We encourage you to read our updated PRIVACY POLICY and COOKIE POLICY. This is a game that looks,. Officially titled The Dark Sword of Chaos, the gameplay remained true to the original, with one notable addition: While Ryu always could (and in many cases had to) grapple to walls to get around, Ryu could now scale up and down walls easily. Strongbad may be cool today, but LucasArts' SCUMM adventure ported to the NES set the bar over 20 years ago. While Niki is a game that hasn't aged as well as titles like Super Mario Bros., if you grew up with it, as I did, the nostalgia factor has you covered. 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. Instead, it was a lot easier to take your time and advance through each level slowly, as waves of soldiers spawned from all direction to charge you and kill you dead. After all, Tetris is one of the classic games not only on the NES, but of all-time. Dozens and dozens of games have spawned from this very title, the first of six Mega Man games released on the NES, and for good reason. Being the first Mega Man game with tangible secrets within, Mega Man 4 got a lot of playtime when I was a youngster. Many gamers wanted a port of Konami's arcade beat-'em-up of the same name instead, but had to wait until 1991, when a port of the arcade classic came to the NES under the TMNT 2 moniker. Out of all of the games on the list, Journey to Silius might have one of the most interesting histories. Tyson's name recognition was never needed, though. Difficult but you get infinite continues and all enemies follow a pre-established pattern. I felt such a sense of relief every time I returned to the vehicle from an on-foot segment, like running indoors to escape the Boogeyman in the woods. Zelda II's entire system suggested it was trying to be more of an RPG, and in many ways, it was a huge success. I played this game for the first time on a vacation to Wisconsin (that was back when most kids had three NES games total, and liked it), and dug the game so much I had to own it. All the while, Pit must work his way through four unique worlds, each with multiple unique stages and an end fortress where Pit must navigate through a labyrinthine set of screens to reach the boss. 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. Its fast-paced 2D action style made it a game preferred by those with quick reflexes, and its arsenal of weaponry, which can be chosen from a Mega Man-like menu, gave the gameplay variety, with certain weapons working best against certain enemies and bosses. Although you control Mickey, Minnie accompanies you throughout the Mousecapade, which plays out as sort of a puzzle-solving platformer. Other elements of Super Mario Bros. 2 have been assimilated into the greater Mario universe as well Shy Guys, Birdo, Bob-ombs, POW blocks making the game seem less like the oddball of the series it's been pegged as. You know that random guy named Captain Commando in the Marvel vs. Capcom fighting 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. When Tengen released its first unofficial games using its new technology, Nintendo quickly sued. Several classic NES series seem to follow identical paths. So when I saw the commercials for the system air with footage from Super Mario Bros, I couldn't believe that it looked identical. Or maybe it was just that I died so much. 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. Adventure Island II took the original Adventure Island's somewhat tedious straightforward platforming and fleshed it out, becoming the foundation for a solid series. Old-school arcade gamers have found and will continue to find a lot to love in any iteration of Mario Bros., but new gamers beware! It appears Dr. Wily is behind the madness yet again. As mentioned previously, the Super Nintendo isn't a processing monster like the Sega Genesis so a second player on-screen would create slow down in most games. I could whip through Super Mario Bros. in 10 minutes without losing a life, but progressing Link toward his final battle was an epic undertaking and one filled with surprises and satisfying rewards throughout. It was a solid companion for the early Zelda games, and perhaps a factor in why Capcom was later approached to develop some portable entries in the Zelda series for Nintendo. And woe is the gamer who forgot to hold down the Reset button when turning off his NES. I should fix that Near the end of the NES' lifecycle, puzzle games were THE craze. Get the Best NES Shmups Here These are by far the best NES shmups for any retro gamer to try. If the Qix interrupts your line mid-stroke, you are destroyed. Perhaps the one NES classic most on the minds of gamers in 2009 thanks to the recent release of its incredible Wii sequel/remake, Punch-Out!! 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. I remember the one clue you had to solve by soaking an included piece of paper in water to reveal it the answer. I lived in Maine when Mega Man 5 came out, which was an SNES-dominated era in my life. What Top 100 NES Games list would be complete without Duck Hunt? Get ready to relive the days when shooting down enemy forces and dodging oncoming fire while sipping a can of Surge was all we needed for a quick adrenaline rush. Choreographing delicate rescue operations with my cousin was a blast, sending one Jeep to collect P.O.W.s while the other threw out cover in the form of myriad bullets and grenades. 9 Darius Twin Overworld puzzle-solving was equally as important there was even a riddle that you couldn't solve unless you opened up the physical game box and read a piece of paper packaged with the game. You took on the role of a nameless hero setting off to save a village of Elves who are slowly being poisoned by the magic of the malevolent Evil One. Konami even tossed in two new, NES-exclusive extra levels, making it even more "in-demand" when it hit store shelves. No longer bound by primitive side-scrolling constraints, the levels of SMB2 can be freely explored, with secret areas, warps and more to discover. Thankfully, Rad Racer turned out to be a great racing game that was my second-favorite racer of the generation, right after OutRun on the Master System. I hear it all the time when talking to fellow gamers. Play The Guardian Legend online! Konami's Castlevania was followed up by Castlevania II: Simon's Quest, a game that strayed entirely from its origins. Getting him to grow a body was the goal of each stage, and that was accomplished by consuming the dot/pellet/balls of semi-sentient foodstuff known as Nibbley Pibbleys. And, like DuckTales, this led to a high quality NES platformer from Capcom. The tank felt like a portable fort, like home with a cannon mounted on the roof. While two Lolo games preceded the 1991 release of the series' third iteration in the States, the game known by fans as Lolo 3 is most fans' favorite. 