Top 10 NES Games (I have played)
Let the Clickbate Commence
So it has come to this…
What can I say? I’m a walking cliché. But I really don’t give a shit. I like top 10 lists, everyone else gets a top ten list so I want one too! Actually I plan on doing several of these, because my opinion is incredibly necessary and the most factually accurate one out there among all the internets. All the rest of the online opinion havers are all shills. Shills I tells you! So fuck’em. Let’s do this shit.
I am starting at the beginning. Technically my first video gaming experiences came from Atari and early 80’s handheld games like electronic football and baseball, and somehow I had a R.O.B. playset, but all those games fucking suck and I hate them and I don’t feel bad for saying it. There is a reason the videogame industry crashed in 83’, the games were complete shit. I hated them then and I still hate them now. They controlled like shit, looked like shit, sounded like shit, smelled like shit, tasted like shit… Okay, I am being a little hyperbolic, they actually tasted fine.
I didn’t get a Nintendo until 1989, by then the videogame industry was back in their stride and companies were actually producing games that were, you know, fun. It was a new boom market and seemingly everyone had a Nintendo but me. I played NES for the first time at my “friend’s” house, the only son of the lonely mom who lived across the street from me. I say “friend” because although we got along alright I could never get over my jealousy of this kid. He was easily the most spoiled kid on the planet. Easily. He had every toy, I mean complete collections of He-Man, Rock Lords, Ninja Turtles, Battle Beasts, Muscles, including playsets and vehicles! I shit you not. I stole so many toys from that kid. It’s terrible. I am six damn years old and already my super villain origin story is starting to blossom. I couldn’t help it, my parents were cheap and going through a separation so I had serious envy issues and I was a little klepto. I grew out of it… mostly.
But what I was most jealous of was his Nintendo games collection. He had more NES games at 6 years old than I owned my entire goddamn life. Most kids at that time got maybe 3 or 4 games a year if they were lucky. 1 or 2 for your birthday and then another couple at Christmas or Hanukah or what have you. That’s it. The NES had only been out for about 3 years at that time. At most he should have 12-15. Little bastard had probably eight times that amount. How can you be friends with someone like that? Well if I wasn’t I wouldn’t have been able to play all those games, sooo I guess I learned to use people I don’t like for my own personal gain at a pretty early age. Lessons for life in an amoral consumerist society?
And so I played a shit-ton of NES games and I became instantly addicted to them and had begged my parents for over a year until the Christmas of 89’ when I finally got the Nintendo Action Set. It came with the original Super Mario Bros. and Duck Hunt (spoiler: neither one makes the list) and an orange Zapper light gun. I guess Nintendo got shit from some insane morons saying that the original grey light gun looked too “realistic” so they painted the thing orange. It’s a good thing they did that too because I used to run around the neighborhood with that thing playing “guns” with the other kids on the block and I could have been easily mistaken for a wild gangster or a hardened criminal and shot dead in the street by some overzealous trigger-happy cop. Except that wouldn’t really be a thing for another 20 some odd years so it was never really an issue for me.
Anywho, as mentioned I have played a lot of games, a shit-ton to be exact, but I haven’t played every game. So fair warning this is not exactly the most comprehensive list of all time and there might be a few games that should be on here but aren’t for that reason. Or maybe there is a game you really think is awesome and you can’t understand how it could possibly be left off this list. I guess, too bad? All I can do is suggest you direct all your useless questions and pointless concerns to the nearest brick wall in your vicinity. Now on to the list! Wahooo.
10. Duck Tales - Capcom
Let’s face it, licensed games usually suck. They generally range from ‘meh’ to ‘eh’. That was not the case with one company back in the day; Capcom. No one else even got close to the fun and quality of Capcom’s licensed games. Go on, name one. Ultra/Konami? The Ninja Turtles games were great and all, the original TMNT game was the only other game besides Mario/Duck Hunt I had for almost a year after getting the NES, I love those games, but I could not honestly justify putting any of them on this list. Sunsoft? What did they have, one good Batman game? Not gonna cut it. LJN? Are you fucking serious? Just stop.
