Favorite NES games - what are yours?

I know that this likely can only possibly appeal to the older crowd out there but I am a member of that crowd and in my opinion, video games were significantly more momentous in the mid-80's based solely upon the fact that we didn't really have a lot of options back then.

Sure, we had the Atari 2600 and some various other machines such as ColecoVision (which very few people actually owned) but when the Nintendo Entertainment System (NES ) was released, this was the first time that people truly got excited about video games. Atari games were easy to play for a bit and then walk away, but with the NES, games kind of became your life. They were all encompassing in a way that I think we could probably say borders on problematic or even addictive in today's times.

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_{When you opened this Christmas gift you weren't even surprised, pretty much everyone got this for a gift in 1985}

We got our NES in 1985 and well, so did pretty much everyone else in USA. It had been available in Japan for 2 years at this point but in 1985, people in USA didn't know anything about Japan other than the fact that everyone that lives there is a ninja.

The games everyone knew at first were of course Mario Brothers, which was just epic and unlike anything anyone had ever seen before. But talking about this is a bit blasé and overdone. Instead, I want to talk about what ended up being my favorite games of the system before the 16-bit systems would come along in 1989.

The Legend of Zelda

I still recall the adverts for this game: Virtually nothing about the actual game was displayed and it was pretty much a mystery what the game was even about. I think that was part of their marketing ploy, as was the first ever GOLD cartridge.

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This was the first game ever (as far as a I know) that had the ability to save your game on the cartridge courtesy of a very small battery that was embedded into the cart. Eventually, this battery would fail but not until long after you had defeated the game... likely multiple times. This game was absolutely epic for the time period and even though we are not sitting 30 years + later, i can still here all the songs in my head.

This game consumed my day-to-day life for many weeks and there were tons of hidden secrets.

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It came with a paper map that had a lot of the "world" still concealed and that was really the only thing you had to navigate from. People would likely get very frustrated with this system today, but like i said, it was a different time and we had a LOT of patience.

Sometimes I suggest people go back and play this to see what it is all about but in retrospect I think that is a bad idea. While this game was innovative as hell back in "85, it would seem absurdly boring by today's standards and just like Magnum P.I. and the A-Team, somethings are better left in your memories.

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Metroid

Unlike Zelda, Metroid did NOT have a battery back up system inside the cart and this resulted in you needing to write down a friggin 24-digit code whenever your mom told you it was time for dinner or to do whatever other thing was interfering with your ability to play video games.

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Metroid was so inventive in that the constant acquisition of new upgrades to your character kept opening up new areas to play in, as well as new way to combat your opponents. Many of the upgrades were optional, but getting another energy pack added lot more capability to survive. Plus I was like 10 years old so I was going to try to get every single little thing and achieve what i believed to be 100% completion. This was long before the internet, so we didn't have any way of confirming this.

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_{how did you approach this battle?}

When you defeated the game the character you control named "Samus" takes off the ol' space helmet and reveals that it was, in fact, a woman inside the suit all along.

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That was a pretty shocking twist in 1986, but today you would probably get sued if it wasn't a woman.

Metroid was awesome for completely different reasons than Zelda and just like Zelda, the franchise went on to make many more titles... most of which were also pretty great. I have a recent Metroid game on my DS that I haven't finished yet and likely never will because the screen is so damn small.

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Dragon Quest / Warrior 2

Were you expecting something a bit more mainstream? Perhaps Mario 3? I hate to be a downer but Mario 2 and 3 never really appealed to me a great deal, but Dragon Quest absolutely did. It was called Dragon Warrior in the States but the rest of the world (as far as I know) kept the original title of Quest.

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When you think of RPG's what do you think of? There were lots of text-based RPG's in the 80's but as far as full video ones are concerned there were really only 2 at this time (in my world): Final Fantasy and Dragon Quest. They are both technically made by the same company. While Final Fantasy did actually get released first (as did the original Dragon Quest / Warrior) this is the title that really caught the public's eye.

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Look at that! Friggin stupid right? Well for someone in the mid to late 80's this was absolutely awesome. You had a team of 3 people in your squad instead of just 1 (as was the case in Dragon Quest 1 and probably why it didn't do so well) and you had a relatively massive world to explore. It was important to level up and to be honest this was probably the first "grinding for levels" I ever did in my life. There would be many games in the future where I would repeat this same tactic and consequently, most of those games were made by Square Soft or Enix.

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The game came packaged with a poser-sized world map and because there were only like 8 people in the world that had the internet at the time, it was extremely necessary.

It won game of the year in Japan and in 2006 it was rated as the 17th best game of all time.

This game would define RPG's for the next 10 to 15 years. The gameplay was just perfect and until computing power was significantly higher, no one really bothered to move away from this very polished system. I remember playing Final Fantasy on the PS3 and it was still turn-based. I have a Dragon Quest 11 on my PS4 as well and it is also turn-based.

Some RPG's have attempted to get away from the turn-based combat system and for the most part it simply doesn't work. A case in point would be Final Fantasy 12 which is a game that took a decade to make based almost exclusively on the complexities of a 4-person group but lack of turn-based combat - and the game kinda sucks.

consequently, an unopened Dragon Quest 2 for NES in orginal packaging can get you around $900 these days

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Well, that's my top 3. There are so many great NES games and I think the most wonderful thing about it was the fact that while Atari got there first, there really wasn't anything particularly great about the 2600, or anything else they made after that. The NES was a full-on game changer and honestly got the ball rolling for the rest of the systems that we have seen over the years including the rise and fall of SEGA.

What are your favorite NES games? I would love to discuss it in the comments!