Nintendo's little pink powerpuff got his start on the Game Boy with Kirby's Dream Land, but it wasn't until this late-generation NES sequel arrived that he gained his trademark trait absorbing enemies' abilities as his own. Others called Nintendo's own hotline for help or consulted a magazine. Do you need anything else? If you can get past the partially naked winged dudes, Legendary Wings offers some other treats as well. After all, with the exception of Pit's inclusion in Super Smash Bros. Brawl, the last Kid Icarus game was released on Game Boy nearly two decades ago. I'm a lifelong Samus Aran groupie. A port of a graphically superior arcade version, Konami gave Super C lots of love to help it make a successful transition, including the addition of several unique levels. I happily rediscovered Stinger despite its unfortunate title and packaging (A space ship with boxing gloves? If you missed their heyday in the '80s and '90s, Micro Machines were essentially the same thing as those other toy car brands they were just smaller; about half the size of the others, in fact making them really, really tiny. "Games are too easy now." The game places a greater emphasis on exploration than the first, and can get a bit confusing, but if you hop around enough you can find your way through the game fairly easily. You'll find a few other games that got thrust into the limelight the same way on this countdown, like VICE: Project Doom. Although prominently featuring traditional Japanese settings and mythology, Demon Sword seems to have suffered from a poor North American localization, as evidenced by the goofy box art featuring a naked blonde guy glaring at his sword. And then there was Zelda II: The Adventure of Link, the follow-up to the smash hit The Legend of Zelda. On horseback, must prevent 3 bandits from boarding the train. Not only is it one of the very best and most iconic videogames ever conceived, but having shipped with the majority of NES consoles, Super Mario Bros. quickly became synonymous with the NES itself. Yeah. You could upgrade its engine, increase the rate of fire of its bullets, increase the number of its bullets, give it the power to fire secondary missiles and even wrap it in a force field. What resulted was a crisp experience in NES gameplay that still stands up today. Choreographing delicate rescue operations with my cousin was a blast, sending one Jeep to collect P.O.W.s while the other threw out cover in the form of myriad bullets and grenades. But the Balloon Adaptor and Wire Adaptor didn't elude me for long, as useless as they were. Dumb, I know. One of the counter-examples to this argument is Mario Bros., an NES port that's not perfect when compared to the 1983 arcade original, but one that is about as close as can be expected, with smooth gameplay and crisp graphics that do the original proud. Baseball Stars is unequivocally the best baseball game, and overall sports simulation, the NES ever saw. And besides, the game was officially backed by Fred Savage, the ultimate gaming Wizard. is the most well-remembered boxing design from Nintendo's NES, Ring King was a capable competitor thanks to its more accurate simulation of the sport. I had no qualms with wasting the POW block if I didn't get my way. The point-and-click adventure genre seems to be in the midst of something of a renaissance, as developers like Telltale Games are working tirelessly to bring series like Sam & Max, Monkey Island and Strongbad's Cool Game for Attractive People to modern platforms. Unlike the Adventures of Lolo series, which was unforgiving in its difficulty, Kickle Cubicle's difficulty spikes were much more reasonable. As a major Wonder Boy fan, I naturally thought Adventure Island was some kind of rip-off. I never was satisfied with the party I formed; so half way through the game, I'd start a new game with a completely different party. Jackal's premise is that the resolution to all conflict lies in explosions lots and lots of explosions. - Matt Casamassina, IGN Nintendo Editor-in-Chief. I always thought Ice Climber was just another way to repackage Mario Bros. "It's just the same game with a bunch of white," I thought. I was blown away by how complete an experience Crystalis was. Soaring around as Mario in raccoon form simply cannot be beat. This original and its sequel, Zoda's Revenge: StarTropics II, are still fondly remembered by faithful Nintendo fans to this day for their unique and light-hearted twist on genre conventions. Fantastic. Unfortunately, Google isn't proving useful in finding a good "top 10" or similar list of great top downs. Thanks to Saberman who contacted us earlier today, we have yet another Amiga news story to share with you all. Capcom seemed to remove Mega Man's classic foil, Dr. Wily, in lieu of a new creator of evil robots, Dr. Cossack. Yes, Super Mario Bros. 2 is a repurposing of a non-Mario Japanese Famicom game called Yume Kj: Doki Doki Panic, but why hold that against it? However, word of mouth combined with a Nintendo Power promotion that sent copies of the game around the country allowed it to blow up. And here's the kicker the pit stop comes to you! And so the Battletoads Rash, Pimple, and Zits were born (kids love acne, right?). Then, Skate or Die 2 came along and trumped its predecessor in many ways, offering a