yeah I still find famicom games I haven’t played that feel on par with modern releases. I don’t even have much nostalgia for the system, my appreciation started a few years ago from sitting down and playing through games with an intent to understand the tactility and pace of several of them.
Shovel Knight is fantastic and accessible, but to this day I still find new reasons to argue with my teenhood preconceptions that no NES games were accessible and fulfilling.
I generally agree with this, particularly as it applies to the last decade of game design + criticism, but I think the Shovel Knight comparison is poorly chosen, since it really only applies to Megaman-style 2D action games graded on a certain level of polish (and I also find Shovel Knight itself kind of boring but I take the point).
on the other hand, we do finally have better modern versions of excite bike and punch-out, which wasn’t true until fairly recently.
that said, these 2D action games are generally the NES games I’m least likely to want to pick up today (with exceptions like megaman 2 and smb3).
though they aren’t originally “NES games,” the NES has the best version of bubble bobble and archon, which are both fairly one-of-a-kind classics. although towerfall makes a legitimate run at bubble bobble.
and there’ll always be weird stuff like solar jetman or a boy and his blob, natch
Wizards and Warriors is clunky and frustrating and the “your health is low” music is possibly the most annoying thing ever, but the overall atmosphere is pretty great.
Also, massively seconding Blaster Master and Rygar, both of which I thought were elementary school fever dreams before I rediscovered them.
Jackal. Play it with a friend if you can.
Yeah, I mean, my point wasn’t really about Shovel Knight, sure fine if its somewhat literal-minded nostalgia and reboot mentality rubs some folks the wrong way, I understand that. My wider point is about the piecemeal influences and principles of simplicity, clarity, focus, pacing, challenge, and taciturn mystery that modern games have drawn on in general. For example, Derek Yu mentioned in his book that NES Zelda was one inspiration for Spelunky, which is not a totally obvious connection.
Shovel Knight is a bad example particularly in that one way of taking inspiration from NES games is to appear sharp-edged and rough and indifferent. Which I’m guessing might be where meauxdal is coming from, although who knows.
I suggest playing Legend of Kage for a bit, just because jumping around the short opening stage is still fairly unique. Just you in a forest jumping dozens of feet in the air, blocking shurikens with your sword and slashing through a seemingly endless wave of ninjas.
If you have friends around, definitely try both Bubble Bobble and Jackal.
I’m weird and would suggest trying Kid Kool until you get a water skipping jump to work (think like skipping a rock along the water), think to yourself what a unique mechanic that is, and then promptly quit playing as the game itself isn’t that good.
The most action-packed NES ninja game (well, FDS not NES strictly speaking – actually the best reason to bother with the FDS at all) is Nazo no Murasamejou, a Nintendo EAD title:
I still have lots of love for Low G Man.
Clash at Demonhead is still weird as shit.
I play through Ducktales 1 and 2 every year around Thanksgiving.
Really just most of the Capcom + Disney output is solid.
Kabuki Quantum Fighter is neat, but not good as I recall.
Thanks EVERYONE for some crazy recommendations. I’m not even going to claim I’ve touched most of them. Actually I remembered I never touched Dr.Mario and I spend some time with that which was cool.
I’m intrigued by Base Wars for just be a crazy sports game. Faxandu seems like something worth checking out, but I think I might get wanderphobia, so I’ll see. Shatterhand looks cool. With a title like Street Fighter 2010, i’m in plus I recall some Mega ran song about it.
Not sure about stuff like Batman or Duck Tales, for me. I’m sure they’re great, but those have to contend with being properties that will evoke, why am I not playing something more modern symptoms I think? I know a lot of people love Mother, but I couldn’t’ stomach Earthbound so I doubt it’s predecessor would do much for me.
Glad someone mentioned Kung Fu 
Again tons of games, I’ll keep digging through this mile long list.
HAHA, man thanks for making this a SB thread. But really? The all stars look and feel is FANTASTIC. Different strokes I guess, but All-Star fits my pallet much better. But overall I think the Snes is when video games finally took flight for creativity over simply overcoming technical limitations.
To the conversation @Broco started. I agree I think less of these games will hold up. But I also think there’s some novelty, and often more consideration and charm than put into a lot of budget steam games. There’s something cool though to knowing these games came out nearly all of them were breaking some ground, and so you get some crazy stuff you wouldn’t see these days. Also I’m not slighting you in any way, but I left my inital post open because frankly I dont’ know a lot about the NES catalouge, and I wanted people to post whatever, because I was hoping for ‘good’ games. But how many will I really play to completion? Maybe one? But just poking around and having fun is the goal, and I never would of though of something like Base Wars, or… frankly about any of these.
