EVERYTHING IS PIXELATED: The top 127 games from the third generation of home video game consoles (Nintendo Entertainment System, Sega Master System, Atari 7800)

good to know.

120 - A Boy and His Blob (NES) - 8 points / 1 Vote
http://i.imgur.com/6EocrHm.png

re: MC Kids: I do like how the McDonald's swoop implies a jumping high-five

said it on the voting thread but A Boy and His Blob sounded SO AMAZING in nintendo power. like this super unique concept that would have all this really creative puzzle stuff going on. in practice it was nearly unplayable and really unpleasant to look at. but still, kudos to them for trying something different. david crane is an under-sung game designer with some really important credits to his name - pitfall and little computer people especially. and ABAHB still has that early 80s "one-man show" feel to it, which i think is neat.

120 - Winter Games (NES) - 8 points / 1 Vote
http://i.imgur.com/nA96rdL.png

^^ highest box art quality : in-game graphics ratio maybe ever

xpost i remember the nintendo power coverage very well, and i agree, it sounded amazing. i never got a chance to play it though.

120 - Wizards and Warriors (NES) - 8 points / 1 Vote
http://i.imgur.com/HVl4sfC.png

played the shit out of all the "games" games on C64 without ever getting any good at a single one of them. it was just fun making the people move around and hear their little quantized feet-stomping noises as they ran, and the digital cheers and such. doubt i ever got the hacky-sack guy to actually get the sack up in the air even once. my sense is that the NES ports were sometimes decent and sometimes disasters in terms of control, but yeah thankfully they held on to the BADASS box graphics.

I cut Gradius for Lifeforce (spoiler!) but I loved Gradius too. what's the definitive version if not NES? arcade?

I had the SNES version. There are some incredible 16-bit versions like the PC Engine CD one that are next level.

Going back and playing NES Gradius I was struck by how polished it seemed compared to other console shooters at the time. Yes the flicker and slowdown but also really precise controls and that ultra smooth scrolling NES was famous for.

MC Kids is a great SMB3 knockoff.

xxp
hacky sack was in Winter Games too? wasn't it California Games?

yeah i was talking about california games sorry - they all kinda ran together in my head as i think we had all of the major ones except 'world games.'

haha i was the lone wizards and warriors voter and now i have no complaints at all with lone-voter games making the rollout. wizards and warriors is not really a great platformer - it's repetitious and kinda stupid, but there are some GREAT tunes (first level tune, you're-about-to-die tune) and i was really taken by the vibe/environment. the first (forest) level goes a long way towards establishing this cozy medieval adventure feel, lots of shit is happening, you're finding cool shit in chests. then it seems like the next three levels are in alarmingly same-y caves before anything happens again. the one thing that reeeeeally sucks is waiting and waiting for an enemy to drop the particular potion you need to make a particular jump - that's bad design and they should have caught it the first time through playtesting.

you can tell they were going for a ghosts n goblins or castlevania thing, with this 'journey' (love any game where you see an overall mini-map of the levels and how they connect, after you beat each one), but just didn't have the chops to pull off CV... but thankfully they made it less arbitrarily punishing than G&G - you could rent it, beat it, and enjoy renting it and beating it again. given that the same cartridge could hold really fully-fledged adventures it's unquestionably kind of a throwback, but it would have been a top-tier home-computer game in 1987, where the competition was instead dark castle.

117 - Batman: Return of the Joker (NES) - 10 points / 1 Vote
http://i.imgur.com/iGMtpxo.png

117 - Kung Fu (NES) - 10 points / 1 Vote
http://i.imgur.com/Ps4qy8c.png

haha Kung Fu, man I sucked at that

117 - RBI Baseball (NES) - 10 points / 1 Vote
http://i.imgur.com/kctHDoc.png

never played kung fu till emus - but i knew it, not from nintendo power but from its predecessor (?), this wonderful, big, full-color, screenshot-ridden tome:

http://vignette1.wikia.nocookie.net/nintendo/images/a/ab/PlayersGuide.jpg/revision/latest?cb=20090701191944&path-prefix=en

real range of games in there tbh - everything from first-generation "this could be an atari 5200 game" cartridge-filler to some of the signature epics of the system. the comparatively slow build of the NES's north american success - released for christmas 1985, but the "action set" bundled with mario bros/duck hunt and the zapper wasn't until 1988! - plus the delay versus the famicom itself meant that things that really felt like "launch titles" to most kids my age (zelda, castlevania) were actually mature games released halfway through the system's effective lifespan. and then the imperial-phase games seemed to come right on their heels. it was just such a bonanza of high-quality stuff, with these much, MUCH more basic games sitting right alongside them on the shelf.

anyone ever watched a game of RBI baseball?

As a life-long sports abstainer, the ____ Games games are pretty much the only sports games I ever played (barring a recent half-hearted attempt at learning what football is from playing Madden). They were a ton of fun.

