been strengthened with robotics, giving him superpowers.  Even the space pirates fear his space suit, which can absorb any enemy's power.  But his true form is shrouded in mystery."

The manual uses the male pronoun throughout, but at the end it does hint at a surprise at the end of the game and the "final outcome" depends on how it took the player to beat the game.  When you beat the game, you will see this screen :  What happens next depends on how long you took to beat the game.  If you took more than five hours, you will only see Samus in a suit, either with back turned (10 or more hours) or first raised in the air (3-5 hours) :

But if you take between 5-3 hours, 3-1 hour or less than 1 hour, Samus' true form is progressively revealed :

Samus does look more than a bit like the woman shown in Mach Rider screenshots above.  There is no official support that the character may be one in the same.  Metroid takes place around the year 20X5 and Mach Rider is set in the year 2112, so it may not be totally impossible that the two could be the same, but it is highly unlikely.

The password system is one advantage over the Japanese Famicom Disk System original, it is extremely versatile.  Others I could think of include the faster arm cannon shooting, extended escape music and a lack of load times.  Metroid for the FDS has some of the longest load times of any game for the FDS.  However, the most unique thing about the cartridge Metroid is the ability to play as suitless Samus.

If you beat the game with the 3-5 or 1-3 hour ending, you will get to play as Suitless Samus and with whatever powerups (but not energy or missile tanks) you had acquired in the next game.  There is no way to get Suitless Samus in the FDS version.  You will not get Suitless Samus if you beat the game with Armored Samus in less than 1 hour, probably because the designers did not anticipate that players would ever be able to do that.

However, Metroid's password system allowed for some very easy to remember passwords.  One in particular was well-known back in the NES era, JUSTIN BAILEY ------ ------  That would allow you to play as suitless Samus without having to officially discover the secret by beating the game with a good time.  I remember a friend of mine that did not believe that Samus was a woman.  We both knew of the Justin Bailey code, but he insisted that Samus and "the woman" were not one and the same.  I knew from reading video game magazines that they were, but I was unable to convince him until we beat the game together and he could see Samus transform.  After that there was no further talk of Samus and "the woman".

This progressive revelation of Samus during the game's ending according to the time taken to complete the game survived into every other 2D Metroid game.  The 3D Metroid games also feature this, but instead of time they use the percentage of the game completed.

Metroid is an undisputed classic.  Unlike later non-linear games, Metroid doesn't try to hold your hand and point to the way.  Metroid : Zero Mission does engage in rather blatant finger pointing, but it has so many ways to break the intended sequence of events that you can easily go in an unintended direction.

The Guardian Legend

This game's US version is almost as coy as Metroid regarding the identity of the protagonist.  The game's manual refers to your character as a "highly sophisticated aerobot transformer."  The manual uses the impersonal pronoun "it" throughout to refer to The Guardian.  The only way you would know that your character is female is to play the game and beat the opening level.  Only in the exploration stages does you character show graphics that would indicate she is a female.

In Europe, the box art in some countries shows a female face clad in body armor, and in Japan the artwork clearly shows a female cyborg.  The Japanese version's box art and text is more explicit than the English version.  The introductory text in the Japanese version, played if no button is pressed on the Title Screen within 30 seconds, is as follows :

"A huge unidentified object is approaching the Earth.  It was made in the far past by another life than the human race, and occupied and inhabited by a vicious creature in the long period.  In order to save the Earth, the strongest women warriors go into action."

The English version's opening scroll text goes like this :

"Long ago, an alien race sent a huge world hurtling toward the Earth, loaded with a cargo of mysterious lifeforms.  You must battle your way deep within the alien world to destroy its vicious inhabitants.  You are the guardian of the Earth and your saga will become The Guardian Legend."

