Nintendo Says Sorry Part I: 10 Free NES Games

The Nintendo 3DS hasn't sold as well as Nintendo initially wanted, prompting them to drastically lower the price by almost $100 just in time for the Holiday Shopping Season. To apologize to early buyers (such as myself), Nintendo rolled out an apology of games even larger than what Sony did during the PSN outage. Sony gave out 2 free PS3 games (from a choice of 5) and 2 free PSP games (from a choice of 2). Nintendo decided to give out 10 free NES games and 10 free GBA games. No fine print, just 20 free games for buying a 3DS early. The first 10 games have been rolled out for download, all of them from the NES library:

1. Super Mario Bros.
2. Metroid
3. NES Open Tournament Golf
4. Wrecking Crew
5. The Legend of Zelda
6. Donkey Kong Jr.
7. Balloon Fight
8. Ice Climber
9. Zelda II: The Adventure of Link
10. Yoshi

All fantastic games, all classics. They're all preserved in all their original 8-bit glory and fit along perfectly with 3D Classics Excitebite, another reward for owning a 3DS early. Of course, this isn't the end of the Nintendo Ambassador Program, with 10 GBA games available for download before year's end. 5 of the GBA games have been revealed so far:

1. Metroid Fusion
2. Mario Kart: Super Circuit
3. Mario vs. Donkey Kong
4. Yoshi's Island: Super Mario Advance 3
5. WarioWare, Inc.: Mega Microgame$

The GBA list is one of a bit of confusion. Mario Kart will be getting its latest iteration either later this year or next year for the 3DS and Mario vs. Donkey Kong was not a very popular game. The last 5 games will need to have some real winners, but despite how successful the GBA was, the console was not well known for its 1st party games. Some people have criticized Nintendo's decision to include some obscure games in their 20 free games, but they're FREE. Who the hell bitches about getting FREE GAMES? The NES games all play just as they did in all their 8-bit glory, even with graphic slowdown and blinking sprites from having a frame rate that's too low! Even the Wii Virtual Console versions of these games fixed those issues, to mixed opinion.