Same as you or @Gordon_Cameron, I jumped back in the console band only later, with the NEC PC-Engine, and discovered the Sega Mastersystem and NES slightly later. Most of the NES games, I discovered through emulation, but it is very hard to limit one’s self to 10 games, as it is one of those platforms that seem to have been blessed by an unusual high proportion of good games.
My list would be in no particular order:
- Zelda, how original.
- Otocky, a crazy musical shoot’em up. Really more of an oddity, but wow!
- Quarth. Ah, if only they had given you a gun in Tetris… Quarth got you covered!
- Summer Carnival '92 Recca, a manic shooter on an 8-bit console known for its display issues, built for their yearly summer contest by the guys at Naxat. It is just mindblowing.
- Nekketsukoko Kunio-kun Dodgeball, a dodgeball game with the River City Ransom cast. Much fun, especially in multiplayer.
- Battle City, a more elaborate and cooperative version of the Atari 2600’s Combat, which often degenerated into a death match.
- Metroid, absolutely fell in love with the atmosphere of this one.
- Super Arabian, my single screen action game of choice for the platform.
- Gun-Nac, an incredible shooter, as usual with Compile.
- Super Pitfall - probably a bad game, but the map was so overly huge, the feel of discovery was awesome. Why is that thing named Pitfall though?
But my absolutive favorite is Musashi no Ken, the improbable adaptation of some minor Aikido anime. The single player part is crazily, stupidly, insanely difficult and impossible, so never play it for that, but the game sports an awesome multiplayer mode, acting as a simplified fighting game that is both hilarious and extremely satisfying.