Best NES Homebrew Games You Can Legally Play in 2026

In short: CartridgeCove currently hosts five NES homebrew games, all self-hosted with verified licenses and all written by the same developer, Damian Yerrick. Here’s what each one is and why it’s worth a look, roughly in order of how approachable they are for a first-time player.

1. Concentration Room — the easiest to pick up

Concentration Room is a card-matching game with a light sci-fi story wrapper, playable solo or with a second player. If you’ve ever played a physical memory-matching card game, you already know the rules — it’s the best starting point on this list.

2. robotfindskitten — the shortest and strangest

robotfindskitten is a straight port of a 1997 “Zen simulation” joke game: you move a robot around a field of objects, bumping into each one to find out if it’s the kitten. It takes two minutes to understand and has genuine charm in its one-line item descriptions.

3. Thwaite — for anyone who’s played Missile Command

Thwaite reskins the classic arcade missile-defense formula as New Year’s fireworks intercepting falling projectiles over a small town. It supports mouse-style aiming through an SNES Mouse adapter if you have the hardware, but plays fine with a standard controller too.

4. Zap Ruder — a tech demo with a real game hiding inside it

Zap Ruder was built primarily to test the NES Zapper light gun, but its menu hides a genuinely playable two-player air hockey game called ZapPing. Worth a look specifically for how rare Zapper-compatible homebrew is.

5. RHDE: Furniture Fight — the deepest of the five

RHDE: Furniture Fight is a real-time strategy game about competitively rearranging furniture — its own developer calls it “a breaking and entering simulator.” It’s the most mechanically involved game on this list and rewards a second or third playthrough once the systems click.

Why only five, and why all from one developer

Every game we host gets checked individually for a real, explicit license before it’s published — see our Sourcing & Preservation Policy. Damian Yerrick’s NES catalog happens to be unusually well-documented, with clear GPL, zlib, or All-Permissive licenses attached to each repository, which made it the strongest starting point for this collection. We’re actively looking for more equally well-documented homebrew titles from other developers to add here — read more on our Homebrew Spotlight page.