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SB Recommends NES/Famicom Games
If you were gaming in the mid-to-late eighties, lived in North America or Asia, and owned a console, this was probably it. Home to countless platformers and venerated Miyamoto/Yokoi classics, all surrounded by a thick layer of licensed crap. Through the efforts of Chinese pirates and homebrew coders, the Famicom has lived on.
Whether the playability of all of its games has survived the test of time is another question, but the popularity of the hardware meant that tons of stuff was released for it, so you're sure to stumble across many forgotten gems. As the large list below attests.
Recommended
Abadox
chompers po pable: Cool shooter from
Natsume with a
Life Force vibe featuring both horizontal and vertical sections. The vertical stages play from top to bottom as you blast down into the monster/alien.
Kitten ClanClan: One of the better shooters on the NES. Despite being released in late '89, it's also one of the most visually impressive, with especially detailed organic levels. Level design is good, and it uses a checkpoint system, but can become brutally difficult if you die late in the game.
Air Fortress
Daphaknee: And god that is totally my favorite
Nintendo game that I always forget about it's so scary and stressful and EERIE.
Max Cola: I was like, “oh hey, standard side-scrolling shooter, nifty I guess” and then the guy landed and got out of the ship and went INSIDE THE FORTRESS and I was controlling him WITH A JETPACK. INSIDE. I was like “aawhao”
table_and_chair: Strangely, for me
Air Fortress sits somewhere alongside
Cosmic Smash and
Shadow of the Colossus. The minimal narrative is told through the player's actions. Riding
Agro to the colossus, running down the absolutely black hallway in
Cosmic Smash, flying to the next fortress. the stoic vibe makes it almost rhythmic. parallel to this, something about air fortress just feels “now” like it would fit right in with indie games of today.
Arkista's Ring
secret character: It's like a weird ROM hack of
Dragon Quest that completely changes the point of the game. It's like
Legend of Zelda reimagined as an arcade game. It's like if
Tower of Druaga were designed by someone who hated
Tower of Druaga. It's like a modern indie 8-bit homage sent back in time. Okay, I'll stop now.
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aderack: It's like
Joust, except better. And with more personality.
NeoZeedeater: It may have more personality but I prefer Joust's gameplay. Both are great.
Judge Ito: Both are great, but Balloon Fight doesn't have Dactyls. Take that as you will.
Batman
Mr Mechanical:
Sunsoft platformer with a Batman skin on it. Good music, though it's kind of hard later on. Distinctly un-Batman like as well.
RT-55J: This game has been one of my all-time favorites ever since I first played it a couple years ago. Everything about it is just feels so perfect. Batman is the most joyously, stickily frictive protagonist I've ever had the pleasure of controlling. The game is very difficult and punishing, but also very rewarding to those willing to take a more methodical approach. Every situation has a solution to getting through it unscathed; even that one
walljump in the final stage.
internisus: You know how people still like the old-school
Castlevanias where if you didn't think before you jumped you're fucked because you can't change the jump? well
Batman is all about that kind of mindset, I think. its gameplay is just really tight but it doesn't annoy me like
CV does. also it has great aesthetics.
108: Man, that was a real elegant game. maybe the best
Castlevania /
Ninja Gaiden game on the NES. what a weird fucking game, now that I think about it.
YoutImaginaryFriend: I love
Batman on the NES. I dig the music a lot and the design is really slick and challenging.
Wall-jumping feels way better to execute than in most other games, especially compared to similar stuff of the time such as
Ninja Gaiden. It has an almost
Castlevania-esque rhythm to it.
Battletoads
chompers po pable: Good beat-em-up by
Rare. Very hard towards the end of the game…the speederbikes are just the beginning of the pain. Really fun two player action, although the game is almost impossible to finish with two players.
Deets: Anyone who says that the speederbike part is the hardest section of the game is just admitting that they never got past it. Features a very wide variety of gameplay, with a very consistently hard difficulty. Success is derived almost entirely from knowledge of the game's intricacies, which include warp zones in order to skip especially hard areas, and the extremely abusable scoring system which can hand out double-digit 1ups in some areas if you know what you're doing.
Interstellar Dinghy: It really just epitomizes everything the NES was about, for me, and I can't think of a
latformer before or after it that had the kind of inventive level design it did.
Bio Miracle Bokutte Upa
dvaergen: One of the best NES
platformers, and the only game outside of the
Mario series that can give me that weird warm “mario feeling”
Blaster Master
aderack: The tightest
Metroidvania on the
NES, probably — and some of the best sound, visuals, and controls on the system as well. And it's weird! And charming. One of the classics everyone forgets to name.
Swimmy:
Blaster Master is my favorite. It's so distinctly
Nintendo Entertainment System: full of wonder, upbeat music, and the most ridiculous storyline ever. Overly difficult-to-navigate levels, completely made up for by the fact that you get a hover tank. Something about it just makes me happy inside.
Daphaknee: OH FUCK
BLASTER MASTER god that game made me afraid to dig holes because I thought I would fall down them and my life didn't come with continues. And all the different modes in that game and the BOSSES oh man big ol
Odinsphere slow down bosses. Ooo and powering everything up I like the
blaster master blueprint screen more than the
Super Metroid one, god jumping cars with guns are so fucking rad.
Bubble Bobble
chompers po pable: One of the best action puzzle games ever made, and the
NES version has more levels and modes than its
arcade counterpart. One of the best two player experiences for the NES. Couple of minor things: there's only one song in the game, and during hectic stages (almost all of them) there's some flicker. Great game, all in all.
