And yes, it was awesome. And, because our hero loves Fred so much that he doesn't care if he's a giant, disgusting mutant toad, he takes command of the equally-massive armored tank S.O.P.H.I.A. The original Battletoads was definitely awesome, but I seemed to favor the design that paired up those TMNT-ripoff characters with the classic brawler characters. Only later did I learn the convoluted history of who made what, so Hudson, I owe you an apology for my playground rants about your integrity. Featured Game: Crystalis “SNK’s action RPG classic, Crystalis, basically takes everything that made the original Legend of Zelda for the NES so good, and makes it exponentially better. The ridiculousness of the premise was only matched by the difficulty of the game's control scheme, and the superb 8-bit soundtrack that accompanied all the hungry, hungry action. However, the NES’ library of action games is too extensive to be limited to those halls of fame worthy examples. Have fun playing the amazing Top Gun game for Nintendo Entertainment System. To proceed to the next level, a treasure chest must be opened, but that chest is only unlocked when all heart icons on the screen are acquired. But for us? I was one of those poor saps that actually enjoyed a similar and ultimately less impressive game, Legend of Kage, so I took to this game immediately. A pretty solid movie, really. Some people just aren't wired for old school gaming, apparently. Several classic NES series seem to follow identical paths. More than any other past gaming console, the NES was the birthplace of long-lived mascot characters. Zelda was an action-adventure game with RPG elements, and in an age without the Internet, people were on their own about how to get through the game in one piece. When you aren't pounding all manner of non-amphibious fauna, you are racing speeding vehicles, repelling down pits and performing various other stunts uncharacteristic of your every day brawler. This game was categorized as Action on our website. But for those who had tasted it, this is one of the best action games at NES. If this premise is still not enough to get your interest in tasting Adventure Island, we will have to raise our hands. Capcom considered the NES obsolete at this point and refused to publish the game in the United States. But mastery of navigation in Section Z was a true badge of honor to hold in the NES age (and Captain Commando survived the adventure intact, after all, if he went on to beat up Wolverine and Ryu in the late '90s and early '00s). You can collect power-ups by "juggling" bells on heart-shaped beams of pure love, thus altering their colors and endowing you with different abilities. I probably played the first level of Section Z more than any other NES game I owned. I found it hilarious that Nintendo had to shrink down Little Mac to a third the size of his replicate the arcade version's over-the-shoulder effect on the NES hardware, but even with the compromise, the game was better on the NES! The drama surrounding Tetris is one of the most storied sagas in the history of the NES. Good luck finding a copy now that doesn't have a warped parchment…. There are bigger, prettier, and more challenging NES games. Although it is fun to pummel some of Double Dragon's most notorious thugs, Battletoads fan will probably be the most satisfied with this cartoonish, goofy beat 'em up. It has become a dream for all young children, it seems, to be able to act as superheroes, eradicate crime, and return to save the city from any chaos that almost happens. Some of them are good. But Slumberland is an unexpectedly dangerous place, and the game's advanced difficulty level no doubt took some unsuspecting youngsters by surprise. In this way, Castlevania III was like the original game on a considerable amount of steroids, with plenty of replay value to boot. The fact that Nintendo had always prioritized fun gameplay means that players are guaranteed to have a good time with any of the numerous titles. It wasn't because I was awful at it (though I do remember it to be challenging), but because there was almost something exciting about getting to make a choice of where I went next. The answer is multifaceted – it's the ability to play a season and track statistics. The NES classic is surrounded by so many standout features and moments that it's hard to decide on just one, from the collectable gold cart to its battery-powered save function. This was so I could put on different weapons and gloat (because once you don the final tier of weapons and armor, you can't remove them). Jackal's premise is that the resolution to all conflict lies in explosions – lots and lots of explosions. Ask anyone who played this game extensively and they'll tell you, it was one of the hardest games of all time. Platforming... with zombies and mummies? Super C, like Contra, is a nearly perfect cooperative experience, and is best enjoyed with a buddy to high five as the iconic level finish tune plays. It was rudimentary, yes, but it extended Lode Runner's life indefinitely. Punch-Out is a game