I Respect the NES, I Just Don't Like It 

The problem is you never played duck tales for NES

For those of us born in the 80s, it was a mind blowing thrill ride you didn't have to leave your house to enjoy. Some of the games were uninspired crap others tapped every bit of potential the system held. Super Mario Bros. was the Beatles of video games, there wasn't anything like it before and it changed everything going forward. The NES, Gameboy and SNES was Nintendo's golden age.

As an amateur game programmer who focuses on 2D, The NES serves as perfect inspiration on what mechanics to figure out how to implement. Yet again, I'm playing it more for research than out of dedication as a gamer. I recommend the NES game Felix the Cat. It's one of the best on the system in my opinion.

I used to think the same way about the NES, but as I’ve gotten older I’ve enjoyed it more and more. And it’s because I figured something out. Modern games are highly addicting, they’re just not FUN. It took me a long time to realize that when I’m playing this huge epic open world game that takes 100 hours…I’m not really having that much fun. I’m addicted, but I’m not really enjoying the PROCESS. I’m being led like cattle on a bunch of fetch quests across a vast open world that does nothing except waste my own time. The truth is, modern games haven’t changed much at all from the NES days, because once you experience a few hours worth of content, you’ve technically seen everything in the game. NES games might not be as addicting at face value, but they’re simply more fun to play. They respect your time, they give you a tight experience, and there’s no filler. NES games are like the electronic version of a board game…you get a fun little gameplay experience that you can mostly beat in a single afternoon. And that’s really what I like about them. When I play a modern game I feel like I’m committing myself to an entire month. It’s just…exhausting. Hogwarts Legacy was like my dream game for the longest time, and I was loving it at first, but the more I played, I started thinking “what am I DOING?”. It’s nothing but a time sink. It’s not challenging. And you spend 90% of your time running from A to B…like cattle. I just beat Super Mario Bros 1 and 3 in three nights. And I had an absolute blast. Mega Man, Castlevania, Legend of Zelda, Punch Out, etc…that’s where it’s at. Give me these games any day of the week.

My Nintendo Entertainment System was my most prized possession in life . After a long day of frustration and keeping up with the Joneses , Super Mario Bros was the only video game that centered me . A calming state of euphoria washed over me whenever I played that game .

I love the NES dearly, but I hate for having a lot of difficult games and so many people are blinded by nostalgia from it.

I was born in 1996 and still love the NES. I still play nowdays games like Contra, Megaman 2, FF1, Dragon Warrior 3, The Legend of Zelda, Super Mario Bros 3, Gradius, Punch Out, and soooo many other great fun games. NES is great, and liking it has nothing to do with "being a boomer".

I think more games took chances back then. Maybe because nothing was established or there weren't "genre formulas" or "game formulas" that get followed blindly like recipes. Some of those chances are going to land flat. I mean, I'm waiting for and RPG to do what Dragon Warrior 4 tried - attempting machine learning on an 8-bit console.

I am a man in my late 40s (who owns a modern gaming pc with an rtx 4090..good,luck affording that young blood..god damn Returnal) and grew up with the original atari, nes, genesis, snes, and arcades. You will never understand playing these games and the bonkers cultural influence it had at the time it was released. I love modern games and have a reverence for the nostalgia that was 70s, 80s, 90s and 00’s retro games and play many of them through emulation. The original Metroid aged poorly for sure but was groundbreaking at the time. Never liked kid Icarus. Ninja gaiden was lightening at the time. SNES was awesome for sure (my high school years).Fun video zoomer.

I grew up with a SNES, and that's where the gold is.

Getting past the dam stage on TMNT was what separated the men from the boys back in the day. Nothing like slowly swimming by electric plants while also rushing to disarm bombs.

You had me in the first half and your video was fun, but if 90% of your argument for most games is “I’m not good at them / I’m not a fan of the genre” than I think it’s just a you problem and not really a problem of the system. And this isn’t me nostalgia baiting either, I grew up in the same gen as you (probably younger) with the same modern touches of gaming. Of course passwords, weird Cryptic games, brutally hard difficulty aren’t for everyone but the NES does have great games not only for the time but in terms of how they hold up now, but idk I don’t think I’ll change your mind. One thing I will say is that you should have been much harsher on metroid 1, that game is complete dogshit and it’s astonishing the game survived past the first game

As a former SNES programmer and a videogame player since the mid-70s, I think that the NES was a huge step up for a home console. Prior to this, people were playing games on Atari, Commodore, and Sinclair home computers, which were graphically inferior. The problem with the NES is that it had limited capabilities compared to what came later. It had very little RAM, but programmers made the best of it. There are a ton of good games.

I always had that same feeling regarding the 5th and 6th generation consoles. The 5th generation was obviously revolutionary and laid the groundwork for 3d gaming, but the 6th generation streamlined the experience so much that I have a hard time appreciating the 5th gen consoles after playing on the 6th gen consoles.

I recently played the first Mario and Zelda all the way through for the first time and was pleasantly surprised. Mario has a ton of secrets that I missed cuz I refused to look anything up, and Zelda kept me busy for awhile trying to beat it without looking anything up. I think that's the way these older gens are supposed to be played. If you use the Internet to look up games that were made before the Internet you fly through them in a few hours, but if you play then without the Internet they can take you awhile to beat

Man you are making the NES sound like chasing a wheel with a stick

I like when folks who have no nostalgia for something talk about the thing. I also like when they also don't understand that high score chasing is a legit form of gaming, is still around, and many young people ALSO like it. :) 'Rich gaming experience' is amorphous language, btw. In Robotron 2084, I get a 'rich gaming experience' by having to deal with 'risk/reward' scenarios approximately 2 times per second and it's always happening. So in essence, 'rich gaming experience' the same as 'good movie'. Is it 'good good', 'good bad', 'bad good', etc. I think you tread unstable ground if you think there's going to be 'objectively good' or 'objectively bad' games, just like the uneducated folks that try to apply those same labels to other forms of art like books and movies. Be careful...

