Home Game Poll vol. 1 (1984-1992): Nominate the best NES, Master System, etc console games ever (Nom deadline: September 8th)

Hi everyone. This is the first volume of the console game polls, and will focus on the third generation of consoles. You can nominate games released on any of the following:

- Nintendo Entertainment System/Famicom
- Sega Master System/Mark III
- Sega SG-1000
- Atari 7800 (not 2600)
- Various weirdo consoles, if you want: Action Max, Commodre 64GS, Amstrad GX4000, Atari XEGS, Pv-1000, Halcyon, VTech Socrates, etc. If you're not sure, ask.

The third generation came on the heels of the crash of 1983. By 1988, the Nintendo sold better than any other home computer device. (and will probably dominate this poll.) Due to pack-ins, Super Mario Bros was the best-selling single-console game of all time for 20 years, eclipsed only by Wii Sports.

Drop your nominations in this thread. After a month, we'll begin the voting process, and after another month I'll begin the rollout.

Sweet. I'm too young for this. Time to download an "all NES games" torrent?

I never owned a Nintendo. We had a Master System at my grandma's with about eight games. Most of my game playing during that time was on C64, which I was fairly obsessed with. Guess that's another poll.

--Atari 7800--
Dark Chambers
Desert Falcon
Xevious
Food Fight
Mario Bros.
Commando
Galaga
Donkey Kong Jr.
Tower Toppler

Ghostbusters
Space Harrier
Phantasy Star
Rampage
Altered Beast
Alex Kidd in Miracle World
Spy vs. Spy
Wonder Boy in Monster World
Zillion
Zillion II: The Tri Formation

I'll let everyone else handle the more obvious nominees:

Final Fantasy
California Games
Friday the 13th
Lemmings
Maniac Mansion
Marble Madness
Spy Hunter
Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles II: The Arcade Game
Winter Games
Impossible Mission

Castlevania I, II and III
Zelda I and II
Contra
Super C
Metal Gear
Metroid
Ninja Gaiden I, II, and III
Batman
Batman: Return of the Joker
Tetris

Battletoads
Duck Hunt
Ducktales
Dusty Diamond's All-Star Softball
Kirby's Adventure
The Legend of Zelda
Mega Man 2
Metroid
Mike Tyson's Punch-Out!!
Ninja Gaiden
Rad Racer
RC Pro-Am II
River City Ransom
Rockin' Kats
StarTropics
Super Mario Bros
Super Mario Bros 2
Super Mario Bros 3
Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles
TMNT III: The Manhattan Project
Yoshi
Yoshi's Cookie
Zelda II: The Adventure of Link

First TMNT is actually a broken shitty game. Even though it's kind of legendary. I had the misfortune to own the DOS port which was shipped unwinnable.

True... it's actually the one I never really got a chance to play, too. I loved 3 though, maybe more than 2!

forgot to cut a few from my list noted above, my bad

This was my first gen so it's pretty heavily trod territory for me even though I never touched a sega console until we got to the Saturn. Flipped through my NES rom list, here's what I will rep for (I integrated the earlier NES nominees for quick reference and for a complete thus far nomination list, they're noted with an *) :

10 Yard Fight
Adventures of Lolo
Bad Dudes
Bases Loaded
*Batman
*Batman: Return of the Joker
Battle of Olympus
*Battletoads
Bionic Commando
Blades of Steel
Blaster Master
Bomberman
A Boy and His Blob
Bubble Bobble
*California Games
Castlevania
Castlevania II
Castlevania III
*Contra
Crystalis
Deja Vu
Destiny of an Emperor
Double Dragon
Double Dragon II
Double Dribble
Dragon Warrior
Dragon Warrior II
Dragon Warrior IV
*Duck Hunt
*Ducktales
*Dusty Diamond's All Star Softball
Earthbound Zero
Excitebike
Faxanadu
*Final Fantasy
*Friday the 13
Ghosts 'n' Goblins
Goonies II
Ikari Warriors
The Immortal
Karnov
Kid Icarus
*Kirby's Adventuer
Kung Fu
Legacy of the Wizard
*The Legend of Zelda
*The Legend of Zelda II
*Lemmings
Little Nemo: The Dream Master
*Maniac Mansion
*Marble Madness
Mega Man
*Mega Man II
Mega Man III
Mega Man IV
*Metal Gear
Metal Gear II
*Metroid
*Mike Tyson's Punch Out
*Mission Impossible
*Ninja Gaiden
Ninja Gaiden II
Nobunaga's Ambition
Pro Wrestling
*Rad Racer
RC Pro Am
*RC Pro Am II
*River City Ransom
*Rockin' Kats
Romance of the Three Kingdoms
Rush n Attack
Rygar
Section Z (objectively horrible, but i loved this game in the day)
Shadowgate
Smash TV
*Spy Hunter
*StarTropics
Strider
*Super C
*Super Mario Brothers
*Super Mario Brothers 2
*Super Mario Brothers 3
Tecmo Bowl
*Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles I
*Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles II
*Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles III
*Tetris
Ultima Exodus
Uninvited
Wall Street Kid
Willow
*Winter Games
Wizards and Warriors
*Yoshi
*Yoshi's Cookie

NES

Adventures of Lolo 3
M.C. Kids
StarTropics 2: Zoda's Revenge
Ufouria: The Saga

How about MSX games? Maybe MSX is more of a computer than a games console. I'd nominate Eggerland and the superior version of Metal Gear.

More NES mop up:
Fester's Quest
Gauntlet
Golf
Golgo 13
Gradius
Hogan's Alley
Ice Hockey
Life Force
NARC
Rampage
Rescue Rangers
Swords and Serpents
Zanac

nb: i have played all of those NES games (except for MC Kids, Mission Impossible and Ufouria

intellivision is being robbed. :(

Faxanadu was such a weird, beautiful, short game. Loved the idea of being in a tree the whole time

serious question: are japan-only games acceptable?

sega master system:
ultima iv
fantasy zone

nes:
banana prince
chip 'n dale rescue rangers
demon sword
fantastic dizzy
gargoyle's quest ii
gradius
holy diver
ice climber
prince of persia
super dodge ball
sweet home

Solar Jetman
Cobra Triangle

Bionic Commando

the best NES/Famicom shooters never made it out of Japan:
Gradius 2
Crisis Force
Over Horizon
Recca
Otocky
Parodius Da (came out in EU though i think?)

Why no love for Dragon Warrior III? I never got very far in it (picked it up circa 1995 and was letting go of NES gaming) but it seemed super huge and elaborate.

Everything else I could think of has been nommed already!

contra III
1943: battle of the midway

contra III is SNES era (and also awesome)

derp

Baseball Stars

RBI Baseball
Baseball Simulator 1.000

NES: Gumshoe, Commando

Sega Master System:
Phantasy Star

Sega:
Action Fighter
Kung Fu Kid
Mickey Mouse Castle Of Illusion
Wonderboy III: The Dragon's Trap
Fantasy Zone

Are we allowed Game Gear games? Defenders Of Oasis was Game Gear only.

someone said that but, yes, definitely

sega master system:
ultima iv
fantasy zone

yes!! to the first, yes ish to the second

master system games i suspect i am mainly nominating because of nostalgia:
sonic chaos
psycho fox
alex kidd in shinobi world
castle of illusion starring mickey mouse
columns
rocky
golvellius: valley of doom
teddy boy
miracle warriors
operation wolf

probably not, really, master system games, but games which had a definite console presence that should be noted that happened to have master system versions:
enduro racer
r-type
rampart
rampage
shadow of the beast
smash tv
speedball / speedball 2
spy vs spy
ys

master system game that fucken rools:
wonder boy iii: the dragon's trap

er:
snail maze

lol xpost

feel like after the 2600 et al the 3rd gen systems weren't that big over here. the Master System got a little UK traction and the NES got more or less none, most mid-80s gaming was home computer based. only when the Megadrive and SNES launched did consoles get back serious market share.

so most of these games i know thru emulation or versions on home computers that aren't eligible. i did have a Master system briefly in the 90s. dunno that there's much here i can honestly vote for, don't feel inclined to check out a lot either - until the 4th gen i was strictly a Spectrum kid.

CTRL + F, folks. It's your friend.

I think Game Gear is pretty firmly 4th gen.

i think they had a moment around the time mid-80s kids were in primary school

also, rampage

xp to NV, from my point of view the nes and the master system were the most lusted-over items and any kid who had one was never short of friends. might be a generational thing. i definitely remember being blown away by my friend's Sega MS and playing Kung Fu Kid, Shinobi and Sonic all the time at his house.

CTRL + F, folks. It's your friend.

I think Game Gear is pretty firmly 4th gen.

― Those Jorts Are Upsetting (Old Lunch), Monday, August 10, 2015 2:16 PM (2 minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

It came out at the same time as the Mega Drive, but it was still 8bit and pretty much a portable master system.

OTOH, the Atari 2600 wasn't really something I was aware of, whereas most people pre-3rd gen console were Atari/BBC Micro/Spectrum.

xpost Right, but the same argument could be made about the Game Boy. And that's surely opening a whole can of worms.

