My Top 25 Best NES Games Ever.

These are my absolute favorite NES games. Some of these I still own, others I now only posses in emulator roms, the carts long since broken or altogether lost. Most of these are the games that I can still play no matter how dated their 8 bit graphics are. They’ve stood the test of time and, if possible, I will still be playing them occasionally until my dying day. In a couple of instances, such as Final Fantasy and Dragon Warrior, the games are included in the list because of what they stood for back then and how the impacted the industry in general.

#25 Dragon Warrior/Dragon Quest



Officially regarded as the first true console RPG. It was published as Dragon Quest by then Enix in 1987 in Japan. The title took a couple of years to come to the West, but when it did under the title Dragon Warrior (due to copyrights pertaining to the original name belonging to a book series in the US), us RPG-hungry gamers couldn’t get enough of it.


The game’s premise is quite basic, which of course was the norm in those days. The land of Alefgard was once save from Evil by Erick, a warrior. Several generations later, the land is once again in peril, and a descendant of Erick is prophesied to rise to the occasion and defeat the evil Dragon Lord. The story is bare bones and the gameplay is archaic as can be. Nevertheless, this game started the RPG craze in Japan and certainly made an impression amongst Western gamers.

#24 Final Fantasy



In 1987, Hironobu Sakaguchi was heading up what he intended to be his last videogame project. He decided to fittingly dub his creation Final Fantasy, his final contribution to then Square Soft. Little did he know then that this single game would garner so much success as to perpetuate one of the longest running series in the history of the industry. You assume the role of the four light warriors of legend. You choose which class each of your characters will be and how to name them. That is basically it. No background info. Nada.



Your journey starts in the kingdom of Cornelia, where your party is recognized as the light warriors and is subsequently sent on a mission to rescue the princess and vanquish the evil knight Garland.
Like Dragon Quest before it, Final Fantasy’s story is pretty much bare bones. The main gameplay mechanic is to level grind and explore. This game, though published some time after Dragon Quest in Japan, was actually released before Dragon Quest in America.
This game is pretty much the game that introduced Asian style RPG’s to western audiences and may very well be the reason, indirectly, why many of you can play RPG’s today.

#23 Xenophobe



Man, was this a simple, uninspired game. Published by Hudson Soft back in on the NES, Xenophobe was, to me, the indirect videogame iteration of Ridley Scott’s Alien. You’re some sort of soldier going from space station to space station ridden with all manner of alien creatures out to eat you. One of the creatures prowling the ship’s halls is a blatant knock-off of the Alien!
I don’t recall ever actually beating this game. Hell! I’ll probably fire it up just to see how long I can ride it today! This game wasn’t really much, if one looks at it critically, but the gameplay was solid enough and, really, back then all you needed was cohesive gameplay.
Many hated it. Very few liked it. But for me Xenophobe is one of the games I most enjoyed when I was a wee lad. Ah, the memories…

#22 Friday the 13th

Yet another game not many seem to have liked. Friday the 13th hooked me from the moment I played it one summer at a friend’s house. For some reason, I became grossly addicted to the eerie feel of the game; of having Jason constantly chasing me and waiting behind every new path or door, a mechanic I’ve only seen in Resident Evil 3: Nemesis since. The music was the most fear inspiring score I had ever heard in a videogame. The graphics themselves – the character design – was so creepy in its simplicity. I don’t know if that last bit was intentional or coincidental, but it certainly heightened the experience for me. Little by little, Jason would hunt the player down until all of his characters (6 different ones) were dead. It took me a good deal of perseverance to make it through this game and it stands today as one of my proudest moments in gaming. One of the first, true survival horror games to grace consoles. Fans of the genre owe it to themselves to at the very least find a rom of the game and give it a spin. It’s almost artsy in its minimalist character design, I daresay. Check it out!

#21 Gauntlet 2

What can I say? The quintessential dungeon-crawler. The forefather of the hack and slash RPG. I spent countless hours with this game; both in the arcade and later when it was released on the NES. Long after beating it, it was still a great gaming experience, especially if you had friends along for the ride.
If you like any game in the Diablo series, you should look at the Gauntlet series’ older titles. This is where the genre started. Hack and slash in its purest form.