I was born in 1988, and I would tend to agree the NES is a bit hard to go back to, although it depends on the game, because some later NES titles near the end of the system's lifespan hold up better than you'd think. I would much rather play a game on newer hardware like the SNES than play the old NES version of it if given a choice. There have been a lot of remakes of the best NES games for newer hardware like SNES or GBA for instance. Another thing that really stands out is comparing the NES to something like the Sega Master System, the Master System is a little nicer, so I do think the NES was a bit dated even by the standards of the day. However, the SNES has aged much better and seems to represent the pinnacle of 2D game design in a lot of ways. The N64 is kind of the 3D era's NES, in the sense that it was revolutionary at the time, but kind of hard to go back to today. The Gamecube holds up much better than the N64 for a similar reason to why SNES tends to hold up better than NES, IMO.

If you were to start your NES experience with Super Pitfall you'd have taken your NES outside to the driveway doused it with gasoline and lit it on fire.

Try adventure island, Ufouria, shatterhand, vice project doom, little samson, mr gimmick etc.. They actually have a grasp of the console and not just overrated classics.

Very nicely put video, gives the insight of perspective of younger gamer, thank you! The reason why original Zelda and Metroid was so simple was because of hardware limitations. What are excuses for Metroid (Dread) and Zelda (BOTW) being so dumbed down on Switch? Linear Metroid with no exploration and heavy reliance on bosses? Zelda with no dungeons, bosses, items and story? That's not a progress.

I'm 27, but have still found a lot of NES games I really enjoy. SMB trilogy, Contra/Super C, original Castlevania are still very fun to go back to if absolutely nothing else. Third party games are incredibly hit and miss, but that goes for any legacy console. All said, I think 2D gaming got perfected with the Genesis.

Not good at Mario games on the NES? Did you play it on a CRT or a panel screen? That does make a difference being that the scaling process of HD screens can make the NES lag some frames. Also, if you want to try more refined NES games try The Guardian Legend or Willow. The Guardian Legend is much like a top down Metriodvainia meets a shoot em up and Willow is like the Legend of Zelda a link to the past with a level up mechanic.

Definitely hard to judge the NES on just the mini lol. There's a lot of gems on the console that didn't make it on to the mini.

I do have a strange love of NES style difficultly. Like I really enjoy the feeling of mastery I get when I slowly get further and further in a game like Castlevania or Battletoads where the game is brutally difficult but its short so you just slowly get better at it until you master it.

It’s just part of a certain generations growing up experience. You didn’t grow up on it so you can’t relate. It will happen to you with things you cherish from growing up with generations after you.

Honestly, between the three main 8-bit consoles of the mid to late 1980's era, I found the Sega Master System to be the easiest to go back to and play (after playing several modern games on Playstation 5), with the NES in 2nd place and the Atari 7800 being in 3rd place. The difficulty level of most NES and Atari 7800 games is really hard, so it takes a while to readjust to those after playing easier modern games. However, with some exceptions, I found the Sega Master System games to be of a nice medium difficulty (not easy, but not insanely hard either. Most of them have medium difficulty. Best example I can give for this is the Sega Master System version of Ghouls 'N Ghosts.... the difficulty is NOT hard for this version of the game, but not easy either, it's a nice medium difficulty that's just right, which I think is the best type of difficulty. Same goes for the Sega Master System version of Double Dragon, Rampage, and most other Sega Master System games. It also helps that the Sega Master System in general has nicer graphics than NES and Atari 7800. Also, Sega Master System has the best "deep gameplay" games since that console has the best 8-bit RPGs like Phantasy Star, YS: The Vanished Omens, Spellcaster, etc. Not saying there aren't any hard Sega Master System games (Thunder Blade is an example of a Sega Master System game that's insanely hard. Also, even games in the same series are different, for example, Alex Kidd in Shinobi World is an easier and more fun game than Alex Kidd in Miracle World), but most feel like they have a nice medium difficulty, which is just right and a lot more accessible than most NES and Atari 7800 games which are mostly insanely hard (with some exceptions here and there).

Love your presenting style. Looking forward to the next video!

You youngsters will never know the excitement of video games like we did in the 80's and we got to grow with it organically and see all the improvements with each generation. With had passwords then memory cards , and now unlimited storage. Old NES games would challenge you to beat a game on one sit down with no option to "save" and play later. Youngsters just complain and cry !!!

Your comedy is great in this video lol. NES is my favorite system but I think you make valid points. As far as Zelda goes, I actually like wandering and searching. I love the feeling of being lost and then finding the next thing I need or the next area to go. I feel most games hand hold too much nowadays. That is also why I love Elden Ring so much. It gave me the same feeling as Zelda. Good video man.

My oldest brother explained that Mario 3 required a special chip so Mario could fly up and to the right simultaneously. So when he flew diagonally that was a big deal back then. So really the 16 bit generation opened up the door for all sorts of good and original ideas that could be implemented, whereas the NES had a lot of limitations. But it was unreal for when it came out in 83 on the famicom.