Golden Axe Warrior
James "Buster" Douglas Knockout Boxing
TransBot

xp but the gameboy was its own thing whereas the game gear used pretty much the same engine as the master system and shared roughly the same games, save for a couple of others. you could even buy a converter that let you play MS games on it.

I am having a severe PTSD flashback to one of the water levels in that first TMNT game

Super Monaco GP

Will can make a final ruling, but based on memory and looking through a list of what was released for Game Gear, the bulk of it came out in the mid-'90s and a lot of them were unique titles and repurposed Genesis games, so I'd still have a hard time considering it 3rd gen.

apparently 3rd gen must have happened while i was doing O-levels and moping after girls

it's possible. I was obsessed with video games up through and including the Super Nintendo, but lost all interest once that machine's title got usurped by the PSOne, which was quite a step on in terms of environment and gameplay. I still get confused by FP shooters and the like because those didn't really exist on third/fourth-gen consoles in any major way.

TransBot

srsly bro?

Nah, Game Gear is a no-go for this one. It is pretty firmly entrenched in that early-90s 4th gen plus I'm thinking there may be need for a portables poll that's separate (mostly thanks to the Game Boy existing for like 20 years?), and that could pretty handily cover every portable console up until smartphones.

fair enough, although i will say that i don't remember even having seen a master system until the early 90s.

I think my aunt gifted us the Master System we had in like '87 or '88. But, tbf, it was similar to playing my neighbor's ColecoVision inasmuch as it's the only time I ever remember directly encountering that particular platform.

(Just realizing that this is the same neighbor who also had the only CD-i I ever encountered.)

CD-i! Hah!

i def remember the nes being prominent a lot earlier than the master system, but maybe that was a uk thing. with a lot of these consoles, the earlier games would be a lot simpler to start with - the first games my friend had were things like Action Fighter which was a fairly straightforward shooter. But Mickey Mouse Castle Of Illusion really felt like a step-up in terms of quality, and soon afterwards the Sonic games came out for the Master System. I got a Game Gear in around 91/92? Played it to death, and it seemed to have a slightly defter engine than the MS.

there was no Sonic on the Master System afaik, strictly Megadrive/Genesis depending what side of the Atlantic you were on

oh my bad, jeez what was the point of that?

intellivision is being robbed. :(

― rushomancy, Sunday, August 9, 2015 9:14 AM (Yesterday) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

Intellivision is getting a 1st+2nd gen poll eventually if there's enough interest. Not robbed. :)

yeah there was def sonic and sonic 2 and all those on the MS. Its legacy ran on well into the Megadrive days, so often two analogues of a game would come out at the same time on each machine. I seem to recall there even being a Mortal Kombat on MS but maybe it was a hoax.

There were MS and GG versions of Mortal Kombat, MS only Street Fighter II

only games i truly associate with the Master System are Alex Kidd and a movie tie-in of Dracula. and i've just remembered a cool RPG-ish thing sent in ancient Japan that i'm googling now

If I were to open this up to computer platforms, how much of a can of worms would that be? MSX and Spectrum seem like the most likely candidates. But then do I have to include C64, Amiga, fucking everything in DOS until 1991, etc.?

Britishes, which of these machines fits best into the poll? I am willing to be convinced to put them in

C64 and Spectrum, maybe the Amiga and BBC, nothing else

those are all 8 bit machines iirc?

sorry i meant Amstrad, not Amiga

Amiga and ST feel like 4th gen

There is not much from a DOS perspective. You basically have LucasArts/Sierra graphic adventures and that's it. Wolfenstein 3D was the first computer exclusive w any power to it and that came out in 1992. That's from a US DOS perspective, I hear the Spectrum and MSX and various other machines had a much greater profile elsewhere.

Alex Kidd is the only MS game I remember playing but my recollection is that NES was big w/ my born in the mid-80s crowd, thanks to Mario and that utterly hellish TMNT game plus the less hellish ones that followed

Separate poll

ironically i don't know if introducing those early home computers spreads the nominations too wide? and the Spectrum at least had a ridiculously extended lifespan for games, well over 10 years iirc

I'd probably have dozens of C64 nominations.

I see that it was released for the Master System and Game Gear but I don't remember Castle of Illusion on anything but Genesis. And PS3 (even though it's a just weird nebulous pseudo release that doesn't seem like it'll ever be available again if I let my PS+ subscription lapse).

like really Spectrum and C64 feel like they've got more in common with consoles than true PCs, but including them is maybe too UK-centric and distracting from the core of this poll

We had a BBC Micro because we were posh. I loved it.

The fuck is an MSX?

Castle Of Illusion was such a great game on both MS and Megadrive. The music itself was excellent, but it was also the first game I remember playing with hidden walls and secret rooms.

Yeah, I think separate poll makes the most sense. Otherwise things will place lower or higher depending on which side of the Atlantic the most votes come from.

And MSX is the home computer Konami made games for before they were like "oh right famicom, lol"

UK-perspective-xposts: I saw a Game Boy before I saw any of the plug-into-TV consoles and the Game Boy was only available here in late '90; I'd seen the NES/Master System listed in the Argos catalogue before that but nobody I knew had one until '91

iirc the UK missed out on 3rd gen until it was more or less over: the NES wasn't a big deal here in the 80s, as Nintendo didn't have a European branch then and were distributed here by Mattel, who were good at shifting those Donkey Kong handhelds but didn't know what to do with a full console system. The Master System came out much later and didn't do much for a while but apparently did better in Europe than anywhere else, because of Nintendo dropping the ball over here - but I still only really remember seeing Master System games in the shops from around '90, when the Mega Drive came out here and the Master System was rebranded into the cheaper Master System II

Around that time Nintendo finally discovered Europe and the NES became reasonably popular long after its Japan/US peak. I do remember SMB3 drawing a crowd at parties in the early 90s and being all point-missingly "pfft, Elf on the Amiga has much better graphics!" <facepalm.jpg>

anyway I guess Acorn/BBC vs ZX Spectrum vs C64 was the main thing in the UK; Amiga/ST feel like 4th gen, can't believe the Amiga is 30 years old now, so far ahead of everything else in '85 that it feels like nobody knew what to do with the Amiga for at least another few years. wondering if PC games can be split into generations by graphics card (Hercules/CGA/maybe Tandy and EGA vs VGA) but of course there were EGA games long after VGA came out. happy with separate poll tbh

huh I had always thought that MSX was Master System in the way that people would refer to the original PlayStation as PSX

i remember that NES spinny-robot disc system thing being advertised on TV a lot in the 80s, to the point where it wasn't really obvious that it was actually an add-on to a games console.

The side-of-the-Atlantic thing will obtain no matter what, it seems like - comments upthread would seem to suggest the Master System (which I basically didn't even know existed, as a US kid) was a bigger deal in the UK than the NES was. And no matter what poll ends up having them, Spectrum is going to be a UK thing and PC games a US thing. Maybe C64 and Amiga straddle that divide; the C64 was effectively my main "gaming machine" in this era, even though we also had an NES!

I've already offered this spiel on the other thread, but for the record I do think it makes sense to get "computer" games in alongside these, unless ILX really has enough interested parties that a series of "computer" polls wouldn't be too short of votes. As before, I think it makes sense to base the years of the poll on console "generations," and then apply the same years to computer games, rather than trying to match up the computer generations ("Apple II goes with Atari, Amiga goes with Nintendo...").

There is not much from a DOS perspective. You basically have LucasArts/Sierra graphic adventures and that's it.

This is mostly true, though I'd always rep for Commander Keen, et al., not to mention other things that played to the hardware strengths of PCs. MUDs and RPGs especially. I could see this both ways though - - - does it make more sense to compare Ultima V to Final Fantasy I, or to Skyrim?

I had a master system it was awesome

I guess people say this all the time but I still lol that there was a game system called Amiga

I'm chuckling at that "Elf" vs. SMB3 story myself - - - kinda sums up my exact stereotype of an Amiga devotee.

I'm wondering if we should open the door to unofficial/unlicensed/unsanctioned games. I know there was a smattering of unofficial NES cartridges released, some of which presumably had fans? I ask mostly because I just remembered how much I used to love the C64 version of Super Mario Brothers (which was a hacked version of the already borderline-illegitimate Great Giana Sisters).

I pretty much only remember these things once someone nominates them but:

Shinobi
Batman Returns

(Probably both slightly shitty platfomers tbh but I liked them then)

This is mostly true, though I'd always rep for Commander Keen, et al., not to mention other things that played to the hardware strengths of PCs. MUDs and RPGs especially. I could see this both ways though - - - does it make more sense to compare Ultima V to Final Fantasy I, or to Skyrim?

― Gorefest Frump (Doctor Casino), Monday, August 10, 2015 12:33 PM (1 hour ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

Yeah that comment I made earlier kind of ignores the huge CRPG history which is responsible for spurring the RPG console thing, which has really seeped into any and every game adopting those concepts.

