Home Game Poll vol. 1 (1984-1992): Nominate the best NES, Master System, etc console games ever (Nom deadline: September 8th)

Hi everyone. This is the first volume of the console game polls, and will focus on the third generation of consoles. You can nominate games released on any of the following:

- Nintendo Entertainment System/Famicom
- Sega Master System/Mark III
- Sega SG-1000
- Atari 7800 (not 2600)
- Various weirdo consoles, if you want: Action Max, Commodre 64GS, Amstrad GX4000, Atari XEGS, Pv-1000, Halcyon, VTech Socrates, etc. If you're not sure, ask.

The third generation came on the heels of the crash of 1983. By 1988, the Nintendo sold better than any other home computer device. (and will probably dominate this poll.) Due to pack-ins, Super Mario Bros was the best-selling single-console game of all time for 20 years, eclipsed only by Wii Sports.

Drop your nominations in this thread. After a month, we'll begin the voting process, and after another month I'll begin the rollout.

Sweet. I'm too young for this. Time to download an "all NES games" torrent?

I never owned a Nintendo. We had a Master System at my grandma's with about eight games. Most of my game playing during that time was on C64, which I was fairly obsessed with. Guess that's another poll.

--Atari 7800--
Dark Chambers
Desert Falcon
Xevious
Food Fight
Mario Bros.
Commando
Galaga
Donkey Kong Jr.
Tower Toppler

Ghostbusters
Space Harrier
Phantasy Star
Rampage
Altered Beast
Alex Kidd in Miracle World
Spy vs. Spy
Wonder Boy in Monster World
Zillion
Zillion II: The Tri Formation

I'll let everyone else handle the more obvious nominees:

Final Fantasy
California Games
Friday the 13th
Lemmings
Maniac Mansion
Marble Madness
Spy Hunter
Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles II: The Arcade Game
Winter Games
Impossible Mission

Castlevania I, II and III
Zelda I and II
Contra
Super C
Metal Gear
Metroid
Ninja Gaiden I, II, and III
Batman
Batman: Return of the Joker
Tetris

Battletoads
Duck Hunt
Ducktales
Dusty Diamond's All-Star Softball
Kirby's Adventure
The Legend of Zelda
Mega Man 2
Metroid
Mike Tyson's Punch-Out!!
Ninja Gaiden
Rad Racer
RC Pro-Am II
River City Ransom
Rockin' Kats
StarTropics
Super Mario Bros
Super Mario Bros 2
Super Mario Bros 3
Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles
TMNT III: The Manhattan Project
Yoshi
Yoshi's Cookie
Zelda II: The Adventure of Link

First TMNT is actually a broken shitty game. Even though it's kind of legendary. I had the misfortune to own the DOS port which was shipped unwinnable.

True... it's actually the one I never really got a chance to play, too. I loved 3 though, maybe more than 2!

forgot to cut a few from my list noted above, my bad

This was my first gen so it's pretty heavily trod territory for me even though I never touched a sega console until we got to the Saturn. Flipped through my NES rom list, here's what I will rep for (I integrated the earlier NES nominees for quick reference and for a complete thus far nomination list, they're noted with an *) :

10 Yard Fight
Adventures of Lolo
Bad Dudes
Bases Loaded
*Batman
*Batman: Return of the Joker
Battle of Olympus
*Battletoads
Bionic Commando
Blades of Steel
Blaster Master
Bomberman
A Boy and His Blob
Bubble Bobble
*California Games
Castlevania
Castlevania II
Castlevania III
*Contra
Crystalis
Deja Vu
Destiny of an Emperor
Double Dragon
Double Dragon II
Double Dribble
Dragon Warrior
Dragon Warrior II
Dragon Warrior IV
*Duck Hunt
*Ducktales
*Dusty Diamond's All Star Softball
Earthbound Zero
Excitebike
Faxanadu
*Final Fantasy
*Friday the 13
Ghosts 'n' Goblins
Goonies II
Ikari Warriors
The Immortal
Karnov
Kid Icarus
*Kirby's Adventuer
Kung Fu
Legacy of the Wizard
*The Legend of Zelda
*The Legend of Zelda II
*Lemmings
Little Nemo: The Dream Master
*Maniac Mansion
*Marble Madness
Mega Man
*Mega Man II
Mega Man III
Mega Man IV
*Metal Gear
Metal Gear II
*Metroid
*Mike Tyson's Punch Out
*Mission Impossible
*Ninja Gaiden
Ninja Gaiden II
Nobunaga's Ambition
Pro Wrestling
*Rad Racer
RC Pro Am
*RC Pro Am II
*River City Ransom
*Rockin' Kats
Romance of the Three Kingdoms
Rush n Attack
Rygar
Section Z (objectively horrible, but i loved this game in the day)
Shadowgate
Smash TV
*Spy Hunter
*StarTropics
Strider
*Super C
*Super Mario Brothers
*Super Mario Brothers 2
*Super Mario Brothers 3
Tecmo Bowl
*Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles I
*Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles II
*Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles III
*Tetris
Ultima Exodus
Uninvited
Wall Street Kid
Willow
*Winter Games
Wizards and Warriors
*Yoshi
*Yoshi's Cookie