Hey Mordy, which USB controller did you get? I recently bought a Super Nintendo one and am quite pleased.

As the sole vote for Boy and His Blob, I gotta say Casino is probably otm, but I still loved playing that game just for sheer zaniness. It was flawed, but I loved what they were going for and enjoyed playing it.

Also RBI Baseball strikes me as a pretty quintessential 8-bit sports game, I'm surprised I was the only vote for it! Many hours spent with it as a child.

i got this one:
http://www.amazon.com/Classic-USB-NES-Controller-PC/dp/B002YVD3KM

it's great for what it is but damn i forgot how much the NES controller hurts your hands

how is the lag with that? the problem i've had with USB controllers is that they seem to have a small lag, which makes playing the reflex-based NES games impossible. on the other hand, using a keyboard eliminates the lag, but is really awkward for most games.

i beat mega man 2 + mike tyson's punch out with it a month ago and didn't experience any lag problems

i used OpenEmu (not sure if that makes a difference)

Grateful for the emulator info itt!

111 - Gradius 2 (NES) - 11 points / 1 Vote
http://i.imgur.com/eknFwKB.png

yes, #111 = 11 points 1 vote, it is amazing

speaking of shmups at 111/11/1

111 - Parodius Da (NES) - 11 points / 1 Vote
http://i.imgur.com/UT8Zpix.png

those images might be fucked up. found it tough to get a bead on which game was which

hmm, that image is from the coin op. my bad. here's the european release NES box art thx to wikipedia:

https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/3/32/Parodius_NES.jpg

111 - Recca (NES) - 11 points / 1 Vote
http://i.imgur.com/gjRWNQC.png

So many shmups

never got Parodius over here. Was heavy into Stinger though (aka Twinbee 2 or whatever)

111 - Rocky (Sega) - 11 points / 1 Vote
http://i.imgur.com/PBr80Ro.png

111 - Teddy Boy (Sega) - 11 points / 1 Vote
http://i.imgur.com/dy05MV8.png

never heard of recca, looks cool? more interested in the goofiness of parodius though.

as a kid, even before getting into robotech, i was really drawn into anything with manga-style art, always disappointed on some level when the game itself featured nothing of the sort. i just really liked that 'look,' without even a name for it.

109 - Golgo 13 (NES) - 12 points / 1 Vote
http://i.imgur.com/B6I0wsh.png

heyo

i've never played that game or even really seen it but it looks crazy!

109 - Ice Climber (NES) - 12 points / 1 Vote
http://i.imgur.com/DnHBvla.png

^ also love this box art template. i actually made a PSD of a blank one and set it up so i could make each result in the style of a NES game box, but realized that it'd jsut be bettr to include the original boxes for these games (and also some of these games are sega and atari.)

GOLGO-13 was beyond Nintendo hard btw. After a certain point it just never let up, IIRC. I can't believe people actually beat it.

108 - Wizards and Warriors II: Ironsword (NES) - 13 points / 1 Vote
http://i.imgur.com/73BwM0l.png

w&w II was all about the atmosphere and non-linear levels

Italian model Fabio Lanzoni portrays the protagonist Kuros on the game’s cover, but he does not make an in-game appearance.

102 - Bases Loaded (NES) - 14 points / 1 Vote
http://i.imgur.com/I6wNxHZ.png

yeah post about them!

Mario 2 (Doki Doki Panic) is murderously hard. I lived with a friend for a couple of months a few years ago when my first marriage was ending and we would smoke weed and play Mario, Mario 2, and Mario 3. We could easily beat the other two, but couldn't master 2.

DONKEY KONG (Gameboy) is one of the real surprises so far --- first three levels are basically classic arcade Donkey Kong, and then it keeps going with more stages and gradually adding new elements (e.g. "now there are levers that change the direction of the conveyor belts" "now there things you have to carry to a spot so you can stand on them") in a way that makes into a genuine action-puzzle game. somewhere in between Lode Runner and a kind of Flash game sensiby. lotta nice sprite animation in there. hasn't really gotten particularly brain-teasing yet but maybe it'll get there...

oh yeah the game boy donkey kong was fucking amazing, i miss playing it

otm, forgot how much i loved it. the difficulty level gets seriously high

if you get off the first level you're gamer of the year imo

i'll say also that one whole huge category of these things is what could be called "spiral notebook games"... where i think it's pretty plausible that if i'd somehow owned these games in 1990, i would have put in the work - and enjoyed the work - of mapping out their incomprehensible worlds, and keeping track of which town has a guy who would trade an ORB for a STATUE. i can practically smell the three-ring spiral notebook, with draggles of loose paper sticking out of the distressed spirals from sheets ripped out to do other things.

basically, these are all games where the minute-to-minute play mechanics range from "playable" to "pretty good," but where at age 39 i'm just completely uninterested in keeping track of not-different-enough areas, typically connected by self-similar passageways or by an absolutely overwhelming number of dark rectangle "press up to go in" doors. i don't think any of these are BAD games, but i just can't see myself playing them. if they had an automap, i'd do it! this bunch includes:

The Battle of Olympus - Zelda II clone but harder)
Clash at Demonhead - base gameplay is a little more primitive but i always wanted to like this because of the anime aesthetic
Faxanadu - great "PC RPG" look, but actually the control/hit detection in this is probably a step below "playable"
The Goonies II - such an ambitious thing, i'm sure it's really satisfying to progress but it's SO overwhelming with the doors and shit right off the bat
Metroid and Metroid II: Return of Samus - i LOVE Super Metroid, was really cool to see how close MII was to that. my kingdom for an automap!!!