Capcom was King, and for good reason, their games were actually really well designed and fun. It’s fuck’n simple. I could have put Dark Wing Duck or Rescue Rangers or Little Nemo on here, but to me Duck Tales is really the most all around best of the bunch. The sound track alone is worth it to me and the lone reason why it beat out it’s sequel, which is also a fantastic game in its own right.
9. Star Tropics - Nintendo
Now some people consider this one a hidden gem, some people totally hate it, most people don’t know what the fuck it is, well I’ll tell you what the fuck it is; Tubular Dude! This was a blatant attempt by Nintendo to make a '“western friendly” adventure, meaning there is a ton of weird crap in it that Japanese people thought that late 80’s American’s culture was into. Yo-yos, soda, baseball, and Gilligan’s Island… Nailed it. Well maybe not because I found this game totally by accident in middle school after the SNES had already been out for a couple years and as far as I can tell no one else knew about it either, including anyone living in Japan because it is one of the few games that was never released there.
The game is actually pretty interesting though in how it blends genres and gameplay, mixing action, puzzle solving, exploration and even light RPG elements which was a fairly novel thing at the time. Most games stuck with one thing or if they blended elements of different genres it was usually clunky or one aspect was clearly more polished than the other. Not with Star Tropics. The different types of gameplay really compliment each other nicely in this one.
I borrowed this game from a friend and played it non-stop. To the exact same point in the game each time in fact, where I would eventually hit a wall. Not because I sucked at the game but because back in those days video games came with cool stuff like posters and instruction booklets, and occasionally little secrets that helped you progress in the games. I guess they call that stuff “Special Edition” material now. Well, Star Tropics was one of those games. If you didn’t have the secret insert that came with your game there is a point in the game that is nearly impossible to pass without the secret code only found in the secret file that came with the instructions. So until the invention of the internet we were all screwed because no one ever kept that shit. But it says something about the game that I still wanted to play it anyway.
The game did have a sequel called Zoda’s Revenge, which was kind of stupid because no one beat the first damn game so no one even knew who the hell Zoda was or knew that the damn thing was even a friggin’ sequel to Star Tropics. Also it came out in like 94’ or something on the New NES… So not surprisingly the game sold like crap and the series died. I would love to see it revived in some way though.
8. Mega Man 2 - Capcom
Now this is where nostalgia is really pulling the strings. Yeah, I think Mega Man 3 is technically a better game in almost every way, and 4, 5 and 6 all introduced fun things to the series and 1… tried really hard. But Mega Man 2 was just the right game at the right time for me.
This was another game I rented a lot or played at other kids’ houses when ever I could. Its a great example of the difficult but fair game philosophy, which was pretty rare in those days. They were usually difficult and unfair cheap assholes. Cheap videogame death was the number one killer of kids in the 80’s. MM2 had its fair share of deaths, but they never felt cheap. Off screen projectiles and purposefully inconvenient enemy spawn locations did happen but they always happen in the same spots so you learn to expect them and avoid them or overcome them with one of the many weapons and Rush abilities at your disposal.
Once again the music puts this one over its series siblings for me. I am literally playing the soundtrack in my mind as I write this. It is so deeply ingrained in me that I can’t even say how often I find myself humming or whistling out Flash Man’s Stage or Wily Stage 1. Without a doubt this game introduced me to the concept of good video game music and really awakened my appreciation for that niche sub-genre. Taking HEAVY inspiration from 70’s and 80’s Rock and Metal (his name is Rock Man in Japan after all) and reproducing it for a tiny 8-bit chip and getting so much out of it still impresses me to this day. I love this game, that’s why it’s here and deserves to be here.
7. Mother/Earthbound Zero/Beginnings - Ape/Nintendo
Now I am cheating a little bit with this one. The first time I played Mother was on an NES emulator sometime circa 1999. The game was never officially released here until 2015 as Earthbound Beginnings on the Wii U Virtual Console, so no, I do not feel bad about playing it “illegally”. Don’t even get me started with that shit. Maybe another time.
Anyway, when I first played it the game was called Earthbound Zero and it was a fully translated version of the game that was originally planned to be released in the US but for what ever reason it never did. Which is pretty odd because this is another game like Star Tropics where Nintendo seemed to be really targeting a Western audience with the game’s characters and setting and they did make the effort to translate the game into English.
