Most retro consoles only supported two players, unless you had a multitap. You plug it in, then it can expand the player count from two to four to five or sometimes even more. And there's a different version for every single console.

But most games didn't use it for co-op. A lot of times it was used for competitive games. But of course, here we're going to talk about the co-op games.

NES AND FAMICOM

So, the NES has the Four Score as well as the Satellite. And like I said, there were not a ton of co-op games that supported this, but there are some. The first one is A Nightmare on Elm Street. This one is very unique because it's a four-player co-op platformer, and this was pretty much unheard of for the time in any context really.

Of course, nowadays we have New Super Mario Bros. and Mario Wonder as well as Rayman Legends and Sonic Superstars. So, we've seen the four-player platformer exist for a while at this point, but this is actually one of the earliest examples of a four-player platformer. And seeing that on a home console was definitely a unique experience.

This isn't one of the best games on the system, but I think it's definitely worth playing if you can do it with four players.

Four-player A Nightmare on Elm Street gameplay from my Multitap video. — A Nightmare on Elm Street (NES)

And Gauntlet 2. I think everybody knows the Gauntlet series, but how many of you actually played Gauntlet 2 four-player on the NES? I think this was just another really novel experience back in the day.

Of course, you could play the original Gauntlet as well as Gauntlet 2 in the arcades as four-player, but again, seeing this on a home console was really cool. The original Gauntlet on NES was only two players, so this was definitely a huge step up. Swords and Serpents is a little bit different from these other games as this was a four-player first-person dungeon crawler. This one it does support the four-player adapter and you each get your own controller, but you still kind of just take turns, so it's not quite as exciting as the other games.

And another really unique implementation was with Smash TV. Now, this game is actually only two players, but it's meant to be played as a twin stick shooter. And in order to accomplish this and to be able to play it with two players, we use one of these four-player adapters and you hand two controllers to each player. So now you hold the controllers vertically.

One hand controls the movement on the D-pad and then on the other D-pad in the right hand you control the aiming. I've always just thought that this was a really cool and creative way to be able to play this game.

Two-player Smash TV on NES, captured from my Multitap video. — Smash TV (NES)

And then years later, we got the homebrew Micro Mages. And this is by far the best four-player co-op game on the system.

It's a four-player platformer that just feels like a modern indie game. You can wall jump, you can get upgrades, and you're going to have these big boss fights. And this can all be done with up to four players on one console. And the performance here is pretty solid.

So, that's very impressive to see on the NES. But this is definitely one of my favorite four-player platformers of all time. And it's honestly one of the best co-op games to ever be made on the NES. It's also on some modern platforms as well, but that's less impressive.

Four-player Micro Mages gameplay captured from my Multitap video. — Micro Mages (NES)

And over in Japan on the Famicom, there were a couple examples as well. I wanted to mention Moero TwinBee because you can actually play this with up to three players co-op. However, this one's a little bit different. You're not using any kind of multitap.

In fact, you use the standard Famicom controllers that are attached to the system. And then you get a third controller and you plug it into the expansion port. And then you can play this game in three-player co-op, which is pretty cool. It's not a multitap, but I still wanted to mention it.

SEGA GENESIS AND SEGA CD

How about the Sega Genesis? So, the Genesis had a couple of multitaps. Most of these games are competitive, and a lot of them are sports games, but there are a few standout titles as well. Just like the NES, we had Gauntlet 4, and it's very similar.

You can play this with four players. The name is a little bit misleading because it's not really a sequel. It's more of like a remake of the original Gauntlet arcade game, but I believe this is the first time you could actually play four-player co-op on a home console. But the more interesting title here is Lost Vikings.

So, this game was on other platforms as well, but the Sega Genesis version, you can actually play it in three-player co-op. That was not included on the Super Nintendo version. So, whenever I talk about Lost Vikings, I always recommend the Genesis version over the Super Nintendo one. And it works really great as a three-player game because there are actually three playable characters.