CRPG Addict is still going strong in his insane quest to play every CRPG in release order and is up ato 1984: http://crpgaddict.blogspot.com/

I want to highly recommend this recent Castlevania 2 remake for ZX Spectrum: http://spectralinterlude.com/

I had Ultima VI and played some of Underworld but was never really into the dungeon crawlers. Compared to Skyrim it has all the basic systems in place (I know VII is the one where you can bake bread and stuff) and a HUGE open world. I would've killed for quest markers and an automated task sheet at the time.

CRPG Addict is really great, love that site. A serious cut above most longform blogs that I've seen on gaming - clear commentary and analysis and not just recaps. (Frankly I could still do with less recapping, but I know it's what a lot of people go there for.)

Ultima 7 (including Serpent Isle) was my favorite by a long shot, but probably precisely because of all its failings as a CRPG - the combat and magic become laughable, so it's pretty much a wandering-around adventure game. Today, I'd probably be much more into a more tactical, controlled combat thing for the sake of the challenge, but I was impatient and clumsy with things like that as a kid, apart from the first FF, which I got very into.

I dunno I played gobs of flight sims and baseball and lots of shareware (Janitor Joe 4eva) on PC in those years, def not dry years.

Yeah, speaking of flight sims, Wing Commander I (1990) and II (1991) are also pretty key pre-Wolfenstein action games. I also logged a lot of time in A-10 Tank Killer, but that was more because we had it than because it was any good.

Maybe more crucial: SimCity (1989) and Civilization (1990) - amazing, genre-defining games on a totally different track from what was happening on consoles.

Maybe we should do an old-school PC/ZX/MSX home computer game poll? My only request is the cutoff be 1993 so DOOM can be in.

An interesting puzzler - what would be the cutoff for "old school" with home computer games? On instinct I'm thinking "pre-Quake" or "pre-Diablo" in terms of a major shift in aesthetics, interfaces, graphics cards, popularity of certain genres, increasing relevance of online play (or at least LAN parties) as a thing, etc. Those are both 1996, which feels right in terms of the evaporation of Sierra as a relevant concern a year or two before, and the last really great traditional sprite games (X-Com, Master of Magic) coming out in 1994... real changing of the guard. I guess Civ2 is '96.

Windows (95+) required

Doom was really the game-changer, no?

Released prior to Windows 95 has a nice clarity to it (August 24, 1995). Obviously with any such thing you'll quickly run into a "You call that old-school!?" kind of deal and again it becomes pretty difficult to rank Monkey Island II vs. Zork, or DOOM vs. Alley Cat (btw maybe the only CGA game I would ever recommend to anybody).

DOOM was definitely game-changing but as a cut-off it does feel weird since the game didn't change instantly and there's so many great games in the following few years that have way more in common with 1990 than 1997. I dunno, I guess there's a case for 1993 (DOOM, Myst).

surprised that Myst is the same year as Doom. in the end i'd argue that the former's legacy didn't really go anywhere but it feels like an historical moment when something shifted

For this poll release of SNES makes more sense for PC cutoff imo. Quake is N64 era no?

Also so Britishers didn't really know SMB? weird

Sounds like that shit was already a cartoon and a breakfast cereal over here before it got much traction in the UK.

Just in case anyone hasn't engaged in the fascinating time sink that is Chrontendo
http://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLRXRxTxAgO0exLF2bTgcHCzJ-kIaVn4By

Nintendo was a niche thing here until the SNES took off with Street Fighter II

Might be better to do console generations then computer games (ie "home computers" and PC) by decade

xp Every Nintendo game (Japan/US/UK) released from 83 to 89

yeah thankfully myst itself was a dead end, and most of the people who bought it went on to buy not much else in the way of games. but the "wow" factor of the prerendered graphics had a big impact, i think. if you were a game developer, there had to be pressure from the owners or whoever, "this thing is selling like hotcakes, why aren't we doing that?" hard to separate out from the CD-ROM video-clip games thing generally though - The 7th Guest is also '93. wonder if anybody rates that as worth a damn now.

@ Euler, if the PC stuff is in the same polls with the consoles, I'd lobby for holding back the years to more track the heydays of the systems that are defining the "generations" in question. so yeah, release of SNES would make sense as the 'end' for the current poll. so then DOOM et al are up against SNES, not spectrum games and Duck Hunt. seems right IMO. OTOH clearly 7th Guest should be up against, say, Night Trap, but nobody in their right mind is going to vote for either game so i don't think that should be an issue.

i get the simplicity of decades, but that gets goofy too in its way. 89/90 games have wayyyyyy more to do with each other than 90/99 games. also if the PC games are their own series it starts to be a heck of a lot of polls.

If we do it this way Doom is up against Sopwith, I think that may be "goofy"

riven is the mystlike you need: a masterpiece in a bastard genre.

the game-changer was actually probably ultima underworld: invents both doom and elder scrolls at the same time.

xpost not sure which "this way" that is? the scenario i'm describing would put the cutoff at release of the SNES, so sopwith (83) and DOOM (93) would not be in the same poll.

"windows required" and "released prior to windows 95" are actually two different things; for a while there everything had a dos installer and a win installer. the former is a right-feeling cutoff, to me, but of course absurdly fiddly to check.

i am with dc tho it seems easy to fold pc games into the console gens.

Yeah after hitting submit I realised I'd put Doom instead of Wolfenstein, Sopwith is '84 btw

Windows 95 seems a good cutoff because of DirectX and the creeping compulsory 3D card, I know these games often had DOS installers but given the choice

"windows required" and "released prior to windows 95" are actually two different things

should obv be "released after"

re platformers, yes the apogee/epic stuff (even jazz jackrabbit) is very store-brand, but remember that prince of persia was a pc game

There's a general "look" to these turn-of-the-millenium PC games - this, Diablo, Baldur's Gate - that is just incredibly off-putting to me. I don't know how to describe it...other examples would include Age of Empires, Ultima Online, and to a lesser extent Ultima 8 (which has plenty of other problems to worry about). It's not the ugliness of polygons (another scourge of the late 90s) but something else. Not sure why it connotes "boring, tedious game" but it does.

― Doctor Casino, Saturday, May 3, 2008 6:02 PM Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

Mrs Vague complains about the "stupid little people that you can't see properly" aspect of those games.

― Noodle Vague, Saturday, May 3, 2008 6:04 PM Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

^^^ i always think about this post when trying to describe the aesthetic of PC games in the later 90s. i mean everything just looks bad to my eyes, compared to the bright happy colorful VGA world that was still going as of 1994. this is related to (but not entirely reducible to) the polygon-happiness that was also present (though way more destructive to console gaming) in the same years. i'm happy to blame whatever culprit - Win95, CD-ROM ubiquity, DirectX, Myst, Quake, 3dfx chips - but in general the more i think about it the more it does feel to me like the shift is right around 1994/95.

which also works out for a "generation"-based poll oddly enough: saturn and PSX are christmas 1994 releases. (dunno what to do about jaguar and 3DO coming out the year before - makes for a really narrow chunk of time, not to mention giving a lot of weight to two very unpopular systems even though SNES and Genesis were clearly still the kings of the scene. although i guess it does put all the aforementioned bad CD-ROM games up against each other.

oh and i just remembered another world/out of this world. yall platform snobs should remember another world.

i revisited 7th Guest a couple of years back and i still like its vibe! even tho objectively it's not much of a game - a far simpler Fool's Errand with some unnecessary whistles and bells. fun to remember when shit like that actually felt magical to me tho

the "stupid little people" genre not polygon-heavy at all: diablo, baldur's gate, aoe are all just cramped lil sprites. if anything it's the twilight of the sprite era: what happens when hardware+ambition start to push past the level of detail the medium was designed to realize. personally this style is right in my nostalgic sweet spot tho.

it's the isometric era i guess: that's what all those games have in common. "2.5d" lol.

the graphics don't bother me really - tho i totally understand what Nom hated about them. my issue ultimately was with bullshit Peter Molyneux games that played themselves better without my input. Black Isle are fine by me - tho i rarely feel like revisiting them now

really it's "stupid little people running about under their own agenda and fuck knows what they're supposed to be doing"

cdn't drag myself into Dungeon Master either. at least Diablo has (numbingly) comprehensible gameplay

this is the point in the convo where i realise i've been more of a VR tourist than a gamer for the last 30 years

doom couldn't even run right on a SNES, seems weird to put it in the same category as NES.

