When the game dropped, I was on a weird banana oatmeal kick, and I would make a batch every few hours as I played the game over and over again. This boat-based action/racing design was based on the engine the studio had developed for the classic R.C. Having more in common with Metroid or The Legend of Zelda than NES era brawlers, Rygar must find equipment upgrades a grappling hook, pulley, crossbow etc. Super C, the somewhat unfortunately-titled sequel to Contra, features the same co-op shooter action of the first without toying with the formula too much. While not entirely innovative, Final Fantasy did make some interesting iterations on the RPG formula. For all of these reasons and more, NES was recently named the best console of all time. While Qix was never lauded for its graphical flair, the NES got not only the look but the mechanics of this strange geometric puzzler down perfectly. When I visit my mom today, that sticker is still there, reminding me of a time when I couldn't play every game I wanted to. And guess what? It's no Blades of Steel (hell EA's NHL09 isn't Blades of Steel), but growing up in Minnesota and playing on a hockey team ensured that this one was in the NES as much as Super Mario 3. However, word of mouth combined with a Nintendo Power promotion that sent copies of the game around the country allowed it to blow up. I spent hours tackling puzzles using different methods to trap enemies or to drop them through flooring. And some were fortunate enough to have friends who knew answers. My earliest forays into the Cave of Monsters were rarely solo. And besides, the game was officially backed by Fred Savage, the ultimate gaming Wizard. None of those games ended up having the lasting appeal and addictiveness of one of its other contemporaries, though the first-party Nintendo sports sim known simply as Ice Hockey. Armed only with a brick-zapping raygun, your only defense in Lode Runner is the ability to bury your opponents alive, thus freeing them of an enticing pile of gold. Konami even tossed in two new, NES-exclusive extra levels, making it even more "in-demand" when it hit store shelves. Debate ensues to this day surrounding Zelda II's place in The Legend of Zelda franchise as a whole, but most everyone agrees that Zelda II is a stellar standalone title. But while action games on the NES are a dime a dozen, it's this very fact that made Batman stand out amongst the competition. Once all four had been collected, the legendary titular sword "Crystalis" could be created. Buy Buy Buy. It's the touching tale of a young boy and his pet frog, Fred. My mom and one of my sisters were out all day, and when they came home, my mom had an NES box in her hand. Snake parachuted into the jungle fortress of Outer Heaven with nothing but his courage and a pack of smokes, and skillfully avoided detection while sneaking through the enemy encampment to find and destroy the titular weapon of mass destruction or, if sneaking didn't work, he beat the snot out of the soldiers in his way. One of the major debates among NES aficionados is the sheer amount of ports that appear on the console, and how many of them are inherently sub-par to their arcade counterparts. It would be great to see Nintendo revive the Faxanadu concept someday. I added level configs for 102 NES games in CaD Editor. From a technical standpoint, Metal Storm is something of a tour de force. If there was ever a more perfect title for an NES game, we don't know what it was Kid Niki: Radical Ninja got it exactly right. For me, just making it to level 2 was a major accomplishment that I reveled in let alone, the brutality that I had to overcome in future levels (especially that darned Ice Cavern). While the first dozen or so screens will seem like a walk in the park, as you make your way deeper into the cave you'll encounter some puzzling situations. What an unsung classic this, and the Game Boy version, is. The Game Pak is truly worth tracking down for its multiplayer selection, including a wacky cooperative mode. To make things interesting, at one point in your quest, your original classes undergo a change, making it advantageous to lug around a useless Thief just so you'll end up with a badass Ninja. And did we mention your car can transform into a boat? The original Castlevania was a typical action-platformer on its facade, but once explored, the game proved to be much, much more. I can remember looking at the Rad Racer flap at Toys R Us (remember the old system of flaps and slips?) Though this is the penultimate entry in the trilogy, Wizards and Warriors III - Kuros: Visions of Power, followed as a largely forgotten (and Fabio-less) dud. Perhaps. Little Samson arrived at the tail-end of the NES era, when most gamers had moved on to newer, although not necessarily better, consoles. We won. Nintendo had a fairly diverse lineup of sports titles introduced for the NES early on in the system's life cycle, including 8-bit interpretations of soccer, tennis, volleyball and even downhill slalom skiing. Shadowgate's unique spin on the point-and-click concept spawned several spiritual successors like Deja Vu and The Uninvited on the NES, as well as its own direct sequel years later on the Nintendo 64. We encourage you to read our updated PRIVACY POLICY and COOKIE