NES Canon!

versus the "Hidden Gems" list!

Ninja Gaiden
Metroid

Haha. Maybe it's time for the ILG Best Games of the NES poll?

Nominations! Baseball Simulator 1.000 was pretty great. I think even with FF1 and RCR in the "Solid Gold" list I still spent way more time on games in the "hidden gems" throwaways.

Also WOT NO LUV FOR CASTLEVANIA II?

Their "Solid Gold" list is really ludicrously out of order. Maybe that's it, I mean StarTropics for crying out loud.

Is what I'm referring to with "Maybe that's it" I mean it makes sense expecially if you look at the release dates for most of these games. You'd think there were no games prior to 1988 except for Zelda.

in now way was george bush ever anything other than a twat

A Boy and His Blog
Solar Jetman
Base Wars
R.C. Pro Am

Missing solid gold games:

Double Dragon
Dr. Mario
Metal Gear
Metroid
Ninja Gaiden
Castlevania II

Haha, best typo I've ever made.

-- TOMBOT (bo...) (webmail), October 31st, 2005 3:35 PM. (later) (link)

OH U BICH!!!!!!!!

What about MASTER BLASTER? Great GFX for an early game!

http://img297.imageshack.us/img297/3202/image156ez.gif
http://www.consoleclassix.com/info_img/Blaster_Master_NES_ScreenShot2.jpg

http://img.gamespot.com/gamespot/images/2005/137/928255_20050518_screen003.jpg

Fucking Battletoads!! Dude, it didn't even make the Hidden Gems list. That's just criminal.

Nobody is ever happy with these lists that people make, not ever. The "hidden gems" were apparently so picked because they received less votes than the "solid gold" selections. Which is a reasonable method but a stupid name for it, since nobody thinks Metroid or Ninja Gaiden were "hidden" from anybody.

And we could make our own list in an organized fashion if people are into it.

I'm gonna have to get back to searching through ROMS of games I half-remember from being younger; gotten through a lot of favorites (Trojan, Karnov, Excitebike) without much excitement, and now I have to find that weird medeival game where you jump around rescuing princesses named Penelope and/or riding some kind of Joust-style emu. (I mostly just remember lots of long hair being involved; also nice music.)

Super Dodge Ball

Hidden from the friendless, perhaps. I usually hate playing games against people, but this was like trying ecstasy for the first time. I can't imagine how much this has suffered from history when emulators aren't really friendly about letting people play against each other (and the only rom of it I ever found was really crappy).

Baseball Stars 2 is the criminal exclusion. Zelda 2 is teh suck.

River City Ransom
SMB2/3
Super Dodge Ball
Bionic Commando
Legend of Zelda 1 & 2
Metroid
Castlevania II: Simon's Quest
Ducktales

also, does anybody else think that the earlier games with the more iconic/abstract/cartoony characters was better than the the later bits with more "realistic" graphics that showed how REALLY limited the hardware was?

I just think that there was that line of Classic NES were the character design was perfect

North Vs. South wasn't too shabby either.

Weird, I hated Baseball Stars 2. 1 was vastly superior in almost every respect, for my money.

I could never figure out what was going on in M.U.L.E.

Also, for the Hidden Gems? Uninvited.

Zork for people without a keyboard. And pretty damn scary when I was about 10 years old. Also an utterly masochistic game to beat.

er c7n how are you too young for the nes! i think know it deeper than the snes. in a way i kinda dislike having smb3 as the nobrainer best ever nes game just cos it feels so much that it ws the very top limit last hurrah of the nes' capability; graphically it's next level yes but also what i mean is its epic vision is almost that of a snes game, vision not in the sense of long narrative like an rpg but of something like, i dunno, a dawning of 'proper' 90s gaming. smb3 at #1 kinda does a disservice to all the rubbish button mashers that made the nes what it is, i think.

the rest:

- mike tyson: a classic PURELY FOR INSPIRED CHARACTERIZATION, the actual gameplay ws shoddy at best but u were so absurdly endeared it never mattered

- duck hunt: oh come on now. (even if i can still to this day picture that laughing dog so vividly! i think what really happens in heaven is when u bust those pointless clips at the bastard chucklemutt HE TAKES 3 IN THE CHEST AND LOOKS AT YOU ONE LAST TIME B4 FALLING DEAD and u r then released from the spell of ever playing again)

- omg rc pro am! and excitebike! also the transworld sport olympic games no wait, california games, where u had to press bbbbbbb were a strange pinnacle of utopianism never repeated

- bubble bobble was tremendous.

have now sold off p much all my nes games. i think im gonna try to keep a top 25 altho prices for dragon warrior iv complete are tempting me otherwise

really tho wish id sold more stuff two or three years ago before next to everything became available on vc

Branching novel games.