#20 Conquest of the Crystal Palace

If it wasn’t for my dear aunt Karen, I likely never have even seen this game. I had never heard of it, let alone seen it in any store or magazine. Little did I know that my birthday gift would be one of my favorite games of the NES era.
You start out as Farron, a kid-looking, sword-wielding warrior with a top-knot hair-do. In this adventure, you have an appointed sidekick in the form of faithful armored dog, Zap. Crystal Palace is the name of the kingdom you inhabit, which in turn has fallen into dark times. An evil war-spirit by the name of Zaras has taken over and brought ruin to the land. Farron’s job, of course, is to depose Zaras and his minions.
The game is pretty challenging, even though it only has five main stages. The bosses take forever to kill and can be quite difficult. Save for the first boss encounter, all other bosses are large and fill a good portion of the screen. Not only are the bosses huge, but also they have no mobility hindrances! Indeed, they are quite agile for their size.
There are many reasons why this game became one of my favorites. Not only was it a good, challenging action platformer, have a dog as a sidekick for the lead (dogs rule!) but it also had what would become my inner-geek’s first videogame crush: Kim, the store keeper! According to my childish standards of beauty she was effin’ hot!
So there you have it. There you have it. Succinctly put, Conquest of the Crystal Palace is a good platformer, with high enough challenge for any NES veteran, has awesome bosses, and happens to have a hot storekeeper thrown in.

#19 Kabuki Quantum Fighter

Hmmm. Ridiculous, incoherent and simply absurd premise? Check! Ripped-off gameplay from Ninja Gaiden? Check! Solid action/platform gameplay? Check!
Yes, it is an almost blatant Ninja Gaiden knock-off, but certainly didn’t care then, nor do I care now. You are a colonel that has to go into the Earth Defense System super computer, a la Tron, in order to eliminate a virus that threatens to destroy humanity. For some unexplained reason, the computer turns the lead’s virtual persona into a kabuki theater actor. Not only is this one of the strangest, yet coolest videogame non-sequiturs I’ve ever seen, the guy has to use his red mane as a weapon! This alone justifies my constant “windmilling” at heavy metal concerts! Now I know that, should the world be overrun by aliens or some other unlikely foe, my brethren of long-haired freaks and I can use our manes to rid us of the menace.
In any case, the game is very good, having emulated Ninja Gaiden’s gameplay rather well. What else can I say about this game? No other game, to my knowledge, lets you headbang your enemies to death. It’s damn fun!

#18 Castlevania II: Simon’s Quest

Castlevania is perhaps my favorite all time series. It’s tied up there with Zelda and Final Fantasy, for sure. But of the classic installments of the series, Simon’s Quest is my absolute favorite.
Many people weren’t keen on the game’s changes to the original’s mechanics, but I like to think of this having happened because people, in general, are lazy.
The game adds roleplaying elements to the already challenging action/platforming, having a day to night cycle as well as letting the player traverse Transylvanian towns and the countryside.
Having played the original Castlevania, I came onto Simon’s Quest looking for more of the same, and came out joyous at the improvements and changes. No other Castlevania has engaged me more save for Symphony of the Night, possibly due to the similarities in design evinced by the former which were later polished off and implemented to perfection on the latter.
Bottom line is: Simon’s Quest, to me, is the best Castlevania of the 8-bit era. Hand’s down.