I grew up with the NES and later the SNES. I remember when the games were new and the epic battle of Nintendo vs Sega at the time. I think your video was fair. You didn't grow up in that time period like we did. The original Metroid didn't age well and I completely agree about the lack of buttons for it (but it's worse that it didn't have an in game map). It's not a game I go out of my way to go back to and play by any means. Back then we'd have to make our own maps for those types of games if we didn't see a guide in a gaming magazine. Some people liked that, but that wasn't for me when I was a kid. The NES will always be special for me for the memories I have from it. The SNES is still my favorite console of all time and it's for many of the very same reasons you brought up. Better graphics, better game design, etc., and also some of the absolute best video game sound tracks ever made were done on the SNES. As for NES games to play, I do think the NES mini you have is a good start, but here's some of my favorites from the time (in no particular order): Ducktales The Guardian Legend Mega Man 6 (my favorite in the series) Mega Man 4 (the first one I beat) Mega Man 2 (the first one I played) Star Tropics The Legend of Zelda Super Mario Brothers 3 Chip n' Dale Rescue Rangers Tetris (the official Nintendo release) Tetris (the unofficial Tengen version) Dr. Mario Wario's Woods Yoshi's Cookie Puch Out! Castlevania Super Dodge Ball Fair warning, NES games are well known to induce gamer rage. Today's flat screen TVs and monitors can't take the same beating that CRTs did from thrown controllers. If you throw controllers while playing these games, try to direct your rage away from the TV. Also be aware of input lag. This isn't as much of a problem on PC with an emulator, but for TVs and mini consoles, it can be and "gamer mode" on the TV doesn't always fix it. These games were not made for modern displays and it does become a problem with high action games and can still drive you nuts with slower paced games. Back in the day where we'd play them over and over again and master them due to the limited selection available to us. It wasn't like today where we could download 10 games for cheap and finish each one in about 10-20 hours at most. Back then, games were not very accessible and a many were like $70 in 1980s money which means they'd be well over $100 today so most kids didn't own a lot of them. Most kids only owned a dozen or so of them and traded/borrowed other games with friends or sent to the video rental store to rent a game. They were harder due to the industry still figuring out mechanics we take for granted today, and they were left harder to keep gamers playing them for longer given that they wouldn't be switching off to the next game very soon. This led to the term, "NES hard" and gave rise to gamer rage. Some of my favorites more than qualify as "NES hard" and even that's only the tip of the iceberg as you eventually explore the NES library to learn more about this console. On the easier side there is Mega Man 5, though while I didn't list it since I didn't play it as a kid, it's the easiest of all the classic Mega Man games. Ducktales is also pretty easy IMO, but can be a little challenging the first time through if you're not used to NES platform games yet.

Like you can't just play a few games and say "well the system is lackluster". You have to dive deep into the NES and play ALL of the games. There are actually like over 100 brand new homebrew games being made today in the 2020's from modern developers. The NES classic is only Nintendo's flavor of what the system has to offer, but really the NES has tons of software and experiences to get into.

I think one issue with your approach is the selection of games. Nintendo wanted to include the first games of their most icónica series, and they do not hold up, as you say. But there are maaaany games that are not there that have a more modern game design. There are also many simpler games that didn't make it there, that are fun to play from time to time. Try late games from Jaleco, or Natsume... almost anything Capcom or Konami.

I used to feel the same way about the NES. But I’ve learned to really love it.

Nes is still my favorite system. Nothing beats the charm, challenge and nostalgia and I'm actually too young to have grown up with it. I bought the Nes i have today when I was in the 6th grade. It's survived an apartment fire which my Xbox One did not. I am still collecting and playing Nes nearly everyday. I still beat the fuck out of my Nes (with love) when it stops working for no reason. Over 200 games in my humble collection but its my pride and joy. Nothing takes away the pain, trials and disappointments in life like my Nes. Nothing makes me feel better and more like a kid on Christmas morning than getting a boxed Nes game. Just picked up Robowarrior. What a neat game. Just thought you should know, if you're trying to show Nes as obsolete, not accessible, boring, frustrating. It can be all those things but much more.

It’s too hard for him....he needs to save it every second.

I find the nes and the n64 to be like this because they feel like they’re the equivalent of those old cars from the 29s because they’re clunky and controll in a smoothly

I love the NES and the memories that I had playing it. One of the biggest issues I have with the NES is that it has so many games that you have to beat in one sitting, and so does the Genesis. Mario 3 doesn't have any save or password function, which means if you are playing it without warp whistles, it will take about 5 hours. The SNES gave us a lot of games with save function and many of the games that didn't had passwords.

I can respect it. This isn't a typical Gen Z rant about how everything before their time is awful. It was a reasoned and measured and ultimately fair critique.

There is something that I think gets lost when playing games wayyyyy after they are current. I grew up with the NES and love so many of those games. It’s still hard to go back to the NES in some cases. Not as hard as the Atari 2600 or the Vectrex. I do remember something that was sinister or scary about many NES games, like Zelda or Metroid, playing late at night and worrying you are going to get killed and lose your progress. But I think you can appreciate something without necessarily liking it.

I generally agree with this. As someone who loves NES games and 8-bit games in general, many of them are an acquired taste. You have to get used to and then actually enjoy the conventions of the time, including the difficulty. In other words, they're not for most people. I think the arcade ports and similar style games of the timecan be enjoyable for what they are, but most sidescrolling and top-down games of that era too difficult for most people today. There's really only a few of those types of game from that era, across all platforms, that I would recommend to modern gamers, at least in single player mode. * Super Mario Bros. - only with the continue code (hold A and press start to continue from the first level of the world you got game over in) * Doki Doki Panic - unlimited continues and saves make this game more friendly than Super Mario Bros. 2 (USA) to modern gamers * Super Mario Bros. 3 * Metal Gear (MSX2) * Metal Gear 2: Solid Snake * Kirby's Adventure That's all I can really think of. Most other games of those styles (top-down and sidescrollers) either start too hard or quickly become too hard to be enjoyable to most modern gamers. And that's completely understandable. Modern games are designed completely differently. There may be some games that are enjoyable in multiplayer, such as Contra, as the focus is more on having fun together than beating the game. And, as you say in the video, the SNES is way more accessible to modern gamers.

