It’s hard to describe just how exciting Zelda was to young people now. When it first came out there was nothing like it. The closest was adventure on the Atari 2600 and that was incredibly simple. Zelda was so revolutionary. It created a new genre
Other than the game boy additions (which I never got into). I have played (and conquered) every Zelda game since the first one. Were you not fascinated by that shiny GOLD cartridge?
Now that I think about it. Mario 3 is a game I've played on NES, SNES, GBA, WII and now the switch. Easily one of the most replay-able games of all time
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It is DEFINITELY one of the greatest games ever! Lolo defined that kind of character-based puzzle game. Before that, most puzzle games were things like Tetris. No hate on Tetris, it's great. But the idea of moving a character around in an environment to solve complex puzzles with (potentially) multiple solutions, items, enemies, etc.. what a wild ride in the 80s. I went back and played the original again last year and it was still great.
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As a die hard megaman fan who played the entire series as a child, mega man 3 was the one that captured me the most. It had all the awesome elements of megaman 2 and improved upon it.
Look at how he made the music for EB, there is a whole video on it. If you are a fan of music (The Beatles for example) it will blow your mind. Genius and it really shows the power of the snes apu, which was a decade ahead of pc sound!
@@leeartlee915 Oh yeah. Thats them. The Earthbound one is very memorable. The SNES had sampling capability, and many of the songs are actual recordings from real songs (*remixed obviously).
chip n dale , TMNT, Mega man 2. punch out, mario bros, battletoads, little nemo dream master, Duck Tales, Contra, Ninja Gaiden, paper boy, double dragon, and others…… so many childhood memories
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What did Rare have on the SNES? The three DKC games, sure. Those are amazing. What did Konami have, though? Super Castlevania IV and Dracula X, The Legend of the Mystical Ninja (and all other Goemon games that stayed in Japan), Contra III, Pop'n Twinbee, 3 Parodius games, Tiny Toon Adventures, Sparkster, and Gradius III. I think that's a better lineup.
@@Krisipoke Battle Toad was also on the SNES and Killer Instinc. But still, my point was that Konami back in the day was a legacy. That logo meant quality.
If im not mistaken, it was developed during the latter part of the NES lifespan. Devs pretty much know how to maximize all NES resources by that point.
Contra and Excitebike were my 2 favorites growing up. I loved how Contra started over after you beat it but was harder and started to send men after you from behind. My record was beating the game 3 times without dying one time. Good memories.
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Chip and Dale rescue rangers is one of my all time favorite NES game (along side DuckTales, Startropics, and SMB 3) so happy to see it included in a list finally!
@@Heliocentric I played Zanac as a youngin' and then 13 years later picked it back up, just messing around one day...and I beat it! I was bonkers. I didn't think it was possible but it happened. It was like I was in a zone. When the game sees you doing well, it goes ape trying to throw everything at you. I somehow kept dodging everything for what seemed like forever...
As someone who has owned and beaten Crystalis, I think it’s fun, quirky and interesting. But forced level grinding, obtuse puzzles, and the absurd difficulty spike once you hit Dragonia make it more of a cult classic than “best ever.”
This is more of a "which games held up best" with a few early classics thrown in, made by younger people who didn't grow up with the nes, at the time. There were definitely games that were considered far and away better than a lot of the games on the list, back in the nes's day. To me, Kid Icarus, double dragon 2 and mario 2 has to make any top 20 list.
Hey Zion, you should do a video on the NES homebrew community! Some of the best NES games I’ve played have been developed in the last 10 years (yes, games developed to run specifically on an NES). It would be a great way to shed light on some incredible indie developers!
Well, they aren't really NES games, then. It's cool people do that, but you can't take design philosophy and even comprehension of the hardware nearly 40 years after a system debuts and compare it directly to what people were doing and could do then. In terms of them being counted as some of the best "NES" games.
@@DeltathRiylaan They are though. They use the exact same limitations as NES designers had back then. Look up the video “How we fit an NES game into 40 kilobytes” and you’ll see what I mean.
@@benhmedia My point is they have almost FOUR DECADES of game history, design philosophy as well as the inspiration of every NES game every made, plus decades of understanding the capabilities and limits of what an NES can and can't do, plus the software and technology to reproduce that work for an insignificant fraction of the budget and effort that went into it in the 80s. It's not a fair comparison. You may as well take two students in a classroom and give one a supercomputer and six weeks to study for a math test then give the other student an abacus and no time at all to study for the same test and then grade them both just as harshly. Just look at the games made at the start of a console generation versus the ones from just a few years later. The difference can be staggering in a few years with the same hardware as costs go down, developers understand the tools more, inspiration comes from other released games, etc. I'm not saying they aren't good or that they can't be amazing, but they can never and will never be true NES games that can be compared or contrasted and placed on lists of "best NES games of all time".