NES

Adventures of Lolo 3
M.C. Kids
StarTropics 2: Zoda's Revenge
Ufouria: The Saga

How about MSX games? Maybe MSX is more of a computer than a games console. I'd nominate Eggerland and the superior version of Metal Gear.

More NES mop up:
Fester's Quest
Gauntlet
Golf
Golgo 13
Gradius
Hogan's Alley
Ice Hockey
Life Force
NARC
Rampage
Rescue Rangers
Swords and Serpents
Zanac

nb: i have played all of those NES games (except for MC Kids, Mission Impossible and Ufouria

intellivision is being robbed. :(

Faxanadu was such a weird, beautiful, short game. Loved the idea of being in a tree the whole time

serious question: are japan-only games acceptable?

sega master system:
ultima iv
fantasy zone

nes:
banana prince
chip 'n dale rescue rangers
demon sword
fantastic dizzy
gargoyle's quest ii
gradius
holy diver
ice climber
prince of persia
super dodge ball
sweet home

Solar Jetman
Cobra Triangle

Bionic Commando

the best NES/Famicom shooters never made it out of Japan:
Gradius 2
Crisis Force
Over Horizon
Recca
Otocky
Parodius Da (came out in EU though i think?)

Why no love for Dragon Warrior III? I never got very far in it (picked it up circa 1995 and was letting go of NES gaming) but it seemed super huge and elaborate.

Everything else I could think of has been nommed already!

contra III
1943: battle of the midway

contra III is SNES era (and also awesome)

derp

Baseball Stars

RBI Baseball
Baseball Simulator 1.000

NES: Gumshoe, Commando

Sega Master System:
Phantasy Star

Sega:
Action Fighter
Kung Fu Kid
Mickey Mouse Castle Of Illusion
Wonderboy III: The Dragon's Trap
Fantasy Zone

Are we allowed Game Gear games? Defenders Of Oasis was Game Gear only.

someone said that but, yes, definitely

sega master system:
ultima iv
fantasy zone

yes!! to the first, yes ish to the second

master system games i suspect i am mainly nominating because of nostalgia:
sonic chaos
psycho fox
alex kidd in shinobi world
castle of illusion starring mickey mouse
columns
rocky
golvellius: valley of doom
teddy boy
miracle warriors
operation wolf

probably not, really, master system games, but games which had a definite console presence that should be noted that happened to have master system versions:
enduro racer
r-type
rampart
rampage
shadow of the beast
smash tv
speedball / speedball 2
spy vs spy
ys

master system game that fucken rools:
wonder boy iii: the dragon's trap

er:
snail maze

lol xpost

feel like after the 2600 et al the 3rd gen systems weren't that big over here. the Master System got a little UK traction and the NES got more or less none, most mid-80s gaming was home computer based. only when the Megadrive and SNES launched did consoles get back serious market share.

so most of these games i know thru emulation or versions on home computers that aren't eligible. i did have a Master system briefly in the 90s. dunno that there's much here i can honestly vote for, don't feel inclined to check out a lot either - until the 4th gen i was strictly a Spectrum kid.

CTRL + F, folks. It's your friend.

I think Game Gear is pretty firmly 4th gen.

i think they had a moment around the time mid-80s kids were in primary school

also, rampage

xp to NV, from my point of view the nes and the master system were the most lusted-over items and any kid who had one was never short of friends. might be a generational thing. i definitely remember being blown away by my friend's Sega MS and playing Kung Fu Kid, Shinobi and Sonic all the time at his house.

CTRL + F, folks. It's your friend.

