10 Best NES Games of All Time

The NES library is ridiculously good. A lot of crap was shoveled onto the platform throughout the course of its lifetime, but a shockingly high proportion of games manufactured for the NES are good, and more than a handful are bona fide classics.

Getting the list down to ten was NOT easy. I left off dozens of legitimate contenders, zeroing in on games that in many cases beat their closest rivals not by miles but by mere inches.

But in the end, I narrowed it down to these ten. Now remember, these are NES games... no Famicom-exclusives allowed. Every game here was available for the stock Nintendo Entertainment System, (though one of the ten, a European exclusive, never made it it to America). These are the games that encapsulate what was great about the Nintendo Entertainment System. Let’s Play with Power.

Super Mario Brothers

The grand-daddy of em’ all, Super Mario Brothers blew the doors off video gaming. It represented one of the few true seismic shifts in the history of entertainment, reigniting the video games industry in the US, redefining it in Japan, and advancing the state of the art. A technical showpiece and a design revolution, Super Mario Brothers was so much further ahead of anything that had come before it that its existence was almost incomprehensible to the mind.

Decades after the novelty wore off, Super Mario Brothers remains a near-perfect essay on the craft of game design. Its simple appearance belies intricate, purposeful craftsmanship. Every tile and block seems perfectly placed. Mario’s handling is the archetype for all platform characters to follow. The unforgettable melodies feel synchronized to the action unfolding onscreen. Over three decades after its release, Mario’s first adventure in the Mushroom Kingdom is still one of gaming’s greatest feats.

Super Mario Brothers 3

Super Mario Brothers 2 (USA) is a superb sequel in its own right, bravely and innovatively deviating from the pattern set by its predecessor while still capturing the essence of great platforming. But Mario 3 stands at the apex of Mario games, eclipsing its progenitors and progeny alike.

Over dozens of short levels, Mario 3 introduces a series of unique mechanics, then gradually builds upon and combines these for ever-escalating intrigue and difficulty. It’s a festival of variety, an absolute feast for the senses, crammed to the seams with memorable enemies, wildly varied stages, and some of the greatest weapons in video game history. The whole package feels like a microcosmic celebration of video games as an artform.

The Legend of Zelda

Much of the mental vocabulary of contemporary video game was perfected in Zelda. It probably sounds silly now, but Zelda was a mind-blowing technical achievement when it was introduced. The scope of Hyrule and the tremendous variety of enemies and items was far ahead of what had previously been considered possible in a home console action game. Its American release took advantage of the NES’s ability to utilize upgrade chips included in the cartridge to stretch the hardware beyond its designers’ original intentions, creating a bright and colorful world full of sweeping melodies and accommodating the game’s extended length with an on-board save system battery. When you think about saving your game, saving any game, on PS4 or Xbox One, thank Zelda.

Tetris

Thanks to one of the weirdest licensing stories in video game history, there are two different Tetris games on NES: one by Tengen (Atari), and the other published by Nintendo. The Tengen carts were eventually pulled from circulation by legal action and are now a rarity. The official NES port of Tetris lacks the multiplayer competitive mode of Tengen’s version, but it is colorful, responsive, stylistically interesting, features great music, and it introduced multitudes of kids to the world’s greatest puzzle game. If you didn’t have a Game Boy, NES Tetris was another solid way to play an all-time great.

Mega Man 3

The Blue Bomber’s second and third outings both rank among the all-time great platformers, but we’re giving Mega Man 3 a slight edge thanks to the game’s extraordinary arsenal of weapons and the fact that it also packs in every Mega Man 2 enemy as a bonus boss. Mega Man 3 also marks the advent of Mega Man’s canine companion Rush, the first appearance of the enigmatic Proto Man, and some of the most inventive challenges of the 8-bit era. The music is terrifically memorable, the control feels fast and pixel-perfect responsible, and Capcom’s passionate Mega Man design team was operating at the height of their collective powers.

The Guardian Legend

I bought The Guardian Legend on clearance mere months after it launched. I spent ten bucks of my own cash for it at an outlet store. I’d heard of it from a truly terrible commercial that ran on local TV, I didn’t have a lot of cash, it looked like a shmup, and I was broke. I took it home and gave it a shot.

Every game on this list had great music, but The Guardian Legend’s first stage theme is my all-time favorite game track. Shooters were supposed to be about butt rock and militaristic splendour, but The Guardian Legend’s wood flute melody was a haunting theme that evoked the mystery and emptiness of deep space. I was entranced as I played, beating the first boss, getting ready to move on to the next shmup challenge. Instead, my plane transformed into a space girl named Miria and suddenly I was on foot exploring a desolate alien planet in a Zelda-inspired overworld.

But that change of genre was only the first of many, many surprises from this hybrid shooter/adventure/RPG. The shooting stages include some of the most beautiful sprites ever released on the NES, with huge, vibrant, detailed bosses. Aquatic foes seem to unzip the background itself and unleash enemies from beneath as massive monstorities swoop down from above. The screen becomes a blaze of projectiles as your truly epic arsenal of special weapons somehow projects far, far more sprites than the NES was ever intended to generate. Between canyon stages, the haunted surface of Naju beacons with strange secrets, hidden shops, and enemy ambushes waiting at every turn. It’s similar in tone to Metroid, a lonely, strange place still very much alive, threatening but also beautiful, a place where YOU feel like the invader.