@@DeltathRiylaan That is a reasonable comparison, and I do see your point. I guess I should have been more clear in my original comment: I think NintendoLife should make a completely separate video highlighting the NES homebrew community, and how they bring fresh modern game design to an old console.
Crystalis, The Guardian Legend, Faxanadu, and Battle of Olympus are absent from this relatively mainstream list, which gives me the impression whoever decided this list probably didn't grow up with the NES because those were some of the best games on it.
As someone who was born in 95, this really brought home just how young videogames are as a medium to me. Like, I already knew, but in the context of how long I've been alive vs how long home console gaming has been a thing... it's pretty wild to think about. (I know some consoles came before NES, though admittedly I don't know a lot about them.)
As someone born in 1980 who remembers a world before Nintendo, it's been quite a ride. I personally miss the simpler, fun times of gaming over the modern scene.
Same, I was born in 93 and grew up in the PS1/N64 era and as a kid NES era felt like a long time ago, when it really wasn't... I think that's probably because of the massive advances made in graphics/hardware capabilities in the late 80s-mid 90s. We'll never see a jump like that again.
Here's a fact that might blow your mind (sorry for being two years late): the earliest video games were built out of radar equipment in the mid 20th century. Google "tennis for two" and enjoy the rabbit hole. ❤
My top 5: Super Mario Bros. 3 Dragon Warrior IV Mega Man 3 Castlevania Kirby Adventure I wish Zelda and Metroid hadn't aged like milk and were possible to beat without a guide or farming.
@@ultrairrelevantnobody1862 I get that. Honestly the fact that I can play 3 while my wife tries to kill me with the Debug mode makes it all the sweeter to me!
"Super Mario Bros. 2" will always be one of the best NES games to me, and I think it deserves as much love as the other games in the series regardless of it being a re-skin of the Famicom Disk System game "Doki Doki Panic", especially since there was more to its development than one may realize.
Yeah, like how actually ORIGINALLY it was supposed to be a Mario game, but then got shelved, then brought back and turned into Doki Doki Panic as a licensed game. So really, the Mario version, SMB2, is arguably what the game was originally supposed to be in the first place. Heck, even Doki Doki had some Mario items in it that were not added in the SMB2 reskinning, such as the starman and pow block, those were in Doki Doki Panic and were already-established Mario items.
@@legoboy7107 Exactly, and I think it's also surprising that most people fail to realize that "Doki Doki Panic" was actually made by the same development team that worked on the original SMB game, especially since Shigeru Miyamoto was even more involved in the game that he was in the Japanese version of SMB2, which was released in America under the name "Super Mario Bros.: The Lost Levels" (to which the US version of SMB2 was actually renamed as "Super Mario USA" when it was released in Japan).
@@mikeypierce3635 I still love playing "Super Mario Bros. 3" from time to time, especially since it has some of the best power-ups that Mario is able to use such as the Super Leaf, Frog Suit, and Hammer Suit. The problem with that game, however, is that it's way too long to beat on a single setting (unlike the SNES and Game Boy Advance versions, which have a save feature), and the fact that Luigi still looks like a pallet-swap of Mario despite his redesign in "Super Mario Bros. 2".
Really solid list. Having two best Megamans and Castlevanias is ok, but strange. Mighty Final Fight is technical wonder, but kinda obscure to add in. Where's River City Ransom, Tecmo Super Bowl and NES Open?
"River City Ransom" currently ranks 36th. "NES Open Tournament Golf" isn't ranked within the Top 50. "Tecmo Super Bowl" still needs 3 more reviews to qualify for the list, at which point it would actually rank 2nd or 3rd!