Dungeon Keeper i meant

god console Doom was hopeless yeah

Out of This World looked soooooo good in 1991. i never got more than a couple of screens in. I think it was secretly Dragon's Lair in terms of its difficulty and how it "worked" but it was really lovely. If you squint and imagine that its polygons are pixellated edges it could pass for a critically-lauded indie game in 2015 - more atmosphere, exploration, and contemplating the environment, with the Prince of Persia aspects of it that felt really strong in 1991 now seeming like its weak points. watching video now and i'm struck by all these other connections. the emphasis on the sound of footsteps, with no background music, and riding elevator platforms up and down, makes it feel like friggin' Impossible Mission.

xposts re: the Diablo look - right, that's what i was getting at - there's a major graphical shift, less heralded, that's happening at the same time as the polygon thing was going bonkers in other games, and affecting PC games in the way that polygons were affecting consoles. (though obv there are also polygonal PC games happening!) definitely 2.5d, definitely cramped little sprites. the other game referred to in my quote above is planescape: torment. so yeah, i agree - it's just pushing the resolution of sprites so high, and the range of colors so "realistic," that actually the games (for me) stop having the same cozy pick-up-and-play fun factor. like i really don't want to click on all that little stuff!

at the same time, games that strove for "cartoony" actually started looking worse for some reason. probably art departments getting slashed or redirected to the tiny-people games, leaving nobody behind to punch up the line weights and give the animation real smoothness. monkey island III maybe the only noteworthy exception. flagship-series games king's quest VII and space quest VI (94 and 95 respectively) look like the CD:I Zelda games ffs.

(ha opening a top-100 list from years ago it turns out 1996-2000 on the pc is just about my most totemic era: deus ex, alpha centauri, the last express, starcraft, master of orion 2, worms armageddon, black isle games, system shock 2, riven.)

Prince of Persia originally an Apple II game, something else Britishers m/l missed out on in the 80s despite Apple dominating the US computing scene of the time.

How different was the PC SimCity from the NES one? I remember being surprised how much they'd fitted in to the NES one but SC2000 was the first version I actually owned.

Wd rep for Commander Keen, Captain Comic (also had a NES version! which I never played), Digger, Populous, Ultima Underworld, all the Lucasarts adventures, and all the old hokey Sierra AGI games... and probably a whole lot of other things I've forgotten. Doom may have invented PC gaming for a lot of people but it almost killed it for me for a good while as I never really liked FPSes (sure I played Wolfenstein and Doom a lot though) and by the mid-90s they'd almost wiped out all the pixelly 2d platformers, god sims and point+click adventures I liked.

(suddenly nostalgic for a post-Myst shareware Windows pointy-clicky thing I played with raytraced static graphics, sliding block puzzles and I guess Stargate-ish abandoned ancient Egyptian spaceship kinda theme. I wonder what the hell that even was. p. sure it had basically no gameplay but I'd like to see its reflective marble halls again)

xps funny, I'd put the isometric era around the turn of the 90s, I guess. Populous, Cadaver, D*Generation, A-Train, a bunch of RPGs... plus there were plenty of isometric 80s Spectrum games (Head Over Heels, Highway Encounter, my pet nostalgic memory Amaurote...). All the fun of guessing whether the "up" arrow is going to take you up-left through the doorway or up-right into the pit of spikes.

more xposts

(suddenly nostalgic for a post-Myst shareware Windows pointy-clicky thing I played with raytraced static graphics, sliding block puzzles and I guess Stargate-ish abandoned ancient Egyptian spaceship kinda theme. I wonder what the hell that even was. p. sure it had basically no gameplay but I'd like to see its reflective marble halls again)

beyond time?

timelapse? lol there were 893275932875239 of these and they all had ancient egyptian spaceships

timelapse had the distinction of being very pretty.

re: DOOM and NES games - - - - i feel like i must be explaining my unsolicited crackpot proposal badly, so let me just like lay it out in one place.

3rd Gen Poll: any games of any year for consoles including NES, Master System, other things maybe? any 'computer games' released in the years from 1983 (release of Famicom) to 1990 (release of Super Famicom) or, alternately, from 1985 (NES) to 1991 (SNES).

4th Gen Poll: any games of any year for consoles including SNES, Genesis, Turbo Grafx etc. years for 'computer games' run from 1990/91 (SNES release year of choice) to 1994 (PSX, Saturn).

obviously this involves crazy fudging, but most of that is inherent to the "generations" game. i mean the turbo grafx came out in 1989 but nobody bought one and that is obviously still prime NES years. ditto jaguar and 3DO for the fifth generation. i'm privileging Nintendo consoles as epoch-defining benchmarks in a way that probably isn't consistent or defensible. but something like that would be necessary IMO if the computer games are going to be matched up with the console games that are really of the same era and which have comparable ambitions.

this also puts the really archaic monochrome and CGA PC games, and most apple II stuff, up against atari 5200 (which feels fair) while letting, say, commodore 64 games really spread out and appear where they "should." like, the last ninja (1987) makes a lot of sense versus NES games, whereas, say, Choplifter (1982) is appropriately paired with the aforementioned apple ii/5200 stuff. just look at 'em! dunno if spectrum games show the same kind of progress.

i'll be heading back to my newspaper-filled basement now, excuse me

hell yeah Spectrum games came a long way from the early 80s to early 90s

tho the hardware was so limited that a lot of that journey feels in the head rather than on the screen. but something like Mike Singleton's Lords of Midnight is a staging post in PC game history imo

sopwith ruled

this era is too close to my heart with the NES; tough for me to even nominate. I think everything I love has already been mentioned anyway.

including PC really screws everything up because things advanced so rapidly at a certain point, especially past... '87? basically whenever VGA graphics came about

I didn't have an ega or vga system until 1993 so I know this era...differently

Yeah. I think I'll stick with the home consoles for this one, sorry. It makes the comparisons more valuable imo -- who did the best given these X number of closed platforms?

beyond time? timelapse? lol there were 893275932875239 of these and they all had ancient egyptian spaceships

hah, figures

the one I'm thinking was graphically less ornate than those, obviously a single bedroom coder affair, but tbh I'm probably best off transferring my nostalgic crush to one of those two, or not indulging it at all

xposts, broadly happy with the proposal though of course there are always going to be things which seem to fall on the wrong side of a divide. I think the VGA thing is fair as there weren't that many VGA games until about 1990 as far as I recall

it was a pretty big leap forward though, (probably) the last Spectrum game I bought was the terrible 1990 Monty Python game and I comforted myself that at least the PC version screenshots looked worse than the Spectrum. then soon afterwards Monkey Island, Wing Commander, Heart of China came out and looked (to me, at the time) amazing

Yeah. I think I'll stick with the home consoles for this one, sorry. It makes the comparisons more valuable imo -- who did the best given these X number of closed platforms?

― Bouncy Castlevania (Will M.), Monday, August 10, 2015 4:56 PM Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

yeah, despite my arguing for the other way, i can 100% see that. the limited hardware of consoles really is such a beautiful study of constraints and design excellence (plus budgets of course) - like, seeing what capcom at their best did on the NES makes it sooooo shameless what lesser publishers were willing to dash out and charge actual money for. like lord of the rings versus a five-page xeroxed insert with a page missing. of course nobody here is actually going to vote for the real shit end of the NES range, but then comparing the greats and near-greats is just as interesting.

...I suspect nobody else was interested in my nostalgia tunnel but I think it may have been Entombed I was thinking of: http://www.abandonia.com/games/472/download/Entombed.htm

W PC gaming there are a number of events in the 80s that changed gaming forever. Win 95 is a good demarcation point in that prior versions ran alongside DOS so most gaming was done from within DOS rather than Windows. This is also the end of the floppy era I remember installing Win95 from like 40 3.5" disks. Games ran like crap in Win5 until the 3d accelerators came out and by then fate was sealed.

Uh I meant the 90s

Entombed looks right up my alley but as the Abandonia page says it's often hard to get games of that vintage running nicely on modern PCs

ha that looks neat a passing spacecadet. you weren't kidding about the reflective halls.

will let this thread re-rail but this was another worthwhile mystlike:

https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/3/34/Cosmology_of_Kyoto_cover.jpg

not really all that mystlike. v much for NV's brand of vr tourist. drift through, get suspicious looks from people, pet a dog, visit a brothel, meet a demon, die, come back as the dog, get attacked by other dogs, die, go to some punitive dimension, come back as the player again, standing somewhere different. a carefree and open-minded roger ebert called it "wonderful" in wired, back before he met gamers.

timelapse? lol there were 893275932875239 of these and they all had ancient egyptian spaceships

― playlists of pensive swift (difficult listening hour), Monday, August 10, 2015 4:10 PM Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

so otm btw

i've played Cosmology and it wd be totally me but for a non-game finding your way in is kinda tough>

i've never been sure there is a way in

v much for NV's brand of vr tourist. drift through, get suspicious looks from people, pet a dog, visit a brothel, meet a demon, die, come back as the dog, get attacked by other dogs, die, go to some punitive dimension, come back as the player again, standing somewhere different.

this sounds amazing, like the world I was sure existed in all adventure games if only I could find a way through the background scenery

also Timelapse is real pretty, suspect I'm not patient enough now but I would've loved it at the time

i like video games

i have nostalgic feelings towards some egyptian spaceships clicky thing though i have only the vaguest memories. entombed does look kinda familiar though. (what i do remember is that i started writing a novel based on it and this x-files book haha, i think i only wrote a couple of pages before abandoning it)

are you jorge luis borges

don't be ridiculous, borges' books were based on pacman

Tlön, Uqbar, Orbis Tetris

let's not forget how he straight ripped off ken's labyrinth

Nice xp

I'm actively opposed to the idea of spending time and money on this pastime these days and I've never played a game on a PC and I haven't understood the last 50 posts itt but I was def a "gamer" cause I played a shitload of games from ms era to dreamcast era, I read that other poll thread when it got bumped & it made me proper nostalgic

I wonder how different it will be now from then, I noticed eg no "survival horror" on the 1st poll which is maybe surprising?

yeah i think eg the first resident evil is absolutely something that comes to mind when one thinks of ESSENTIAL PSONE MOMENTS IN GAMES but definitely not something that comes to mind when asked for goat

i think its context though, like if someone said "tell me the best games of all time, you get 100" i might forget RE, but if someone said "best PS1 game, you get 10" i might remember -- even though the former list might have 10+ games on it! like that RE game needs to be remembered in the context of the hardware or something. which i guess is why i like this poll concept. (it's going to be extra-cool when we get to PS vs. N64 vs. Saturn because it won't be as dominated by one console or another)

*10+ PS1 games on it

Dr. Mario
Little League Baseball: Championship Series

I think PS1/N64/Saturn will be pretty Sony-heavy if it goes beyond 20 or so!