I think Game Gear is pretty firmly 4th gen.

― Those Jorts Are Upsetting (Old Lunch), Monday, August 10, 2015 2:16 PM (2 minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

It came out at the same time as the Mega Drive, but it was still 8bit and pretty much a portable master system.

OTOH, the Atari 2600 wasn't really something I was aware of, whereas most people pre-3rd gen console were Atari/BBC Micro/Spectrum.

xpost Right, but the same argument could be made about the Game Boy. And that's surely opening a whole can of worms.

Golden Axe Warrior
James "Buster" Douglas Knockout Boxing
TransBot

xp but the gameboy was its own thing whereas the game gear used pretty much the same engine as the master system and shared roughly the same games, save for a couple of others. you could even buy a converter that let you play MS games on it.

I am having a severe PTSD flashback to one of the water levels in that first TMNT game

Super Monaco GP

Will can make a final ruling, but based on memory and looking through a list of what was released for Game Gear, the bulk of it came out in the mid-'90s and a lot of them were unique titles and repurposed Genesis games, so I'd still have a hard time considering it 3rd gen.

apparently 3rd gen must have happened while i was doing O-levels and moping after girls

it's possible. I was obsessed with video games up through and including the Super Nintendo, but lost all interest once that machine's title got usurped by the PSOne, which was quite a step on in terms of environment and gameplay. I still get confused by FP shooters and the like because those didn't really exist on third/fourth-gen consoles in any major way.

TransBot

srsly bro?

Nah, Game Gear is a no-go for this one. It is pretty firmly entrenched in that early-90s 4th gen plus I'm thinking there may be need for a portables poll that's separate (mostly thanks to the Game Boy existing for like 20 years?), and that could pretty handily cover every portable console up until smartphones.

fair enough, although i will say that i don't remember even having seen a master system until the early 90s.

I remember the existence of TurboGrafx-16 (probably as much from those ads on the back of comics as anything), but I don't know that I ever saw one in person.

I remember that so well. Very striking image.

Was Bonk the only TurboGrafx exclusive to get any traction? I'm looking at a list of games and that's the only one I recognize that wasn't available for other platforms.

keith's adventure, i want to say? you were a nerd who could turn into a metroid looking dude.

i knew one kid who had one... i am like 20% sure i can remember who the kid is tho.

one of my best friends had a turbo-16 and a bunch of games, we played the shit out of it. It was a really good system!
Splatterhouse was what was up.

Legendary Axe was cool. Maybe next poll.

4th gen! def next poll!

also the game was called keith courage in alpha zones, apparently.

also sept 8 stands as the deadline because i just remembered i'm on vacation until then, haha

I didn't have the time to read the whole thread, but shouldn't the original greyscale Game Boy be included in this poll? It came out in 1989 in USA/Japan and in 1990 in Europe (that's when I got mine), it was 8 bit and the games are definitely comparable to what was on NES at the time. If the Game Boy is only included in the 4th generation poll, it'll be pretty weird to compare something like Super Mario Land to 16 bit games on the SNES.

We had this discussion upthread about the Game Gear. Both handhelds were distinctly 4th gen in terms of time period, despite their graphical inferiority, and I believe Will has opted to poll them as such.

http://www.rockpapershotgun.com/2015/08/27/metal-gear-solid-v-preview/

Cool will Turbo CD be included? Played some games lately ("Gradius II", "Last Alert", "Gate of Thunder", "R-Type Complete CD" and they were INCREDIBLE. Electro anime Japanese weirdness cranked up. The intro to R-Type alone was like a 10-minute cutscene with voice acting and nearly full screen anime-style sprite animations. This stuff really intrigues me because in the US we didn't really get this we got EXTREME proto dudebro machismo marketing. The Turbo CD stuff is like mutant interpretations of Chuck Norris-era action movies.

Oops sorry for that link wrong thread. I was responding to

4th gen! def next poll!

Sorry to keep going OT.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HU80R7jGanE

What do you all think is the best 8-bit Mario from the original trilogy? SMB3 is frequently hailed as the greatest game of all time, and with that globe-spanning ad and "The Wizard", it definitely felt like a zeitgeist game. Plus it's so fun and has so many levels and secrets and things you can always go back to. It's also hard as heck.

