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

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.