Old-school games are new again

Almost 19 years ago, the Nintendo Entertainment System (NES) stormed American shores with then-revolutionary graphics and a classic library of games.

    At the time, kids of all ages hooked the gray box up to TVs to play games like Metroid or Super Mario Bros. But thanks to today's technology, those games are now available in the palm of your hand.



    While games had been re-released as part of the "classics series" or the like for years, the trend began in earnest with the release of the Game Boy Advance (GBA) in June 2001.



    The GBA, for those not in the know, is a handheld system with capabilities similar to that of the Super Nintendo, but with full compatibility with old Game Boy games. Along with the system's release came Super Mario Advance, an updated version of the NES classic Super Mario Bros. 2, complete with a graphics update.



    Since then, several other NES and SNES games have been re-released for the handheld system. Super Mario World, Super Mario World 2 and Super Mario Bros. 3 have become Super Mario Advance 2, 3 and 4, respectively, and The Legend of Zelda: A Link to the Past was re-released as well, with a bonus multi-player mission.



The game to get the most makeover treatment is the NES classic Metroid. Metroid: Zero Mission, which retells the story of the original Metroid game, added extra levels and updating the graphics. Upon completing the game, players can replay the original Metroid, with the original graphics and password system -- even the well-known "JUSTIN BAILEY" password still works.



The success of these updated classics has caused the trend to expand to other systems. Last year, Nintendo offered four games from the Zelda series on one disc as a bonus for people who purchased a Gamecube, and Square Enix issued Final Fantasy Origins, a Playstation disc that included the original NES Final Fantasy.



Super Puzzle Fighter 2, a Sega Saturn and Sony Playstation game, was released, in very limited quantities, in 1997, and the Playstation version was selling for as much as $80 on eBay for years. That changed in April of last year, when the game was released for the GBA. It now sells on eBay for less than $30.



So where will this trend end? Will Nintendo release a new Virtual Boy so it can re-release Nintendo 64 games with full 3-D graphics?



Don't count on it. The reason these games have been reissued is simple: these are the games that inspire college students to rescue their NESs from the attic to play one more time. These are the games we wasted our childhoods on years ago, that we fondly remember.



These games are classics.