#17 Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles II: The Arcade Game

I live in Costa Rica. Costa Rica is a third-world Central-American country. Here, games can run you for about twice as much as they would in the States. For this reason, I rarely, if ever, buy my games locally. Before the advent of the World Wide Web, I would have to depend on visiting relatives to secure the titles I desired and bring them to me, or have to make a trip, while on vacation, to visit relatives states-side in order to attain my fix of new games. Hence, I often took requests from friends who couldn’t make such trips at the time. This one friend of mine gave me about 100 bucks and asked me to get him the game for which this game is titled. That is how I discovered this games NES iteration.
Having played the original arcade iteration of the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, and having had nothing but bad experiences with Arcade-to-NES ports, I certainly wasn’t expecting this to be a very good game. Boy, was I ever wrong. This was arcade bliss in my home console. Back then it was the stuff of videogame dreams. As faithful an adaptation as could be fit into a meager 8-bit cart.
I keenly remember playing two-player co-op and getting as far as the Japanese pagoda stage and loosing at the hands of the paper tigers. Second play through, dying at the hands of Shogun, that same stage’s boss. My friend and I played that game to the brink of exhaustion and managed to beat it within a couple of weeks. It wasn’t enough, though. I had to have more. So I eventually bought the game for myself and never looked back.
To this date, no other TMNT game has ever come close to replicating the addictive gameplay of TMNT II: The Arcade Game. If you collect old Nintendo games, get this one. It’ll keep you playing forever.

#16 Rad Racer

All you kids today wouldn’t put the name Square Soft in the same sentence as Racing Game, but there was a time, not all that long ago, when the RPG giant would produce all manner of games in various different genres. Such is the case of Rad Racer.
As far as racing games for the NES, this was IT. I don’t recall that many other racing games for the NES being particularly good. The genre just didn’t do it for me on home consoles in those days. No, for me, the racing genre thrived in the Arcade. However, Rad Racer was a shining example of good game design on a rather limited piece of hardware. It had simple gameplay. You basically raced against a timer to make it to the end of a course. The courses were usually in cities and highways. The soundtrack was easily one of the game’s highlights, as the tunes would actually meld well with the on-screen action.
The game came with blue and red cellophane pseudo-3D glasses, which would only induce headaches. Gimmicks aside, however, the game was as close to an Arcade racer as you could come to play on the trusty, old NES. Nowadays, I must admit, the gameplay doesn’t hold up too well, but it’s still pretty damn entertaining and serves as one hell of a historical piece of gaming. I wonder what a Square-Enix developed racing game would look like today…

#15 R.C. Pro-Am

There’s something about driving little radio-controlled cars that is unbeatably fun. In Pro-Am, you race around course with R.C. cars to achieve first place in a circuit and move on to the next.
The graphics were pretty decent for an NES game. The game has a top down, slightly angled view from which you can see a good portion of the track you where you’re racing; a view similarly used for games such as Rock n’ Roll Racing on the SNES and GBA, as well as on Racing Gears Advance on the GBA. The control scheme was a bit hard to get used to at first. It basically went like this; left and right as well as up and down, would function as such regardless of your car’s position on screen. That is to say that, if your car would appear on the screen facing downwards, as in moving from the upper part of the screen towards the lower part, if there was a turn to be made, from the players point of view it would appear as though right would be the direction to press. However, in truth, it would be left, the direction to be used on the pad, for it would be interpreted from the vehicle’s point of view, so to speak. The result, I dare compare, was the NES racing game equivalent of the Resident Evil control scheme. Cumbersome at first, but ingeniously apt once you got used to it.
All in all, R.C. Pro-Am is a very enjoyable racer, one I’ve played tirelessly over the years and gladly do so still on the odd evening when I’m not out and about and I don’t really feel like playing anything current.

#14 Super Mario Bros. 2

That’s right. The oddball of the Mario Bros. game stable, the black sheep, the ugly cousin, the weird uncle… you name it. While the Japanese got to play more of the same in their second installment in the series – which was very much the same as the original Mario Bros. only that insanely hard by comparison -, us westerners got this re-imagining of Nintendo’s flagship franchise.
I guess I’ve always been a very odd person; I was certainly regarded as an odd child. This would certainly explain why I loved this game so very much. The imagery, the setting, the play mechanics, they were just so weird that they made nothing but perfect sense to me. Catching the eggs of some over-grown, anthropomorphized reptile by jumping atop them and plucking them from the air in order to throw them, as projectiles, back at the creature, seemed to fit the whole context very eloquently.
I could go on about all these little nuances and details that made this game for me, but the bottom line is that the game is great mainly because it’s so different from it’s older brother(s) and yet faithful enough to it. The ending, for some reason, I didn’t expect. I mean, these a freakin’ plumbers that somehow go to a kingdom which population consists of humanoid fungi save for the princess, who in turn gets kidnapped by an overgrown turtle with delusions of grandeur. How, under these premises, was I, a mere child, supposed to intuit that the second chapter in the series, despite the excess of oddity, would have been nothing more than a “bad dream” (that, or some really bad acid trip)?
No matter. This game rules! ‘Nuff said.

