Three Namco-published NES games, including Pokémon studio Game Freak’s first ever game, join Switch Online

Three more NES games have been added to the Nintendo Classics service on Switch Online, including Pokémon studio Game Freak’s first ever title.

All three games – Pac-Man, The Tower of Druaga and Mendel Palace – were originally published by Namco in Japan.

Namco’s NES version of Pac-Man is a straightforward port of the arcade classic, featuring an accurate recreation of the maze and including all the arcade version’s comedy cut-scenes.

The Tower of Druaga was only released on the Famicom in Japan, and didn’t get a Western release on the NES.

The game is an action RPG maze game, where the player controls a knight called Gilgamesh as he makes his way through 60 floors of a giant tower in search of a demon called Druaga, who has kidnapped the maiden Ki.

Finally, Mendel Palace – known as Quinty in Japan – is an action puzzle game notable for being the first ever title developed by Pokémon studio Game Freak.

Published by Namco in Japan and by Hudson Soft in North America, Mendel Palace is a 100-level action puzzle game where a boy called Bon-Bon has to defeat the evil dolls on each stage by flipping and sliding tiles to push them off the edge.

The three new additions bring the total number of NES games available on the service to 84 in the West, while a further 11 can be found in the Japanese version of the app.

NES, SNES, Game Boy and Game Boy Colour games are available as part of the standard Switch Online subscription, which costs £3.49/€3.99/$3.99 for a one-month membership, £6.99/€7.99/$7.99 for a three-month membership, and £17.99/€19.99/$19.99 for a 12-month membership.

Switch Online’s Expansion Pack add-on, which is needed to play Virtual Boy, Nintendo 64, Game Boy Advance and Sega Mega Drive / Genesis games, costs $49.99 / £34.99 / €39.99 per year. The Virtual Boy library also requires a physical Virtual Boy accessory, which can be purchased from the My Nintendo Store.