Yeah, I have no doubt Super Mario 3 is gonna win this poll, and deservedly so. It's pretty much the 2nd best 2D era Nintendo game (the best being A Link to the Past). So much imagination, cool imagery, gameplay variation with the different suites, secrets, bonuses, etc... My family never even had a NES, but I still know SM3 inside out, because when it came out I used to hang at friends of mine who had it all day and play the game.

But SMB has the best physics imo. SMB3 felt a little floaty. It also gave you WAY too many lives, it was kind of the start of handholding imo. The music is the best too, if only for inventing the standards that all game music still strive for. I highly recommend the 33 1/3 book.

Maybe handholding started with SMB2, which was famously released as an entirely different game. Also pretty floaty physics. It was the first spin-off even though it was a mainline number game. I loved it. It was so weird and I dug the Arabian Nights influence. Player selection: CLASSIC. Almost wish they had it in SMB3 but maybe they felt that one was so different best to keep it simple at times.

One of my clearest childhood memories is the first time playing SMB2 at a friend's house, who was also playing me the Beach Boys for the first time. I didn't actually hear the music for a long time. It's still by Koji Kondo and it is still amazing. It kind of ramps up the silent film schtick they were developing. Mario as a kind of Super Saiyan Buster Keaton. I learned how to play it on keyboard, it's very ragtime. Playing through only a 3 notes at a time + noise channel it's fucking beautiful.

SMB3 soundtrack is great, I LOVE the drum samples. I think they don't really sample any melodic sounds but there may be a string or two. The new Matronix-style beat for the underworld theme is incredible. Koji Kondo is a genius. Some of this is very garage rock. Some calypso (as always) but more dubby here, with the drum samples.

Thank God Mario doesn't speak in any of them.

Yeah, SMB3 wins that fight VERY handily. So much craft and detail and joy and vastness, and yet not entirely unthinkable as a "sit down and play in one sitting since there's no save" game. Amazing control too. Basically the perfect NES game imo. The first one is also very pick-up-and-playable and also has basically era-defining control (that, nonetheless, hardly any third-party game ever came close to matching - the basic clunkiness of moving around in nearly ever licensed platformer has more than anything to do with them feeling like headache-inducing wastes of time), music and sound... it's a bit easier to just pop it in and play for a while but it also has less to unveil. Maybe purer as a "game" in terms of the player having to eventually become very skilled with an extremely limited set of skills; SMB3 isn't really hard by comparison.

Am I right that we did a poll of just the worlds from SMB3? Or was it from SMW?

There are a couple of other NES games that I could see giving it passing competition in this poll, basically the usual suspects of Zelda, Tetris and Castlevania, maybe Final Fantasy.

The original Zelda is groundbreaking and all, but man did that game get tedious and repetitive if you played it long enough. I don't think any kids in my neighbourhood had the stamina to play it all the way through (even though it had save codes, I think?), while most of us eventually managed to complete all the Mario games.

Castlevania is amazing but it's so hard to control. If the stairs were better, maybe.

Tetris might be the perfect game on a Ms. Pac Man level.

So much craft and detail and joy and vastness, and yet not entirely unthinkable as a "sit down and play in one sitting since there's no save" game.

in retrospect, not having a save system was SO important to SMB3 because, counterintuitively, it encouraged wandering and exploration. although of course it was possible to beat it relatively quickly once you knew where the whistles were and which rocks to break in world 8, the first several dozen times you played likely ended in, say, world 3 or 5 or 6, just because you had to go to school or dinner or bed or whatever. so you ended up playing those early worlds over and over and over again, and naturally exploring and looking for secrets as you went. to this day, i'm amazed when i sit down and play SMB3 for the first time in a few years and i still automatically know where tons of secrets are. it's just cemented in the brain, muscle memory style.

Music from SMB2 is a very good point. Love the character selection soundtrack expecially, pops into my head all the time.

It's amazing in hindsight what a huge mascot Mario was, for not having much backstory or dialogue or anything like that. I remember that Mario 3 commercial and it really did feel like that big a deal. Ditto The Wizard, the gigantic unveiling, obviously really heavy-handed promotion there but no kid in the audience would have disputed the game deserving such a massive unveiling. And all that without an "attitude" or anything like that. It was just so fun to play Mario games!