It’s awesome. I’ve never found another game quite like it.

Mr. Gimmick

I’m really reluctant to include this entry because so few of us in the West ever got a chance to experience its sublime glory. Its extremely limited distribution means it’s not a part of our nostalgic NES vocabulary. But it’s just too extraordinary a game to pass up.

Mr. Gimmick (called Gimmick in Japan) never made it to the US, but it did get a limited NES release in Europe, and that qualifies it for this list. Thanks Scandinavia! You may have never played Gimmick, and that’s a true shame. It’s the most technically impressive NES game ever made, and one of the most challenging.

Plainly put, Mr. Gimmick is spellbinding. It’s crammed with little things, tiny moments of interest and beauty that exist only to be experienced for a few seconds, the assets never repurposed again. It has an honest-to-goodness physics engine of some kind running, an incomprehensible accomplishment on the modest NES hardware. And its platforming execution stands out even on a console renown for its 2D platformers.

You really should watch Frank Cifaldi’s annotated longplay and get a feel for just why Mr. Gimmick is so unique.

Final Fantasy

I agonized over whether Final Fantasy, Ultima IV, or Dragon Quest IV should hold the NES RPG crown, but in the end I couldn't ignore the spellbinding impact Final Fantasy had on those Western audiences fortunate enough to experience it in 1990.

So much of what makes contemporary Final Fantasy games work is already present in a prototypical way in NES Final Fantasy. Beautiful melodies. A vast variety of spells and items. A sprawling world that combines magic and high technology. Beautiful art that pushes the capabilities of the hardware. A final twist that reveals the true evil behind the sinister plot isn’t who you’ve been led to expect. At the same time, the original Final Fantasy is also quite distinctive from modern iterations. It borrows heavily from Western RPG design... its party members are customizable archetypes rather than characters. There are no substantial cutscenes (though there’s quite a bit of dialogue).

Pirates!

It’s the best version of one of the best games ever created. Developed by Rare, published by Ultra (aka Konami), the NES port is a standout interpretation of Sid Meier’s genre-defining sandbox game. It lacks a few minor features of the microcomputer originals and isn’t quite as pretty as the 16-bit Pirates Gold, but it more than makes up for that with a smoothness of control execution and animated precision unmatched in any other version of the game.

I first experienced Pirates on the IBM PC, but after playing the NES version in 1991 or so, there was no going back. It became a near-permanent resident in my NES’ cartridge port for years. It could be played and played and replayed again, and every experience would be entirely different. I could change the settings to alter the world and customize my captain, but the real variety grew out of the decisions I made WHILE playing... not dialogue tree options, but rather the organic approach I took in response to every emerging encounter. Swashbuckling raider, imperious conqueror, peaceful trader, adventurous explorer, every role was valid and each led to a vastly different gameplay experience.

Bionic Commando

By the time I got to this slot on the list I was desperate. I had a long list of games that I thought belonged in the number 10 position... I conservatively identified at least 13 serious contenders. But in the end, I came down on Captain Ladd and Super Joe’s ridiculous, extraordinary platforming masterpiece, Bionic Commando.

Bionic Commando is dope. It’s a tremendous departure from the typical 8-bit platformer. There’s no jump button. Instead, you use a bionic arm to grapple nearby objects, climbing them or using swinging momentum to propel yourself across vast gulfs and above obstacles, all the time mowing down hordes of Nazis. It integrates an experience system, a customizable arsenal of weapons and items, a map screen complete with secret passageways and roving enemy encounters, hidden continues that must be fought for, peaceful zones where you hobnob with enemies and firing your weapon calls in hordes of neutral UN peacekeepers to kill you, and one of the most absolutely bodacious soundtracks in any game.

Bionic Commando is far more complex than it first appears to be. When I first played it as a kid I hated it... why play a game without a jump button? But when circumstances forced me to spend an afternoon with it, I was blown away by the depth, the simply brain-numbing level design, the variety, and the utter insanity of what was unfolding in front of me. Space-age Nazis aided by giant spiders. Tiny men with helicopter backpacks. Slime levels. Top-down stages where the bionic arm transforms from means of propulsion to impromptu force field. Surprise after surprise. And so much bad translation and utter weirdness.

Here are some other things that happen in just one stage Bionic Commando:

• You navigate a man with a Rocket Launcher and a robot arm into the depths of a huge neo-Nazi base to hunt down the bad guys’ superweapon.
• Hitler comes back to life, blows up the leader of the Fourth Reich, calls you a “Damn Fool,” and sends a giant mechanized death machine (misspelled “Albatros”) to kill you.
• You climb and demolish Hitler’s colossal robotic “Albatros.”
• You leap off a cliff, shoot through the windshield of a helicopter, and blow up Hitler’s head with a bazooka. The camera zooms in and you watch it bloodily split and rupture in slow motion.
• The game tells you “THIS BASE WILL EXPLOD IN 60 SECONDS.”
• You race to escape the self-destructing base and fight another big robot on the way up, just because.
• Rushing outside, you realize you’ve left an ally behind, so you run back in and save him, then escape by hanging from a friendly helicopter while everything around you erupts in flame.

Jared Petty produces Red Dead Radio: The Read Dead Redemption Podcast, Hop, Blip, and a Jump, and Pockets Full of Soup. He's a host at Kinda Funny Games and a frequent contributor to IGN. Follow him on Twitter @pettycommajared and on Instagram @pettycommajared.