And now you no longer have to switch between characters. Each character is assigned to their own player and you can actually work through and solve these puzzles simultaneously. You don't have to jump around between characters anymore. And this just works as a really great co-op experience.

And then on the Sega CD, they had Dungeon Explorer. And this is a unique version. So, this game originally came out on the PC Engine and the TurboGrafx, but the Sega CD version was unique to the Sega CD. If you're not familiar, this game actually plays very similar to Gauntlet.

It's basically a dungeon crawler that you can play with up to four players. And there's a number of different classes. There's a knight, a ninja, a beast, an elf, a monk, and a wizard. But this one has a little bit more RPG depth.

You go into towns and you're able to talk to NPCs. You have the character classes that I just mentioned and you're able to gain experience and level up. So, there is a little bit more depth here than Gauntlet. I really love this game even though it's really hard and I suck at it.

SUPER NINTENDO

Now, let's talk about the Super Nintendo. So, there's actually a few choices here, but the main one was called the Super Multitap and it was developed by Hudson Soft. And this one was made specifically for Super Bomberman. There's also a Super Multitap 2 where it actually looks like Bomberman's face.

And then there's one called the Performance Super 5 Play. I have the Super Multitap. And the way you use this one is you actually plug it into controller port number two. And then player one plugs into port number one.

And this allows for up to five players. The standout title here is definitely Secret of Mana. This game you can play with up to three players. And yeah, it's still considered to be one of the best co-op RPGs ever made.

And really back in the day, there was not a lot of co-op RPGs with this much depth. And then Pocky & Rocky 2 was only two-player, but the retro community has since modified it, so you can play it three-player on original hardware now as well. But yeah, there's a lot of competitive games, mostly sports games. Of course, Super Bomberman, but the co-op aspect of that only goes up to two players, and NBA Jam, which is probably the main game people know of when they think of multiplayer Super Nintendo games, but that's just two on two matches.

But one of the lesser-known titles is Lord of the Rings. And this is a game that's not necessarily known to be a good game. But if you do want to take the time, you can actually play this game with up to five players co-op. But it starts out as a one-player game.

You play as Frodo and you have to slowly go through do some side quests, crap fetch-quest stuff, and then you eventually slowly start building up the fellowship and slowly as you add them players can take control of them. Once you get up to five then you can finally play it up to five players. I don't know if it's actually worth that much effort but it is very cool that it exists. And if you don't want to spend that much time on this game and you just want to play it five-player co-op, you can do what we did and just put in a password.

So then you can actually just experience it and then realize you never want to play this game again. And another new one is a homebrew and it's New Super Mario Land. This is a remake of the original Game Boy Mario Land, but they made it look like New Super Mario Bros. on the Wii.

It has the same visual style. You can also do wall jumps like that game as well as the four-player co-op aspect. So being able to do this on Super Nintendo is pretty cool.

PC ENGINE AND TURBOGRAFX-16

Let’s talk about the PC Engine and the TurboGrafx 16. They have the Turbo Tap. I already mentioned Dungeon Explorer on the Sega CD, but this is where it originated. We had Dungeon Explorer as well as Dungeon Explorer 2, which came out on the PC Engine CD and Turbo CD.

And much like Lord of the Rings, you can actually play these games with up to five players co-op. And both of these are some of the strongest co-op titles on the entire platform.

ATARI 2600 HOMEBREW

And another one that I briefly wanted to mention is the Atari 2600. The multitap for this did not exist back in the day, but again, the retro community saw a problem and they fixed it. They created a multitap called the QuadTari. None of the original Atari 2600 games actually support this, but the homebrew community continues to be really active.

Similar to Smash TV, there's a version of Robotron on the 2600 that was made by Champ Games. And just like Smash TV, this is a twin stick shooter. So, they solved that problem in the exact same way. When you use the QuadTari, you plug in four joysticks and each player gets two joysticks each and now you have twin stick controls.

This is a really impressive game and very fun to play co-op. That same developer, Champ Games, has another game coming out. This is a port of the arcade game ripoff and you could play this game with up to four players. And this one's not out yet, but I am really looking forward to it.