Zelda has actual save files with a battery in the cartridge - that was a big deal at the time, and for years afterwards tbh. Even lots of A-list titles like the Megaman sequels relied on really clunky password systems - graphical in that case, but godawful tedious gibberish input fests in nearly everything else. I guess I see what you mean about getting repetitive if you really played and replayed it; it's not something like Mario 3 where I played through and won many, many times (sometimes warping past less-beloved worlds, sometimes kicking back to savor every single level and get the Hammer Brothers suit). But it's more like a quest game or an RPG anyway, you save and come back to it and gradually progress and when you win you feel satisfied not coming back right away. Beating Zelda II the first time felt like the biggest gaming accomplishment I had ever, or would ever, attain.

That's a fair point about the Castlevania controls; they're just such landmarks of design, music, and scope for a 2D platformer. You compare the first one to Ghosts n Goblins, which has a similar theme and maybe even a similar number of levels, and while both are brutally hard, Castlevania mostly feels "fair" and it's so evidently a leap forward in graphics and enemy/level design and stuff. It's fun to play even just for the clear sense that you're moving through meaningfully different regions of this castle. Passing over the bizarre failed experiments of the second one, III basically takes all that many steps forward while perhaps being less satisfying as a game. It's huge and there are the multiple paths and multiple characters, but only a few of the individual levels come into focus as much. Still just astounding for how much they could get those cartridges to do on that system.

xpost otm

i'm trying to think of the most recently released game that has as much content as SMB3, with no save system.

i think it was SMB3

haha - maybe!

but i wouldn't even want a save system in it, is the thing. you don't miss it at all. i feel sorry for "the kids" who have only played re-releases of the game (through wiiware or emulators) that have save systems, because i doubt they feel as compelled to play it over and over again. when you have a save you don't really revisit old levels nearly as often, if at all. but replaying SMB3 levels is so key to what makes the game legendary.

Agreed. In particular the first two worlds really start to feel like old friends; it's a good thing they're among the stronger in the game I think. Plus it actually increases the novelty factory of the later boards that you might sometimes skip past or just not get to. There's also a certain pace to it, if you really play straight through, where you do get rewards and reprieves every so often; again, not that it's remotely a "hard" game but there's still, for example, that payoff in the water world where you can take a little boat far out to the east (I think after judicious use of the hammer if you didn't use it in the desert world?) and just basically pick up a bunch of little bonus mushroom houses IIRC. That's satisfying as heck.

I do basically agree that the lives are a little too freely given. I don't recall a game of SMB3 ever coming down to a nail-biting "whew!" like, I really needed to win that level on that life. But there are lots of death-defying stunts within the levels, so eh.

Is there a master list with all the noms so far? like a google doc or something?

more noms

Ironsword: Wizards & Warriors II (NES)
Pang aka Buster Bros. (I only played it in the Arcade and on my Playstation Buster Bros Collection but it was on earlier stuff. wiki link)

I'll try to remember more later

I loved loved loved first Wizards & Warriors, out of proportion to its actual quality. Rented it many times just to march through the same few levels, relish the treasure chests again, sigh at the tedium of ascending the castle exterior, thank god for the Feather of Feather Fall.

I can't remember if I didn't enjoy the sequels as much or if they were just really rare. They looked great in Nintendo Power, that's for sure. I think the third was supposed to be a little more quasi-RPGish, in a Faxanadu/Zelda II kind of way?

Castlevania mostly feels "fair" and it's so evidently a leap forward in graphics and enemy/level design and stuff

YES in a lot of ways it is like the Souls games are now now. If you master enemy patterns and know how to properly react you should be able to one-life it. It's INSANE that they have NG+ in the original Castlevania, which makes the game harder by manipulating damage. That game is already insane. As for level design, look no further than that room before the Grim Reaper, where you are dodging Medusa heads and axe-throwing knights that take multiple hits to kill.

Highly recommend the Anatomy of Castlevania: http://www.anatomyofgames.com/gamespite-quarterly/gjs13-anatomy-of-castlevania/ it goes into depth at why it's so good, how it may be the first game that really tried to do a linear and cohesive design. IE random platforms sitting in mid-air are connected to brickwork in the background and stuff. It is a masterpiece of impossible architecture. Here the sprite art really shines: what could be rather boring brick walls and archways have weathering and worn paint and moss drawn onto the tiles, one pixel at a time. This details suggests a world beyond what you just see on the CRT. Castlevania tugs at your imagination.

Sorry that links is broken. Try this one. http://www.anatomyofgames.com/anatomy-of-a-game/

Jeremy Parish is a great game writer. He covers a lot of the games in this poll on the site.