#13 Kickle Cubicle

This one is puzzle/adventure game published by Irem (of Gradius fame). It is somewhat similar to the Adventure of Lolo games as far as play mechanics go. You play snowman-like chubby humanoid with earmuffs. Your goal is to collect magical red bags across the many different island stages in order to reach the main island boss. If you beat all the bosses you save palaces that were trapped in ice.
What you actually do in the game is freeze your enemies – which go from blue blobs to fruit and vegetables – and use them to reach the magical red bags.
It’s a very simple game and it is not all that challenging. The reason why I’ve included it in my top 25 is that it is a game I thoroughly enjoy playing, even more so than Lolo. Perhaps it’s the goofy, cartoony character design. Perhaps is the fact that the bosses have real tough attitudes despite being giant pirate chicken and icebound, beach ball throwing clowns. The gist of the matter is that Kickle Cubicle is a fun puzzler with a mildly amusing story thrown in.

#12 Monsters In My Pocket

Back in the late 80’s and early 90’s there was this collectible plastic figure toy series named Monster In My Pocket. The first few series of these figures were based on mythological and supernatural beings, from a Chimera to the Phantom of the Opera, from the Behemoth to Baba Yaga, a varied gamut of pantheons were tapped when selecting the creatures/gods to be released as toys.
The series was much bigger in Europe, namely in England, than it was in the US. Nonetheless, its popularity merited that a video game be produced based on the toy series.
Enter Monster In My Pocket, the game. The premise is that you control 3 different miniature monsters that happen to live in a family house. As it turns out, a mad scientist kidnaps a bunch of your miniature monster friends and tells you so by interrupting the television show your monster crew is currently watching.
You can use Frankenstein’s Monster, Dracula and the Werewolf as your playable characters, employing their varying abilities to overcome the action/platforming levels.
The game itself is mildly challenging, with a few difficulty spikes here and there. The bosses are very entertaining, a plethora of mythology aptly tapped for such purposes. The Kraken and Behemoth boss fights come to mind as being particularly entertaining.
The graphics are pretty decent, if not really good for NES standards and the score is all right, nothing to write home about.
As a whole, the game is a very entertaining action/platformer that should please any fan of the genre.

#11 Star Tropics

Star Tropics is better described as a mix between the original Zelda and Link’s Adventure with a little bit more RPG put into it. One could say it’s ripping off the Zelda series, save that it’s also developed by Nintendo, therefore such a term wouldn’t apply.
In this game you star as Mike Jones, a famous baseball player, who has received a letter from your Uncle - a scientist, no less – inviting you to visit his island lab. When you get there, however, you find that your uncle’s been kidnapped and so you set out with a magical island yo-yo to find your uncle.
The game has a decent over-world map reminiscent of Link’s Adventure, while the dungeons look more like the original Zelda, save for having considerably more detail and some platforming involved.
The gameplay is basically that of the adventure style perpetuated by the Zelda franchise, consisting of several dungeons at the end of which strategically challenging bosses await, as well as some scavenging and NPC interaction.
The game is very entertaining and satisfying. For some reason, perhaps simply because it doesn’t take place in Hyrule, it doesn’t quite live up to the franchise it borrows from. It is, regardless, a damn good adventure game for any NES fanatic.

