Top 10 Longest NES Games! 

A video game youtuber who doesn't spam obnoxious random futurama clips and lame memes over the video while they talk. Bless your heart.

"Lemmings is a puzzle game where you tell absolute f'n idiots how to survive in a given environment." 😂

Destiny Of An Emperor is such an underappreciated gem, I always try to get a full playthrough in every year. And with so many impressive ROM hacks, it's even better.

Both Startropics games seemed like they would be short and simple...but the games went on longer then you were led to believe by their first levels.

The thing you didn't mention about Baseball Stars was the ability to play an entire season of 125 games with your team. That makes this the longest game ever for NES.

Destiny of an Emperor was awesome. Those 8-bit chip tunes were really quite excellent.

A couple longer games on my nostalgia playlist are the Magic of Dheherezade, Crystalis, Legacy of the Wizard, Zelda 2, and of course Final fantasy. Out of the franchises covered I remember playing Ultima Exodus but it was a frustrating experience that I never could finish.

After that Ultima V music hit, I was very disappointed that the British Bulldogs didn't make an appearance.

Never lose this format my man. Informative, not a meme or overused sound effect anywhere. Keep it up. Subbed.

I think an honourable mention is deserved to Full Quiet, a recent homebrew release from Retrotainment. It took me about 20 hours to beat the main campaign, but most players are expected to take closer to 40 hours, especially if you try to 100% it.

It’s true what you said in the dragon warrior bit, playing with friends hanging out eases the grind so much compared to slogging it alone. Time flies when you’re having fun right?

I literally was thinking about this very topic yesterday! I recently subscribed to your channel (Your breakdown of top nes soundtracks was fire). I love your content, videos & approach so far & look forward to future material you bring out. Great job! 👍

"But what do I know...I'm just a silly boy"- LOL

battletoads: 30 years

For the AD&D gold box games, you really need the PC version. The NES is far more limited, and your characters are all a bunch of blue things. On the PC version your characters actually look good and can have a lot more colors. Fun Fact: you can get Unlimited Adventures for the PC which is an editor that lets you make your own gold box games. You can also get lots of custom sprites for it.

Back To The Future 2&3. Even if you know where every item is, it can still take 3 hours or so to complete 2, and another 30 minutes for 3.

I remember Roger Clemens MVP baseball taking forever to beat just one season, and the passwords you had to write down, when each game was over..in case you wanted to take a break, or lost power during a game. I don’t think I ever beat it, if you want to call it beating a sports game.

Glad you had the “times are subjective” clarification. Games like Bayou Billy, Blaster Master and so many others would take me so much longer than Ultima, Dragon Warrior or Final Fantasy because I wouldn’t know where to go (or how hard they are).

One that comes to my mind is Nobunga's Ambition. I remember seeing my brother play that game like it was life or death for months on end. Googled the total game time and 318 hours to beat.

Love seeing destiny of an emperor in the list. Had it as a kid and yes it was definitely an underrated gem

I hope you get well soon man. I love watching your videos but your health comes first. Rest up and get well soon.

Back in the day I remember I had Ultima Exodus on NES. I got stuck somewhere during the story and never figured out how to beat it. Thanks for the content and bringing back some old memories.

Ultima 2 was one of my favorites growing up in the 90s with the NES. It can be really long, because you need a LOT of gold to get the best equipment and build up your power base. Then you need to figure out what you're doing and get through the various dungeons. That was really tough before the internet, but on the bright side I did have a game genie.

Shingen the Ruler - that was a long game for the NES. And on the website not enough people have beat it to supply data.

Koei simulation games take an ungodly amount of time to beat. I don't see anyone beating the larger scenarios on Genghis Khan or Nobanaga's Ambition in less than 20 hours, maybe far longer than that.

Cool list of long NES games! I feel like Dragon Warrior 4 is the longest in its NES series, but maybe that's because 4 is the only NES DW game I've never finished haha! Cheers!

I enjoyed this, and feel delightfully slighted as to what a filthy casual I am for expecting Zelda to be on the list before watching.

Needs more Romance of the Three Kingdoms, Nobunaga's Ambition, and Genghis Khan. Probably L'Empereur, North and South, and Bandit Kings of Ancient China.

I had no idea how many non metroid games had metroids in them

Swords and serpents inparticular was hellacious. But dad and I (RIP Dad), would literally use graph paper snd pencils to manually draw the dungeon levels and all special squares so the total play time was more than a hundred hours

Baseball Simulator 1.000 also had a battery back up (came out in Japan as Baseball Stars hit the U.S.) and you can do an entire 165-game season, and it takes an ETERNITY.