The game is basically what if Dragon Warrior(Quest) but in modern day(1989) USA. It is brutally difficult and grinding is hard to do but is basically required at a few points in the game, it is totally cryptic and its easy to get lost and it’s almost impossible to figure out what to do next, but it is so weird and charming and exciting that it is completely worth getting through all the absurd obstacles to enjoying it. Hardcore JRPG fans will love it, most anyone else will probably hate it, and everyone will question why it’s on this list. Because I fucking said so. That’s why. SMAAAASH!!
6. Dragon Warrior - Chunsoft/Enix
Speaking of Dragon Warrior, here is the MF’ING OG GOAT JRPG U GD SOB! This is the first JRPG I ever played, it completely sold me on the genre and got me hopelessly hooked for life. I remember they pushed this game so hard here in the US that they were practically giving the game away. I mean literally. If you subscribed to Nintendo Power you got a copy of the game and a goddamn strategy guide! Insane!
The game was certainly popular but never hit the same massive cultural impact here as it did in Japan where it is known as Dragon Quest. By the time this fist game was hitting the shelves here the 4th game was about to release in Japan. We eventually got the sequels here and most people who have played them consider them to be vast improvements over this first game and in many ways I agree, but by the time they came out here I was already playing 16-bit JRPGs and never gave them a fair chance. Yes I have played them since but I played their SNES remakes so unfortunately they are disqualified from this list. If it makes you feel any better you can just put your favorite number here in this spot instead. Yes, 3 really is the best in the series. There you go. Feel better now?
5. Final Fantasy - Squaresoft
If Dragon Warrior was the gateway drug Final Fantasy was the heroin. At another point in my life this would have easily been my number one on this list. It was kind of unfair to other games because once I played FF I started comparing all other RPGs to it and most of them didn’t fair very well. I’ve mellowed out and took the game and the series as a whole off the pedestal I placed them on but it is still an amazing game.
I guess some people consider it a more “approachable” RPG compared to something like Ultima or D&D or even Dragon Quest. In some ways I can see that as true, they cut down on all the extra menus, made most interactions a simple one button does all, character classes were easy to play and understand their roles, exploration was simple but rewarding, the story was straight forward and engaging enough to get you to the end and it was challenging without being frustrating. I mean it set the standard for JRPGs for the next couple console generations. It’s fucking great. The only reason why it isn’t higher up is that it just doesn’t quite hold up as well as the rest. Being the first kind of comes with the caveat that you will eventually be surpassed by those you paved the way for and the next in line cuts a new path… My point is it just feels dated.
4. Blaster Master - Sunsoft
I don’t know what the hell was wrong with me, but it took me a long time to come around on this game. I always considered it to be a Metroid wannabe, like an idiot! Because this game is amazing. And Metroid didn’t even make my list. So up yours, Samus! Actually I love the Metroid series but let’s face it, that first game is rough to go back to these days. Blaster Master is never rough to go back to. It feels great, I mean the controls feel so good you forget that it is played on the same system as Action 52 and Ghostbusters. How a game feels to play isn’t normally something that anyone talks about too much unless the controls are just truly awful or completely groundbreaking. Well, my problem is I don’t know how to say the game feels “buttery smooth” and “tight” and not sound like a pervert?
This is one of the earliest games outside the Castlevania and Metroid series’ to be considered in the “Metroidvania” genre. The game’s stages are split between exploring a side scrolling platform maze in a tank that can jump and then getting out of your tank and entering small overhead dungeons to take on bosses and get new powers to unlock new areas. It was doing Metroidvania better than Metroid or ‘Vania, sorry not sorry. The music is awesome, the graphics are awesome, indie games have been aping its style for decades now and games are still coming out for this totally underappreciated series.
3. Kirby’s Adventure - HAL Laboratory/Nintendo
Every top whatever list needs to have a spoiler, and here’s mine. This game gets unfairly pigeonholed into a baby game for little scaredy babies who aren’t manly enough to play something hardcore like Contra or Ninja Gaiden and just pee themselves and play easy little baby diaper games like Kirby. To them I say; Leave me alone, Dad! I play what I want. You aren’t the boss of me anymore. I’m a grown ass man now and I love Kirby.
