NESMaker helps you make hardware-playable NES games – no coding knowledge required

With fond memories of The Legend of Zelda, you may have managed to track down a Nintendo Classic Mini: NES, to relive the glory days of gaming. But that won’t scratch the itch regarding a game you’ve had stuck in your head for years. NESMaker (from $36) gives you tools to make it a reality. Without writing a single line of code, you can design heroes and the monsters they duff up, fiddle with maps, AI and front-ends, go all Hollywood with your narrative skills, and then delve into other genres, such as platformers, brawlers and blasters. Best of all, get the full toolkit ($88) and you can squirt your creation on to an actual cartridge and shove that into a real NES (or compatible system), thereby proving not only that you’ve got amazing game-design skills, but also that you were clearly born a decade or two late.