I remember grinding away on Dragon Warrior 1 back in the day. I wish I would've spent that time grinding away at something else because the juice just wasn't worth the squeeze.

they had Baseball Stars on Commadore 64 before the NES. It was a fantastic step up from Atari baseball. Very innovative. You could play the Yankees with Babe Ruth !! It set the bar HIGH for future baseball games.

Dragon Warrior 3 is the longest of the four NES games? I would've thought four was given all the different campaigns. Cool idea for a video!

My brother, myself, and our friends loved Baseball Stars. We would have drafts using real MLB players, play entire seasons with every team controlled by a real person, and all kinds of fun stuff. Since there was a fairly short limit on player's names, some of the MLB names were pretty funny when we had to shorten them.

I usually never comment on RU-vid but this brought me back. I loved all of these games growing up, especially Destiny of an Emperor which caused me to fall down a wormhole of games and literature from that time period. My mother would tell me that people would judge her for letting my sister and I play video games all the time, but my mom encouraged us to continue because we were rocking in English/Math etc. IF I were asked, I could accurately tell anyone the entire Three Kingdoms period from the fall of the Han to the establishment of the Qin, but no one ever asks! Thank you for the nostalgia journey! 44 years old btw if that matters!

As a fan of pool of radiance I find your comments both fighting words... and accurate

I’m a recent subscriber, really enjoy your lists and laid-back vibe! Would love to see another list on this topic of longest games (NONE RPG EDITION). Would be fascinated which platformers and exploration games took the longest to beat for the average player. Blaster Master NEEDS to make that list because it took an unthinkable amount of childhood hours to beat that game, most likely because it all has to be done at one goddamned sitting and save states wouldn’t be invented for twenty five years to save our sanity 😂

Your channel is super underrated.

I was hoping Destiny of an Emperor would make this list. One of my favorite games ever. I've played through it probably 50+ times since the NES glory days. It has quite a cult following, with tons of Rom hacks and an easy to use editor to make changes to the game yourself.

Good video fortefyre!!!

I'm surprised Legacy of the Wizard didn't make the list Milon's Secret Castle is another long one

Spy hunter never ends.

Great video. Suggestion: list the titles in description as well.

haven't played most of these except bards tale and AD&D pool of radiance, both games we absolutely great, maybe it's because me and my dad would sit there and play them for hours. wish he was still around to see games now

Destiny of an Emperor is the FIRST game that sprung to my mind! I played in as a ROM back in, like, 2001, and found it thoroughly enjoyable.

@11:32 Sounds like you said Dragon Warrior 3 is the famicom version, however its the NES version and Dragon Quest 3 is the famicom version.

Ultima 2:Quest of the Avatar,Swords and Serpents,Faxanadu,Dragon Warrior 2 and 3 are other long NES games.(Also Dragon Warrior was the original American release titles on NES,you had it backwards.)

Btw on the PC versions of Wizardry and Ultima 4, you also had to type the name of the spell to cast it. In the case of Ultima 4, you also had to prepare each spell casting ahead of time by mixing the reagents together for the appropriate spell. Fun, huh?

Correction: Dragon Quest is the Famicon and Dragon Warrior is the one we got in the US.

OMG the arena in Dragon Warrior! I would spend so much time there I need a metal slime

Effing Astyanax still haunts my effing nightmares ...

Solomon's Key is a game I played as a kid that seemed to just go on forever. Surprised it didn't at least crack the Top 10.

To put things into perspective. When these games were the new hot stuff... We played outside and got to nerd out on games for very limited amounts of time. A game that didn't have near instant satisfaction... was the type of game we had to sneak and play late at night when Mom and Dad were sleeping. Today ego Chads have hundreds to thousands of hours logged on a game.

Dude says he loves Gyruss. Subbed

It would be cool if you did a non rpg longest nes games

Would love to see some of these older games on the Expansion Pass.

Quest for the Avatar is often overlooked nowadays. Never choose Humility.

Can't say I've played any of those. I think my life is better for that.

What game did you feature during the intro at 14 seconds? I’ve been trying to remember that one for decades! Thank you, great video.

Final Fantasy took me almost a year to complete.

I never played any of these. But, Legend of Zelda I know the record is 27 minutes but in the late 80s 90s with no internet and no way to get info other than the one issue of Nintendo power we had. When I played it it took years to beat it. Mainly because I have a brother, three sisters and parents that all shared the same console. Plus we had 10 other games we played and shared with each other on. Also, my oldest sister and my brother had a slot on the Zelda game because they had interest in playing it also. I my dad bought it in 88 or 89 and I beat it around 1993 or 94. All good memories.

Also, what creator do you know that has this much viewer interaction, this man LITERALLY replied to almost EVERY FUCKING COMMENT?! INSANE! Thats love and respect for those that support you, Brava

If played alone from start to finish trying to conquer all 50 fiefs, Nobunaga’s Ambition would take a while to complete.