People who don’t like Kirby’s Adventure must have never even tried the game. Guarantied. Or maybe they played the original game Kirby’s Dream Land on the Gameboy and thought the sequel was more of the same. Because if they had actually played it they would not be saying those horrible ignorant slanders. Okay, I concede, it is fair to call the game easy, when compared to fast twitch shooters or action games, but that is not what Kirby is about at all. Kirby’s Adventure is, *gasp* an adventure game. A platform adventure to be more accurate, full of exploration and puzzle solving and secrets to find, and uncover. And guess what? It gets pretty damn hard, especially the final boss and finding all the secret areas. But so what if it is on the easier side, when the fuck did hard start equaling good or fun?
The game looks completely amazing too. It really is one of the biggest glow ups a sequel has received. Some of the bosses and stages have effects on them that weren’t seen anywhere else on the system, like pseudo-3D backgrounds and giant sprites that almost would’ve passed as an early SNES game. It had some greatest music and smoothest animation on the entire system. Can’t forget to mention the massive upgrade to the gameplay, Kirby’s ability to steal the powers of the little critters he eats was huge and kind of the thing he is known for to this day. I mean some of gaming’s greatest legends had a hand in this game; Masahiro Sakurai, Satoru Iwata, and Shigeru Miyamoto. Yeah, the NES was 10 years old at this point, and the SNES had already been on the market for a couple years, and the NES was kind of old news, but damnit, I stick by my stance. This game is just so great.
2. Super Mario 3 - Nintendo
Well here we are. Everyone knew it would come down to these final two games. And to be honest I really didn’t know which game to put at number one. It was almost a coin flip, but I decided to hitch up the ol’ sack and make a stand. Even if I have horrible nagging reservations about it and will instantly regret it as soon as I pull the lever. But you know what? Fuck it. I vote in the United States of America gawddammit. I’m used to that feeling.
So for most people this is easily the definitive number one game on the NES. And to them I say, hey, you’re not wrong. This was my prized possession for years as a kid. I got it from my Dad for my 8th Birthday in 1990, one of only maybe three or four games that he ever bought me, so that alone made it pretty special. Not to mention the fact that I only had three or four other games at the time that I was totally sick of playing for the thousandth time so I was really jonesing for anything new and all the hype surrounding the release of SMB3 including a damn movie with game footage and secrets and Fred Savage was not making things any easier. But when I finally got the game and got it in the console and hit the power everything changed.
Unfortunately for all other games on the system, from the point of its release on Super Mario Bros. 3 really set a standard that very few of them could ever live up to. Fortunately for them though, in a lot of ways it was Mario’s swan song on the system, because a short year or so later the SNES would be out and the hype and focus would be on Nintendo’s next greatest Mario game ever, Super Mario World. But that is for another list another time.
I could go on about its amazing controls or its graphics or music, Koji Kondo at his peak in a lot of ways here by the way, but I am not going to do that because a.) How long do you want this to be? and 2.) There are 8 billion other pages for that. You all played the fucking thing. You know how good it is. It’s Super Mario Bros. 3 for God’s sake! Now just shut up and let me tell you why it is not the best game on the system.
1. The Legend of Zelda - Nintendo
Yes folks, the number one best game (in my *correct* opinion) on the NES is The Legend of Mother Fucking Zelda. Even Nintendo knew this, they were so confident this was the greatest game ever that they made the damn cartridge GOLD! Case fucking closed. But since this is a list where SMB3 is not in the number one spot so I suppose I should give at least some explanation about why, although I am sure, as with all top lists, no explanation will appease everyone. But maybe it will be fun to poke the badgers a little.
Alright lets get the main crap out of the way. No it does not have the best graphics on the system, no it does not have the tightest controls on the system, and even though it is a classic and I love them the music and sound are not the best on the system. So then what the hell is it that makes this game so damn special? Something no other game did or even could do at that time, at least not for me. An elusive state that most games strive for but rarely ever come close to achieving. Another sentence to further build upon the anticipation. A little thing called…, immersion.
Whuh? What do you mean anticlimax? No YOU are anticlimactic! At least let me explain myself before casting aspersions. Yes, fucking immersion. It’s actually a big fucking deal if you would just stop shitting your pants so hard and let me explain it. Son of a bitchin’ Christ almighty, wouldja already?