These are fair points, and I understand how the NES can seem primitive or hostile to people who grew up after it. I did grow up with an NES, but I didn't experience _The Legend of Zelda_ or _Metroid_ at the time, and I do have similar feelings about their rough edges as you do. That said, I would maintain that the NES is _objectively_ still a fun experience today.

Rc Pro Am, Skate or Die, Tecmo Super Bowl, Bart vs Space Mutants, Metal Gear, Battletoads, Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles 1 + 2, Ice Hockey, Kung Fu, Skate or Die 1 + 2, Double Dragon 1 + 2 + 3, Ghosts and Ghoblins, Marble Madness, Blades of Steel. So many classics on the NES.

I do enjoy NES games. But you have to be in the mood for them now. It’s like 8-Bit is its own genre on its own. Adventure, shooters, RPGs, Racing, etc. being a sub genre of 8-bit. With that mind set you will actually manage to get into them. Like watching black and white films. The good news is that many NES games are fine with playing for a bit and putting them away for a while too. They are simple and fun.

Honestly, as someone born in 1980 I was like the perfect age to grow up with the NES. I remember the end of the Atari end and how AMAZING Super Mario Bros was in comparison. That being said, other than some of the major tent pole games, I don't really go back and play most of the NES catalogue, and I certainly can see why someone born in this millennium would be even less interested in going that far back. Like, Space Invaders was the greatest thing ever in the 70s, and I'm definitely not sitting down to play that lol

Both the Atari 2600 and I arrived in 1977. I have seen video games and consoles develop and progress. I do remember rotary phones, and the early days of cable TV even though I'm Gen X and not a Baby Boomer. I remember when you had to tune in to a TV show when it was broadcast and reruns were pretty much non-existent if the show didn't go into syndication. I agree today his a lot better than those days I remember growing up. Yes, the NES games are hard. I think they were hard for several reasons: arcade game principles (as you mentioned), the fact that games were roughly $50 in 1980s so you spent a lot of time with fewer games and that meant the learning curve had to be greater, and Nintendo had successfully prevented cartridge games from being rented in Japan where they couldn't here in the US so the games were made harder to encourage you to buy the game instead of renting. The NES was pretty much dated hardware when it came out here in 1985 and the step up with the SNES pretty much meant it was superior in every way. However, both consoles used a design that meant the cartridge was actually part of the motherboard of the console itself. Many of the games with better graphics and sound were not just the result of better programming techniques as they learned the system, but the cartridges themselves contained extra chips to expand the capabilities of the system on an individual game level. Consoles today aren't designed like that. While I love Final Fantasy, I don't think I'd play the NES version of it again. It had bugs that almost made it broken and the bugs kept the thief from being an effective or even a good choice to play in your party. The games were so cryptic back then you HAD to read the manual or have a strategy guide for any game that had a story more complex than "Big ape stole girlfriend." I had a subscription to Nintendo Power (back then websites were sent through the USPS to your house on a recurring basis) and I received the Final Fantasy Strategy Guide the same day my brother bought the NES and rented the Final Fantasy game from Blockbuster just to try out. We probably would have given up on the game if we didn't have the guide. I agree with you that while the NES was influential, but if there is an updated version of the game on newer hardware, it would be a better experience to play the newer versions. I still have my NES, and a Retron 5, and I do occasionally play an old NES title, but while I have some nostalgia for it, it isn't my favorite console. For the most part, the quick games I enjoy to burn 20 minutes or so, are implemented better on newer hardware. And the RPGs I enjoyed from my youth are definitely better implemented on today's hardware and offer a much richer experience.

I feel like the main issue tends to be the focus on games released within the first few years of the platforms lifespan, which while those games are fine still feel a bit stuck in the past especially today a lot of late releases on both the Famicom and NES are still worth going back to, especially some of the RPGs and other hidden gems also just my opinion, but the Famicom is simply the better console to play these games as the NES lacks certain features such as the 15 pin expansion port and most notably expansion audio so games like Lagrange Point and Gimmick! flourish on Famicom with its music but if you tried playing these games on NES you'd only hear the stock 5 audio channels the console can output

NES is a console that you just had to be there in the 80s. Sure the Genesis and SNES have mostly better versions of everything the NES has in its library, but at the time the NES was a juggernaut. It will always be my favorite console for those memories alone, even if I can play better versions of those games on successive hardware.

Back in the day, the NES and earlier systems felt a lot better than they actually were because we didn't know video games could be any better. And I'm not talking about the graphics and the sound; most NES games were badly-designed (too difficult and frustrating). If there was no nostalgia value, only a handful of NES games would still be played today. Super NES is where I think video games really came into their own. Dozens of those games are still good games by today's standards.

Better solutions ? Do you really think that I had any "Drifts" on my controllers back then ? Do you really think that I had any needs to wait 1 hour to install patches and updates before playing a game back then ? Do you really think that I had any disgusting squared pixels on CRTs back then ? Etc...etc... Modern does not equals better ! Sometimes yes it is but generally, old style cooking from grandma taste 100 times better than the fast food down the street. 😛

Does Josh do other content? He is either way more experienced than the size of the channel would suggest, or a total natural. Well done. Some great nostalgia.