#10 Super Mario Bros. 3

Ah. I still remember what joy, what glee I felt at owning my copy of SMB3. It was the hottest thing out at the time. Nothing could beat SMB3 in any way.
Having woken up from the literal nightmare that beset him in SMB2, Mario receives a letter from Princess Daisy/Peach, informing him that she has been kidnapped by none other than Bowser, king of the koopas. So you set of as Mario to once again rescue the princess from the clutches of the obese, overgrown turtle.
Chances are, most people who own or have owned an NES have already played this game to the point of insanity. Fact of the matter is anyone who’s ever played a side-scrolling platformer needs no explanation as the Mario Bros. series is the originator and godfather of the genre. So, the gameplay is basic platforming with incredibly challenging stages, wildly original power ups and top-notch control.
The graphics are beautiful for a Nintendo game, consisting of manifold pastels and bright primary and secondary colors. There really nothing you could want more from a Nintendo game, it’s all here.
It is one of my greatest memories and accomplishments, having beaten the game without using the warp flutes. That’s right! Stage by painful stage, all the way to the very end. Oh, but how I miss the days when I had the time to be hardcore at videogames.
SMB3 should be in every single person’s NES collection. There are no excuses.

#9 Zelda

One of the very first Nintendo games I got was Zelda. I had played it briefly at a friend’s house. At that time, I was mainly a platformer fan, all other genres were, well, not that interesting to me – save for schmups and Arcade beat’em ups – having survived the Atari days on not much other than Pitfall. My first impression of Zelda was that the golden cart was just awesome. Once I popped that baby into my friends console I tried to figure out what it was that I was intended to do. Found the old geezer, got the wooden sword and proceeded to whack the hell out of the octoroks. I kept on exploring until I got killed by the falling boulders, near the waterfalls. At that point all I knew was that, a) this wasn’t a platformer, b) I didn’t know what the heck was the point of the game, it had no points, for pete’s sake, and c) The music was incredibly good.
So I did the sensible thing and got the game for myself sometime afterward. It took me about a week to get through the first quest. Having beaten the game, I went on to play the second quest, which took me a little over a month to beat if I recall correctly.
I’ve been playing the game on and off for years since and I can’t get enough of it. This is the game that started it all. Sure, Adventure for the 2600 was its spiritual forefather, but Zelda made it truly good. It defined the adventure genre, many of its conventions established by this first game in the series.
Pretty much anyone oldschool knows the basic Zelda back story: Evil Ganondorf abducts princess Zelda, Link is sent on a quest to recover all pieces of the Tri-force in order to vanquish Ganon and bring peace back to the land. Pretty simple stuff; the dungeons and bosses are what made Zelda truly enga
Zelda is a classic by every standard possible; another game that belongs in every NES collection. No cop-outs.

#8 Zelda II: Link’s Adventure

I know a lot of people would give me flack for placing Zelda II higher than the original. What can I say? This game proved to be more than I could’ve expected from Zelda.
Many found fault with the gameplay changes made for this much anticipated sequel, but I found said changes more than fitting.
The game changed its top view display for two different modes, namely a top view over-world map for world traversing, and a 2D action/platforming style for the actual stage areas and dungeons.
This adoption of 2D side-scrolling gameplay made the game very challenging. So much so that many would be easily frustrated and would not play the game on ground of difficulty alone. Sure, the control could be hard to get used to, Link being a bit stiff all around, but if given enough time one could easily master Link’s movement and overall mechanics.
Some RPG elements were added to the game’s mechanics. Mainly, a magic/health/weapon level system that requires the player to kill enemies for a certain amount of experience, once the set experience amount was reached, the player would then choose which attribute to level up.
Dungeons, once again, would culminate each with a challenging boss fight, made all the more difficult by the twitchier gameplay involved in the side-scrolling view.
This game took me a good long while to complete. I’d say it took me over a year, for when I’d get particularly frustrated I would simply quit it for some time to focus on other, more action oriented games, to later pick up where I’d last left off on the quest.
I personally love this game, but I wouldn’t recommend it as much as the original Zelda, given that it takes a bit of getting used to and it seems to be more of an acquired taste of a game, so to speak. A veritable triple-A classic, nathless.