As an Olde I just want to push back a little on the notion that people only beat games like Zelda because of Nintendo Power, help lines, playground crowd sourcing, etc. It's not like we didn't talk about games, but without the internet, you'd be limited to a very small candidate pool. Literally just your in person friends. Who likely wouldn't own the same games. As for magazines and the silly phone thing... again, not everyone would have access to such things. We just beat games anyways. I do mean as little children mind you. All the cryptic stuff was just how things were so we were used to it. You'd figure it out because you had too, as such the clues put in the game by the devs were enough. So to say the experience of Zelda is different between now and then... well the only real difference is that you can go online and be told how to play it. If you choose to. If you don't? Then you have access to the the authentic 1980's Zelda play experience. Everything you need to know is in there, you just need time and patience. Whether or not someone used to modern games would even want try and burn all ten thousand bushes and bomb every tile is a different matter. But that didn't come across as some terrible thing back in the day, to my recollection, at the very least.
a Megami Tensei game on the nes??? I honestly never knew. I am going year by year until I get to the wii bcz thats the era I was alive for and played. And I thought I had to wait for the SNES to dive into Tensei-
@@gonkdroidincarnate4237 well... it was the Famicom. We didn't get digital devil story megami tensei 1 or 2. But it was remade on the super Famicom. Play that version.
Superb list! So many games could've been included (Battletoads, Metroid, Super Tecmo Bowl, etc.). Maybe seperate lists for different categories of NES games (sports, action/adventure, quest, fighting, games based on films/tv shows, shooters, etc.)? Great content, keep it coming!
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@Tom Ffrench I absolutely love the DQ series, but I always preferred the contemporary settings of the Mother trilogy. It just gives a sense of familiarity and relatability that DQ just doesn't give me. While I acknowledge that DQ was what helped inspire the Mother games to begin with, Mother is what molded that framework into something even better, in my personal opinion.
I think that Metroid is the best NES game, right up with Kirby’s Adventure. While I think Kirby’s easier to come back to, Metroid’s huge map is just amazing.
I can't believe it wasn't on this list! If you were a kid in the 80s and got that game, you didn't really know what it was and it sucked you in for many many hours
Blaster Master, Faxanadu, Solomon's key, Final Fantasy, Contra, Ninja Gaiden, Rad Racer, Milon's Secret Castle. Those were my young days, truly amazing games.
Quite solid list. Personally I missed some great shmups: Gun Nac, Crisis Force, Over Horizon. And good platform games: Felix the Cat, Kyatto Ninden Teyandee, U-four-ia, Moon Crystal. Interesting European games - James Bond jr. and Hook. And Capcom's classic dream world game - Little Nemo. Oh, almost forgot New Ghostbusters II.
Cool trivia fact about Kirby: He was named after the American lawyer John Kirby who helped represent Nintendo and was insanely good at his job. He was the reason Nintendo won the Universal City Studios v. Nintendo case where Universal was trying to say Donkey Kong was a rip off of King Kong. Kirby did such a good job that Miyamoto honored him by naming a video game character after him. That character is the enemy inhaling pink puffball we've grown to love.
Bionic Commando and the Lolo games are some of my personal favorites that never seem to make these lists. More people should check them out! Particularly Lolo, since it's on Nintendo Switch Online at least.
Super Tecmo Bowl didn't make this list?!?! Most addicting NES game I owned or played. All my friends agreed. More addicting than even Zelda or Super Mario Bros. And the most underrated NES game of all time was Super Sprint. Golgo 13 could have made this list as well. I'm guessing the guys who made this list were not the generation that grew up with it.
Some of my all-time favorite NES games: Mega Man 3>Mega Man 2 Super Mario Bros. 3 Ninja Gaiden Ninja Gaiden II Duck Tales Little Nemo and the Dream Master Tetris Rescue Rangers Double Dragon II Contra Super C Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: The Arcade The Legend of Zelda Mike Tyson’s Punch Out Wrath of the Black Ninja
Fun list and great delivery as always, Zion! Love that you all take time to make content about games from all generations. There’s stuff worth playing everywhere!
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It doesn't belong on the list but I had very fond memories of Legend of Zelda 2, Adventures of Link. I played it more than the regular game. Other honorable mentions would be Narc, Mario 2, and Final Fantasy. However, this list was pretty good.
River City Ransom was awesome! It should've been on this list for sure. It was more then just your typical side scrolling beat'em up game, it has substance in it as well.
One of the best NES games that I never see on any list is Bucky O'Hare. An Amazing action-platformer made by Konami so you know it's gonna be good, I highly recommend it. Also Adventure Island 2 & 3, at least one of them should have been in the list.
Yeah, it really dissapoints me to never see it on any lists. Bucky O’Hare is my second favorite NES game, and belongs in my top 10 of the best games of all time. I really love that game!!
