The NES never really took off here, I guess it was a London thing mainly, but Nintendo was never big in the UK in the 80's, don't let the revisionists tell you otherwise.
I guess a mix of paying £30-40 for console games, and the fact we had a massive home computer market here meant that Nintendo was a distant 3rd place behind Sega and whatever home computer came first. It doesn't help that nearly everything got a NES port back in the day so what I'm proposing here is a few games that are strictly European in flavour or obscure arcade ports.
1. Mr DO!
This was one of my favourite arcade classics growing up. Essentially a dig em up, you had to tunnel to get the cherries and drop apples onto the spawning dinosaurs and evil crocodile monsters. Its probably the only glaring omission from the Famicom line up that could most definitely do with a homebrew port.
2. Manic Miner.
An unashamed, classic, euro platformer from back in the day. One of the classics of its genre with miner Willy having to collect keys and evade all manner of weirdo's to make his fortune. There are hardly any single screen platformers on the NES where you die from falling a short distance (this genre was everywhere on home computer.). If you're a yank you could sub in Bounty Bob Strikes Back which is similar in execution but without having you attacked by toilets and the like.
3. Frogger
OK, there is the other obvious arcade classic that does not have a port to the classic homebrew platform. Can't believe Konami never ported this out as one of its first run of games in the system. You play as a frog who has to cross a notoriously busy road to make it to the banks of the swamp.
As a purist I'd love it to have Inu no Omawarisan in it as this normally gets skipped due to copyright concerns.
4. Bruce Lee
Never played this back in the day, this is another platformer, like the NES isn't overrun with them already. As I've never played this I will shamelessly copy from Wiki and put the synopsis here.
The plot involves the eponymous martial artist advancing from chamber to chamber in a wizard's tower, seeking to claim infinite wealth and the secret of immortality. There are twenty chambers, each represented by a single screen with platforms and ladders. To progress, the player must collect a number of lanterns suspended from various points in the chamber.
That and a vague memory of it getting a homebrew port for the Master System as well makes it my ideal candidate.
5. Match Day.
Almost all NES football (proper football) is abysmal in execution. With few exceptions, such as Nintendo World Cup and Soccer. I will NOT have the best football game on the NES, be Dino(saur) Dini's Kick Off. I also never played much in the way of sports titles as a kid, FIFA soccer was a good 8 years in the future when I first got my computer, and was terrible at the actual game itself.
But I think a good homebrew port of one of the 8 bit home computer games would be a fine idea.
Just don/t port Indoor Soccer. OK.
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