full storyline adventure in addition to the standalone skating events as well as adding in the "Double Trouble" half pipe, a massive structure that spanned two full game screens and let you pull off highly stylish (for the time) vert skating tricks. The key to not being obliterated is, of course, power-ups. Confusion aside, the game left players confounded with its intricate, wide-open design. Just be careful writing down those passwords! This NES follow-up refined and focused what started on the portable platform, offering a polished action experience married with overhead map and town exploration ripped right out of the best RPGs of the age. My favorite design was the fighting system: the loser of the fight heads to the penalty box. Although Nintendo's licensed, "official" version of Tetris was ubiquitous, happening upon this strange, black cartridge in the cobwebby recesses of a used game joint proved an eye-opening experience for this young NES collector-to-be. In Little Samson you play as one of four different characters: a mouse, a robot, a dragon and a boring ol' human boy. Haunting music and the constant fear of running out of torches usually kept me from playing more than a half hour at a time, but I kept going back to it. The place was red and full of aliens to shoot or avoid It's like someone took the Gradius series' Vic Viper and transformed it from a spaceship into a jet ski. Fond memories for this one really only go a year or so back. The entire game can be played with a wingman, but make sure whoever it is can appreciate a heaping dollop of cuteness, served Japanese-style (with extra "cute" on the side). Good luck finding a copy now that doesn't have a warped parchment. In this post I'll run down some quick reviews of the games that I have. We're glad it did, because it's still a blast to power up our blades today. Only later did I learn the convoluted history of who made what, so Hudson, I owe you an apology for my playground rants about your integrity. - Jeremy Dunham, IGN Games Editorial Manager. Of course the objectives need executed while hordes of enemies swarm you. This isn't the Super Mario Bros. we oft talk about as one of the most groundbreaking games to ever be released. In Klax, a conveyor belt feeds tiles that can be stacked in columns. While many of you are still waiting for Neeso Games awesome looking Arcade platformer of 'Super Delivery Boy', which is due for release towards the end of this year. When you aren't pounding all manner of non-amphibious fauna, you are racing speeding vehicles, repelling down pits and performing various other stunts uncharacteristic of your every day brawler. If you were a space nerd who loved Stewart Cowley's Spaceships 2000 to 2100 AD, you too, would write up fictional technical specifications for the Vic Viper and the RoadBritish spacecraft. Interestingly enough, my memories of Qix on NES were limited until many years later when I was playing the PS2 game Bully. Firepower 2000 is notable for being one of the few shoot em' ups on the Super Nintendo that allows two-player action. To this day I still vividly remember the cutscenes that showed my sword becoming more powerful. Who's Link? Top 100 NES Games - IGN.com 100 NES Games Start Over Comments 100 Ice Hockey 99 Rush'n Attack 98 Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles 97 Astyanax 96 Dragon Warrior III 95 Mega Man 4 94 Kickle. Whether or not the game was a blast to play is how we decided the order of our beloved NES carts - so don't be surprised if you see an important or influential title below something we loved to play over and over and over again. After all, it is 2009, and there's been a lot of time for Tetris and Dr. Mario. Death Rally is a top-down combat racing game developed by Remedy, published by Apogee, and distributed by GT Interactive Software. It's a shame the character known as Kickle has died with history, as well. The Game Pak is truly worth tracking down for its multiplayer selection, including a wacky cooperative mode. Although the NES had trouble tackling some of its arcade contemporaries, games like 1981's Qix were a perfect match for its capabilities. When Tengen released its first unofficial games using its new technology, Nintendo quickly sued. Jackal and Ikari Warriors on the NES. The Ninja Turtles do love their pizza. Simon's Quest took you away from the all-too-familiar atmosphere of Dracula's castle and instead set you loose in an Eastern European locale full of mysterious villages, haunted mansions and, ultimately, the remnants of the castle Simon Belmont destroyed in the original. And since everybody seems to be teaming up, you may as well take on the combined forces of the Dark Queen and Shadow Warriors with a pal the game's difficulty seems to indicate that it's built for two. Dragon Warrior III continued to open up both the gamer's party and the enemy parties to more than one per side, creating for the first time in the series a real feeling of strategy. This game had everything that made the first what it was: from the slick graphics and amazing music, to the awesome cutscenes and silky-smooth gameplay. You can collect power-ups by "juggling" bells on heart-shaped beams of pure love, thus altering their colors and endowing you with different abilities. Kickle Cubicle's appeal seemed