I feel the same way brother. My older brothers grew up on the NES. I remember playing it but it wasn’t until the SNES that got me into video games. The NES is legendary but it’s definitely a product of its time

I grew up with the game boy and Super Nintendo as my first game systems and I felt this way about the nes back then. Great video!

Nice job on the video. We grew up on the NES so it’s difficult to be objective, totally understandable why kids born mid to late 90s and later would have trouble truly appreciating it. You’re 100% right that Super Nintendo, took everything the NES did right and amplified it, while trimming the fat on areas that were not as well done. I think your sticking point that the NES controller has so few buttons is one of the most appealing things for the people (like us) who adore the system. It’s great being able to fire up a game and start playing right away without having to get acclimated to complicated controls (not that SNES has complicated controls). Everything is right there under your thumbs. Keep revisiting, you’ll find games that truly hook you. And try the original Contra, it doesn’t have the arcade feel you mentioned about Super C. -Cast

The NES should be judged within the context of it's time, because it was the best system of it's day and dominated the console market to the point of essentially having it all to itself until the 16-bit erra arrived later on

you seem to be missing the part where atari and nes both had space limitations (ram and rom) for their decade that limited the complexity of games. reusing tiles saved both ram and rom but 4kb doesnt leave much room for complexity. even the nes at 256k+ for rom size was paltry and required reusing assets. this isnt as big an issue these days with space being cheap but you will fill up an ssd fast with 100gb games so the pain is still there in a different way. despite the graphical limitations the games are fun regardless - Kaboom! and Combat! are still fun (i think) because of their design. Adventure is also fun when you consider how much complexity they eeked out that it all fit in 4kb of rom. I think zelda 1 and metroid 1 are as fun as 2d games you can find now (undermine, neon abyss, noita) yes newer games are shinier and have way more content and side quests but the core mechanics that make it fun arent better. fun is fun. breath of the wild mechanics were first tried out on a zelda 1 style 2d sandbox to see if they would make sense and be fun in 2d. so there's that.

Tengen Tetris > Nes Tetris Tengen Tetris has multiplayer for 2 players playing at the same time in vs and coop game modes plus you can also play alone or with a CPU on vs and coop game modes Nes Tetris does not End of the story.

Ah, the ole "Was it really so great?' take. Original.

I don't know.. you grew up with PS2 when you were a kid, then had cell phones throughout all your life.Nintendo was quite amazing when it came out. Was better than Coleco and the graphics was very much advanced compared to Atari. It was a different time. We had friends to stay for the night to try to finish a game instead of online gaming. The only competition there was on the original NES is really Sega Master System. Wonder if you'll criticize/or love that too?

I feel the same way about atari 2600. I respect the pioneering, but I don't like the system. It was before my time. NES is what made me a gamer. I can understand where you're coming from because this was before your time lol Very interesting to hear coming from the younger generation the opinions of 80s and 90s gaming

I would recommend... Rygar and Life Force if you didn't grow up with Nes... maybe Faxanadu. Micro Machines is fantastic racing if you like racers. There is a lot of too hard design, even as a kid I was frustrated by how obtuse it can be. But there are still those titles I can play today.

Try Toki, Dream Master, Sword Master, Solbrain, Bucky...

I have no use for the Atari VCS. The 2600 was revolutionary for it’s time, but there isn’t a single game I want to ever play on it again. The controller was clunky. The graphics are unbelievably primitive. The sound is abysmal. It just has no draw for me at all. Now, the NES? I love the NES for all it gave us. Yet, you make some good points. There are only a few games I really want to go back and play. Most of the games, I could do without. Give me the Mega Man series, Metroid, Legend of Zelda, Mike Tyson’s Punch Out!!, Castlevania series, Super Mario Bros. 2 and 3, Funal Fantasy III (yes, the Japanese one), Marble Madness, Tetris, the Ninja Gaiden series, Double Dragon (the original) and a handful of others, and you really have all you need. Oh yeah, Duck Hunt. That’s a classic.

The rather limited sound and 3 visible colours per sprite just doesn't cut it for me, witch is strange because I love the ZX Spectrum and most games on that were completely monochrome!

I guess I should be lucky to be able to actually enjoy and respect the evolution of gaming firsthand. I'm not trying to hate, actually I'm in the same boat in one way, I can't really get into anything earlier than SMS or NES. But man do I envy all the people who grew up and enjoyed playing ATARI, INTELLIVSION, and the numerous 8-bit Mini Computers.

I hope it was intentional that the "person waiting for the guy ahead of him to finish his turn on the arcade machine" (sometime in the 80s) was on his cell phone.

I like his calm, non yelling personality. Subd

A lot of modern games wouldn't be where they are today if NES and other retro consoles didn't take the first leap. SNES will naturally be the superior console because it learned from NES, just like the consoles after SNES learned from its shortcomings--that's how evolution in gaming works. Or rather, evolution in general. It's a bit unfair to compare an older generation to a newer one because home gaming had to start somewhere. It's like saying the original light bulb sucks because it doesn't illuminate the room as well as a modern one. Yet, it's because the original light bulb laid the foundation for the newer and better one to shine more brilliantly. A terrible analogy (and I'm too sleepy to think of a better one), but you get the point. A lot of people hold NES games in high regard because that's where a lot of folks' journey began. If you were a kid in the 80s and 90s, NES felt magical. We didn't know the perks of having more buttons because we didn't think we needed them. We accepted the games for what they were and enjoyed them because it was something new and fresh at the time. Sure, we can look back at the games now and realize what could be done to improve them on a fundamental level, but only because of the advancement in the hardware and mechanics of modern era. Without that foresight into the future (not to mention hardware limitations), what were they supposed to do? Nowadays, they're re-released for the sake of history, preservation, and most importantly, nostalgia. That way, younger generations can see and experience what challenges their favorite franchises went through when they first started, as well as how these games appealed to people back in that era. Some can't appreciate it, and that's fine. Older gaming won't appeal to everyone, but some younger folks do enjoy it. It always puts a smile on my face when seeing my little nephew have a blast with older games.

