nginx rewrite rules /about to index.html?page=about - apache

Question

I had some htaccess rules for my server and now I am using nginx instead of apache.
I tried to translate those rules and I came up with:
location /about {
rewrite ^/about\.html$ /index.html?page=about;
}
location /archive {
rewrite ^/archive\.html$ /index.html?page=archiveindex;
}
location /sonic1 {
rewrite ^/sonic1/index\.html$ /index.html?page=archivegame&game=s1;
}
location /sonic2 {
rewrite ^/sonic2/index\.html$ /index.html?page=archivegame&game=s2;
}
location /sonic3 {
rewrite ^/sonic3/index\.html$ /index.html?page=archivegame&game=s3;
}
For some reason these rules do not work
Long story short when someone acceses my website and writes:
/about or /about.html i want it to be redirected to this page /index.html?page=about
These applies to all the other rules, if the about one will work I will figure out how to do the rest of them.
Any help would be really appreciated!
Original apache rules:
RewriteRule ^about\.html$ index.html?page=about
RewriteRule ^archive\.html$ index.html?page=archiveindex
RewriteRule ^sonic1/index\.html$ index.html?page=archivegame&game=s1
RewriteRule ^sonic2/index\.html$ index.html?page=archivegame&game=s2
RewriteRule ^sonic3/index\.html$ index.html?page=archivegame&game=s3
RewriteRule ^sonicandknuckles/index\.html$ index.html?page=archivegame&game=sk

Answer 1

As promised, I am publishing the nginx rules that I came up in the end for my previous apache rules (htaccess).
location = /about {
rewrite ^/about$ /index.html?page=about permanent;
}
location = /archive {
rewrite ^/archive$ /index.html?page=archiveindex permanent;
}
location = /sonic1 {
rewrite ^/sonic1$ /index.html?page=archivegame&game=s1 permanent;
}
location = /sonic2 {
rewrite ^/sonic2$ /index.html?page=archivegame&game=s2 permanent;
}
location = /sonic3 {
rewrite ^/sonic3$ /index.html?page=archivegame&game=s3 permanent;
}
location = /sonicandknuckles {
rewrite ^/sonicandknuckles$ /index.html?page=archivegame&game=sk permanent;
}