In addition, most US NES versions of Japanese games copy the manual artwork found in the Japanese manual.  The US manual copies all the artwork from the Japanese manual except two images showing that the Guardian is female.  If there is any doubt that Broderbund was trying to avoid the issue of the title character's gender, this should silence that doubt.  Their marketing strategy was to avoid the issue at all costs, undoubtedly to avoid turning off male gamers by prominently featuring a female character in the game. I'm surprised that Broderbund did not change The Guardian's sprite graphics, but then they would have to change something else.  Just in case anyone had any doubt about The Guardian's gender, at the end of the game, this screen appears :

The developer of this game, Compile, made quite a reputation for itself with its vertical-scrolling shooters, which include the Aleste/Power Strike and Zanac series.  Compile would feature female protagonists in some of its later games, including Aleste 2 (MSX2), MUSHA Aleste (Mega Drive/Genesis) and GG Aleste (Game Gear).

As far as the game goes, this is definitely one of the best fusions of two different gameplay styles for the NES.  The team behind The Guardian Legend gave itself reasonable goals.  They implemented a vertical scrolling shooter mode based on Zanac and an overview exploration mode inspired by The Legend of Zelda. The graphics and music are especially impressive, with many enemies filling the screen without much slowdown.  The bosses are impressive because they are so large.  The developers did this all within 128KB cartridge, which is even more impressive.

Of the two gameplay modes, the shooting stages (the corridors) are the stronger of the two.  This is unsurprising considering Compile's pedigree in vertical shooters.  By contrast, nothing consequential seems to happen in the exploration stages (the labryinth).  The difficulty spikes in odd places, with the fight against the second Optomon like hitting a brick wall.  In addition, the weapon choices are not equal or nearly so.  The lengthy passwords can cause frustration.

Life Force

Like VS Mach Rider, this one is a questionable inclusion at best.  Although the Guardian Legend seemed embarassed by its protagonist, at least they kept the cute girl image at the end in the game.  When Konami localized Salamander as Life Force, they took out the credits and the multiple endings.  The best ending in Salamander, seen if you use no continues, included graphics of the pilot of the Vic Viper taking off her helmet to reveal herself to be a woman during the credits :

After the planet Zelos explodes in Life Force, only KONAMI is shown with the credits music playing, and pressing start sends you back to level one with whatever lives and powers you had at the end.  Life Force and Salamander share the same ROM size, so leaving the pilot out completely was probably not a size decision.  I could postulate that the credits were removed to obscure the fact that Japanese programmers made this game, but Konami (and Ultra) was generally not a company to hide its origins when releasing games outside Japan.  Of games from this period, only Top Gun omits credits in the U.S. version.

It is important to note that Life Force supports the Konami code for 30 fighters per continue, Salamander does not.  As the Konami code made it much, much easier to defeat the game without continuing, perhaps Konami believed the continue-based endings had no meaning.

Of course, for such a bad-ass game like Life Force, perhaps Konami decided to cut out the woman because it would turn off boys from their products.

Faria - A World of Danger and Mystery!

This is an overhead adventure game with similarities to The Legend of Zelda and Dragon Warrior.  The game's packaging and manual is intentionally very ambiguous about your character's gender.  The manual either uses "you" or "the warrior" to refer to the main character.  However, some of the artwork betrays a feminine appearance.  Look at the armor, particularly the legs, on the box art.  Also, some of the armor as shown in the manual has an area which would suit the female breast well.  Finally, the in-game character sprite looks just a little more like a boy than a girl :

The game apparently does not have any closeups of the main character.  The Japanese box art makes it quite clear that the title character is a girl.  However, during the game there is a twist, sort of the reverse of Metroid.  It turns out that there was a curse on the title character that turned him into a girl.  His proper sex is a boy, and when he changes back toward the end of the game his sprite becomes much more masculine in appearance.  This allows him, when he rescues the princess (the object of the game), to marry her and live happily ever after.

The game itself is passable as a Zelda clone, but the Dragon Warrior inpsired random enemy battles were ill-advised.  The fact that your character controls like a brick, has a narrow range of attack and there is virtually no hit recovery time makes this game more difficult than it should be.  The graphics are rather strange with many NPCs looking impossibly goofy.  The browns and reds in the NES palette are all over the place in this game.  The soldiers in the game are female.