#7 Ninja Gaiden 2: The Dark Sword of Chaos

Well, can be said about the Ninja Gaiden series that hasn’t been said before? Each game in the series is brutally challenging while also being fun. As always, the player takes control of Ryu Hayabusa, who is always out to disassemble some complot of one sort or another. In this case, Ashtar, the main bad guy from the original game, returns in order to wreak his vengeance upon Ryu himself.
The game has spot on controls that serve to make the poignant action/platforming gameplay nothing but top notch. The first stage of the game is very much like any of the stages of the previous game, it isn’t until one advances to the second stage that one starts noticing the additions to the already successful formula. Weather conditions affect the way you play, becoming both a hindrance as well as being highly exploitable to the player’s advantage. The bosses, as in the previous game, are tough and require a good deal of pattern memorization, precise timing and absolute concentration.
One of the reasons, if not the reason, why Ninja Gaiden was so well liked is the inclusion of cinematic scenes between levels. The anime style cut-scenes were something groundbreaking as far as console gaming went. I still remember being awed by the opening scene of the first Ninja Gaiden, the ninja swordsman duel.
Number two trumps the original iteration in pretty much every aspect; difficulty is suitably raised, enough gameplay implementations keep the formula fresh, and the overall story is engaging enough for an 8-bit actioner.
In my book, Ninja Gaiden 2 is still the best in the series.

#6 Mega Man 3

This became my favorite Mega man from the moment I fought Needle man. Not only was this bastard fast, his needle gun was absolutely overwhelming. Much to my relief, I later found Snake man to be much less of a challenge than his very stage, so I quickly disposed of him and applied the snakes on Needle-not-so-tough-anymore man.

As far as Mega Man games went, I had really liked the previous two titles, but 3 seemed like the best the series ever offered on the Grey Immortal Console. More color, more detailed stages, the coolest Wily Castle, giant mad caps, the freakin’ Cyclops, and just plain making it to Dr. Wily himself. The powers the blue bomber inherits from defeated reploids are simply the best in the series, to me; I’m especially fond of the Gemini Laser.
I could go on all day about the zen-like perfection one player can achieve by dedicating him/herself to a single Mega Man game, but that is vox populi among gamers in the know, so why bother? If you don’t own a copy of the game… shame on you!


#5 Double Dragon 2: The Revenge

Ah, Beat’em-ups! The genre that kept me going back to the Arcardes to squander my allowance like it cost me nothing. I never played the arcade version of Double Dragon 2, but I certainly play the un-living crap out of the NES cart.
To my closest friends and I, DD 2 was the best way to spend our weekday afternoons while avoiding the actual undertaking of school assignments. This game was the king of beat’em-ups, hands down. Certainly, it is as good as it gets on the 8-bit console.
Once again, players take over the role of either Billy and/or Jimmy Lee, who are out on a mission to, yet again, save Billy’s girlfriend (or was it Jimmy’s?). Now, I don’t know about you but what the hell is wrong with these guys? How much trouble do they get into that they get their girl(s) kidnapped not once, but twice! Hmmm, food for thought.
In any case, out you go to kick some ass and whatnot, going from the mean streets of wherever they happen to inhabit (I never bother to learn the city’s name) to a sea lab, even. I remember clearly how surprised I was to be fighting myself at the end of level 8. That’s right! A doppleganger! Man, was that a toughie. In any case, the game could be very hard at times. Hell, it was often cheap, really. All the old defects and clichés, it seems, do nothing to hinder the experience; on the contrary, it heightens it. I could play this game, easily, till the day I die. They’ll probably have to bury me with the damn cart.
As you can see, I haven’t really described this game. Well. Why would I? If you don’t know what Double Dragon is or have ever even played any of the games in the series, you should do yourself a favor and track down a cart. Think Final Fight with extra cheapness and crappier graphics. What’s not to like?


