NES Games are in-game games that appear in Animal Forest, Animal Forest+, Animal Crossing, and Animal Forest e+. They are games that appeared on the Nintendo Entertainment System and can be played just as if they were the original. Some can be won at Tom Nook's lottery, while others are obtained as promotional items from a special memory card found in certain Animal Crossing games. Nintendo e-Cards also have a few NES games available for Animal Crossing.
Ice Climber (Animal Crossing, e-Cards, Series 4; Data Moving Service usage from Animal Forest to Animal Crossing, Japan-only)
Super Mario Bros. (Animal Forest+, Japan-only 2001-2002 Famitsu Giveaway OR cheating device)
The Legend of Zelda (Have the Legend of Zelda NES save file, Japan-only e-Card, cheating device)
According to the e-Cards for Mario Bros. and Ice Climber, Tom Nook gave these away for free as a "loyalty gift" for customers of his various stores.
NES Console[]
There is a NES console (Famicom Disk System in the Japanese version) that has no games included with it. When attempting to play it, a message is displayed saying that the player does not have any software to play.
It was discovered that the console actually attempts to load NES ROM save files from the Memory Card. These games could then be selected from a list to play. It is speculated that Nintendo planned on distributing these games through some media as additional content.
Some people will do anything to get you into their tents, or stores. Well I can tell you I will not stoop so low. I did however find this classic NES game on a storeroom shelf. Would you like it? Let's just call it a "loyalty gift" shall we?
Ho ho... I just made a deal on a one-of-a-kind classic NES game. Although I don't think that giving stuff away for free is a good business practice, I do hope it will buy your loyalty.
Animal Crossing - All NES Games (Forbidden Four)-2
Famicoms in the Japanese version (from left to right: Clu-Clu Land; Balloon Fight; Donkey Kong; Donkey Kong Jr. Math; Pinball; Tennis; Golf; Famicom Disk System).
Trivia[]
Only seven Famicom games can be obtained in Animal Forest for Nintendo 64. These games are given a color code as well:
Orange: Clu-Clu Land
Gray: Balloon Fight
Red: Donkey Kong
Blue: Donkey Kong Jr.
Yellow: Pinball
Purple: Tennis
Cyan: Golf
The original Japanese release of Animal Forest+ for GameCube lacks Soccer and Excitebike, and instead features the early Famicom versions of Gomoku Narabe and Mahjong. Similar to in Animal Forest, the various games (with the exception of The Legend of Zelda and Clu-Clu Land D, which instead came included with a Famicom Disk System installation) also had a color code for the various Famicom games, although some had a picture instead of a frequency wave logo to better differentiate games with the same color which were as follows:
Gray: Balloon Fight
Dark Blue: Baseball
Orange with picture: Clu-Clu Land
Red with wavelength logo: Donkey Kong
Blue and white: Donkey Kong Jr.
Red with picture: Donkey Kong 3
Blue and gray: Donkey Kong Jr. Math
Black with wavelength logo: Gomoku Narabe
Cyan: Golf
Light blue: Ice Climber
Green: Mahjong
Orange with wavelength logo: Mario Bros.
Bright yellow with wavelength logo: Pinball
Black with picture: Punch-Out!!
Dull yellow with picture: Super Mario Bros.
Purple: Tennis
Mint green: Wario's Woods
Depending on the version of the game, some NES games are obtained through different means.
Clu Clu Land D, Soccer, Donkey Kong 3, Donkey Kong Jr. and Punch-Out!! were initially unavailable in-game, however Nintendo of America and Nintendo of Europe later released an official code generator that was embedded into their respective official Animal Crossing website pages. This official code generator would generate a code specifically tailored to your town and character name that would unlock one of these NES games in-game. Which game that would be unlocked by the code generator would periodically cycle. As time went on however the Nintendo of America code generator stopped cycling and became permanently stuck on Soccer and Punch-Out!! was exclusively offered only through the Nintendo of Europe website code generator. Despite this, generated codes through the European website could work on American copies of the game. So Punch-Out!! was not region locked. Also by the time Punch-Out!! was offered through the Nintendo of Europe website fans of Animal Crossing with computer programming skills had successfully deciphered how the official code generator worked and created unofficial 3rd party code generators for download and website embedding that could accomplish the same task, but allowed the user more options such as the ability to select nearly any in-game item for code generation except those that required external assistance like an Action Replay or an e-card. The official Nintendo of America and Nintendo of Europe code generators are no longer available as the official Animal Crossing website pages are now defunct.
Super Mario Bros. and The Legend of Zelda cannot be played through normal means, although Super Mario Bros. was given away between 2001 and 2002 by Famitsu for Animal Forest+.
Some NES games were re-released in Classic NES Series for GBA.
When playing Animal Crossing using a setup that supports the game's progressive scan display mode, the mode must be activated in order for NES games to be playable.
In New Leaf, the New Nintendo 3DS and Wii U furniture items received from fortune cookies may be a nod to these NES games, as they are playable Nintendo consoles.