Arkista's Ring

This game is relatively simple and reminds me of the Hydlide and King's Knight.  Fortunately it is better than either of those two horrible games.  It was released in April 1990, and is a relatively simplistic game for one released so late in the NES's lifecycle.  The main character is a female Elf named Christine who goes off to fight a Shogun and his Ninjas to save her kingdom.  It is odd but I can find no Japanese release for this game. The principal frustration is the control scheme where you simply cannot turn, each button press either moves or turns and moves you character, leading to cheap deaths.  If you press the select button between the stages, you get a status screen like this :

At least for once, the cover/label artwork has not been localized for this game.  This is probably due to a lack of funds.  With this cover/label artwork, we get something of a sense of the gorgeous artwork of Japanese Famicom games.  They almost always put the stuff we got to shame.

The Krion Conquest

This game borrows many gameplay elements from the Mega Man series, but I would not go so far as to deem it a Mega Man clone.  The main character, Francesca, is a witch who can use six types of magic, selected on a menu screen. Her wand can shoot a normal shot that can be charged (think Mega Buster), a ball shot that can bounce around walls (similar to Gemini Man's power), a fire power which can damage all enemies on the screen at the cost of 1/3 of your life (similar to Toad Man's power), an ice shot that can freeze enemies when powered up (just like Ice Man's power).  She can also summon her broom which can be used to transport you over gaps or spikes (one of the Rush types)  Francesca's in-game sprite looks like Mega Man, she controls like Mega Man, makes similar sounds and dies like him too. Unlike Mega Man, she starts with all these powers at the beginning of the game, and can shoot upwards and shoot while ducking.  Her powers are needed to be used far more frequently to defeat enemies than Mega Man's special powers.  Her powers do not have any weapons energy, with the exception of the Fire power.  Also, there is no stage select.  There are five rounds with three levels and a boss at the end of each road.  Unfortunately, you don't get the boss's power when you beat him.  The graphics are good, but the music isn't going to give any of the Mega Man games a run for their money.

In Japan the game is known as Magical Doropie, which is a transliteration of Dorothy, which happens to be the witch's name.  In both versions of the game, there is an introductory scene, but there are cutscenes in Magical Doropie.  These cutscenes were removed for The Krion Conquest.  Also, the title screen for Magical Doropie has an image of Doropie whereas the The Krion Conquest only has the title in uncharacteristic archaic lettering.  There is a screen with an image of Doropie announcing the beginning of each round, and at the end of each stage a hexagram is drawn on the screen.  Nothing so interesting with The Krion Conquest.  The sole image with Francesca has been redrawn somewhat from the original to make her look more like a girl than a young woman.  The ending is particularly affected by the cuts.  Also, there are no continues in The Krion Conquest, which makes a hard game much, much harder.

Unlike The Guardian Legend's localization, where efforts were taken to minimize the gender of the character, The Krion Conquest has minimizing of another kind going on here.  Vic Tokai kept the localization as cheap as possible.  It would have cost some money to translate all the dialogue and fit it into the ROM.  While the hexagram drawing had to be removed because of Nintendo's censorship, any other graphics that would have to be redone, such as the Title Screen or the Round Intro Screen, to show a more youthful main character, were apparently out of Vic Tokai's budget.  The box for The Krion Conquest shows a female witch and the manual does not try to obscure the fact that your character is a female witch named Francesca.  Fortunately, some good soul wrote a translation patch so we can now enjoy Magical Doropie as the programmers originally intended.

WURM : Journey to the Center of the Earth

While The Guardian Legend was a successful synthesis of two different gameplay styles, WURM was way too ambitious and ended up failing on multiple levels.  It is not an awful game, just one whose ambition outstripped the resources (I believe all of three people contributed to the game) devoted to it.  WURM includes cutscenes (Ninja Gaiden) horizontal shooting stages (Gradius) vertical shooting stages (Life Force), sidescrolling action/fighting exploration (Golgo 13) and boss battles conducted in a first-person view (Golgo 13 first person enemy shooting mode).  Because some of the same people who worked on Golgo 13 : Top Secret Episode worked on this game, it is something of a spiritual successor to Golgo 13.