0:26 An arcade port of Operation Wolf. A game where you can accidentally (or on purpose) murder kids. So much for Nintendo’s family friendly policy. lol

Hope you get better soon man- KentuckyFried :)

Retro gaming hippie approves! Nice work as usual. I am a C64 RPG guy. I did play final fantasy recently on nes and reviewed it. Only RPG I have played on NES. I am biased to gold box. Two things I like about them: you can name your party members and you can make out dungeons with graph paper.

Legacy of the Wizard. Good luck beating that without a map. You'll spend hours just dealing with the password every day for months on end.

Ooooh! Dragon Warrior 3! Oh man, yeah...I remember one of my neighborhood friends and I playing through it, and yeah!....DW3 was very much a loooooong-ass game! Very fun though, I did enjoy it.

I find always add hours onto How Long To Beat. Ive seen some ridiculous average times for stuff like Maniac Mansion

Blaster Master, Rygar, and Top Secret Episode Golgo 13 needed a battery save or a password system. Don't get me wrong, those 3 games are great, but needing to sit down and play them from start to finish in one sitting really sucks. Unless you want to pause the game and leave the NES turned on with the TV turned off so you can come back and play it again the next day from where you left off. I do NOT recommend doing that, since you can burn out your NES that way. LOL.

Good idea, I suggest a video on the actual best SNES games

I played Lemmings in 6th grade computer class in '87. I thought it was awesome, but i was 11.

Love seeing love for destiny of an emperor.

I like your channel and wish you lots of success ❤🎉😊

What is a feely? Something you can touch? Never heard of it

The Karate Kid NES takes 11mins to finish 😅

Liked and subscribed

I dont play too many NES games but one game that could be on that list would be Back to the Future II & III. You have to unscramble words that you find in the game, and if you get it wrong you lose the letters you find. Unless you already know the words the game's near impossible because you have to guess the word- who would want to unscramble words in a 2D platformer?

I ran Pathfinder for many years I miss it

In Tales of the Unknown: The Bard's Tale on PC if you had a mouse and the driver loaded and clicked Cast a Spell it would bring up a list. Also you would quickly memorize WOHL(word of healing) ARFI (arc fire, an attack spell that uses little SP and scales with level) MIJA (mind jab same cost as arc fire same scaling, double the damage but later in the game because it's a sorcerer spell) WAST (war strike, an AOE attack) and STFL (Star flare, another AOE attack) and several other spells you use often.

It's no surprise they never really attempted an NES version of Ultima 6 considering the C64 was already falling behind with that one.

I wonder what games would be on this list if a starting ground rule for longest games on NES was no ports? That's about four games gone right there.

Suprisingly me how Earthbound Begginings are not on this list

you forgot Xenophobe. It's literally endless. The game continues forever or until you die.

Dang, I was hoping either Star Force or Q*Bert would make it in the list lol

I got my first job just to buy Final Fantasy. I didn't even own a nes at the time and had to play at a friend's house.

SHengen - The Ruler was a very long game but I managed to beat it :P

Destiny of the Empire sounds fun was it actually on the NES or just the computer or a Japanese port?

I used to love baseball star!!!!!

Dragon Warrior IV is a long game too.

Surprised none of the Romance of the 3 kingdoms games showed up on this list. 1 was like 18 hours, 2 was over 50, both playable on nes.

100% that wasn't really a thing back in the NES days. Because once you beat the main game on most games there's nothing else to do. Like there's no extra content in contra to go find. So just by playing through the game you have completed 100% of the game.

Decades after getting final fantasy I made a extreme effort to defeat it before the extremely old battery failed.and I defeated it.mostly because of the N.P. strategy guide, those castle floors are massive

Wait, 19 hours to build the best possible team in baseball stars? That would take years. To get max stats takes a super long time even with cheating. How can you max stat all players on one team in 19 hours?

11:32 Umm... correction. Dragon Warrior 3 is the American Version. Dragon Quest is the Japanese Version. I miss Dragon Warrior games. After 7, they converted to Quest only, and they just aren't the same.

Baseball stars always crashed and erased data

I played Faxanadu for years. Begore internet, games like Faxanadu was very hard to understand something. Goonies 2 was also a hard and long game to figure out.

I always look at these how long to beat times and then I basically add another 50% to 100% more time onto it to gauge how long ittl probably take me. Because based upon how long the games took me to beat that are listed and I have played and completed it usually takes me that much longer to beat them. I watch long plays of people playing the games and beating them in around the same time and I think.... But these people know exactly where to go and what to do all the time it appears lol where I spend an hour wandering around blindly trying to figure out what I'm up posed to be doing. I feel like a lot of those time to beat times are based on people's who have played those games plenty of times already. What takes them 20 hours will take me 30 to 40 hours

I can't take this seriously without a single Koei game on the list.