QuadTari-supported co-op gameplay (Atari 2600)

PLAYSTATION

And the PS1 had a multitap. And again, most of these games are competitive. I'm going to be saying that a lot. But here are some of the co-op games.

We had Fantastic 4. This is pretty much a side-scrolling beat 'em up that you can play up to four players. It's pretty slow and it's pretty clunky and the music is pretty bad. It sounds like a porno.

But it's still kind of cool that there's a Fantastic 4 game that came out in the '90s that you can actually play four-player co-op. Rampage had a version on the PS1, but that version was only two-player co-op. But when Rampage 2 came out, they fixed that and made it three-player co-op. And there was an exclusive Rampage title that only came out on the PS1 called Rampage Through Time, and that one is also three-player co-op.

There was a port of Captain Commando that only came out in Japan on the PS1. So, officially, this game can be played with up to three players co-op, but there supposedly is a hidden mode that allows you to play with up to four players. And this is a really solid port of Captain Commando. But one of the most interesting games on the PS1 is Blaze and Blade: Eternal Quest.

This game never came out in the US, but it came out in Europe and Japan. And it's basically an action RPG that you can play with up to four players co-op. And there was a sequel called Blaze and Blade Busters. And that one only came out in Japan, but yeah, you can play this one with up to four players as well.

SEGA SATURN

And then there's the Sega Saturn. The only multitap supported co-op game that I know of is Three Dirty Dwarves. And like the name implies, you can play this game with up to three players co-op. I really love the hand-drawn art style here, as well as the cartoon cutscenes.

This is actually a really fun game. It kind of plays like a beat 'em up, but you can only get hit one time, and each character has their own unique abilities, and kind of similar to Lost Vikings. It's nice to have three players, so you don't have to switch between the characters. I think that this is a really underrated game that's definitely made better when you can play it three-player.

PLAYSTATION 2

And then in the next generation, most consoles had four controller ports. So the multitap was basically extinct except for on the PS2. For some reason, they still only had two controller ports. And there was a lot of four-player co-op games on the PS2.

Gauntlet Dark Legacy. This is a sequel to Gauntlet Legends, and it might be the best Gauntlet game ever made. We had X-Men Legends 1 and 2. Champions of Norrath and Champions Return to Arms are both action RPGs with a ton of depth, and you can play these ones in four-player co-op as well.

And Digimon World 4 is basically a Digimon themed action RPG. And then Mystic Heroes is pretty much like Dynasty Warriors, but you could actually play it in four-player split screen co-op. And to this day, I think it might be the only musou game that supported four-player co-op. And there's a bunch of other games as well, but most of them were ported to the GameCube and the original Xbox.

So, they weren't exclusive to the PS2, but there was one exclusive that I found to be really interesting, and that's Project Eden. You can play this game in four-player split screen, and this is a pretty huge game. It's another action RPG, and it's basically a sci-fi squad-based action adventure game. It came out on the PC as well, but that version did not have the local co-op.

This game is a little bit dated by today's standards, and even back in the day, it didn't get the best reviews, but I do think it's a pretty unique game that's definitely worth revisiting.

FINAL THOUGHTS

So, there's a look at most of the co-op focused multitap games over the years. I think multitaps made some of the best co-op experiences possible, but I think that it was definitely underutilized. I just wish that we got more four-player and five-player and even more player supported co-op games on these old consoles. But it is cool to see homebrew and modern developers trying to support multiplayer co-op gaming on these old consoles now.

I would love to see more games like Micro Mages show up or maybe a new four-player beat 'em up for the Sega Saturn. If you got two of those multitaps, that thing could actually support up to 12 players. We've never seen any game actually support that. The most we ever saw was 10 players with Saturn Bomberman.

So yeah, let's see some 12-player co-op games come out on the Sega Saturn. That'd be cool.

For more games to play together, explore the Classic Co-op database, my 20 PS1 co-op games, and the best PS2 co-op games.