Kind of my thoughts. The NES is fine, no one can deny it changed the industry, but.. I feel little need to go back to it. Mind you, Its a little before my time, born in '92. There are a few games to go back to, like the Mario games, but the majority of the games are kind of jank. The games were created in a time when game design was less refined. The majority of the "NES difficulty" is just shit design and unfair difficulty. Its is hard to want to go back to the NES when the SNES exists. SNES games look better and generally play better. Many of the series on NES have much better sequels on the SNES.

You wanna play some fire ass NES games? Play River City Ransom, Monster Party, Totally Rad, Kick Master, Shatterhand, Power Blade and Little Samson.

I play Zelda II to this day. Today on emulator, beause it would be too much work to setup my NES just for one game I could play on emulator. Zelda II is extremely ahead of its time, its gameplay I can't find in any other game to date. It have the perfect sidescroller sword-shield combat (but only fully enjoyable at the end of the game because that is where most humanoid strong enemies are). I play Zelda II today with the same mindset I play Sekiro nowadays, to mess with the extreme precise and fast paced combat. Mainly I fight the blue Iron Knuckles, both the boss version and the enemy; The blue chackal at the final castle; Dark Link (the final boss); Those Lizard man with spears in the forest (they are fun because they came one at each side and by being extremely good you can handle both). I can't find this gameplay anywhere else!!! Today I play Sekiro only to fight Isshin again and again (the final boss), because he is just too much fun to fight against... kind of the same logic. And yes, First time I played Zelda II was on my NES. Today I play it on emulator. I have a lot of save states, one in front of each enemy I like to fight against. And sometimes I begin the game from zero. O also see some games such as Super Mario Bros. 3 as fun "passtimes". You begin to play to pass some time and when you see it you made a lot of progress... like Solitaire. Other NES game that got me very very hooked nowadays (yes, nowadays) was the Dragon Ball Z Gekshin Freeza... this game is a turn based RPG that uses a system of cards, something you never see after this series (ended in the Snes). When I first won my first battle (all battles matter, even the random ones, because battles are a few in this game when compared to standard turn based RPGs, they also take a looong time) I was hooked and played the game to completion. Unfortunately this game only exists in japanese, so you have to figure stuff out as you play along. Those are my 3 NES games that survived time itself. Very enjoyable and rewarding to play even nowadays. Zelda II and DBZ GF have a unique gameplay that you won't find anywhere else and they have a very high learning curve that feels totally rewarding once it "clicked" (just like Sekiro and Dark Souls games). Classics such as Ninja Gaiden, The Legend of Zelda, Contra, Super Mario Bros, Castlevania and etc. I don't see myself playing again, or they are too old (janky gameplay) or just plain cheap in terms of difficulty. Zelda II is fast paced and extremely precise, no bullshit when controling Link. I don't understand how people love an extremely imprecise and slow game like Castlevania 1 but hates this one.

Thanks for explaining the doki doki panic thing.. WE HAD NO IDEA. Also I read the title of the video in a thick Irish accent in my head and I'm really angry that you aren't Irish.

Hey there chief have you flashed the kernel and installed hackchi yet? I added a lot to my SNES classic.

All I have to say is: fair enough. You don't like JRPGs, you don't like arcade-like experiences on a home console. Those two elements are at the core of the NES. ROM capacity of the time was limited to allow games that could be beaten in about 20 minutes to half an hour. Because game prices back then, adjusted for inflation, were about the same as are today, designers artifically increased the difficulty of games requiring mastery, and intending the experience out to days, if not weeks and even months in some cases to see the ending. Personally, I return to the NES specifically because of the simplicity. But that's not everyone's thing. If you don't like arcade-like experiences even if the game isn't a port from the arcade, then hey, you do you. The NES maybe isn't for you.

I had the atari and the nes. I would play the nes for hrs. It was one of the only things we did back then.

I started on the 2600 and the NES... and yeah, they kind of suck. Sometimes guys my age get defensive about these things, but I agree with just about everything you said. I respect these systems, have many fond memories (and sizable collections!), and they began my lifelong appreciation for video games. They're also very, very hard to go back to outside of a handful of titles that essentially were ahead of their time. Even some of the standouts like the Mario and Zelda games had vastly superior sequels that I'd play before their NES ancestors--and that goes beyond the first party market to include games like Castlevania, Contra, and TMNT. I'm also a huge fan of the SNES (and Genesis, to a lesser extent), as I think that's where console gaming really found its footing. There are a lot more titles on the SNES that I can pick up, replay, and have a blast--and some I do regularly. It's still one of my favorite systems in terms of the quality of games and general fun factor, while the NES and 2600 don't even crack my Top Ten. But the NES was an absolute revelation, not just saving the industry but building a foundation for everything we have today, and I'll always love it for that!

NES games are simpler, shorter but hard. The games also cost like $50-$80 bucks a pop depending on the game. They had to extend the life of them somehow for you to get your money's worth.