I think that generation does suffer though from being a new explosion of new tech and new horizons - inevitably the stuff that comes later with more power does it better.

I have never played a PS1. I played a PS2 once for 10 minutes.

that poll will be weird for me.

Get u some Metal Gear Solid and Final Fantasy VII.

There are some pretty great PS1 games fwiw, dunno how well all of them have aged but I look forward to that poll in a big way (also a chance to rep for the half-dozen or so super all-time unbelievable classic N64 games).

BTW Will M., will there be a separate campaign thread once we have the noms together?

I played the shit out of some PS1. I co-owned a PS2 but I probably only played five or so games on an actual PS2 (although I've since played HD remakes and other PS3 ports). I basically just rode my PS1 hard from the late '90s all the way through the 2000s, in much the same way I'll probably still be stuck on PS3 by the time the PS5 rolls around.

I'm down with a campaign thread for sure! Although it'll be tough for me to actually play those campaigned-for games in September, personally, considering it's such a mammoth new release month in modern gaming :)

lol man when we start listing the big hitters of the psx/n64 era it's like, no, videogames had already started sucking by then ..

There have always been sucky games!

Man I wish I had a Nester-modded PSP right now.. !

Are the nominations drying up? I'd be willing to go to phase 2 early if so!

ohh hrrmm. i wonder. feel like i could easily be overlooking something really major and classic. but probably not?

also -

Ghostbusters

this is on for "worst" right???

Genesis:

Shinobi (1987)
Revenge of Shinobi (1989)
Shadow Dancer (1991)

xpost Wellllll...I cheated and nominated it even though I was technically nominating the C64 version, which I loved. I have no idea whether the NES or Genesis versions are worthwhile (although they do seem to be variations on the same game, from what I can tell).

Although I see the NES version has an amazing ending that I was denied:

CONGLATURATION !!!
YOU HAVE COMPLETED
A GREAT GAME.

AND PROOVED THE JUSTICE
OF OUR CULTURE.

NOW GO AND REST OUR

HEROES !

master system for this poll... genesis for the next poll!

Can you compile the nes list so far? I probably have more noms but this thread is hard to navigate for me (on zing)

Sorry, my mistake. Ghostbusters was released for NES and the Master System.

Ghostbusters for the NES is 100% terrible. I generally don't go out of my way to rep for the Angry Video Game Nerd, but IIRC his take on it does nail all the things I found totally dumb, un-fun and head-scratchy as a kid. "The Ghostbusters don't even own their own ghostbusting equipment."

I've got to properly set up this list with crossovers, so before you say a game is missing from x console make sure it isn't already listed for y console... this is the quick and dirty. also if you nominated something in the middle of a paragraph, i probably missed it and am sorry. (thanks forks for your initial re-listing, i used that too).

SEGA MASTER SYSTEM:
Action Fighter
Alex Kidd in Miracle World
alex kidd in shinobi world
Altered Beast
Batman Returns
columns
enduro racer
fantasy zone
Ghostbusters
Golden Axe Warrior
golvellius: valley of doom
James "Buster" Douglas Knockout Boxing
Kung Fu Kid
Mickey Mouse Castle Of Illusion
miracle warriors
operation wolf
Phantasy Star
psycho fox
rampage
rampart
Revenge of Shinobi
rocky
r-type
Shadow Dancer
shadow of the beast
Shinobi
smash tv
snail maze
sonic chaos
Space Harrier
speedball / speedball 2
spy vs spy
Spy vs. Spy
Super Monaco GP
teddy boy
TransBot
ultima iv
Wonder Boy in Monster World
Wonderboy III: The Dragon's Trap
ys
Zillion
Zillion II: The Tri Formation

ATARI 7800:
Dark Chambers
Desert Falcon
Xevious
Food Fight
Mario Bros.
Commando
Galaga
Donkey Kong Jr.
Tower Toppler

NES:
10 Yard Fight
1943: battle of the midway
A Boy and His Blob
Adventures of Lolo
Adventures of Lolo 3
Bad Dudes
banana prince
Baseball Simulator 1.000
Baseball Stars
Bases Loaded
Batman
Batman: Return of the Joker
Battle of Olympus
Battletoads
Bionic Commando
Blades of Steel
Blaster Master
Bomberman
Bubble Bobble
California Games
Castlevania
Castlevania II
Castlevania III
Cobra Triangle
Commando
Contra
Crisis Force
Crystalis
Deja Vu
demon sword
Destiny of an Emperor
Double Dragon
Double Dragon II
Double Dribble
Dragon Warrior
Dragon Warrior II
Dragon Warrior III
Dragon Warrior IV
Duck Hunt
Ducktales
Dusty Diamond's All-Star Softball
Earthbound Zero
Excitebike
fantastic dizzy
Faxanadu
Fester's Quest
Final Fantasy
Friday the 13th
gargoyle's quest ii
Gauntlet
Ghosts 'n' Goblins
Golf
Golgo 13
Goonies II
Gradius
Gradius 2
Gumshoe
Hogan's Alley
holy diver
ice climber
Ice Hockey
Ikari Warriors
Impossible Mission
Karnov
Kid Icarus
Kirby's Adventure
Kung Fu
Legacy of the Wizard
Lemmings
Life Force
Little Nemo: The Dream Master
M.C. Kids
Maniac Mansion
Marble Madness
Mega Man
Mega Man II
Mega Man III
Mega Man IV
Metal Gear
Metal Gear II
Metroid
Mike Tyson's Punch Out
Mission Impossible
NARC
Ninja Gaiden
Ninja Gaiden II
Ninja Gaiden III
Nobunaga's Ambition
Otocky
Over Horizon
Parodius Da
prince of persia
Pro Wrestling
Rad Racer
Rampage
RBI Baseball
RC Pro Am
RC Pro Am II
Recca
Rescue Rangers
River City Ransom
Rockin' Kats
Romance of the Three Kingdoms
Rush n Attack
Rygar
Section Z
Shadowgate
Smash TV
Solar Jetman
Spy Hunter
StarTropics
StarTropics 2
Strider
Super C
super dodge ball
Super Mario Bros
Super Mario Bros 2
Super Mario Bros 3
sweet home
Swords and Serpents
Tecmo Bowl
Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles I
Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles II
Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles III
Tetris
The Immortal
The Legend of Zelda
The Legend of Zelda II
Ufouria: The Saga
Ultima Exodus
Uninvited
Wall Street Kid
Willow
Winter Games
Wizards and Warriors
Yoshi
Yoshi's Cookie
Zanac

Thanks!

don't forget:

Dr. Mario
Little League Baseball: Championship Series

― 1992 ball boy (Karl Malone), Wednesday, August 12, 2015 10:51 AM (1 week ago)

Nes

Jackal
Track and Field

Nes

Mach Rider

Nes

Urban Champion

Nes

Ring King

whoops sorry for the omissions km!

also hahaha ring king

no problem! also, shoot, one more for NES: Tiger Heli

NES:
Super Spike V'Ball
Tecmo Baseball
Town & Country Surf Designs: Wood & Water Rage

Nevermind I was thinking of Super Tecmo Baseball.

we should do some "ILX PLAYS" on these.
i mean, fuck, there's a board.
http://www.ilxor.com/ILX/NewAnswersControllerServlet?boardid=56108700

Truly baffled at some noms. Fester's Quest? Karnov? M.C. Kids?! This is the shit you hoped you wouldn't get stuck with when you got to the rental place and it turned out all the Megaman games were checked out.

I know at least one ILXor is a die-hard fan of Base Wars, so I'm going to nominate that on their behalf.

Technically, the title really is "Zelda II: The Adventure of Link," not "The Legend of Zelda II."

Also, for clarity/memory-jogging, I'd mark "Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles II: The Arcade Game" and "Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles III: The Manhattan Project," not to be confused with the (very odd and obscure) PC Turtles game, "The Manhattan Missions."