WURM is the first NES game to portray a female character as something more than just an in-game sprite and a closeup photo.  The main character of this game is Moby, cut straight from the anime world with green hair and a suit that covers about 60% of her body.  Thanks to the cut scenes and interactive segments, Moby will interact with various members of her crew and enemies.  She is given a love interest and a crucial plot point revolves around that interest.  Unlike The Guardian Legend, the box art and manual do not obscure the fact that the main character is a female.

Unfortunately, WURM was released during the "Red Stripe" era of NES games.  This is the box-label styling Nintendo adopted after the release of the SNES.  Because attention was being quickly focused away from NES games, this game is more obscure than it deserves to be.

None of WURM's five gameplay styles is particularly great.  The SHUMP style sections are just not very memorable.  The great SHUMPs of the NES : Life Force, Zanac, The Guardian Legend, Gradius and Gun Nac, are not threatened by this game.  There is a sameness to the levels and the enemies are fairly generic. While the ship (VZR) has many different abilities and modes, only a few get to see any real use.

The cut scenes suffer from repetition, both in the sense that graphics are being constantly reused and the cut scenes generally proceed in the same fashion.  An example, Dan in the ship announces that they have hit something.  The scene pans to Moby, who speculates on the situation.  Then Moby is shown walking out of the ship and discovering something.  The English is somewhat awkward in these scenes and dialog is also being reused.  They are nothing like the dynamic and inventive cut scenes of any of the Ninja Gaiden games.  The ending is just a screen of text, leaving the player extremely disappointed after watching all the cutscenes that appeared prior thereto.  You would expect some really spectacular ending animations, but you get zilch.

The sidescrolling stages appear to be, developmentally, somewhere in between the two Golgo 13 games.  Moby has two weapons, her kick and her gun (with limited ammo).  Duke Togo had the same two weapons, although Moby's kick is closer to the second game.  These stages disappoint because of the very limited variety of enemies you encounter and the relative featurelessness of the background graphics.  Fights with the Nonmaltas become very repetitive, very quickly.  The stages also show where the game had some rushed areas, namely the boss fights against Zolda and Icamod.  These guys, supposedly the #3 and #2 to the main villain, run away after a few shots from Moby's gun every time.  Apparently the developers did not have the time to give them an AI more appropriate to their status.

Finally, the boss fights are very strange.  The game puts you in a 360 mode where you can shoot at the monster.  No matter how many times you shoot at his weak point, you cannot defeat him until you raise the Probability Factor to 100%.  How you do this is not well-explained.  You can raise the score by talking to your teammates in the right order, but some can say something stupid and lower your score.  You can also sometimes regain or lose some health by talking to them.  Talking to the team only gets you part of the way, to raise the score all the way you need to shoot the monster as he is attacking you.  Further, you need to select the right weapon.  Of course, it is hard to tell when you actually hit the monster's attack. This typically takes several minutes as you go back and forth between talking and shooting, making it increasingly tedious.

This is another game where the US got hideous box/label art and Japan received beautiful box art.  The Japanese box shows Moby prominently in a very attractive profile (with uncharacteristic blond/light green hair).  The US got something fugly by comparison, which implied that there were a male and female playable character.

Ghost Lion

Ghost Lion is a Role Playing Game with a girl named Maria as its central character. It plays like Dragon Warrior, with a menu box allowing you character to interact with the world, view status and use items.  It uses odd terms like "Hope" for Level, "Courage" for HP and "Dreams" for MP.  The main character can attack on her own and she can summon spirits to help her for a battle, not too dissimilar to Pokemon.  Summoning a spirit costs a turn and Spirit Points.  The spirits have their own HP and can attack on their own and some can cast spells.  If one gets put out of action you can summon him or her again.