Barely playable games based on anime franchises.

&c.

Mr Gimmick is a good game, but super expensive nowadays. same team made Ufouria, which was never released in the US

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7tu_fad1cWg

LayLa, which is like a cute version of Metroid. never made it out of Japan though. (title music sounds a bit like "Like A Hurricane"!)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tJ4GSlG7IS8

Is it just me or is it really fucking bizarre that this post is the first one to mention TETRIS

I think of Tetris as a Gameboy/PC joint, honestly.

Yes, that's odd. It's good that you checked so you could remind us how canonical Tetris is.

There was supposed to be a rare unauthorized tengen version of tetris that was supposed to be good, but how good was it?

It's not rare, really. The cool thing about it is that you can play two player side by side, and that it has cute animations when you beat stages. My aforementioned mom was pretty good at it.

another good NES game that came out very late in the systems lifespan, and is now far too expensive, Panic Restaurant

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=02xWeKLSjEU

the first Kirby game Kirbys Adventure, looks almost like a 16bit game at times. really good game, but far too easy.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5slZicVDG-c

Deadly Towers

got a good price on little nemo and north & south so ive decided to just keep 20 games. p similar to the 1up list above which i think is why i revived this last nite:

adventures of lolo 3
bubble bobble
castlevania
castlevania II: simon's quest
castlevania III: dracula's curse
crystalis
dragon warrior IV
faxandu
final fantasy
golf
the legend of zelda
maniac mansion
mega man 2
metroid
river city ransom
startropics
super mario bros.
super mario bros. 2
super mario bros. 3
zelda II

honestly considering emulators/virtual console/handhelds holding on to stuff like panic restaurant feels p stupid. also i think the best late release for the nes has to be mega man 6. like that dude's enthusiasm for the gimmick! game is p delightful but it most of those platformers are 2nd rate.

Barely playable games based on anime franchises.

You mean like Golgo-13? I fucking loved the shit out of that game. I was OBSESSED with it.

faxandu

THIS

xpost Fist of the North Star, for instance, or, yeah, something like Golgo-13. When I was 10 I wanted that game so bad after seeing it in Nintendo Power.

Some of my final purchases, made a few years ago, were of some uncommon boxed games that were culturally very Japanese, and they were all awful.

Big sprite games like Panic Restaurant are like a subgenre of platformers, or a sub-genre, like a defect of the genre.

Dusty Diamond's All Star Softball was AWESOME

Always pick Diablo.

And the guy that turned into a tornado.

recca:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=77yXkKlgusU

pretty amazing that they pulled all this off on the nes w/no slowdown

short list of my faves:

mario 3
castlevania 3
bionic commando
gun nac
the guardian legend
ice hockey

oh yeah, LIFE FORCE

nes life force is probs still my fave game in the gradius universe

here's another good famicom shooter

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=C8rBUGqMRfI

was Hit The Ice on NES? Because THAT game

apparently an nes port was developed but never released. w/some kind of rpg interface! o_O

http://www.lostlevels.org/200405/01.shtml

ice hockey

lol this is even worse than preferring baseball to the tecmo games. i mean in what way is blades of steel not superior to this?

I just love the way ice hockey plays. still do. it controls pretty loose but I never feel like I don't have a handle on things, it's fast (big part of why I like it), very tense (esp against a friend), and I like the ability to go w/fat, skinny, or avg players and the dynamic that introduces.

blades of steel is too sluggish, the perspective is awkward (particularly for goal-tending which becomes a real matter of chance), and I just get bored quickly.

fights are better in blades of steel, tho. and the gradius minigame was pretty mind-blowing for the time.

Little League Baseball: Championship Series is the best NES game, imo. It uses the Ice Hockey character model, in which you have a few body types: tall/skinny, short/skinny, and medium/husky. The players' skills (hit and pitch) were rated on a simple 5 point scale (lol romney foreign policy debate). Each character also had a name. I have to admit that the similarity of poster am0n's name to New York's second batter, "Amos", prompted this post. Amos was a short/skinny level 4 hitter that always seemed to find the gaps. The real power of New York's team, however, is the one-two punch of Ward and Saul (also the best starting pitcher) at the three and four spots.

Tecmo Super Bowl would be my favorite game if I could find anyone good enough to challenge my run-a-sweep-with-neal-anderson strategy.

Clark was awful. I regularly substituted Wilbur for Clark before each game. Clark played catcher, and there were no passed balls in the game. He had a hit/pitch of 1/1, the worst possible combo. It's difficult to see an upside to you, Clark.