about strategy, timing, and observation. Following the original arcade Donkey Kong and the follow-up Mario Bros., Shigeru Miyamoto took his series to the all-time greats by creating Super Mario Bros., a legendary, all-time great platformer that represents one of the best games on the NES. As a kid, I'd go to my grandparents' house for a big Italian dinner every Sunday. Totally killer! The beginning of the franchise which ended up being one of Nintendo’s main strengths, even today. Blades is notable for much more than being an early advancer of recorded voice-work in gaming, though, as its take on professional hockey was brutally realistic (in that it realistically presented the most brutal unofficial aspect of the game – fistfights). The Nintendo Entertainment System (NES) has a huge, diverse library of games. Little Samson arrived at the tail-end of the NES era, when most gamers had moved on to newer, although not necessarily better, consoles. The new Rush Adaptors combined Mega Man with his robotic dog into one unit for the first time, and yes, Dr. Wily is again behind the robotic destruction coursing through the game, this time masquerading as the ill-disguised Mr. X. What resulted was a crisp experience in NES gameplay that still stands up today. Developed on the same engine as Kid Icarus, and released around the same time, Metroid toned down the action-platforming found in Icarus and focused on exploration. "Blades of Steel!" You can also pick up Alpha and Beta icons that give you a robot helper with a weapon depending on a 3-icon combination. without those, everything would loko at best … Gamers who grew up in the golden era of PlayStation will probably immediately crown Bishi Bashi Special as one of the most fun games they have ever tasted, especially through the mini-theme of the absurd and crazy game. No sooner would an unprepared adventurer leave a town and cross a bridge into a new area than he would find himself smashed by an enemy much stronger than he. That's right – if you've ever cursed the skies after falling prey to the infamous Blue Shell, you can trace the source of your rage all the way back to Rare's R.C. Borrowing ideas from Mega Man and Ninja Gaiden, Batman was able to toggle through a vast arsenal of weaponry and grapple to walls to assist in the platforming mayhem. Sweet game. 5. Taking cues from open-ended adventure games like Metroid, you'll need to find certain weapons and equipment to progress in Bionic Commando, and that sometimes means returning to area you've previously visited to take care of unfinished business. It's also the teams and roster customization including the ability to create players, mess with their stats, and pay them a salary. Super Mario Bros. 2. What game is this? If there is one game that feels like it was made and formulated by Satan and perfected by the evil genie and then tested by bloodthirsty psychopaths who happen to still be living on earth, Megaman is that product! Tiny Toons. And woe is the gamer who forgot to hold down the Reset button when turning off his NES. Crap… I should really get this awesome gem of a game back to him. Rocket? Cruising the skies unhampered by the copious random battles of surface travel is truly exhilarating. The music rocks, the night/day system inspired my brother's own work with Shantae, and like Zelda II it's truly unique among the series. This makes it all the more mysterious that he appears as a strapping naked dude on the cover, but hey, those were different times. The Vic Viper's first attack run may have been in the arcades, but the NES brought the popular space shooter home in a near-perfect port. Feeding the Blob flavored jellybeans from apple to vanilla caused the Blob to transform into everything from a car jack to an umbrella. Hit every villain you meet on the screen while jumping from one platformer to another, Batman: The Video Game might look “junk” now compared to the variations that Batman can do in the Arkham series, for example. If the name "Willow" isn't immediately familiar to you, we suppose you can be forgiven – but you really should get to know it. Of course, you don't have to hit the mean streets of River City alone. And here's the kicker – the pit stop comes to you! In the realm of 8-bit graphics and extremely limited storage space, Nintendo RPGs (and other RPGs of the time) had a difficult time telling expansive, immersive stories. My earliest forays into the Cave of Monsters were rarely solo. I'm a lifelong boxing fan, so being able to "sim" matches this early was something of a breakthrough for me. Stay Tuned In This Blog For Further Updates. Carry on about how this game just isn't as good as the arcades (I do), but the truth is NES had some killer shooters, and this was one that I went back to over and over again. Damn, I think I should replay this game. With a good 6-7 hours of playtime, Faxanadu will keep you entertained even though the password system for continues might not be everyone’s cup of tea. - Matt Casamassina, IGN Nintendo Editor-in-Chief. Oh Little Samson, we hardly knew ye! After a few