The plot falls into a standard trope of a girl trying to find her lost parents.  Her parents were lost researching the Legend of the Ghost Lion, which incidentally is the name of the game on the Title Screen.  You go to search for them, fall off a bridge and spend the rest of the game in a dream world.  The game is more colorful than your average medieval fantasy RPG.  You will be seeing Maria's face a lot, she reacts to damage and winks at you when you beat a monster.

Ghost Lion was released in October, 1992 for the NES.  The gameplay is very primitive by 1992 standards.  The Japanese version was released in July, 1989, where it would have been more impressive, especially from an RPG from a publisher  (Kemco) who did not make RPGs their stock-in-trade.  The game is not as difficult as other NES RPGs, it was clear that with the main character and the plot that Kemco was trying to target younger players.

There are no experience points or any equivalent in the game.  You increase your level by finding "fragments of hope" in treasure chests.  There is no healing magic, you have to buy "Bread" to heal damage.  While Maria can equip more powerful weapons, there does not seem to be any typical armor in this game.  Instead, there are defensive items you can use, defensive spells some of your spirits can cast, and your spirits can defend you by taking hits meant for you.

You also acquire new spirits by finding items, and as your level increases, so do their abilities.  You do earn money (rubies) from battles, but you will fight enough random battles that there is little need to grind for gold.  You can heal yourself for free at the fairy area where you also save your game (like to the King in Dragon Warrior, but he doesn't heal you).  Death only means you lose half your money and start back at your last save, exactly like Dragon Warrior.  This is still a NES RPG, so you can expect tedious random battles and items that do very little at the higher levels.

Ghost Lion is another game where the US box art does not compare to the Japanese box art.  This is a common issue with Famicom games, they have better box art, more colorful manuals, and even more colorful and varied cartridge shells!

Conclusion

I have not discussed licensed games with female protagonists like The Little Mermaid or Barbie, their stories are well-known.  Most of the games described here are somewhat obscure, although I believe there are two classics (Metroid, The Guardian Legend) here.  All of these games, except for Athena, are quite playable and enjoyable.

As far as the portrayal of girls and women go, you should not expect much here.  Video games were marketed heavily toward pre-teen and teenage boys.  More maturer gamers would have a more satisfying selection in many instances from PC games.  Video game marketing toward girls has always been a tricky subject, and marketing games to girls during the NES era was particularly non-existent.  The thinking was that boys identify with strong, male characters and prefer to rescue damsels in distress than play as a heroic girl/female character.

Ghost Lion appears to be the only game that may have used a female protagonist broaden the appeal of the game to girls.  I suspect that a lack of funds to redraw the player sprites prevented The Krion Conquest and The Guardian Legend from removing the female character completely.

I have discussed four games here that use some form of surprise gender reversal.  Amusingly, TV Tropes actually identifies this as "Samus is a Girl".  It is fairly popular in anime, so it is not surprising that it is one of the tools of surprise Japanese programmers used in their games.  The surprise is based on the fact that we expect that a humanoid that kicks ass is a dude.  When the dude turns out to be a dudette, the less mature among us gasped in awe, disbelief or puzzlement.  It also gives the programmers an excuse to insert eye-candy into their games, and Nintendo was the first with VS Mach Rider.  At least the NES, in the hands of a great graphic artist, can do justice to the female form.

Female characters are rarely well-developed in video games, but in the NES era, there was little attention to narrative or story, and what little attention there was left little in the way of development.  Just about everything is an archetype or stereotype.  Moby from WURM may be the best-developed female character in this list, but she is defined in very, very broad strokes in the anime mold.

None of these female protagonists, with one or two possible exceptions, were really played up as "sex symbols".  Although no doubt unintentional, Nintendo's censorship policies limited the overtly sexist depictions of female lead characters.  Supporting female characters, from Donkey Kong's Pauline and Super Mario Bros. 1 & 3's Princess Toadstool onward, would continue often to be depicted as helpless damsels in distress needing only to be saved, but this was not unique to Nintendo.  The NES did suprisingly well in limiting sexism in the games using female protagonists, and the games are more enjoyable because of it.