I miss jamescobo.

Holy shit, Little League Baseball was the BEST. it was kind of a chance gift - the one game my grandparents ever bought for me for christmas, and they had no idea what they were buying. they were just like "Zach likes baseball, he'll like this". they batted 1.000 on NES purchases and then promptly retired.

i'm not sure how much i would enjoy it now, because it was the kind of game where you'd regularly win by scores of 24-2 or whatever. as a kid there was a maniacal joy to be found in consistently obliterating the competition, but as an adult (technically) it might just get boring to dominate so handily. of course, you could play as another team, i suppose. i think i used New York for every single game except for a handful.

Saul is all-time, the best starting pitcher in the entire game and also a beast at the plate. ward had (even more) power, though.

here's the New York roster (formatting will be all fucked up but it's from here: http://www.gamefaqs.com/nes/587415-little-league-baseball-championship-series/faqs/13760):

--------
New York
--------
NAME    POS    PITCH   HIT
--------------------------
Tommy   SS       1      3
Amos     2B       1      4
Ward      RF       1      5
Saul         P        5      4
Mike       LF       1      2
Cecil      3B       1      3
Oliver     CF       1      5
Clark      C        1      1
Ezra       1B       1      5
Andy      RR       4      2
Reed      RR       3      3
Reggie    RR       1      2
Rocky     RR       1      3
Bob        RR       1      3
Wilbur    RR       1      4
--------------------------

i would also bench Clark in favor of Wilbur. I think I also used Reed instead of Mike.

ah, yes. Reed for Mike. I think Mike was a medium/husky dude with blonde hair. I had good luck with him, 2 rating be damned, so I would usually leave him in. I assume that you are also familiar with Austin, that fireballer from Texas. Texas was my #2 team, generally.

Also, does anyone know of an NES baseball game where hitting the scoreboard 3 times in one game with a home run causes the crowd to rush the field? This was a common rumor for nearly every baseball game, and I would waste hours trying to make it happen.

Never played LLB, but it looks very similar to Baseball Stars, another great SNK baseball title.

BLADES OF STEEL

Texas pitcher is apparently Joseph from that website. Memory isn't so good with #2 team.

battletoads was great but almost over-regarded in that it was fucking impossible to beat

oh man, that fucking jet ski type level was infuriating

which is the third level

yeah, I could never beat it. I could only play it at my cousin's house, so I didn't get too many opportunities.

Dusty Diamond's All Star Softball was AWESOME

― Quantic Dream, So Hard To Beat (Will M.), Wednesday, March 17, 2010 11:46 PM (fifteen years ago) bookmarkflaglink

Always pick Diablo.

― Jeff, Thursday, March 18, 2010 12:07 AM (fifteen years ago) bookmarkflaglink

And the guy that turned into a tornado.

― Jeff, Thursday, March 18, 2010 12:07 AM (fifteen years ago) bookmarkflaglink

unbelievably otm. Currently going through every baseball videogame ever released chronologically and hoo boy what a step up! All them characters, all them special moves, all that style, all them homers! Can't fault it. Big fan of my big boy Fuji.
Very important website: https://dustystats.com/

Fifteen years later, Jeff OTM.

Currently going through every baseball videogame ever released chronologically

That's awesome.

NES was the system I grew up on, but I was v young and so my experience was somewhat compromised I guess, a lot of games rented and tried out. I got "Back To The Future" as a Christmas present and so I played an awful lot of that incredibly shitty game haha. Spent a lot of time playing TMNT and Gauntlet

I definitely feel as if the developers for NES were revolutionising control-concepts that are now standardised, I feel as if SMB3 was the first 'modern' game I ever played where the control was so streamlined and faultless that it felt as if you were 'one' with the Mario, and it kinda set the standard for years to come.

There are a lot of games on these lists I've never played-- River City Ransom, Bionic Commando, StarTropics, Guardian Legend, Crystalis, Ninja Gaiden-- and a LOT of blind spots, I love a good shmup and am a collector of Treasure titles but I haven't played any of the Gradius series beyond III for SNES, Nemesis for Gameboy and V for PS2. I really should check out Life Force/Salamander

the control was so streamlined and faultless that it felt as if you were 'one' with the Mario

This is exactly what I've always thought about these games -- more specifically for Super Mario World on the SNES -- and they've never been beaten in this regard afaic (though I've not been a gamer for years).

Control is an essential part of platformer game design and the best get this innately correct. Agreed that Mario 3 SMW definitely set standards. I still notice the attention to detail with this in modern games like Mario Odyssey

When a third party game gets this right I take notice. Felt Ori Will of the Wisps was great, as well as Hollow Knight