And what the hell, I'll nominate Snake, Rattle & Roll - kinda dumb but spent a lot of pleasant afternoons with that at the neighbors'. They were the kind of neighbors that had tons and tons of NES games but almost all medium-bad or dull ones like Low-G Man, the clunky Godzilla game, and the aforementioned Fester's Quest. The snake game and Rampage were the main saving graces until they went 16-bit.

Oh and they had JACKAL which was awesome and which I totally thought I'd nommed upthread - thanks Euler. That's great two-player fun, just drive and blow stuff up, making progress together.

if marble madness doesn't place i'm going to hack into the mainframe and reveal everyone's ballots and last 4 of digits of SSN

Karnov was whats up fuiud

Kick Master is an amazing NES game

Ring King ruled

Karnov had cool music but the rest was your basic too-hard, awkward-to-control platformer, ime.

Technically, the title really is "Zelda II: The Adventure of Link," not "The Legend of Zelda II."

When I post results I'll write the name correctly, but for the sake of people seeing what's nominated i put sequels alphabetically beside each other.

added snake r&r, base wars, kick master, the sutf designbs game, tecmo baseblal, and super spike v'ball. and im trying to type in a very awkward positino so ill fix my typos NEVERF.

I'm playing some NES games right now and I have a new nomination.

DuckTales 2 (NES)

which nobody played at the time because it came out in 1993 with a tiny print run, but it's good despite having a poor soundtrack.

Dom "Very Awkward" Positino

Was always curious about Duck Tales 2! I think I finally checked it out in the emu era and it didn't "click." Maybe it was the soundtrack for all I know - first one had a pretty fucking great one, especially the Amazon and Moon levels. I liked to imagine that the little octopus alien guys were mouthing the dooty-dooty-deedo stuff that opens the latter.

yo rushomancy, if i didn't answer above, japan-only games are acceptable!

in fact i would love it if you would tell me more about sweet home. all i know is that there was a tie-in movie directed by, of all people, kiyoshi kurosawa :O

surprised that Myst is the same year as Doom. in the end i'd argue that the former's legacy didn't really go anywhere but it feels like an historical moment when something shifted

― the lion tweets tonight (Noodle Vague),

there was a good article recently about the creators of both games and what they thought of eachother's game
http://kotaku.com/what-creators-of-doom-and-myst-thought-of-each-others-1565214198

ooh, I'll look forward to reading that. The story behind Myst is so weird and non-typical for 90s games, it sounds much more like a 70s/80s origin story with a couple of outsider non-gamer weirdos cooking this thing up. see http://mentalfloss.com/article/63351/15-things-you-might-not-know-about-myst

NES:

The Adventures of Rad Gravity

was reading an old copy of Groo and this was on the back cover and i have no memory of this existing.

https://scontent-dfw1-1.xx.fbcdn.net/hphotos-xpf1/v/t1.0-9/11902449_10154187043572137_4587347480124198122_n.jpg?oh=f2ea560574b149e7ff24b8be922dfe23&oe=567D680A

also, that ad is from the JANUARY 1990 issue of groo the wanderer. so, total ground zero for 90's graffik design.

I remember the existence of TurboGrafx-16 (probably as much from those ads on the back of comics as anything), but I don't know that I ever saw one in person.

I remember that so well. Very striking image.

Was Bonk the only TurboGrafx exclusive to get any traction? I'm looking at a list of games and that's the only one I recognize that wasn't available for other platforms.

keith's adventure, i want to say? you were a nerd who could turn into a metroid looking dude.

i knew one kid who had one... i am like 20% sure i can remember who the kid is tho.

one of my best friends had a turbo-16 and a bunch of games, we played the shit out of it. It was a really good system!
Splatterhouse was what was up.

Legendary Axe was cool. Maybe next poll.

4th gen! def next poll!

also the game was called keith courage in alpha zones, apparently.

also sept 8 stands as the deadline because i just remembered i'm on vacation until then, haha

I didn't have the time to read the whole thread, but shouldn't the original greyscale Game Boy be included in this poll? It came out in 1989 in USA/Japan and in 1990 in Europe (that's when I got mine), it was 8 bit and the games are definitely comparable to what was on NES at the time. If the Game Boy is only included in the 4th generation poll, it'll be pretty weird to compare something like Super Mario Land to 16 bit games on the SNES.

We had this discussion upthread about the Game Gear. Both handhelds were distinctly 4th gen in terms of time period, despite their graphical inferiority, and I believe Will has opted to poll them as such.

http://www.rockpapershotgun.com/2015/08/27/metal-gear-solid-v-preview/

Cool will Turbo CD be included? Played some games lately ("Gradius II", "Last Alert", "Gate of Thunder", "R-Type Complete CD" and they were INCREDIBLE. Electro anime Japanese weirdness cranked up. The intro to R-Type alone was like a 10-minute cutscene with voice acting and nearly full screen anime-style sprite animations. This stuff really intrigues me because in the US we didn't really get this we got EXTREME proto dudebro machismo marketing. The Turbo CD stuff is like mutant interpretations of Chuck Norris-era action movies.

Oops sorry for that link wrong thread. I was responding to

4th gen! def next poll!

Sorry to keep going OT.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HU80R7jGanE

What do you all think is the best 8-bit Mario from the original trilogy? SMB3 is frequently hailed as the greatest game of all time, and with that globe-spanning ad and "The Wizard", it definitely felt like a zeitgeist game. Plus it's so fun and has so many levels and secrets and things you can always go back to. It's also hard as heck.

Yeah, I have no doubt Super Mario 3 is gonna win this poll, and deservedly so. It's pretty much the 2nd best 2D era Nintendo game (the best being A Link to the Past). So much imagination, cool imagery, gameplay variation with the different suites, secrets, bonuses, etc... My family never even had a NES, but I still know SM3 inside out, because when it came out I used to hang at friends of mine who had it all day and play the game.

But SMB has the best physics imo. SMB3 felt a little floaty. It also gave you WAY too many lives, it was kind of the start of handholding imo. The music is the best too, if only for inventing the standards that all game music still strive for. I highly recommend the 33 1/3 book.

Maybe handholding started with SMB2, which was famously released as an entirely different game. Also pretty floaty physics. It was the first spin-off even though it was a mainline number game. I loved it. It was so weird and I dug the Arabian Nights influence. Player selection: CLASSIC. Almost wish they had it in SMB3 but maybe they felt that one was so different best to keep it simple at times.

One of my clearest childhood memories is the first time playing SMB2 at a friend's house, who was also playing me the Beach Boys for the first time. I didn't actually hear the music for a long time. It's still by Koji Kondo and it is still amazing. It kind of ramps up the silent film schtick they were developing. Mario as a kind of Super Saiyan Buster Keaton. I learned how to play it on keyboard, it's very ragtime. Playing through only a 3 notes at a time + noise channel it's fucking beautiful.

SMB3 soundtrack is great, I LOVE the drum samples. I think they don't really sample any melodic sounds but there may be a string or two. The new Matronix-style beat for the underworld theme is incredible. Koji Kondo is a genius. Some of this is very garage rock. Some calypso (as always) but more dubby here, with the drum samples.

Thank God Mario doesn't speak in any of them.

Yeah, SMB3 wins that fight VERY handily. So much craft and detail and joy and vastness, and yet not entirely unthinkable as a "sit down and play in one sitting since there's no save" game. Amazing control too. Basically the perfect NES game imo. The first one is also very pick-up-and-playable and also has basically era-defining control (that, nonetheless, hardly any third-party game ever came close to matching - the basic clunkiness of moving around in nearly ever licensed platformer has more than anything to do with them feeling like headache-inducing wastes of time), music and sound... it's a bit easier to just pop it in and play for a while but it also has less to unveil. Maybe purer as a "game" in terms of the player having to eventually become very skilled with an extremely limited set of skills; SMB3 isn't really hard by comparison.

Am I right that we did a poll of just the worlds from SMB3? Or was it from SMW?

There are a couple of other NES games that I could see giving it passing competition in this poll, basically the usual suspects of Zelda, Tetris and Castlevania, maybe Final Fantasy.

The original Zelda is groundbreaking and all, but man did that game get tedious and repetitive if you played it long enough. I don't think any kids in my neighbourhood had the stamina to play it all the way through (even though it had save codes, I think?), while most of us eventually managed to complete all the Mario games.

Castlevania is amazing but it's so hard to control. If the stairs were better, maybe.

Tetris might be the perfect game on a Ms. Pac Man level.

So much craft and detail and joy and vastness, and yet not entirely unthinkable as a "sit down and play in one sitting since there's no save" game.

in retrospect, not having a save system was SO important to SMB3 because, counterintuitively, it encouraged wandering and exploration. although of course it was possible to beat it relatively quickly once you knew where the whistles were and which rocks to break in world 8, the first several dozen times you played likely ended in, say, world 3 or 5 or 6, just because you had to go to school or dinner or bed or whatever. so you ended up playing those early worlds over and over and over again, and naturally exploring and looking for secrets as you went. to this day, i'm amazed when i sit down and play SMB3 for the first time in a few years and i still automatically know where tons of secrets are. it's just cemented in the brain, muscle memory style.