Yes, immersion. No, not emersion. I made sure. The act of total engagement and captivation. To be totally engrossed and lost in preoccupation. To lose yourself in another state of consciousness… probably. Other games may have been fun, or entertaining, or even addictive but none of them ever made me feel like I was really in a world that I could explore and affect and discover like Zelda 1.
I am not being hyperbolic when I say that this game changed everything for me. It triggered some kind of dormant trailblazing adventurous spirit within me that was now hungry for discovery and adventure and damsel rescuing. But in our world all the best stuff has already been discovered and all the dragons are dead and all the princesses are stuck up rich bitches not worth rescuing and you would be called a sexist for even trying anyway. Well guess what, the princes are even worse than the princesses, so fuck ‘em all. The point is there is a longing for triumph over daunting malevolent adversity and proper acclaim for worthy deeds that’s probably totally overrated and not at all worth the sacrifice in the end but still nags at you subconsciously and is probably some kind of deep psychological issue having to do with self worth or abandonment or some shit but gotdammit we ain’t talk’n ‘bout that shit, we’re talking about immersion.
The Legend of Zelda started my refined taste for immersion and I have been chasing it ever since. No other NES game did this for me and it would take the SNES to finally satiate my hunger but we will save that story for another time. I really don’t know what else to say about Zelda, you either get it or you don’t and if you don’t get it you won’t, and if you won’t you can’t. So what’s the point? What’s the point of anything?
The rest of the best
Well, as is the case with all ‘best of’ lists there are always going to be some folks who gets the shaft. And I know there are a bunch of whinners who will complain their favorite game didn’t make my (emphasis on MY) list so to appease a couple of them (or to rub in the salt) here are a few honorable mentions, in no particular order.
Battletoads: Great graphics and music and pretty varied gameplay for a beat’em up, but the game is just too damn hard, and not like the kind of hard where you want to overcome the challenge like Mega Man or Mother but more like the kind of hard where you throw the controller and say “Fuck this shitty fucking piece of shit!” Can’t put it on the list for that.
Little Samson: I never played this game. I never heard of the game or even knew it existed until years after the system was dead and I had moved on. I didn’t even play this on an emulator until I was out of college. It’s fine. Probably a top ten game to a lot of people but I just don’t give a shit about it. Not making the list that way.
Metroid: I really love the Metroid series. Maybe even more than the Mario series. I have played Metroid 1 hundreds of times and still feel like I suck at it. Let’s face it everything it does Blaster Master does better. Sorry Metroid. You’ll make the next one.
Crystalis: This game is great. It really is, I just can never stay invested in it for very long. I have played it dozens of times and find myself really enjoying it but then at some point I just get over it and dip out. I would love to go back and complete this one some day but until then I just can’t justify it making the cut.
Castlevania 1, 2, 3: Out of these games I like 2 the most but I concede 3 is overall a better game but the slow movement and stiff gameplay always ended up frustrating me after awhile. I didn’t really start appreciating Castlevania until the SNES and PS1 era. The music for these games is fucking amazing though and I would often play them just to listen to the soundtracks.
Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles 1, 2, 3: None of these games are all that great, but I love them all anyway and I have easily more playtime in those games than any other NES game on this list. If I was totally nonobjective I would put them all on here but objectively they just aren’t better than anything on this list so sorry, inner child, but you don’t get a say today.
Bionic Commando: This game is so good, even though it is an action platformer where you can’t jump. It really defies the laws of reason. I only played this one at friend’s houses so maybe I didn’t get enough time with it and it might deserve a higher placement on the list but that is another reality we don’t live in so in this reality it is what it is.
Batman The Video Game: An example of the rare very surprisingly well polished licensed game. Another one I didn’t play enough as a kid so I just don’t have enough reverence for the game to make the cut but I can see why this game is so highly regarded even today.
Contra 1/ Super C: Some of my all time favorite co-op gaming experiences where playing these games with friends. Up, up, down, down, left, right, left, right, B, A, start. Too bad they aren’t as fun when playing on your own otherwise they would’ve been up there.
And that’s it. All other games are trash and you should feel bad for liking them… But seriously, there are something like 770 games for the NES and I can’t say I have played them all, so who knows there could be a dozen more games that should be at the top of every top list and maybe one day I will play them and reevaluate things, but until that probably never going to arrive date this is my list and I am sticking to it.