I used to read that guy religiously, going back to like, 1999/2000 or so. Evangelion Thumbnail Theater, all that stuff. He must be the king of unfinished or now un-archived projects, so many loose threads. Clearly struggling between the 'blog' and the 'kitchen sink website' as formats. As it is so much of the recent stuff is virtually un-browsable; maybe that's an incentive to buy the books. I do like that he's picked up the print volume as a format, and zeroed in on a few recurring obsessions (the "Metroidvania" genre in particular).

The only thing is, and this is hardly unique to that site, but there's also a real tension between what's brilliant about the insight and what's popular with most of the readers. I feel like a lot of projects like this burn themselves out screencapping everything and basically let's-playing every single step of the game, like a walkthrough but every sentence has to be written snappily and with nerd panache. Sometimes that's fun to read but sometimes it's just flab keeping us from a really taut single medium or long-form essay about, in this case, the anatomy of the particular game. Part of me loves the idea of a 14-article series on Zelda II, or 27 parts on Super Mario Bros., but I suspect some of the strengths of the insights actually get buried in all that coverage... which nonetheless I'm sure is very popular. This is by no means unique to Parish, and he has a way better ratio than some other blogs I could name, but you kinda wish his experience in print journalism would have helped him internalize some checks on excess. OTOH he's writing about what he loves so, y'know, more power to him!

Sticking closer to content, one thing I wonder about is the tendency for most of the games to assume that they're really well-thought-out masterpieces and that every little move is just incredibly amazing, or just brilliantly effective, or just perfectly calibrated. That's another common tendency in this kind of writing and it's exhausting, but I think it also starts to seep into the argument; he has a general predisposition towards games that 'teach' their mechanics through gameplay, and a good eye for ways games do this in subtle ways that also flesh out the story or atmosphere of the world. But I feel like, and I should have examples for this, but sometimes it starts to feel like every single thing you do in a game is a planned little teachable moment; every jump you have to make early on is there to train you for a more complicated jump in World 7. And yeah, sure, in general I buy that but this was also just an era of games being hard as fuck and throwing you in the deep end, and sometimes stuff wasn't really telegraphed all that well but the games were still fun for it. I dunno, I'm not explaining this well and it's not a reason not to read his stuff. Maybe it would be better to say that his essays for their emphasis on this theme have forced me to think for myself about what makes a good difficulty curve or how much of this stuff is necessary for a good game.

BTW: What is the best world of Super Mario 3?

Without knowing Castlevania II's secrets (ie without internet help), you won't be able to win. It's not the game's difficulty but the fact that you need a Nintendo Power or the prodigy kid down the street in order to progress in the game. I mean you would have to be pretty damn lucky to find/solve the secrets on your own.

Nobody I know bothered to play all the way through Link II. I wonder if it had any bitchy secrets as well

the tendency for most of the games to assume that they're really well-thought-out masterpieces and that every little move is just incredibly amazing, or just brilliantly effective, or just perfectly calibrated

Well given memory limitations everything was more or less meticulously thought-out, from level design to song length to character art. The designers themselves have admitted as much, the famous example being Mario's design was due to the limitations of pixel art, his moustache and hat being added to fix animation problems that cropped up with the tiny resolution they had to work with.

Nowadays there really aren't any limitations so less consideration probably goes into it. If you can only include X amount of art/music/gameplay, it is going to be the absolute best you can come up with.

But yes there is probably some projection/fandom in there largely coloring things.

Also I may be confusing this (with DOOM?) but I seem to remember them saying the first stage of Mario was built at the end of development, after they had figured out the tools, and thus were able to use more deliberate planning irt what the player would encounter and how they would likely respond.

Sure, I just think it gets taken to this level of "and here's yet another example of the unfailing inexhaustible genius of the designers" and it just becomes unreadable after a few paragraphs. Definitely talking more about the game design/challenge/information stuff here than the pixel art stuff. Obviously, there's more care at all levels in the classics than the far, far more numerous dudfests... s'what makes them the classics!

Zelda II is profoundly flawed but in the end, basically playable and satisfying in its way. If the first one had never existed it'd probably be pretty well remembered as an ambitious if incompletely-worked-out action RPG. I can think of only two totally baffling points that really scream "Nintendo Power, take me away!" which is basically zero compared to Castlevania II. Will be stunned if anyone ends up voting for that one...