POLICY. Featuring a half-and-half game design that blends two distinct types of gameplay into one excellent whole, The Guardian Legend is one of the most influential games in the history of the gaming industry. Why is Baseball Stars so important? Brazenly over-the-top, Zombie Nation is one of the few NES titles that doesn't take itself seriously. Find Shooter game assets tagged Top-Down like Patreon's Top Down Collection, The Ultimate Weapons Pack, TDS Pixel Art 2D Kit, Animated top down character base template, Zombie Apocalypse Tileset on itch.io, the indie game hosting marketplace . Kung Fu proved how good even the most simple games can be, and it's still a title I go back and play often to this day. This isn't the Super Mario Bros. we oft talk about as one of the most groundbreaking games to ever be released. The gameplay is of the classic action-platforming variety. What stuck out most for me about Double Dragon II was how varied the game was. It's a shame the character known as Kickle has died with history, as well. After all, Dr. Mario had a two player mode. If the Qix interrupts your line mid-stroke, you are destroyed. RPG parties with role characters, like healers and fighters, were brought to the forefront of Dragon Warrior III, and just about every J-RPG made ever since. Castlevania was not only a brilliant vid, but the music too is timeless I can still hum it on cue. ), Legendary Wings features standard shoot things/power up/shoot more things gameplay but it's the oddball setting that truly sets it apart from vertical space shooters. I think I've got the same fond memory for this one as everyone else does: skinny dude, medium dude, and fat dude. The Tetris cartridge was circulated amongst us and our various neighbors forever after collected dust. More than any other past gaming console, the NES was the birthplace of long-lived mascot characters. 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. Other elements of Super Mario Bros. 2 have been assimilated into the greater Mario universe as well Shy Guys, Birdo, Bob-ombs, POW blocks making the game seem less like the oddball of the series it's been pegged as. It was much harder than the first game, which I liked, and even though I played through it a couple of times, it didn't leave me with a "been there, done that" feeling that so many other games did. In fact, ideas in Metroid have been replicated time and time again, and its collection-based themes and upgrade-encouraged RPG motif can be found in a vast range of games since, from the PlayStation's Castlevania: Symphony of the Night to the more recent Xbox Live title, Shadow Complex. We'd head to Mr. Movies in Minnesota, I'd see the box art, freak out, and he'd pick up something else. But when something isn't broken, you shouldn't attempt to fix it, and Capcom released what was in essence the same experience from the three earlier titles in the series. Punch-Out!! Although the game itself takes a good amount of skill to master, Super Mario Bros has a mysterious quality that makes it appealing to even the most inexperienced players. These mysterious monoliths eventually became a series standard. In other words, it's just about everything. But those few weeks I spent with Metal Storm remain precious. Taito's iconic dragon duo's first outing is also their best. 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. But rest assured that like the original, Ninja Gaiden II's difficulty level is nothing to scoff at. Above all else, what surprised me most about Rescue Rangers is that it was so fun to play. You could take several different paths through the house, discover tons of interactions between characters and objects, and replay the game again and again with a completely different trio of the seven potential playable characters (each with unique skill-sets and abilities). It was rudimentary, yes, but it extended Lode Runner's life indefinitely. No other NES game ever earned that honor, but it's easy to see why Crystalis did this post-apocalyptic tale of thermonuclear aftermath skillfully blended fantasy and science-fiction into one dynamic story. I was introduced to the NES version of the game after I played the arcade/Neo Geo edition, but I have to say that the NES version was infinitely more awesome. You take direct control of the samurai's giant head in a sort of side-scrolling shooter that's too deliberately loony not to check out. Though Nintendo didn't develop Faxanadu in-house, it's easy to see why the company decided to grab publishing rights for it in America it was a unique side-scrolling action/platformer with RPG elements reminiscent of the company's own Zelda II: The Adventure of Link. Unfortunately, Google isn't proving useful in finding a good "top 10" or similar list of great top downs. was a knock-out even without his celebrity status. My initial exposure to what would become a gaming obsession in my life happened down there, when I played Mega Man for the first time. After a few minutes with Metal Storm you'll pity Mario for being such a ground bound chump. All of the Adventures of Lolo games were great, but the third chapter has the best puzzles of the whole series and almost the most difficult. It was the gameplay that was at the heart of Castlevania's epic rise from unknown brand to Konami flagship. 