Ok, I'll bite, what was the 678th commercially released, licensed NA NES game?  NWC doesn't fit the bill, so I'm deathly curious here.

Nintendo World Championship is a licensed NTSC NES game, it does fit the bill. Nobody said anything about retail releases.

If NWC counts, test carts count. None of them have a seal of quality or were commercially sold, but they're all official Nintendo tapes! Also does NCC not count because it looks so prototypey but NWC does  

But there were two of those, so it should be 679 using that criteria.
 

 


Bingo.  People's collections can have in them whatever they want, but actual sets consist only of items which were released publicly (ie: at retail) versus what ended up being privately handed out (such as the gray NWC carts handed out to contest finalists at NWC events and those who won gold NWC carts via the Nintendo Power contest; NCC wasn't even privately handed out, it was sold off at a yard sale years later) and never released to the public at large.  Even Stadium Events, as scarce as it was and has become, got a regular public, retail release, ensuring it's included in the 677 list due to anyone having a fair (if limited time) shot at going out and buying a copy.

There are always fringe items in lists that push the boundaries of what counts and what doesn't.

THE "List" consist of 677 Licensed + 91 Unlicensed carts, with an optional 2 Competition carts. But that isn't quite a complete set...

- Add the "Test Carts" and you're not finished.
- Add the "PAL Exclusives" and you're not finished.
- Add Mah Jong and you're not finished.
- Add HES / Gluk / MicroGenius / Sachen / Codemasters and you're not finished.

Because now you have a jumbled set of mismatched libraries. A nearly complete set requires...

All North American Licensed & Unlicensed Games
All PAL-A Games Licensed & Unlicensed Games
All PAL-B Games Licensed & Unlicensed Games
All Brazil / Playtronic Licensed & Unlicensed Games
All Korea / Comboy Games
All Asian & Hong Kong Games
All India / Samurai Games

and then...you're not even halfway there. Because you're excluding an entire library of games because they lack 12 measly pins on their connectors. You have over 1000 licensed games missing from your library by ignoring Famicom and pretending its a different console, and its one official add-on, the Famicom Disk System. Plus all the unlicensed crap on 60-pin.

Once you have that set you still have major variants, and minor variations....so realistically you have to draw the line somewhere.

99% of the community draws the line at 677 + 91...so that's the set that everyone abides by.

Edit: Also this topic is 7 years old...

I understand, appreciate, and in a certain way agree with what you've said and added, however...  The title of this ancient, necro'd thread was "Full Ntsc only NES game list," so PAL exclusives, Asian releases (such as Mah Jong), South American/Brazilian releases, etc. wouldn't count, even if you're talking about unlicensed carts (which the original thread didn't seem to be).  Those weren't NTSC compatible titles and certainly weren't released in the US, so they'd be out by default.  I know there's some argument about some of the extraordinarily late released games which came from overseas (whether they were or weren't ever distributed in the US, consensus seems to say they weren't, at least not outside of one city ro so), but those wouldn't affect the count of the licensed NTSC set originally being discussed.

Missed that bit, but even I used to be an advocate for 678/679.

I used to argue that even if NWC Grey didn't count, then at the very least Gold HAD to count because it was advertised in Nintendo Power as a giveaway item, a wholly owned subsidiary of Nintendo announced a game, advertised it, and released it, therefor making it published and licensed. Hell, they even used to give away Dragon Warrior through Nintendo Power. SO IT MUST be a legitimate outlet!! But then my thought process changed.

677 just makes sense. All 677 were released in the same manner, no special circumstances. Only NWC has special circumstances.

That alone is enough, I think, to disqualify NWC.



But if we were to play a mental game, what if Dragon Warrior was exclusively distributed on Nintendo Power. Would IT count?

If it didn't have sequels, probably not.

On another fun note, there were a variety of unlicensed (and also bootleg Japanese exclusives) stuffed into nes shells with 60 to 72 pin adaptors. these would have all been NTSC as well, and while I wouldn't necessarily put the bootlegs on the list, the unlicensed originals easily could be placed there

I think it would come down to whether the SNES competition carts (Starfox and Donkey Kong Country, I believe?) are counted for their respective set, as I seem to recall those being available to anyone via purchasing from Nintendo directly, with the items themselves being advertised in Nintendo Power.  If they are, then I'd say yes, if they aren't, I'd say no.  I think availability to anyone and everyone is really the key, which still disqualifies NWC gray and gold since you had to either win one of Nintendo's competitions or just have enough luck to win the Nintendo Power contest to get one.

I'm all for a healthy debate about what does and doesn't count, but I think once you're getting to a point of coming up with your own rules for what does and doesn't count, you're not really asking for advice anymore. At the end of the day, everyone is the master of their own collection and has to determine what they are going for and what they're going to call it (how many asterisks they want to put next to complete)