Thanks for responding to that

I never understood the love for Zelda II. All I can remember is getting it and being like WTF, this isn't Zelda. But I was 9, so maybe I'd feel differently now.

Yeah it's pretty fun.

CVII is really fun too when you have a walkthrough. Killer music. The bosses are piss easy but I don't mind that after the nightmare bosses in the first game.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Tfh0ytz8S0k
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_rsycfDliZU

zelda 2 the first game i ever beat. dark link an all-time end boss. (his cameo in ocarina is kind of misplaced and random.) a genuinely difficult game, probably less forgiving than the first (definitely meaner: ganon's digitized chuckle on game over) and the last zelda game to be hard at all. its dangerous places (the forests, the pitch-black caves, the big mess of rocky maze in the southwest, the town where people are bats) are stressful and frightening in ways no death mountain has ever been, and a combination of nes-memory restrictions on text and a number of NPCs hugely increased from the first game meant even the non-hostile townspeople (health-restoring hookers aside) seemed standoffish and terse. the rare game i remember (vividly) as a hostile place, remote from help, instead of as a beloved playground. it's also weirdly colorless, simultaneously too simple and too fiddly to be a working platformer, and (alone in the series) reliant on dedicated, mindless grinding without any of the monster or spell variety that's supposed to entertain you when you're doing that in FF games. so it probably deserves its reputation in comparison to the likes of zelda 1 and link to the past, but in the post-twilight-princess era of nintendo's long enslavement to ocarina of time it definitely shouldn't be called the series' worst anymore.

I had a great idea for the upcoming Zelda game the other day. You start the game with a sword, shield, bow, boomerang and bombs
http://i44.tinypic.com/2z8ce9u.png

tbf the last Zelda game was in thrall to Link To The Past rather than Ocarina (and was all the better for it)

Myself and a few other guys are using Minecraft to build a working 3D remake of the original Zelda. Not sure how you guys feel about Minecraft, though.

i'm trying to think of the most recently released game that has as much content as SMB3, with no save system.

Kid Chameleon (Genesis, 1992) had over 100 stages and no saves. Stages had multiple exits that lead to many paths through the game.

those videos on graphics were really cool, thanks - somehow got this far in my life without knowing that stuff. wild about the 'color cells,' amazing how well the artists knew how to camouflage the boundaries. super cool.

high-fives to dlh. love this - "the rare game i remember (vividly) as a hostile place, remote from help, instead of as a beloved playground." totally. I AM ERROR. it's a bleak and ugly sort of hyrule you're saving here, not unlike the transylvania of castlevania ii but a lot more playable. i also think it should get credit for the dungeons, which are sometimes really irritating, and are nothing on the high-concept ones from link to the past, but again, legitimately hard, and considerably more varied than CV2's mansions which really all feel like the same place (and don't even have bosses!). and of course, the 'big rocky maze' - which IS death mountain! - thrown at you way too early in the game, super punishing. these mean motherfuckers, man:

http://www.nintendojo.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/10/Zelda-Daira.png

I'm on vacation so I don't have the master list handy. But I can post it on Tuesday. If anyone thinks some hang is missing, nominate it I won't get mad if it's a dupe.

Am I missing anything?

