The NES2 Hall of Fame: Voting Period 1

Nominations are open for the NES2 Hall of Fame, which honors NES homebrews—including original titles, ports, and “complete” hacks—published from 1996 onward.

Image credit: Matt Hughson (@matthughson).

{Note: As discussed below, a RETRO subscription is not required to vote for the NES2 HOF.}

Introduction

Nominations are open for the NES2 Hall of Fame, which will be published by RETRO through future volumes of its ongoing Top 500 NES Homebrews archive (I, II, III, IV, and V).

Anyone can vote, provided voters follow the guidelines outlined in the sections below.

If you’re feeling momentarily stumped about which NES homebrews you might be able to select, check out the ever-growing archive (organized by genre) of over 1,000 NES2 games here.

Voting Guidelines

(1) Voters can only put forward one slate of nominations, to be publicly posted in the comment section of this article (“The NES2 Hall of Fame: Voting Period 1”). While a future voting period may allow for supplemental votes by those who’ve already voted (see below for more information), voters will not be permitted to vote for games twice.

(2) Each slate must include at least ten (10) eligible NES2 homebrews (see below for Eligibility Guidelines). Slates containing fewer than ten homebrews can’t be counted.

(3) Voters cannot vote for games they were in any way involved in developing (with “developing” to include, for instance, having a role in conceiving, funding, scoring, programming, or publishing a game). Game testers are permitted to vote for games they play-tested, provided they did not receive financial compensation for doing so.

Eligibility Guidelines

For the purposes of the NES2 Hall of Fame published by RETRO, an “eligible” NES2 homebrew is as follows:

(1) A NES game published in 1996 or later. It doesn’t matter in what nation the game was published, who the publisher was, or whether the game was localized to English at the time of its publication or afterward, so long as the game is an “NES” rather than merely “NES-style” game—meaning it meets all the restrictions of that hardware and could be played via an unmodified NES cart. Hacks of original NES games that have been generally recognized as “complete” hacks (meaning they alter all or most sprites, level design, music, story, and gameplay mechanics) will be considered for the NES2 Hall of Fame on a case-by-case basis. Use the contact form linked to below if you have questions about the eligibility of a particular hack.

(2) A game that can be played in English, regardless of format. It does not matter if a game is cart-only, ROM-only, or available in both cart and ROM formats provided it can be played by English-speaking gamers (the audience for this particular curation of NES2 games). Games that can only be played via a web browser are, for now, ineligible.

(3) A game that is not a pirate or bootleg, though ports are acceptable. A “pirate” or “bootleg” game isn’t merely a game that is unlicensed; all homebrews are unlicensed. Rather, these terms refer exclusively, here, to an unlicensed copy of an NES game that already exists in licensed format and for the same console (i.e., the NES). By comparison, unlicensed ports are eligible for the NES2 Hall of Fame if the original game hails from a different gaming generation than the NES. Unlicensed aftermarket NES games from China and Taiwan that do not require a working knowledge of Chinese are therefore eligible for the NES2 HOF—despite wrongly having been called “pirate” or “bootleg” games by Western developers for decades—provided they are either (a) original NES homebrews, or (b) ports of games from a generation other than the third generation.

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Image credits: Simon Arnold (@smnarnold) and Matt Hughson (@matthughson).

Disclaimers and Additional Information

Voting will be open until May 31, 2022. All unique votes cast in the comments below will be counted for this first period of NES2 Hall of Fame voting. Only votes cast in the comments below will be counted; votes cast via other means cannot be considered.

The first appearance of NES2 Hall of Fame aggregate data in RETRO’s monthly Top 500 NES Homebrews series will be determined by the volume of votes received below, though the earliest the rolling tally produced by the voting below will be made public is the June 2022 edition of RETRO’s Top 500 NES Homebrews.

The data here compiled is necessarily unscientific—though the hope is that the volume of voting will be sufficient for results to be probative. RETRO urges potential voters to vote with integrity, as this curation of data intends to honor the work of hundreds and hundreds of developers, musicians, publishers, and testers. Voting data will accrue over a long period, and be published on a rolling basis, with the aim of making these results more and more probative over time. It’s anticipated that during some future voting period individual voters will be permitted to vote a second time (to recognize homebrews not yet published as of the date of this article), but until then please do not attempt to vote more than once. To ensure the integrity of this vote, RETRO will rely on not just the honor system but upon other measures not detailed explicitly here.

Voting and eligibility guidelines are subject to change in the future—though this will only be done to increase fairness and transparency, and will be done in such a way, if it’s done at all, to honor votes already cast.

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About RETRO

The NES2 Hall of Fame is sponsored by RETRO, a Substack publication that covers far more than retro video games (see the menu bar atop this page) and which you can subscribe to via the red button below for the lowest rate Substack permits ($5/month, cancel anytime):

Voting isn’t restricted to paid RETRO subscribers; all gamers worldwide are welcome to cast a slate of votes.

While past editions of the voting results, to the extent they appear in the Top 500 NES Homebrews series, will eventually be available only to RETRO subscribers, the most current set of voting data—and the most current volume of the Top 500 NES Homebrew series—will always be available to the general public for free. If you have questions on any of the foregoing or about RETRO generally, please use the contact form here.

Will all that said, I hope you’ll vote in the comments below for the NES2 Hall of Fame!

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