Music from SMB2 is a very good point. Love the character selection soundtrack expecially, pops into my head all the time.

It's amazing in hindsight what a huge mascot Mario was, for not having much backstory or dialogue or anything like that. I remember that Mario 3 commercial and it really did feel like that big a deal. Ditto The Wizard, the gigantic unveiling, obviously really heavy-handed promotion there but no kid in the audience would have disputed the game deserving such a massive unveiling. And all that without an "attitude" or anything like that. It was just so fun to play Mario games!

Zelda has actual save files with a battery in the cartridge - that was a big deal at the time, and for years afterwards tbh. Even lots of A-list titles like the Megaman sequels relied on really clunky password systems - graphical in that case, but godawful tedious gibberish input fests in nearly everything else. I guess I see what you mean about getting repetitive if you really played and replayed it; it's not something like Mario 3 where I played through and won many, many times (sometimes warping past less-beloved worlds, sometimes kicking back to savor every single level and get the Hammer Brothers suit). But it's more like a quest game or an RPG anyway, you save and come back to it and gradually progress and when you win you feel satisfied not coming back right away. Beating Zelda II the first time felt like the biggest gaming accomplishment I had ever, or would ever, attain.

That's a fair point about the Castlevania controls; they're just such landmarks of design, music, and scope for a 2D platformer. You compare the first one to Ghosts n Goblins, which has a similar theme and maybe even a similar number of levels, and while both are brutally hard, Castlevania mostly feels "fair" and it's so evidently a leap forward in graphics and enemy/level design and stuff. It's fun to play even just for the clear sense that you're moving through meaningfully different regions of this castle. Passing over the bizarre failed experiments of the second one, III basically takes all that many steps forward while perhaps being less satisfying as a game. It's huge and there are the multiple paths and multiple characters, but only a few of the individual levels come into focus as much. Still just astounding for how much they could get those cartridges to do on that system.

xpost otm

i'm trying to think of the most recently released game that has as much content as SMB3, with no save system.

i think it was SMB3

haha - maybe!

but i wouldn't even want a save system in it, is the thing. you don't miss it at all. i feel sorry for "the kids" who have only played re-releases of the game (through wiiware or emulators) that have save systems, because i doubt they feel as compelled to play it over and over again. when you have a save you don't really revisit old levels nearly as often, if at all. but replaying SMB3 levels is so key to what makes the game legendary.

Agreed. In particular the first two worlds really start to feel like old friends; it's a good thing they're among the stronger in the game I think. Plus it actually increases the novelty factory of the later boards that you might sometimes skip past or just not get to. There's also a certain pace to it, if you really play straight through, where you do get rewards and reprieves every so often; again, not that it's remotely a "hard" game but there's still, for example, that payoff in the water world where you can take a little boat far out to the east (I think after judicious use of the hammer if you didn't use it in the desert world?) and just basically pick up a bunch of little bonus mushroom houses IIRC. That's satisfying as heck.

I do basically agree that the lives are a little too freely given. I don't recall a game of SMB3 ever coming down to a nail-biting "whew!" like, I really needed to win that level on that life. But there are lots of death-defying stunts within the levels, so eh.

Is there a master list with all the noms so far? like a google doc or something?

more noms

Ironsword: Wizards & Warriors II (NES)
Pang aka Buster Bros. (I only played it in the Arcade and on my Playstation Buster Bros Collection but it was on earlier stuff. wiki link)

I'll try to remember more later

I loved loved loved first Wizards & Warriors, out of proportion to its actual quality. Rented it many times just to march through the same few levels, relish the treasure chests again, sigh at the tedium of ascending the castle exterior, thank god for the Feather of Feather Fall.

I can't remember if I didn't enjoy the sequels as much or if they were just really rare. They looked great in Nintendo Power, that's for sure. I think the third was supposed to be a little more quasi-RPGish, in a Faxanadu/Zelda II kind of way?

Castlevania mostly feels "fair" and it's so evidently a leap forward in graphics and enemy/level design and stuff

YES in a lot of ways it is like the Souls games are now now. If you master enemy patterns and know how to properly react you should be able to one-life it. It's INSANE that they have NG+ in the original Castlevania, which makes the game harder by manipulating damage. That game is already insane. As for level design, look no further than that room before the Grim Reaper, where you are dodging Medusa heads and axe-throwing knights that take multiple hits to kill.

Highly recommend the Anatomy of Castlevania: http://www.anatomyofgames.com/gamespite-quarterly/gjs13-anatomy-of-castlevania/ it goes into depth at why it's so good, how it may be the first game that really tried to do a linear and cohesive design. IE random platforms sitting in mid-air are connected to brickwork in the background and stuff. It is a masterpiece of impossible architecture. Here the sprite art really shines: what could be rather boring brick walls and archways have weathering and worn paint and moss drawn onto the tiles, one pixel at a time. This details suggests a world beyond what you just see on the CRT. Castlevania tugs at your imagination.

Sorry that links is broken. Try this one. http://www.anatomyofgames.com/anatomy-of-a-game/

Jeremy Parish is a great game writer. He covers a lot of the games in this poll on the site.

I used to read that guy religiously, going back to like, 1999/2000 or so. Evangelion Thumbnail Theater, all that stuff. He must be the king of unfinished or now un-archived projects, so many loose threads. Clearly struggling between the 'blog' and the 'kitchen sink website' as formats. As it is so much of the recent stuff is virtually un-browsable; maybe that's an incentive to buy the books. I do like that he's picked up the print volume as a format, and zeroed in on a few recurring obsessions (the "Metroidvania" genre in particular).

The only thing is, and this is hardly unique to that site, but there's also a real tension between what's brilliant about the insight and what's popular with most of the readers. I feel like a lot of projects like this burn themselves out screencapping everything and basically let's-playing every single step of the game, like a walkthrough but every sentence has to be written snappily and with nerd panache. Sometimes that's fun to read but sometimes it's just flab keeping us from a really taut single medium or long-form essay about, in this case, the anatomy of the particular game. Part of me loves the idea of a 14-article series on Zelda II, or 27 parts on Super Mario Bros., but I suspect some of the strengths of the insights actually get buried in all that coverage... which nonetheless I'm sure is very popular. This is by no means unique to Parish, and he has a way better ratio than some other blogs I could name, but you kinda wish his experience in print journalism would have helped him internalize some checks on excess. OTOH he's writing about what he loves so, y'know, more power to him!

Sticking closer to content, one thing I wonder about is the tendency for most of the games to assume that they're really well-thought-out masterpieces and that every little move is just incredibly amazing, or just brilliantly effective, or just perfectly calibrated. That's another common tendency in this kind of writing and it's exhausting, but I think it also starts to seep into the argument; he has a general predisposition towards games that 'teach' their mechanics through gameplay, and a good eye for ways games do this in subtle ways that also flesh out the story or atmosphere of the world. But I feel like, and I should have examples for this, but sometimes it starts to feel like every single thing you do in a game is a planned little teachable moment; every jump you have to make early on is there to train you for a more complicated jump in World 7. And yeah, sure, in general I buy that but this was also just an era of games being hard as fuck and throwing you in the deep end, and sometimes stuff wasn't really telegraphed all that well but the games were still fun for it. I dunno, I'm not explaining this well and it's not a reason not to read his stuff. Maybe it would be better to say that his essays for their emphasis on this theme have forced me to think for myself about what makes a good difficulty curve or how much of this stuff is necessary for a good game.

BTW: What is the best world of Super Mario 3?

Without knowing Castlevania II's secrets (ie without internet help), you won't be able to win. It's not the game's difficulty but the fact that you need a Nintendo Power or the prodigy kid down the street in order to progress in the game. I mean you would have to be pretty damn lucky to find/solve the secrets on your own.

Nobody I know bothered to play all the way through Link II. I wonder if it had any bitchy secrets as well

the tendency for most of the games to assume that they're really well-thought-out masterpieces and that every little move is just incredibly amazing, or just brilliantly effective, or just perfectly calibrated

Well given memory limitations everything was more or less meticulously thought-out, from level design to song length to character art. The designers themselves have admitted as much, the famous example being Mario's design was due to the limitations of pixel art, his moustache and hat being added to fix animation problems that cropped up with the tiny resolution they had to work with.

Nowadays there really aren't any limitations so less consideration probably goes into it. If you can only include X amount of art/music/gameplay, it is going to be the absolute best you can come up with.

But yes there is probably some projection/fandom in there largely coloring things.

Also I may be confusing this (with DOOM?) but I seem to remember them saying the first stage of Mario was built at the end of development, after they had figured out the tools, and thus were able to use more deliberate planning irt what the player would encounter and how they would likely respond.

Sure, I just think it gets taken to this level of "and here's yet another example of the unfailing inexhaustible genius of the designers" and it just becomes unreadable after a few paragraphs. Definitely talking more about the game design/challenge/information stuff here than the pixel art stuff. Obviously, there's more care at all levels in the classics than the far, far more numerous dudfests... s'what makes them the classics!