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. And never got anywhere. While friends moved on to Super NES, I made do with Kirby. Their next door neighbors' kids ended up being me and my siblings' friends as time passed, and they had a basement dedicated to NES gaming. You play as The Guardian, a female cyborg warrior tasked with preventing Earth's impending destruction via a collision with a rogue alien world, Naju. The care gameplay is right on, the visuals aren't bad at all, and it stinks of Mega Man inspired robot blasting. 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. Section Z was a forced-scrolling shooter made by Capcom, one of that company's few entries into a genre more closely associated with Konami in the 8-bit era. Weird West is a game that might spark some interest . A small contingent of NES gamers actually prefer Klax to its main competitors the simple, but accessible, Dr. Mario and even to the great Tetris, which does seem a little stuffy when stacked against the Day-Glo extravaganza that is Klax. Finally we rented it, played co-op, and dominated the game, even leaving the NES on overnight during the dreaded "Everyone looks like player 1 and 2" level. As a bonus, your stunned partner can double as a bludgeoning tool. The first Double Dragon for the NES was a capable and compelling coin-op conversion, but this sequel was superior to that original in many ways, primarily because it kept a core feature of the franchise, co-op play, intact on the home system. Not too bad for a couple of sweaty, shirtless Rambo clones. This game kicks a wave of unrelenting ass, so while people bitch and moan like the cartridge killed their parents I'll happily relive this dare-to-be-different classic with all its quirks. 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. I still equate the smell of bananas to Mega Man 6 to this day. 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. Re: Top Down Shooter Engine. Whether or not the game was a blast to play is how we decided the order of our beloved NES carts - so don't be surprised if you see an important or influential title below something we loved to play over and over and over again. The permutations through Mega Man were many, giving the game great replay value. Who's Link? It's these adventure game elements that make River City Ransom the thinking man's beat-em-up. Any discussion of Contra wouldn't be complete without a nod to its iconic 8-bit soundtrack. It's a shame the character known as Kickle has died with history, as well. This original and its sequel, Zoda's Revenge: StarTropics II, are still fondly remembered by faithful Nintendo fans to this day for their unique and light-hearted twist on genre conventions. But if you venture into this territory, be ready for unforgiving difficulty, one of the game's hallmarks. and seeing that the game was in 3-D. That was enough for me. The North American sequel to everyone's favorite game does not disappoint. Although I initially displayed the poster of IronSword's cover art that shipped with the game on my wall, Fabio's polished pectorals quickly became a discomforting presence in my bedroom. But the Balloon Adaptor and Wire Adaptor didn't elude me for long, as useless as they were. Yes, Super Mario Bros. 2 is a repurposing of a non-Mario Japanese Famicom game called Yume Kj: Doki Doki Panic, but why hold that against it? Gamers could then figure out which boss was weak to that weapon and attempt to use it against him. Even as a young'un, I felt some injustice every time a guest brought the Zapper up against the television's bubble screen. Super C, the somewhat unfortunately-titled sequel to Contra, features the same co-op shooter action of the first without toying with the formula too much. It would be great to see Nintendo revive the Faxanadu concept someday. 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. The game places a greater emphasis on exploration than the first, and can get a bit confusing, but if you hop around enough you can find your way through the game fairly easily. If you missed their heyday in the '80s and '90s, Micro Machines were essentially the same thing as those other toy car brands they were just smaller; about half the size of the others, in fact making them really, really tiny. It was sort of like Mega Man meets Strider, which I thought was spectacular for the time. Most memorable of all is Tales' peerless soundtrack, particularly the tunes for Transylvania, African Mines, and the Moon. But in reality, the games were different enough, and Ice Climber so much better to me when I finally played it, that I felt silly for ever thinking that. Brazenly over-the-top, Zombie Nation is one of the few NES titles that doesn't take itself seriously. Your standard melee attack was a stabbing knife, with distance-attacking firearms available later on, but no matter what your armament, you had to be precise with your placement or cheap death was inevitable. As for "greenish" color palette and "guy in spacesuit," Section-Z comes to mind, but there is no vertical scrolling shooter segments in that . Shotgun, Mario. Watching my neighbors play the series endlessly as a child, my first independent go-around with Dragon Warrior was when I was in the 8th grade in 1997. The Cobra Triangle gunship was a versatile vessel, and the power-ups it could obtain were what made this one a blast to play. Then you've got "Ninja," which summoned up the best emotions from Ninja Gaiden, the Ninja Turtles and Zen: Intergalactic Ninja. Fast forward another 15 years or so and I spend my nights playing Call of Duty 4 while he frequents games like BlazBlue. I was lucky enough to rent Mega Man 4 over and over again before buying it later on. I had a password that started players at (or near) the final town, but with all the ultimate weapons and armor still unequipped. Treat them well and you'll be riding through the eight islands in style. Honestly, that still amazes me, it was so much better than all of those it was nuts. 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. And if that five dollar coupon on the manual wasn't enough, Pizza Hut ads even made it into the game itself one of the earliest examples of that kind of advertising in gaming history. Although Nintendo's licensed, "official" version of Tetris was ubiquitous, happening upon this strange, black cartridge in the cobwebby recesses of a used game joint proved an eye-opening experience for this young NES collector-to-be. 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