Every system built on the one that came before. But the NES was the first "good" system, in that you were actively exploring worlds, and could engage in a game for more than 10 or 20 minutes without getting bored. A ton of Atari games were single screen ones, and were very repetitive. And even then, out of the roughly 700 games on the Nintendo, I'd argue maybe only 100 of them are really good? Most of the stuff in a series-Mario Bros, Contra, Zelda, Dragon Warrior, Double Dragon, Mega Man and then other staple titles like Punch Out and Metroid. For every good or excellent game on the NES, there's at least 2 other stinkers. But the thing is, the good games were REALLY good, and I think many of them still pass the test of time.

Growing up playing Atari and NES as a small kid gave me the reflexes and stick-to-it-ness that allows me to laugh at stuff like Dark Souls. "Your game's hard and unfriendly?" ....."I grew up on games that actively cheated to beat me and then sent me back to the very beginning. Your game's a sweetheart."

Josh, please check out Blaster Master, Journey to Silius, Ducktales, Little Nemo, and Batletoads. You're going to find these a better representation of what is truly possible and chocked full of excellence.

As a person who grew up on the NES, I agree with you. Even when the NES was the state-of-the-art home console, I felt like most games were unplayable garbage. There were standouts like Kirby, Mega Man, Mario, Contra... but most titles were poorly designed and not fun to play. When the SNES came out, I thought "oh, THIS is what games are supposed to be like!" Most SNES titles were playable, even fun! But we still found ourselves going back to the NES, which was still receiving new releases like Mega Man installments.

I can understand this from your perspective. Although I was old enough to have potentially had an Atari, my first game console was NES. Therefore, I don't have any nostalgic memories for Atari.

Let's not forget that Nintendo cranked up the difficulty on their US releases because in the US game rental was popular and they didn't want to lose sales because people were just renting the games and beating them in like 2 days. This made games not just hard but _Nindendo hard_

It’s crazy how much of an improvement the SNES is to the NES for only being the next generation and still fairly early for video games as a whole, they just polished and cranked everything to the extreme, the NES just stands no chance.

Born in the '80s, grew up on the NES, and the problem I see with returning to it is that the Super Nintendo just has so many games that are "NES but nicer looking/more polished/more content, better QoL." Conversely, the reason why the SNES has aged so well is because until the explosion of good indie games in recent years, modern developers weren't trying to make games like that anymore.

This was a fun video, thx m8

Suggestions for you : Batman Double Dragon II Return of the Joker Crisis Force Vice Project Doom Recca Mr Gimmick Little Samson Metal Storm 3D World Runner Lagrange Point Totally Rad Moon Crystal Mighty Final Fight etc...etc...

With the original Metroid, the diagonals don't give you the ability to aim diagonally. UL or UR will cause you to shoot straight up while running left or right. Down is ignored while moving left or right. Once you get Screw Attack, that becomes your diagonal up attack. Any down presses will cause you to go into the ball mode. To hit low enemies, you would generally go into ball mode and use bombs or if they're heading toward a wall, wait for them to crawl up and then shoot them, and if you don't want to do either of those, you could just go get the wave beam. When you don't have the convenience of a lot of buttons, you have to think more about strategy rather than remembering which one of the many buttons to press on newer hardware.

As someone who got started with the NES, you're not wrong about a good amount of this stuff tbh. i do think the original Zelda holds up far better than the original Metroid or Final Fantasy 1 or Mega Man 1, but it's still a product of a time when players were expected to make their own maps and trade information with their friends to figure out what to do. Your love for Kirby's Adventure suggests your best place to look may be the less famous later releases on the NES; there are so many gems that remain hidden to this day because they had the misfortune of releasing after the SNES. Action platformers in particular were becoming much more refined by this point; some cool ones to check out include Bucky O'Hare, Zen the Intergalactic Ninja, Vice Project Doom (this one's easier than the others mentioned here BTW), Shatterhand, Kick Master, and Little Samson (best known for being the 2nd-most expensive NES game today). Each of these has some unique mechanic or incorporates other genres to make it stand out from the others. Or for side-scrolling beat-em-ups, Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles 3 came out in '92 and was a massive improvement over the much more popular TMNT2 (though it does get smoked by Turtles in Time tbf). Even among RPGs (not your genre, i know) Dragon Warrior IV was a late-era release that's pretty often considered the best RPG on the console today. And if we take it back just a little to 1990, Castlevania 3 blows the original out of the water (many branching paths & 4 playable characters w/ different endings) and is my pick for best NES game ever made. Ninja Gaiden 2 was also from that year and is right up there with the original - not as brutal with the difficulty, to boot! Honestly everything i said above about later NES games really began in 1990, and a lot of folks will point to that as the peak year of the NES because of how many major franchises had great games release on the console. In addition to the ones mentioned, Double Dragon 2 is a 1990 game that deserves mention as a candidate for the best 2-player beat-em-up on the NES, as it doesn't really have a superior 16-bit equivalent like TMNT does. Actually, one last thought: River City Ransom might be up your alley! It's a rare example of a beat-em-up that feels much more like a home game than an arcade game, to tie into one of your main critiques from this video. It has a quasi-open world structure with RPG elements such as leveling up stats, an item inventory & learning special moves over time. They do a tremendous job integrating all of this stuff into the core game, plus the co-op is some next-level shit with the game even having unique double-team moves!

