Well, off the top of my head:
- Zelda
- Metroid
- Super Mario Bros. 2
- Super Mario Bros. 3
- Final Fantasy
- Metal Gear
- Contra
- Mega Man 2
- Ninja Gaiden
- Zelda 2
Blades of Steel all the way.
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SNK Baseball Stars - make a team, play games against the computer or a buddy, win money, pick up free agent players which could then be developed by spending money on something like 8 skills, lather, rinse, and repeat. Super addicting in the dorm. We all had such highly developed teams and played so much that the games would quite literally come down one pitch. If you left your ace (or any pitcher) in for even 1 pitch too long he’d lose his ‘stuff’ and any one of our batters could then crush it out of the park.
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Super Mario Bros. 3
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Contra up, up, down, down, left, right, left, right, select, start (anyone?)
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Super Mario Bros.
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Dragon Quest (actually Dragon Warrior in North America)
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Jackal - overhead jeep driving game for 1 or 2(better) players, similar to Akari Warriors
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194x - don’t remember which but loved it
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How has no one said Gauntlet?!
Because the NES version of Guantlet was such a pale comparison to the arcade version.
Wow, really? I just watched videos of both and other than the sounds and to a lesser extent, the graphics they seem pretty close to me.
NES Gauntlet is a far more interesting game than arcade Gauntlet, since it has an actual ending and a health system that isn’t balanced around dumping quarters into the machine.
Since I have been spending a lot of time with my NES Classic, here’s a list in no particular order
Super Mario Bros 3
Guardian Legend
Crystalis
Contra
Mike Tyson’s Punch Out (the Tyson version is important)
Legend of Zelda
Metroid
Final Fantasy
Gradius
Castlevania 3
List subject to change
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The Legend of Zelda - amazing game. Loved figuring out all the secrets and especially the second quest.
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Metroid - It spawned a genre.
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RC Pro Am - I remember playing Rock N Roll Racing many years later and while I really liked it, I felt like it didn’t quite capture the magic of RC Pro Am.
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Metal Gear - This is the only Metal Gear game I’ve ever liked. I remember trying to play the sequel and finding it super frustrating for some reason. The beginning of this game could be frustrating but somehow it was worse in the sequel. Or that’s what I remember.
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Baseball Stars - Worst battery in cartridge history. But I loved the mismash of baseball and rpg stats that very dramatically impacted gameplay. My “movie monsters” team destroyed a group of friends one weekend when we were fooling around (everyone made a team and my two choices were “speed and defense”. I was the only one who could reliably throw people out at first from the left side of the diamond, and my speedy lineup could create runs like crazy). RBI baseball and MLB Baseball were more popular (to say nothing of Baseball Stars) but this was my secret favorite. I want to play an RPG baseball game again one day.
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Techmo Bowl - my favorite sports game on the system. Quirky but oh so fun.
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Master Blaster - great take on the Metroidvania forumla. And I just loved the car thingy.
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Castlevania 2 - I found I and III too hard for my abilities. I liked that they slipped rpg bits into this and found it gave the genre interesting possibilities.
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Nintendo Tennis - probably my second favorite sports game on the system.
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Mike Tyson’s Punch Out - I never beat Tyson or the guy before him. But I did love it.
Don’t know if a lot of these would hold up now, but I sure played a lot of them.
- Metroid
- RC Pro Am
- Mike Tyson’s Punch-Out
- Rygar
- Double Dribble
- Contra
- Baseball Simulator 1000
- NES Hockey
- Castlevania II: Simon’s Quest
- Strider
Honorable Mentions:
- Goonies 2
- MegaMan
I’m sad to see a lack of Black Bass and Blue Marlin in this thread.
Except it controlled like driving a bus through a China shop. I was never a fan.
Man how could I forget Tecmo Bowl? Bo Jackson is still the greatest video game athlete in history. Mike Vick in Madden 04 was almost as dominant.
Too hard to really order them. I’ll start with what hasn’t been listed yet.
Star Tropics - Excellent Zelda-like game about a boy with a YoYo going on an epic journey to kill aliens. Tight gameplay and good puzzles. Story and dialogue are fun and the game doesn’t take itself too seriously.
Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: The Arcade Game - beat em ups are not my favorite genre but this one was one of the finest arcade ports of its time. It kind of blew my mind at the time to be playing a game like that on my home console.
The rest in no order…
Legend of Zelda
Castlevania 2
Metroid
Super Mario 2
Super Mario 3
Ninja Gaiden
Final Fantasy
Contra
That’s a great point - I played a crapload of Tecmo Bowl in college, we had weekly tournaments. Love that game. Guess I didn’t totally miss the NES era.
I didn’t play a lot of the classics (Zelda, Metroid, Castlevania) and owned a lot of shit games including Wisdom Tree stuff.
Super Mario Bros.
Super Mario Bros. 3
Mega Man 2
Mega Man 3
Duck Tales
Chip 'N Dale: Rescue Rangers
Mike Tyson’s Punch Out
Super Dodge Ball
Baseball Stars
Double Dragon II: The Revenge
Yeah, but he was broken. Literally broken, he was programmed in a way nobody else was. Although it’s fun to go watch youtube videos of people running laps of the entire defense with him. But it’s pretty stupid. Of course he wasn’t in every version of the game. I didn’t learn until years later that there were more than two versions of the game, in fact. Two more Tecmo football games are going to make my top 10s for future systems (SNES, Genesis). Great franchise.
I forgot an important game on my list:
Deadly Towers - mind you, I wouldn’t go so far as to say that it’s a good game. But I obsessively played it for months and beat it/found all the best equipment. I never thought about this before, but this game is basically a continuation of E.T.'s bad ideas:
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There are a zillion invisible warps in the game that you have to pixel hunt for (although they tended to not require exact pixels, so there was that). To get into dungeons, out of dungeons, or take shortcuts.
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you could spawn into rooms and die immediately if you weren’t careful.
It also had a really fussy password system.
But, somone stuck the prime farming spot into the beginning of the game and I lucked not only into finding it, but finding the way out (dungeons were square grids that were IIRC bigger than 5x5 rooms, so that’s a lot of pixel hunting in rooms with really dangerous foes you may not be able to beat right away). I spent hours and hours exploring where to find merchants who sold better gear (or finding the higher tier gear in other places), and then farming that stupid ball tower in that dungeon to get money to do it. There was no reason whatsoever I should have spent this much time on the game. But I did. And I beat it, to boot. No walkthroughs or hints back then (the only help I ever got was a password that allegedly gave a lot of near best gear but I couldn’t get it to work).
Oh, and the cartrigued was sort of sucky too. The game had a habit of resetting if you so much as looked at the Nintendo cross-eyed. I don’t remember what it was like to have this much time, and no other satisfactory options to fill it with.
Most of my faves have been mentioned and are the usual suspects (Metroid, Zelda, Contra, Punch Out and others) but i was totally addicted to a Strategy/Rpg I rarely ever see mentioned called Destiny Of An Emperor.
(https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Destiny_of_an_Emperor).
Also loved Star Tropics.
And was never a hockey fan but I played a lot of Blades Of Steel
I remember being able to complete 100yd passes from Joe Montana to Jerry Rice as well. And Lawrence Taylor was fast enough to block field goals and PATs every time.
Yeah Tecmo Bowl was broken.
Lots of Qbs could. . . well, ok, some of QBs could complete 100 yard passes (Marino e.g.), . The best QBs, if they had good receivers, could do it more consistently (it’s just a jump ball at that point, so both the QB’s ability to throw that far, throw it accurately, and the WR’s ability to catch factor in).
But Jackson was the only RB who, if the D called his play, could still elude the suddenly unblockable and extra speedy defense. SF and the Dolphins were the only teams with 3 pass plays, and IIRC the only teams with a safety route for each pass play (although the slant route was a little temperamental so it was really more like 2.5).
Taylor wasn’t the only defensive player who could block FGs/PAT either. I actually like these sort of crazy aspects of Tecmo bowl. Realistic? Hell no. But it made for a fun, arcadey experience that had surprising depth. Especially the next gen’s Tecmo Super Bowl, with it’s played season and modeled fatigue on your players.
Also, I seem to recall some KR shenanigans for some teams but I can’t recall exactly what that was. Ahhh, the good old days.