to be centered in its balanced approach. TMNT II: The Arcade Game for the NES was an incredibly impressive 8-bit conversion of one of the most popular coin-op cabinets ever created the original side-scrolling Turtles brawler from the early '90s arcade scene. As if you have been following Neeso Games upcoming Amiga game of Jackal, which is a remake of the NES top-down shooter of the same name . Pit is a fledgling winged angel who is tasked with working his way out of the Underworld and to the Sky, where the evil Medusa has taken control. By 1990, Capcom was churning out quality 2D platformers at frightening rate, making it entirely possible for the gamers of yesteryear to have missed this strangely licensed gem. Then, with enough mass amassed, you could jump onto the level-ending weight scale to trigger the opening of the stage-clearing door make it through there, and you're on to the next world. Super Mario Bros. was a smash hit, and its American sequel was a completely different type of game. Every Ice Hockey player discovered their own perfect combination of men, and then it was on to the ice. Those that picked up Jackal merely due to its similarity in appearance to games like Contra and Castlevania were not disappointed. If you fully power up your weapons you turn into a flaming, butt-kicking phoenix. "A winner is you!" It's not only the hardest in the franchise, but one of the hardest NES games period. This game of skating and slap shots was perfectly balanced, simple fun with just the right touch of planning and strategy to keep things interesting match after match. That's awesome! My earliest forays into the Cave of Monsters were rarely solo. There really is nothing quite like punching a guy in the gut, jump-kicking him in the face and watching him fall backwards out of a chopper's open side-door, then imagining his terror as he plummets to a watery death in the waves below. But it belongs on our NES list as well, for the port of Lode Runner was pixel-perfect and provided something that only Excitebike had done prior: a level editor. This intense top-down shooter fills a retro-fied void on Xbox One and Series X with its wild brand of gory gameplay and thematic celebration of 80s culture. A complete reworking of an inferior arcade brawler of the same name, Rygar for the NES tells the heroic story of a man and his deadly yo-yo shield. It was also the longest Mega Man title in the classic series, reintroducing all of the Robot Masters from Mega Man 2 in addition to an extended trek through Dr. Wily's dangerous castle. Gradius is all about pimping your ride. Not too shabby. And that's saying nothing of its amazing action-platforming gameplay, which was oft-replicated and never exceeded. What at first appeared to be an awkward platformer quickly revealed itself to be a true test of gaming mettle. Carry on about how this game just isn't as good as the arcades (I do), but the truth is NES had some killer shooters, and this was one that I went back to over and over again. And for the most part, franchises that did flood the NES were of a high quality. Although it's actually the second entry in the predominately Japanese TwinBee series, the re-branded Stinger was the only entry that saw release on the North American NES. Today, the game known as Tengen Tetris is a rare title to have in your collection, but it's a worthwhile play. Little Nemo's cover art of a tyke in his pajamas most likely resulted in it finding its way into the hands of many a NES gamer's little sister, which is where probably where I first chanced upon it (I had a strict "no girly games" policy when I was 10). Tyson's name recognition was never needed, though. Years before Yoshi first crammed a fat plumber on his back, Adventure Island II offered some of the coolest dinosaur wrangling in the business. Welcome to the 80's. Pocky & Rocky is a top-down shooter in which you choose to play as either a young girl named Pocky or her tanuki named Rocky. But for the most part, early Zelda gamers had nothing but their own ingenuity to rely on. Despite the unparalleled hype, no one was disappointed. Some of the islands' giant eggs pack ferocious but adorable dinos who will let you hitch a ride until they take damage. Cue Dragon Warrior III, the third game in the long-running RPG series from Enix, a game that came only a couple of years after the original landed stateside. Wizards & Warriors is about probing every corner with your trusty blade for treasure chest, precious gems and the like. Doctor Hauzer. Linux Xbox One Nintendo Switch stadia vita Playstation 3 Playstation 4 PC Windows Mac OS. Fast moving platforms, icy terrain and blocks that couldn't be broken by your mallet ruled the day, and Ice Climber got excruciatingly hard in the latter stages. That's right if you've ever cursed the skies after falling prey to the infamous Blue Shell, you can trace the source of your rage all the way back to Rare's R.C. . I can remember looking at the Rad Racer flap at Toys R Us (remember the old system of flaps and slips?) Just like Mega Man 4 pulled a bait-and-switch with Dr. Cossack, Protoman served the same function in Mega Man 5. To this day, this is still the only game that's ever shipped with a coupon for five bucks off an order at Pizza Hut printed on the back of its instruction manual.