You’re totally the kind of person who I would want to talk to about retro gaming. I like how approachable you seem and your sense of humor, and most of your points make sense. That being said, I massively disagree with your conclusion that the SNES necessarily made the NES harder to go back to, but the reason I understand you may not see much is simply because you haven’t played some of the NES games that weren’t included on the classic, but also opinions of what being “better” means also being varied. Plus you did say you aren’t great at NES games, I don’t blame you at all since they’re tough. Battletoads is infamously difficulty but I consider it classic and love it on NES, same with Battletoads and Double Dragon. SNES Battletoads and Double Dragon is quite good but not necessarily a new experience that ruins the old one, and Battletoads in Battlemaniacs, despite being a game I love nostalgically, kinda sucks compared to the NES version. Ninja Gaiden didn’t do anything on SNES besides releasing the trilogy version, which butchered parts of the NES ones anyway. Mega Man X was brilliant, but I feel like that only applied to X1 when it came to game design and care. X2 was good but certainly not groundbreaking, and X3 was forgettable. Moreover though, I don’t believe that X’s experience made the originals harder to play the way Super Metroid did it to Metroid, it’s just a different experience which makes both of them good. Castlevania 4 is one of my favorite games of all time, but it still feels different enough from the NES that I struggle to call it “better” or “worse”. The first game felt more like a puzzle platformer with how much planning you had to do, 4 was an fully action based platformer. Not to mention 2 being much more open to explore and 3 having split paths and extra characters, 4 would not replace that experience even if you don’t love 2. Contra 3 definitely did more than Contra 1 and Super C in terms of power ups and carnage to deal with in the stages, so maybe this one can apply that the SNES added stuff to the relatively plain NES physics in a way that didn’t totally alter the gameplay to be a different experience. But I still don’t apply this mindset because the controls of OG Contra and Super C were almost perfect to me as is, so while Contra 3 is a good game I think Contra 1 has aged extremely well. If you think it’s too arcadey for you I can kinda get it, maybe that’s preferential though. There’s also the SNES games/series that didn’t have predecessors on the NES. Donkey Kong Country, Yoshi’s Island, Star Fox, Indiana Jones and Star Wars trilogies (I know there were Star Wars games on NES but they weren’t exactly the same franchise the way previous series mentioned were), Chrono Trigger, and Super Mario RPG. All of those games are masterpieces, but they don’t replace NES greatness imo. You’re not completely wrong to be fair, there are some games that are harder to go back to on NES. TMNT 2 and 3 were fine, but after playing 4 it does feel a bit bare bones to go back (TMNT1 is a unique experience in and of itself). Gradius 3 makes the original Gradius nearly impossible to go back to, though at least Gradius 2 on Famicom is advanced enough to go back to - though I would still check out Life Force on NES, but only because it was a unique side series game compared to the main entries. Final Fantasy is a great example of this as well for obvious reasons. I recommend giving the NES more of a try, after all it’ll fulfill your funny plot twist punchline at the end.

Big thing about games back then like Zelda, Mario 3 and Metroid was they were built so you’d share discoveries with friends at school. Or the 1-800 number of course. That element of gaming is lost

So I'm 48. Knew people that had the Atari 2600 and got to play; our Dad went the route of the Intellevision and we had a neighbor friend who had Colecovision. The NES was the first console that was mine alone, and later got the Genesis with my brother, and bought the SNES myself. That said, there were some games I got really into on the SNES, but overall the system didn't grab me as much, maybe because I was far more into sports games at that point. That said, maybe it was timing for me, but I can still go back to NES games and have loads of fun. After that, I actually enjoy more games on the Genesis than I do the SNES. I agree with a lot of your points, except the NES games were just flat out FUN and engaging. Yep, they were incredibly difficult oftentimes. This has a lot to do with the fact that reflexes and timing were still an essential component to effective gaming (as they were in the previous generation of consoles), but the games were now complex enough that you really had to figure things out to progress on many of them. They really would challenge your brain, sometimes your reflexes, and sometimes both. Not everyone had the gaming magazines at this point (like they would in the following generation of consoles), so it was either you figured it out or it was passed on word-of-mouth. The one significant downside I would suggest is the boxiness of the controllers could be REALLY hard on the hands after a while. But even the graphical limitations are somehow endearing to me... I still love the constant sprite flicker of the original Tecmo Super Bowl.

I appreciate this perspective. I grew up with the NES and undoubtedly am biased in favor of it, but I also see all the flaws it had. Basically I see it this way: about 15% of the games in its library are legitimately incredible and stand among the best ever made; the other 85% are split between unplayable garbage and flawed-but-memorable games. The latter kind I think accounts for the largest share of uncalled for nostalgia, as the "memorable" parts were sometimes just a cool aesthetic, gimmick or novel concept which our young imaginations then over-amplified.

Ok you redeemed yourself with the end, snes is my favorite console of all time next to ps2. Maybe because I was born in 81 I can appreciate both

I agree. I had the original NES back in the 80s and don't really enjoy playing any games on it today. A bit of a a nostalgia kick is all I really get from playing these games.

There are a few games that are worth going back to, but unless its Mario 3 or Kirby they will be quite frustrating.

I think Mario 3 and maybe Kirby's adventure are the only decent games on the console. I think the 16bit consoles are lightyears ahead of the NES and have huge libraries of games that hold up.

It's mostly Americans who vastly overrate the NES and claim it "saved gaming". In Europe there was no videogame crash. We had 8 bit computers, ZX spectrum, C64, the Amiga, Atari ST. The Master System was the best selling console behind the Megadrive and then SNES. The NES is just not ingrained in European culture like America. Not until Mario 3 and TMNT arcade were released did it get any traction.

5:24 the world map in smb3 doesn't let you go back and replay levels