minutes with Contra's militant anthems you'll want to put your controller down and headbang along. The variety in power ups kept me endlessly entertained and I cherished every moment with the blaring microphone attack. Finally, you can also blast through Life Force with a buddy – just don't expect the game's strained, overworked engine to keep up! All of the terrain was interconnected into one big map, an idea later expanded upon and matured by the SNES's Super Metroid. The late, great Little Samson saw extremely weak sales in the US and so it usually comes up short in the Fond Memories department. Gamers could then figure out which boss was weak to that weapon and attempt to use it against him. I never was satisfied with the party I formed; so half way through the game, I'd start a new game with a completely different party. It's like Marble Madness turned into a platformer…and it worked! Match three games were starting to gain in popularity when Klax came out. The cast was so memorable and the experience so well defined that many elements were kept completely intact for the recent Wii re-imagining of the game – there's no improving on the perfection of King Hippo, Great Tiger or Glass Joe. Essentially the '80s answer to The Lord of The Rings films, it was a fantasy film written by Star Wars' own George Lucas and directed by Ron Howard – it starred Warwick Davis as a hobbit-esque Nelwyn and none other than Val Kilmer as his brash human companion Madmartigan. - Sam Claiborn, IGN Game Help Associate Editor. It was almost IMPOSSIBLE to pick just ten of the best obscure games on the NES, but here they are. In 1991, Turtlemania was in full swing, and every marketer worth his or her weight in branded merchandise wanted a piece of animals-that-kick-ass pie. Released in 1988, Zelda II proved to be an entirely different experience from the first and that wasn't necessarily a bad thing. It became the first game for many gamers out there, which made them feel challenged and fell in love with this industry. Take that, Zero Suit Samus in Super Smash Bros. Brawl – developer Aicom had you beat to the punch nearly two decades ago. Featured Game: Crystalis “SNK’s action RPG classic, Crystalis, basically takes everything that made the original Legend of Zelda for the NES so good, and makes it exponentially better. I said it then and I'll say it now. Fighting enemy parties that never consisted of more than one enemy, the original was about narrow-minded preparedness. Unforgiving, head-scratchingly perplexing, deep, dangerous and unlike anything else on the system in theme and feel. BUY NOW. This is probably one of the most fun and memorable action games we’ve ever tasted at NES. In retrospect, it's nowhere near as good as the MSX original, but back then I didn't know better. Others called Nintendo's own hotline for help or consulted a magazine. But the original is still the best, which is probably why it was singled out for a Game Boy Color release ten years after its Nintendo console debut in 1999. Life Force's moderate difficulty sets it apart from its peers in a genre generally geared towards the masochistic. Bye-bye, Abobo. Oh, don’t imagine the first Street Fighter in the past like the Street Fighter V that Capcom is currently planning. Totally bodacious to the max! It seems that we missed the gaming radar which was still quite in the early ’90s. And Kid Niki was indeed a radical adventure, starring a young ninja-in-training whose own princess-rescuing adventure was set apart by two defining features – his spiked-out, punk-rock hairstyle and his vicious spinning sword. You know that random guy named Captain Commando in the Marvel vs. Capcom fighting games? The ability to choose your own path had my permanent attention. This was his debut – hiding inside a jetpack-equipped flying spacesuit and advancing against the forces of auto-scrolling space invaders out in the darkest reaches of the galaxy. But it belongs on our NES list as well, for the port of Lode Runner was pixel-perfect and provided something that only Excitebike had done prior: a level editor. Why? Really, really good. Most popular games at that time took these two formats, even though they offered different themes. Tecmo World Wrestling's main gameplay screen split the action, with the core wrestling taking place on the top half on the screen while the television's lower portion was dominated by the text bubbles of an overly enthusiastic ringside announcer calling all the play-by-play. Unfortunately, almost everyone agrees that Tengen's version of the game was far superior to Nintendo's, even including a two-player mode which Nintendo's version sorely lacked. One of the all-time arcade platforming classics, from a time when developers thought the more difficult the game play was the better the game. Weird, right? It looked extremely impressive for its time and I loved the soundtrack. Cue Dragon Warrior III, the third game in the long-running RPG series from Enix, a game that came only a couple of years after the original landed stateside. Cool again? I haven't been playing