For those of us old enough to remember the halcyon days of NES classics like The Guardian Legend, Dragon Warrior or 1942, Retro Game Challenge for the Nintendo DS provides a gleeful trip down memory lane. For younger players, it offers a chance to know what old-school gaming was really like.

Retro Game Challenge puts you into the role of a young gamer challenged by Game Master Arino, a disembodied digital head who hates modern games and decides to take his frustrations out on you. The Game Master sends you back in time to meet his younger self, who assists and encourages you to complete the Game Master’s challenges. Arino will offer advice and jokes and will even provide you with copies of Game Fan Magazine to assist you in your quest.

The games themselves are not copied versions of actual NES classics; they are original games that capture the 8-bit aesthetic perfectly. Everything from the simple controls to the bleeps and bloops of the sound effects to the punishing difficulty of mid-1980s videogames has been lovingly re-created.

Retro Game Challenge presents you with one game at a time, each with four challenges to beat before unlocking the next one. Each game comes with an instruction manual and a relevant copy of Game Fan Magazine, which usually gives additional tips and even “cheat codes” to use. The games themselves span a variety of genres, from space shooters to racing to platformer and with a role-playing game thrown in.

Each game comes with four challenges, with each successive one being more challenging than the last. The first challenge might be something like “Complete the first level,” with the final challenge being “Make it to level 5 without losing a life.” The majority of the games are easy and fun enough that accomplishing the challenges isn’t a problem, but the later games do add a certain amount of frustration.

The lone RPG in the collection, Guadia Quest, is where I really hit my first brick wall. Guadia Quest was clearly influenced by early RPG classics like Dragon Warrior and the original Final Fantasy, which is simultaneously the game’s greatest strength and weakness. While I give the game major kudos for its accuracy in emulating the feel of those old games, it also made me realize how many elements of today’s RPGs I take for granted — things like being able to organize my inventory, raise my KO’d party members with ease, and keep my party buffed and healed at all times.

Anyone who’s played the original Dragon Warrior knows that, even in its day, it was both lauded and condemned for its punishing difficulty. Guadia Quest maintains that difficulty well, giving you overly strong monsters early on and being stingy with the healing spells and strong weapons. The Game Master’s challenges, usually the hardest part of the gameplay, took a backseat to merely being able to get to the next village without getting wiped out.

Moreover, the biggest problem with Retro Game Challenge is that many of the later games are sequels or re-interpretations of games you play earlier in the game. For example, after you conquer the challenges of Robot Ninja Haggle Man, a platform/action hybrid along the lines of Mario Bros. and Flicky, you’ll later encounter Haggle Man 2 and even Haggle Man 3. Even Rally King, a racing game, later becomes Rally King SP, which is basically a more difficult version of the first game.

I felt like this was the game’s ersatz way of getting around its own arbitrary rule of only having four challenges per game. I wish the game had instead given me more challenges on a single game so that I would have been able to play a bigger assortment of games. When you get down to it, there are only four distinct genres represented in Retro Game Challenge, and there are other game collections out there, like Atari and Midway, that give you more variety.

Still, Retro Game Challenge gives you much more than the actual games to enjoy. Every issue of Game Fan Magazine is as meticulously recreated to invoke a real magazine as the games are to recreate old games. Aside from providing tips and tricks, every issue has previews of upcoming games, sales charts, and even interviews with the designers of the games you’re playing. As a game writer myself, it made my usually cynical heart swell with joy.

Though 8-bit games are known for being short compared to today’s games, Retro Game Challenge will keep you busy for a good length of time. Even after all four challenges have been completed, you’ll find that most of the games are meaty enough to go back and enjoy in “Free Play” mode. And even though there are really only four genres, it’d be hard to imagine someone not finding something they like. Retro Game Challenge is definitely worth picking up if you’re a fan of old-school gaming or someone who wants to get in touch with their gaming roots.