Link's Awakening didn't grab me right out of the gate, but i might stick it out with that one - automap, baby! haven't yet taken a serious crack at Willow, would like to hope that passes muster. So far, as far as these action/adventure/RPG hybrids go, Crystalis has been the most enjoyable one to crack open and explore. was always curious about it, always had it mixed up with StarTropics. there some odd and janky design decisions, but it's basically fun to go around killing stuff and raising your level. i just hit this really annoying snow/ice area though and the mapping is becoming a problem - everything looks the same and i really can't remember which passages i've checked out and whether there's anywhere i haven't yet been.

another kind of huge category is "mid/late-period NES platformer with cool concept/gimmick/weapon, but just too unforgivably hard." this includes a ton of acknowledged classics and things that placed in this poll, and again, if i'd had them back in the day, i'm SURE i would have banged my heads against their impossible opening levels enough to get baseline good and then enjoy the rest of the experience. a lot of them really do have super cool ideas, like the different characters in Little Samson i did this with Blaster Master, so i'm sure i would have done it with, oh, let me see, Astyanax, KickMaster, Little Nemo, Little Samson, Power Blade, Shadow of the Ninja, Shatterhand, Strider...

just below this are earlier NES platformers that i remember being curious about back then, but which just feel way too primitive for progress to be satisfying at this point. a lot of them have cute art or intriguing gimmicks, but just don't play well at all, like they just have not internalized any of Mario's lessons about jumping or momentum or how a platformer should "feel." e.g. Athena, Legacy of the Wizard. Milon's Secret Castle and the Adventure Island games would be in here too but i already knew that sucked.

also off on the side: the Wizards & Warriors games, which are all sort of objectively bad. i played the shit out of the first one on rentals as a kid - just loved the aesthetic and the world i guess, because the gameplay's really frustrating and stupid! but it's still way, way more enjoyable than the sequels, where i'm glad to say that my tweenage self was not wrong: they are nigh-unplayable!

W&W has one of my favorite early soundtracks

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=h9eZvd_74qQ

oh yeah i love all those tracks, even the maddening "low on health" music. they have very headsticky basslines, especially.

another one that i've really enjoyed picking back up is Castlevania III, which i'm sure i've posted about before. we owned I, so III's expanded scope really blew me away on rentals even tho i knew i'd never master it all. i haven't delved too deep so far (it is, of course, hard as hell) but it feels good and satisfying --- and the built-in emusave capability of the Mini means no fucking around with passwords, otherwise a huge obstacle to pick-up-n-play gaming. FYI Grant sucks and is not worth the detour into the clocktower and back.

actually Sypha sucks too, i should probably start over and seek Alucard but beating the level with the auto-ratcheting vertical scroll and those flying skeleton pseudo-sine-wave bastards has me on too much of a high.

also --- this was from the ghost ship level --- one pleasure of old school gaming that remains the same qualitatively if not quantitatively: on the nth attempt to get through a hard-ass level and a hard-ass boss, you finally nail it, you're tearing the boss up, your life is running down but you're doing it, then they reveal a new attack or new form that you haven't gotten to before and it's like OH SHIT but you're so in the zone that you STILL BEAT THEM, hell yeah.

In the Japanese version, Grant is easily the strongest companion, because he can throw knives for free. In the American version, Sypha is probably the best, especially with the ice spell. Alucard is probably the weakest in both versions.

huh, didn't realize! i really struggled to make sypha help me out on the ghost ship, which is the first stage after you pick her up. hmm. i'll give her another go.

Was the ZX Spectrum not a part of this generation? Or is that not even considered a video game console? Or did it just suck?

nah that wasn't a console, it didn't have cartridges and controllers and that kind of thing

i probably could have counted it but it was basically a home computer, and the computer game poll is a thing that is too overwhelming to even figure out a way to split up so i haven't tackled it! someone else can put a bell on that cat's collar

If I were to do it (which I'm not) I'd do it for all non console games - any platform (speccy, c64, amiga, st, pc) as long as it's never appeared on a console. too broad?

Maybe remove pc, but then not sure how much interest there would be for those remaining four. (I'm in tho)

or at least limit to an era of pc

yeah no pc games would feel... purer.