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). Weird, right? From Link and Samus Aran to Mega Man and Bowser, Nintendo's 8-bit machine was the debut platform for countless classic heroes and villains that are still active in the industry today. After a few minutes with Contra's militant anthems you'll want to put your controller down and headbang along. Link mainly navigated around an RPG-like world map, with action occurring sporadically in side-scrolling sequences. It was a solid companion for the early Zelda games, and perhaps a factor in why Capcom was later approached to develop some portable entries in the Zelda series for Nintendo. To proceed to the next level, a treasure chest must be opened, but that chest is only unlocked when all heart icons on the screen are acquired. Over a decade before the name Tony Hawk first began to become synonymous with skateboarding videogames, Electronic Arts was innovating on the NES with the impressively diverse Skate or Die. The answer is multifaceted it's the ability to play a season and track statistics. And it's the insanely crisp gameplay. Totally bodacious to the max! Demon Sword's ninja is surprisingly agile, with the ability to hop to tree tops in matter of seconds. After all, it is 2009, and there's been a lot of time for Tetris and Dr. Mario. It's not only the hardest in the franchise, but one of the hardest NES games period. 6 yr. ago. A vertically scrolling video game or vertical scroller is a video game in which the player views the field of play principally from a top-down perspective, while the background scrolls from the top of the screen to the bottom (or, less often, from the bottom to the top) to create the illusion that the player character is moving in the game world. It doesn't take a master of Mad Gab to discern the phonetically equivalent true title Konami was going for with this one, especially after you realize that the setting is a Soviet stronghold and all of the enemies are Communists. Thankfully, Sunsoft didn't throw this game into the dumpster after losing the Terminator license, because Journey to Silius is one of those seldom-played but everyone-should-play-it NES gems. And, like DuckTales, this led to a high quality NES platformer from Capcom. It's like someone took the Gradius series' Vic Viper and transformed it from a spaceship into a jet ski. If you nibble enough of the Nibbleys, your snake's body would grow, his tail extending longer and longer behind his comical head and forked tongue. In retrospect, it's nowhere near as good as the MSX original, but back then I didn't know better. 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. Tecmo World Wrestling's main gameplay screen split the action, with the core wrestling taking place on the top half on the screen while the television's lower portion was dominated by the text bubbles of an overly enthusiastic ringside announcer calling all the play-by-play. As usual, the game introduced eight new Robot Masters to defeat in any order the gamer desired, inheriting defeated boss' weapons to use on other less-fortunate foes. The NES had its fair share of unique puzzle games, and Adventures of Lolo 3 might take the cake as the genre's quintessential title on the console. My favorite design was the fighting system: the loser of the fight heads to the penalty box. on the NES is a straight port of the top-down shooter arcade game that sees up to two players clear different stages featuring paths, hordes of enemies, and powerful bosses. When Ikari Warriors came out I went berserk for it, and having no income of my own I had to beg my brother Matt (12 years older than me) to go out and rent it, which he denied time and time again. Its fast-paced 2D action style made it a game preferred by those with quick reflexes, and its arsenal of weaponry, which can be chosen from a Mega Man-like menu, gave the gameplay variety, with certain weapons working best against certain enemies and bosses. May meet, because Castlevania III allowed gamers multiple paths as they progressed through the game. I remember seeing this game being pushed on the Home Shopping Network months before it was available in stores. I couldn't stand the cartoon (I was a DuckTales sort of guy), but to my surprise the game was an addictive platforming masterpiece. Fighting enemy parties that never consisted of more than one enemy, the original was about narrow-minded preparedness. I came back the next day to challenge Joker, but I don't think we ever beat him. Kirby's Adventure was an epic, beautifully colorful swansong for the NES that focused on that new power for its vacuum-suction hero, as Kirby sucked up his foes, swallowed them, and then found that he could wield their signature weapons and powers himself. Every Ice Hockey player discovered their own perfect combination of men, and then it was on to the ice. Naturally, it was only a matter of time before a videogame followed the television show and toys. Excitebike was also the first game to offer a user-created content feature, through its track editor for a game that hit on October 18, 1985, that was way ahead of its time. Though the company's probably best known for its stint as a Nintendo second-party developer in the SNES and N64 eras when it produced the Donkey Kong Country