#4 Metal Storm

Irem completely wowed me with this one. A mech-shooter with anti-gravity mechanics, challenging stage design and tough bosses; Metal Storm is so entertaining I never quite returned the rented cart I still have. Indeed, I rented it and said - “screw it! I’m keeping it”-, and so I said I’d lost the game and paid a nominal amount for it at the rental shop.
I could go on at length about why this game is an under-appreciated classic, but it would serve no real purpose. Metal Storm doesn’t break the genre; it merely does it to near perfection. Its anti-gravity gimmick actually gives the game a new dimension of gameplay, and intrinsic mechanic that is amply utilized throughout the game.
The graphics are nothing mind blowing, but the use of color makes it stand out. The score is apt and, though not particularly memorable, does a good job of setting up the ambience.
All in all, Metal Storm is a game I’d love to see remade for the Nintendo DS, or even a next-gen platform if its 2D roots are properly observed.
Get it, if you can.

#3 Shadow of the Ninja

Another ninja game on the list. No, it is not a Ninja Gaiden game or and offshoot thereof. It’s Shadow of the Ninja. A game developed by Natsume (of Harvest Moon fame) borrowing heavily from Ninja Gaiden in some ways while eschewing other elements in favor of its own innovations.
You get to play as either one of two ninjas, a male and a female, as they take on an evil emperor (Garuda) in a futuristic wasteland of America. There’s little difference as far as I could tell from my extensive play sessions with this game between one character and the other save for the male having a blue suit and the female having a pink one. No matter. You can actually play simultaneous co-op all the way to the end of the game! Trump that, Ninja Gaiden!
The graphics are decent while the score is actually quite good. The game has some digitized voice samples, something unheard of back the glory days of the NES. The control handles perfectly, making it easy to employ the different weapon types available as well as the ceiling-hanging mechanic.
The game is not particularly tough at first where breezing through the first handful of stages is commonplace. The difficulty spikes considerable at the later stages, where stages become harder to navigate, enemies faster and tougher, and bosses just white-knuckle tough. The game manages to remain entertaining at all times regardless of how tough the last stages are, making it an easy addiction for any avid 8-bit gamer.

#2 Punch-Out

Ding, ding, ding! The best boxing game ever. It’s incredible that some 20 odd years after the release of this game, no other boxing game has even come close to being as good – save maybe for Super Punch-Out on the SNES -.
You take on the role of boxing upstart Little Mac as he takes on the world of boxing one fight at a time. Starting at the lowest circuits, Little Mac makes his way to the title of world champion and one title defense fight after that. Either version of the game is great, be it the Mike Tyson one (before he became a sex offender) or the regular one with Super Macho Man and Mr. Dream.
What makes this game stand out is how simply it controls yet how well it plays. The other big factor is the charm and cheesy personality of Little Mac’s opponents throughout his climb to the top of the boxing world. From the flamboyantly narcissistic Don Flamenco to the obese glory of King Hippo, the game is rife with quirky personality.
The game starts out real easy, the first fight being a cakewalk. The game does spike steadily after that, making every subsequent fight a matter of timing and observation. Twitch reflex, precise timing and pattern recognition/memorization are the key to becoming a world champion of boxing and being able to defend the title.
Whether anyone ever beats this game or not matters little, for the game is enjoyable in boundless ways; it’s pure gaming nirvana.

#1 Contra

Here we are. There number one spot. The king of the mighty mount: Contra.
This is the game that separated the men from the boys. Sure, you could beat it like it was nothing with the Konami Code, but could beat it without the cheat?
The game should be required playing for anyone into videogames. Few games have managed to be as good and balanced as this one. Other titles in the series have been good, if not great, but nothing stands higher than the very first one.
This game gets the number one spot because it wasn’t just a great game for a lonesome player; it was the quintessential co-op game on the NES. I don’t know a single NES owner who didn’t at least play Contra back in the day. Everyone had played it. Everyone loved it. So did I and I still do! Contra is the best. Down with the Red Falcon!


And there you have it, kiddies. These are the titles that marked my videogaming days on the NES. Got any comments? Feel writing anything? Go ahead. That is, if any of you even exist. Readers, I mean.