Well, these lists are literally popularity contests. They take votes on the community's choices and then tally them up. Games like Bucky O'Hare were never well known enough, despite being great. For me, the worst omission will always be Bionic Commando. It never makes lists either and it's one of Capcom's greatest.
@Tom Ffrench I wasn't saying they aren't. Just that they'll always be populated by the better known good games. Hard to vote for a game if someone hasn't played it and Bucky O'Hare is just a lesser known title.
- Super Mario Bros. - Super Mario Bros. 2 (USA) - Super Mario Bros. 3 - Metroid - Mega Man 2 - Mega Man 3 - The Legend of Zelda - Kirby’s Adventure - Castlevania 3 - Contra - Tetris
At the end, lists like this comes to more to what ppl know. Sure all games here listed are good, but if i think about NES, there are alot other great Games not many ppl played or even heared of. Like: Vice, Shatterhand, Kabuki Quantum Fighter, Guardian Legend and so on. But i must say, that im surprised that Gargoyles Quest 2 is on the list. Maybe it got more attention since most ppl know the first on the Game Boy.
I miss Captain Skyhawk. It was the 1st NES game I ever beat without cheat codes & also my introduction to the existence of cheat codes from a friend who burrowed my game for a few days just to tell me he discovered a code while using the old arcade joystick controller he had, while I only had the standard d-pad controller. Captain Skyhawk was a better version of any Top gun style aircraft game back then & I loved it. My friend told me that he was just impatiently spinning his controller during the disclaimer credits screen that comes on once you turn on the console...10 second boredom wait to get to the start screen. So (where 7 & 8 years old) I tested his description of this discovered cheat code... UP, RIGHT, DOWN, LEFT, UP, LEFT, DOWN, RIGHT, Up. I did that with the normal controller!!! : ) Invincible, unlimited missiles for all 3 classes, but only level 4 machine gun... You fly to stock up on everything you can hold when you can, dodging whatever planet or space, arming yourself to defend your home planet from some spaceship with eyeballs to shoot at... God memory sucks. After Burn just wasn't cutting it., Air Combat, Ace Combat... You and your team all try to have a good day/night. : )
My Grandma and I are the only people in my family to have beaten Batman on the NES. She was a stay at home mom in the 80s, so when they got an NES, my grandma spent a lot of time playing games while my dad and aunt were at school. She says it took her a week to beat it. Last year, during quarantine, I finally decided to play it, and while it was really tough, it was also really fun. I guess my grandma was better at it than I was, because it took me 2 weeks to beat it! Haha! I 100% recommend it if you can find a copy.
Pretty strong list. Copying famous pictures or movie posters for box art was a common thing in those days. I believe both poses on the contra box are lifted from Arnold poses.
Nintendo World Cup is a forgotten gem on the NES, as is Faxanadu. Parasol Stars was also a great game and one of the best Taito games not to get an arcade release!
I'm so happy I was born in time for the NES as a young child .. It basicly feels like modern gaming has grown up with me.. Knowing that even when younger people mention stuff like halo or the ps3 360 era as the beginning of it I'm just sitting there like no it all spawned from the nes
I was actually a huge fan of Zelda 2 and Castlevania 2. Not a popular opinion I know, but I just played through them both recently and I really thought they held up well.
I still remember the very day that I first played Legend of Zelda. Christmas morning, 1987. I don't remember very much about being 7 years old, but oh man do I remember playing Zelda with dad. THAT is how big Zelda was and how awesome it still is
This is definitely a solid list, but also have to mention that Hudson Soft had some great offerings on the good ol’ NES. Loved Adventure Island and Xexyz which was a weird space platform with a banger soundtrack.
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1: Super Mario Bros. 3 2: Super Mario Bros. 2 3: Kirby’s Adventure 4: Adventures of Link 5: Super Mario Bros. 6: Balloon Fight 7: Metroid 8: Excitebike 9: Mega Man 2 10: Doki Doki Panic 11: Duck Hunt 12: TMNT: The Manhattan Project 13: Punch Out 14: Donkey Kong 15: Kid Icarus 16: Legend of Zelda 17: Chip n’ Dale Rescue Rangers 18: Castlevania 19: Battletoads 20: Dragon Quest IV 21: Ducktales
Battletoads and Double Dragon, Super Spyhunter, Tetrastar, Crisis Force, Journey to Silius, Ninja Gaiden 2, Summer Carnival '92 RECCA, Batman return of Joker, and the one nobody talks about Adventure Island 4