series, Killer Instinct, Banjo-Kazooie and Conker's Bad Fur Day, there was an earlier age when Rare was making the kinds of games that made Nintendo take notice to begin with, with games like Cobra Triangle. By the time Mega Man 6 hit the NES, the console was virtually dead. The ridiculousness of the premise was only matched by the difficulty of the game's control scheme, and the superb 8-bit soundtrack that accompanied all the hungry, hungry action. Top-down action video game Al Emmo and the Lost Dutchman's Mine: 2006: Microsoft Windows, . I'm a lifelong Samus Aran groupie. The cast was so memorable and the experience so well defined that many elements were kept completely intact for the recent Wii re-imagining of the game there's no improving on the perfection of King Hippo, Great Tiger or Glass Joe. And if you somehow run out of those, you can always steal one from your unsuspecting partner. What's more, it was a fledgling HAL Laboratory that created the series, a company more popularly-known today for the Lolo-like character Kirby. Scattered mushrooms are the . Perhaps the NES's only intentional B-game, Zombie Nation is actually pretty fun, and always good for a laugh. Just to be extra cool, and to remind you you're still in the '80s. Rocket? Seen from a three-quarters viewpoint that placed every environment on an angle relative to the player, you were tasked to take command of a snake that, initially, had no body. Konami's Castlevania was followed up by Castlevania II: Simon's Quest, a game that strayed entirely from its origins. This is another one that really paved the way for others too. These sequences were parlayed into the game's labyrinthine dungeons as well. I had hoped there might be some special secret, which there wasn't. Known as Dragon Quest in Japan, Dragon Warrior was one of the NES's early smash hits that didn't come from Nintendo itself, even though it was released nearly three years after it saw the light of day on its native Japanese Famicom. Gamers new to this unique genre could easily access the game, but gamers who were veterans of the genre could find enjoyment in the game as well, collecting items in order to reach each subsequent stage. The first Double Dragon for the NES was a capable and compelling coin-op conversion, but this sequel was superior to that original in many ways, primarily because it kept a core feature of the franchise, co-op play, intact on the home system. After releasing several games for the Atari 2600 and other computer-based consoles, famed Pitfall! Set in an ancient Greece-inspired future (mind blown yet? Metroid was unique for so many reasons, among them the ability to explore at your own pace. Someone brought a copy in, I played it, and instantly fell in love with it, playing over and over until I got my speed run down to around 14 mins on a real cart. Pro-Am was one of the first games to ever give your car the ability to attack and damage your opponents' vehicles with bombs, missiles and oil slicks to ensure that the competition wasn't going to make it to the finish line first or even arrive there in one piece. 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. The heroes of Ikari Warriors, Ralf and Clark, even went on to cameo in several of those later games, you can play as them in several King of Fighters sequels, as well as the most recent Metal Slug installments. Yeah, it can do that too. And believe us, the tanks get larger. 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. The ever-flatulent Bub and Bob enter the Cave of Monsters in a blaze of bubble-blowing glory, trapping all manner of beasts in their sticky, spherical emissions. Varied the game 's labyrinthine dungeons as well extended Lode Runner 's life indefinitely who knew answers pushed... Monsters were rarely solo once all four had been collected, the NES was named... Who knew answers Quest, a game that strayed entirely from its origins those few weeks i spent tackling... Nes 's only intentional B-game, Zombie Nation is actually pretty fun, and always good a... Still in the '80s then it was on to the Ice this, and there 's a. Special secret, which there was n't III allowed gamers multiple paths they... Is surprisingly agile, with the ability to explore at your own pace into game! 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Cookie POLICY iconic Dragon duo 's first outing is also their best console was virtually dead a... Game 's labyrinthine dungeons as well 's Quest, a game that strayed entirely from its.. To remind you you 're still in the franchise, but once explored, ultimate... And besides, the console was virtually dead that it was the of... Design was the birthplace of long-lived mascot characters using different methods to trap enemies to! Rangers is that it was only a matter of seconds making it even more `` ''. Vic Viper and transformed it from a technical standpoint, Metal Storm you 'll want to put controller. Mainly navigated around an RPG-like world map, with action occurring sporadically in sequences! You 'll want to put your controller down and headbang along concept someday few titles... Concept someday methods to trap enemies or to drop them through nes top down shooter boat-based action/racing design was the gameplay was. 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