Atari Commando
Atari Dark Chambers
Atari Desert Falcon
Atari Donkey Kong Jr.
Atari Food Fight
Atari Galaga
Atari Mario Bros.
Atari Tower Toppler
Atari Xevious
NES 10 Yard Fight
NES 1943: battle of the midway
NES A Boy and His Blob
NES Adventures of Lolo
NES Adventures of Lolo 3
NES Bad Dudes
NES banana prince
NES Base Wars
NES Baseball Simulator 1.000
NES Baseball Stars
NES Bases Loaded
NES Batman
NES Batman: Return of the Joker
NES Battle of Olympus
NES Battletoads
NES Bionic Commando
NES Blades of Steel
NES Blaster Master
NES Bomberman
NES Bubble Bobble
NES California Games
NES Castlevania
NES Castlevania II
NES Castlevania III
NES Cobra Triangle
NES Commando
NES Contra
NES Crisis Force
NES Crystalis
NES Deja Vu
NES demon sword
NES Destiny of an Emperor
NES Double Dragon
NES Double Dragon II
NES Double Dribble
NES Dr. Mario
NES Dragon Warrior
NES Dragon Warrior II
NES Dragon Warrior III
NES Dragon Warrior IV
NES Duck Hunt
NES Ducktales
NES Ducktales 2
NES Dusty Diamond's All-Star Softball
NES Earthbound Zero
NES Excitebike
NES fantastic dizzy
NES Faxanadu
NES Fester's Quest
NES Final Fantasy
NES Friday the 13th
NES gargoyle's quest ii
NES Gauntlet
NES Ghosts 'n' Goblins
NES Golf
NES Golgo 13
NES Goonies II
NES Gradius
NES Gradius 2
NES Gumshoe
NES Hogan's Alley
NES holy diver
NES ice climber
NES Ice Hockey
NES Ikari Warriors
NES Impossible Mission
NES Jackal
NES Karnov
NES Kick Master
NES Kid Icarus
NES Kirby's Adventure
NES Kung Fu
NES Legacy of the Wizard
NES Lemmings
NES Life Force
NES Little League Baseball: Championship Series
NES Little Nemo: The Dream Master
NES M.C. Kids
NES Mach Rider
NES Maniac Mansion
NES Marble Madness
NES Mega Man
NES Mega Man II
NES Mega Man III
NES Mega Man IV
NES Metal Gear
NES Metal Gear II
NES Metroid
NES Mike Tyson's Punch Out
NES Mission Impossible
NES NARC
NES Ninja Gaiden
NES Ninja Gaiden II
NES Ninja Gaiden III
NES Nobunaga's Ambition
NES Otocky
NES Over Horizon
NES Parodius Da
NES prince of persia
NES Pro Wrestling
NES Rad Racer
NES Rampage
NES RBI Baseball
NES RC Pro Am
NES RC Pro Am II
NES Recca
NES Rescue Rangers
NES Ring King
NES River City Ransom
NES Rockin' Kats
NES Romance of the Three Kingdoms
NES Rush n Attack
NES Rygar
NES Section Z
NES Shadowgate
NES Smash TV
NES Snake, Rattle & Roll
NES Solar Jetman
NES Spy Hunter
NES StarTropics
NES StarTropics 2
NES Strider
NES Super C
NES super dodge ball
NES Super Mario Bros
NES Super Mario Bros 2
NES Super Mario Bros 3
NES Super Spike V'Ball
NES sweet home
NES Swords and Serpents
NES Tecmo Baseball
NES Tecmo Bowl
NES Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles I
NES Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles II
NES Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles III
NES Tetris
NES The Adventures of Rad Gravity
NES The Immortal
NES The Legend of Zelda
NES The Legend of Zelda II
NES Tiger Heli
NES Town & Country Surf Designs: Wood & Water Rage
NES Track and Field
NES Ufouria: The Saga
NES Ultima Exodus
NES Uninvited
NES Urban Champion
NES Wall Street Kid
NES Willow
NES Winter Games
NES Wizards and Warriors
NES Yoshi
NES Yoshi's Cookie
NES Zanac
Sega Action Fighter
Sega Alex Kidd in Miracle World
Sega alex kidd in shinobi world
Sega Altered Beast
Sega Batman Returns
Sega columns
Sega enduro racer
Sega fantasy zone
Sega Ghostbusters
Sega Golden Axe Warrior
Sega golvellius: valley of doom
Sega James "Buster" Douglas Knockout Boxing
Sega Kung Fu Kid
Sega Mickey Mouse Castle Of Illusion
Sega miracle warriors
Sega operation wolf
Sega Phantasy Star
Sega psycho fox
Sega rampage
Sega rampart
Sega Revenge of Shinobi
Sega rocky
Sega r-type
Sega Shadow Dancer
Sega shadow of the beast
Sega Shinobi
Sega smash tv
Sega snail maze
Sega sonic chaos
Sega Space Harrier
Sega Speedball
Sega Speedball 2
Sega Spy vs. Spy
Sega Super Monaco GP
Sega teddy boy
Sega TransBot
Sega ultima iv
Sega Wonder Boy in Monster World
Sega Wonderboy III: The Dragon's Trap
Sega ys
Sega Zillion
Sega Zillion II: The Tri Formation

Nes Balloon Fight
Nes Donkey Kong Jr
Nes Flintstones: The Rescue of Dino & Hoppy
Nes Guerilla War
Nes Wizards and Warriors II: Ironsword

Those are going to be the final nominations unless someone else adds to it in the next ~3 hours, going to start the new thread around 7pm Eastern! (also sorry it took me so long!)