as Zelda all this time? And as I recall, Ninja Gaiden II taught me to slide button presses for instant jump slashes, a skill that helped when I graduated to fighting games. It also had multiple fields-of-view, from top-down navigation to side-scrolling sequences, the perspectives were mixed up considerably at a time when games were usually from one outlook only. Playing this game constantly every time we manage to rent it from an NES store in our small town, Guerrilla War which can also be played in multiplayer ends up being a super fun action game that will make your time pass by. At first, Bionic Commando's emphasis on swinging seems counterintuitive and limiting, but at some point the smooth grappling action just clicks, you find yourself zipping around the stages in a blur of red and green pixels. Along the way you'll explore – via many, many knightly leaps – lofty treetops, labyrinthine caverns and an unexpectedly tall castle tower. Today, the game known as Tengen Tetris is a rare title to have in your collection, but it's a worthwhile play. My initial exposure to what would become a gaming obsession in my life happened down there, when I played Mega Man for the first time. No need to cut activity man. Another home port that differs from the arcade, this one has a cheat code that makes Astyanax invincible (except from pits). Although, in hindsight, going up against the Tetris juggernaut probably wasn't the best strategy, but still, some lucky NES players found time for both. Ghosts N' Goblins. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fjW2mFAJxXE . Punch-Out!! But the Balloon Adaptor and Wire Adaptor didn't elude me for long, as useless as they were. But after the Wonder Boy series went in the direction of RPG-lite, I was happy to have Master Higgins keeping the flame alive on his trusty skateboard. Made up of only five stages and a few types of enemies, a skilled gamer can get through Kung Fu in its entirety in less than ten minutes. Simon earned experience points for killing enemies and collecting money to buy new goods. Perhaps the most interesting tidbit of all about Duck Hunt, however, was the stand-alone product's incredibly small size. Instead, you will be able to buy better equipment as you progress through the game. If you nibble enough of the Nibbleys, your snake's body would grow, his tail extending longer and longer behind his comical head and forked tongue. It feels a little unfair at first to see the main character present empty-handed. Voodoo?) There are opponents before your eyes, and you have only one goal – making sure your two fists are effective enough to subdue each of them. We encourage you to read our updated PRIVACY POLICY and COOKIE POLICY. ), Legendary Wings features standard shoot things/power up/shoot more things gameplay but it's the oddball setting that truly sets it apart from vertical space shooters. With a good 6-7 hours of playtime, Faxanadu will keep you entertained even though the password system for continues might not be everyone’s cup of tea. Completely unlike anything else at the time. It's effectively a full Battletoads follow up with our boys Billy and Jimmy Lee along for the ride. You take direct control of the samurai's giant head in a sort of side-scrolling shooter that's too deliberately loony not to check out. It's flashy, it's clever, and it's one of the few puzzle games worth revisiting on the NES. Cue Fester's Quest, a 1989 offering from Sunsoft that put gamers in the role of Uncle Fester, a character from the 1960s sitcom The Addams Family. Worked like a charm, I got arcade perfection at home! The atypical confluence of high quality and low sales of Little Samson ultimately resulted in it being one of the most sought after cartridges for collectors today. Plus, being able to build an "ultimate weapon" out of blades I already had was a great touch. With a friend you can tag-team your opponents. The levels are similarly themed but diverse; from pulsing, organic biomasses to blistering fire fields to gleaming space stations, Life Force keeps things interesting for the duration of the admittedly short flight. Pro-Am was one of the first games to ever give your car the ability to attack and damage your opponents' vehicles with bombs, missiles and oil slicks to ensure that the competition wasn't going to make it to the finish line first – or even arrive there in one piece. Little Samson is one of the most technically impressive NES titles, featuring eye candy like rotating character sprites and colossal bosses in what was ultimately a futile effort to try and entice 16-bit-smitten gamers back to their NES. One of the most successful RPGs on the NES, the first Final Fantasy improves on many aspects of Dragon Warrior, a game it very clearly attempts emulate. Fester's Quest was an amazing game that was both deep in its delivery and excruciatingly difficult in its execution. Most NES games had pretty lackluster endings thanks to hardware limitations but there are some NES games that have pretty great endings. 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