To your point about Shovel Knight. First Shovel Knight is not an NES game. It wouldn’t fit on an NES cartridge and wouldn’t run in an NES emulator. I’m sure you know all of this. While yes it’s great homage, it’s not authentic. THANK GOD FOR THAT. I love Shovel Knight and if they had hampered it I’m sure I wouldn’t. It’s one of the best games I’ve played in years, but it is a modern game, with modern sensibilities. I mean there’s a touch of Dark Souls in there.
But overall I agree. I have no overwhelming love for the NES, but who doen’t wanna tool around with some crazy games and see what’s out there?
I mean I realized my NES knowledge was basically a touch of the Marios, Zelda, Kirby, Metroid, Castlevania, Mega Man, TMNT, Marble Madness, that Adams Family game, and Duck Hunt. Clearly mostly classics, and I had room to expand my horizons.
I’m not sure why I play the NES version of Rainbow Island over the arcade one, but it’s my non-Katamari go-to feel good game.
Seconding Murasame’s Castle. If you wish all of Zelda were like the shooter-y Aquamentus and Gleeok fights it’s your game.
Base Wars also has totally baller music. Man, I love Base Wars.
Honestly, the approach that you’re using here may be a little askew. The reason to go to NES games will be less in terms of what they have to offer mechanically from a contemporary perspective; the main appeal here will be their method. It’s in the look, the sound, the technical limitations that result in the problem-solving that forms the basis of most of the design.
The most interesting things that you’ll find here are informed by these ephemera of a context that doesn’t exist anywhere else. Metroid isn’t interesting on the NES because of the shape of its world or what the buttons do; it’s because the game is both glitchy as fuck and designed so that most of its genuine surprises come off like possible glitches. The experience of playing the game feeds from a sort of cognitive dissonance between what you’re seeing and what might be, that creates a sense of endless possibility.
The best NES games feed into that dissonance, to create an idea that anything could be out there.
[To that end, Simon’s Quest is one of the most definitive NES games and one of my personal favorites. It is one of the less popular Castlevanias, in latter-day quantitative terms. Dial back your expectations in terms of what needs to be there on the basis of what’s in other games, and in terms of the experience that it presents I think it has more to offer than nearly any other game in the series.]
gosh. i love ya GM but ouch. this hurts my soul a bit. the SNES is when games began codifying and hardening themselves against the chaotic, fumbling creative energy of the NES days. it’s in the eye of the beholder whether turning the wild west into the suburbs is a good or bad thing, but give me the goddang wild west any day. this is similarly why i prefer the psx to the ps2.
I guess I mean to say that the experience of the NES is one of uncertainty. The system is like a Schrodinger’s Box. Nothing is clearly defined except in the moment of experience – a moment that for all you know may never be recaptured.
It’s childhood myth and legend encoded in inconclusive living hieroglyphics. Whispers in the night. Nightmares in silicon, filtered through corroded contacts, coaxial cable, and the roughly traced path of an electron gun.
Back then it was very hard to pass judgment on what was a “good” or a “bad” game; it was more that some things were more opaque than others, and better at hiding their secrets.
And then you get to the chaos wrought by the Game Genie, which at first wasn’t exclusively a cheating device – it was a hacking device, allowing you to fundamentally alter the experience of playing. Make Mario walk backwards. Be Small Firey Mario at any time! Make the entire world black, so you have to feel your way around…
have you ever looked into the 8-bit computer scene of 80s uk? it was mostly teenagers making games up as they went along, and publishers would buy pretty much any game, since the demand for new titles was so high.
so there’s a lot of unrestrained creativity, with very little regard as to whether anything makes sense or whether any of the games are actually good
The European PC scene is a big vacant place in my experience. I like Turrican, you know? I like the demoscene. I like Tim Follin. I don’t really have a good feel for the dev scene and what it was like, and everything that informed it, and that it later informed.
It’s curious that it seems so much more informed by arcade games and Japanese console development than American PC games ever were up until John Romero and Tom Hall got involved.
that’s probably one of the things i know the least about, but i’m passionate about all games and that stuff sounds right up my alley
i have a fair bit of knowledge about the msx, c64, and amiga libraries, but the zx spectrum and the amstrad cpc (and others that maybe i don’t even know the name of?)… uh, i know a lot less about those libraries
Honestly I just don’t get the Spectrum. I know the affection that people have for it, but to me, from my distance and ignorance, that comes off as Stockholm syndrome.
The aesthetic definitely has its weird alien charm.
OH man this is just gonna be a difference between us. You and a lot on here really love the wild west, anything goes odd creative angle I guess. For me the SNES and PS2 were the best consoles. For their era they balanced what could be done with what should be done I think.
That chaotic fumbling creative energy as you put it I think is the charm anymore for most of these, and I appreciate it.
Like I was just playing metal storm and man is that a COOL game, but every step of the way it just felt like the game was held back by the system. You can see they wanted more depth, more colors, the use of more sounds, to have more active animations on the screen. You can see them cheating the specs at every turn, and man if they just made this on the snes, it would of been better, they could of made the game they wanted.