Zelda II is profoundly flawed but in the end, basically playable and satisfying in its way. If the first one had never existed it'd probably be pretty well remembered as an ambitious if incompletely-worked-out action RPG. I can think of only two totally baffling points that really scream "Nintendo Power, take me away!" which is basically zero compared to Castlevania II. Will be stunned if anyone ends up voting for that one...

Thanks for responding to that

I never understood the love for Zelda II. All I can remember is getting it and being like WTF, this isn't Zelda. But I was 9, so maybe I'd feel differently now.

Yeah it's pretty fun.

CVII is really fun too when you have a walkthrough. Killer music. The bosses are piss easy but I don't mind that after the nightmare bosses in the first game.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Tfh0ytz8S0k
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_rsycfDliZU

zelda 2 the first game i ever beat. dark link an all-time end boss. (his cameo in ocarina is kind of misplaced and random.) a genuinely difficult game, probably less forgiving than the first (definitely meaner: ganon's digitized chuckle on game over) and the last zelda game to be hard at all. its dangerous places (the forests, the pitch-black caves, the big mess of rocky maze in the southwest, the town where people are bats) are stressful and frightening in ways no death mountain has ever been, and a combination of nes-memory restrictions on text and a number of NPCs hugely increased from the first game meant even the non-hostile townspeople (health-restoring hookers aside) seemed standoffish and terse. the rare game i remember (vividly) as a hostile place, remote from help, instead of as a beloved playground. it's also weirdly colorless, simultaneously too simple and too fiddly to be a working platformer, and (alone in the series) reliant on dedicated, mindless grinding without any of the monster or spell variety that's supposed to entertain you when you're doing that in FF games. so it probably deserves its reputation in comparison to the likes of zelda 1 and link to the past, but in the post-twilight-princess era of nintendo's long enslavement to ocarina of time it definitely shouldn't be called the series' worst anymore.

I had a great idea for the upcoming Zelda game the other day. You start the game with a sword, shield, bow, boomerang and bombs
http://i44.tinypic.com/2z8ce9u.png

tbf the last Zelda game was in thrall to Link To The Past rather than Ocarina (and was all the better for it)

Myself and a few other guys are using Minecraft to build a working 3D remake of the original Zelda. Not sure how you guys feel about Minecraft, though.

i'm trying to think of the most recently released game that has as much content as SMB3, with no save system.

Kid Chameleon (Genesis, 1992) had over 100 stages and no saves. Stages had multiple exits that lead to many paths through the game.

those videos on graphics were really cool, thanks - somehow got this far in my life without knowing that stuff. wild about the 'color cells,' amazing how well the artists knew how to camouflage the boundaries. super cool.

high-fives to dlh. love this - "the rare game i remember (vividly) as a hostile place, remote from help, instead of as a beloved playground." totally. I AM ERROR. it's a bleak and ugly sort of hyrule you're saving here, not unlike the transylvania of castlevania ii but a lot more playable. i also think it should get credit for the dungeons, which are sometimes really irritating, and are nothing on the high-concept ones from link to the past, but again, legitimately hard, and considerably more varied than CV2's mansions which really all feel like the same place (and don't even have bosses!). and of course, the 'big rocky maze' - which IS death mountain! - thrown at you way too early in the game, super punishing. these mean motherfuckers, man:

http://www.nintendojo.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/10/Zelda-Daira.png

I'm on vacation so I don't have the master list handy. But I can post it on Tuesday. If anyone thinks some hang is missing, nominate it I won't get mad if it's a dupe.

Am I missing anything?

Atari Commando
Atari Dark Chambers
Atari Desert Falcon
Atari Donkey Kong Jr.
Atari Food Fight
Atari Galaga
Atari Mario Bros.
Atari Tower Toppler
Atari Xevious
NES 10 Yard Fight
NES 1943: battle of the midway
NES A Boy and His Blob
NES Adventures of Lolo
NES Adventures of Lolo 3
NES Bad Dudes
NES banana prince
NES Base Wars
NES Baseball Simulator 1.000
NES Baseball Stars
NES Bases Loaded
NES Batman
NES Batman: Return of the Joker
NES Battle of Olympus
NES Battletoads
NES Bionic Commando
NES Blades of Steel
NES Blaster Master
NES Bomberman
NES Bubble Bobble
NES California Games
NES Castlevania
NES Castlevania II
NES Castlevania III
NES Cobra Triangle
NES Commando
NES Contra
NES Crisis Force
NES Crystalis
NES Deja Vu
NES demon sword
NES Destiny of an Emperor
NES Double Dragon
NES Double Dragon II
NES Double Dribble
NES Dr. Mario
NES Dragon Warrior
NES Dragon Warrior II
NES Dragon Warrior III
NES Dragon Warrior IV
NES Duck Hunt
NES Ducktales
NES Ducktales 2
NES Dusty Diamond's All-Star Softball
NES Earthbound Zero
NES Excitebike
NES fantastic dizzy
NES Faxanadu
NES Fester's Quest
NES Final Fantasy
NES Friday the 13th
NES gargoyle's quest ii
NES Gauntlet
NES Ghosts 'n' Goblins
NES Golf
NES Golgo 13
NES Goonies II
NES Gradius
NES Gradius 2
NES Gumshoe
NES Hogan's Alley
NES holy diver
NES ice climber
NES Ice Hockey
NES Ikari Warriors
NES Impossible Mission
NES Jackal
NES Karnov
NES Kick Master
NES Kid Icarus
NES Kirby's Adventure
NES Kung Fu
NES Legacy of the Wizard
NES Lemmings
NES Life Force
NES Little League Baseball: Championship Series
NES Little Nemo: The Dream Master
NES M.C. Kids
NES Mach Rider
NES Maniac Mansion
NES Marble Madness
NES Mega Man
NES Mega Man II
NES Mega Man III
NES Mega Man IV
NES Metal Gear
NES Metal Gear II
NES Metroid
NES Mike Tyson's Punch Out
NES Mission Impossible
NES NARC
NES Ninja Gaiden
NES Ninja Gaiden II
NES Ninja Gaiden III
NES Nobunaga's Ambition
NES Otocky
NES Over Horizon
NES Parodius Da
NES prince of persia
NES Pro Wrestling
NES Rad Racer
NES Rampage
NES RBI Baseball
NES RC Pro Am
NES RC Pro Am II
NES Recca
NES Rescue Rangers
NES Ring King
NES River City Ransom
NES Rockin' Kats
NES Romance of the Three Kingdoms
NES Rush n Attack
NES Rygar
NES Section Z
NES Shadowgate
NES Smash TV
NES Snake, Rattle & Roll
NES Solar Jetman
NES Spy Hunter
NES StarTropics
NES StarTropics 2
NES Strider
NES Super C
NES super dodge ball
NES Super Mario Bros
NES Super Mario Bros 2
NES Super Mario Bros 3
NES Super Spike V'Ball
NES sweet home
NES Swords and Serpents
NES Tecmo Baseball
NES Tecmo Bowl
NES Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles I
NES Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles II
NES Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles III
NES Tetris
NES The Adventures of Rad Gravity
NES The Immortal
NES The Legend of Zelda
NES The Legend of Zelda II
NES Tiger Heli
NES Town & Country Surf Designs: Wood & Water Rage
NES Track and Field
NES Ufouria: The Saga
NES Ultima Exodus
NES Uninvited
NES Urban Champion
NES Wall Street Kid
NES Willow
NES Winter Games
NES Wizards and Warriors
NES Yoshi
NES Yoshi's Cookie
NES Zanac
Sega Action Fighter
Sega Alex Kidd in Miracle World
Sega alex kidd in shinobi world
Sega Altered Beast
Sega Batman Returns
Sega columns
Sega enduro racer
Sega fantasy zone
Sega Ghostbusters
Sega Golden Axe Warrior
Sega golvellius: valley of doom
Sega James "Buster" Douglas Knockout Boxing
Sega Kung Fu Kid
Sega Mickey Mouse Castle Of Illusion
Sega miracle warriors
Sega operation wolf
Sega Phantasy Star
Sega psycho fox
Sega rampage
Sega rampart
Sega Revenge of Shinobi
Sega rocky
Sega r-type
Sega Shadow Dancer
Sega shadow of the beast
Sega Shinobi
Sega smash tv
Sega snail maze
Sega sonic chaos
Sega Space Harrier
Sega Speedball
Sega Speedball 2
Sega Spy vs. Spy
Sega Super Monaco GP
Sega teddy boy
Sega TransBot
Sega ultima iv
Sega Wonder Boy in Monster World
Sega Wonderboy III: The Dragon's Trap
Sega ys
Sega Zillion
Sega Zillion II: The Tri Formation

Nes Balloon Fight
Nes Donkey Kong Jr
Nes Flintstones: The Rescue of Dino & Hoppy
Nes Guerilla War
Nes Wizards and Warriors II: Ironsword

Those are going to be the final nominations unless someone else adds to it in the next ~3 hours, going to start the new thread around 7pm Eastern! (also sorry it took me so long!)