Bucky O'Hare
T.:
Bucky O'Hare is one of the top 3 or so NES action-platformers, easily. Also the most pre-Treasure
Treasure staff working on a single game (and it shows)! It has level design tighter than
Mega Man 3 and the variety of
Gunstar Super Heroes, except without stupid vehicle levels. It plays like
what if Treasure made a mega man game
Kitten ClanClan: One of the best action-platformers on the NES. A variety of characters with different platforming and combat abilities give the game excellent variety. Has great level design, and it also makes great use of the license.
RT-55J: I still don't like it. I mean, it's fascinating, brilliant, has some really well thought-out design and [is] enjoyable, but I just don't like it. The game's balance is just unpalatable to me.
T.: Enter HARD! as the password to play hard mode, which does away with the health-bar (everything is an instant kill), much to the game's benefit
RT-55J: Woah. I've heard of that before but I wasn't expecting it to improve the game so drastically.
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ry0n: An early attempt by
Konami at the platformer/RPG. Famous music.
Rud13: It is absolutely required you play this game with an
FAQ handy. The translation isn't just bad, it lies to you constantly. I can't imagine someone playing this game as a kid. Fairly easy outside of the translation errors. I wish the other
Castlevanias took something from this game.
Scratchmonkey: My favorite
NES game. Notable mainly for being the setup for
SotN, only with a world outside of a castle for once. Relentlessly easy.
Sniper Honeyviper: Those aren't translation errors, the villagers were supposed to be lying to you! Would be an easy game if not for all the inane, obscure crap you're required to do to progress (though that's why walkthroughs were invented).
Castlevania III: Dracula's Curse -
forum thread (also on: Wii VC)
Levi: It's definitely weakened by inconsistent design (the
Alucard path is appalling, even if you play it right) but the Japanese version on the
Grant path is very solid (and absurdly easy.)
Kitten ClanClan: Despite difficulty balancing often varying wildly from stage to stage (and what partner you have with you), the music and aesthetic design are both excellent and worth playing the game for, alone.
Cobra Triangle
bleak: Okay so
Cobra Triangle is one of these old
Rare games (I'm pretty sure it's Rare) where you pilot a boat in a NO HOLDS BARRED DEATH RACE TO THE FINISH. It's got a
Gradius-like powerup system where you get little moving buoys to give you points across the bottom of the screen so you can upgrade your speed, weapons, get missiles, all sorts of fun shit. Now the best part about the game isn't the boats, or the weapon system, it's the fucking BALLS ASS HARD HUGE VARIETY OF LEVELS that the game runs you through. You have to get this game like fucking clockwork in order to beat it. You have the standard death race, which is easy. Immediately after each death race, you have to fight some sort of giant, impossible sea creature. I can't help but die at least once to each sea creature in the game, even now. Then you have the 'dispose of mines' levels, which are easy at first, but the boats get so fast you have to do some fancy footwork to evade them. THEN, you've got the rescue the hostages levels, which are just fuck you annoying. Little boats try and come and steal your dudes and you have to kill the boats before they get off screen. It's all well and good, pretty hard until the fucking ROBOT BUOYS WITH STUN MISSILES COME ON and say FUCK YOU,
COBRA TRIANGLE BOAT! fuck that mission. Okay so anyway after that you have to do some sort of obstacle course thing, and that's usually where I die. not on the first or second obstacle course, but on the third, where you have to dodge giant, manic death icicles instead of logs leisurely floating downstream or jumping across 4 or 5 consecutive waterfalls. (that level is the one that consistently boggles my mind, on a physics level) I've yet to get past those fucking icicles. But I'll be goddamned if
Cobra Triangle isn't a wonderful game.
Cosmo Police Galivan
Victor: The arcade version is interesting enough with it's large explorable, if limited, levels — but the NES version is really quite something. Exploration based 2D platformer with RPG affectations — solid quirky 8bit
Metroid-vania. It's surprising how fully fleshed out it is.
Contra (also on: Wii VC)
chompers po pable: features
Scorpion and
Mad Dog, two of the toughest characters to grace the
NES…so tough they don't need shirts. Thank baby Jesus for toughness.
Kitten ClanClan: What I consider to be the best game on the NES. Once over the slight learning curve, the game is extremely accessible and easy to get into. Level design and mechanics bring out the best use of momentum you'll see on the NES, and its short length makes for tremendous replay value. Excellent example of improving upon a somewhat mediocre arcade game.
Contra Force
monaco:
Contra,
Metal Slug, tons of slowdown. Throw in a bit of strategy (all of the heroes have different weapons and stats), Co-op gameplay and some cool tunes.
Donkey Kong Classics
NeoZeedeater:
Donkey Kong 1 and
Jr. on one cartridge. While I prefer the arcade version of
DK1 because the
NES version is missing the factory level, I prefer the
NES version of
Jr. because the controls are much more responsive.
Dream Master
Tulpa: This game is excellent. I am constantly surprised by Dream Master. It requires me to think and act carefully (and because I've been playing well, I can experiment with the items a bit). I've gotten through 3 dark dreams so far and don't know how many are left (though I hope it doesn't overstay its welcome with a dark dream for every single dream master). Since writing this I have beaten the game. Aside from the misstep with random button guessing that Vic describes (which is the only time I actually save stated in a dungeon) it is probably the most interesting dungeon crawler I have played on the NES. The controls and interface are unburdened by excess menus, yet the game offers interactivity absent from any non-roguelike RPG.
Vic Torious: Feel free to stop playing at the bullshit Water Temple area, though, unless you like purely luck-based progression (PICK ONE OF THREE ARBITRARY ITEMS TO ADVANCE) and hunting for fake walls and switches.
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dmauro: The level select loop is only like five seconds long, but I never get sick of it.
Take It Sleazy:
DuckTales expanded on
Fujiwara's games really feeling like a real living world and the music is great and I love Scrooge McDuck.
Kitten ClanClan: Genuinely worth playing if only for the music. Great use of the license and a very enticing game once you're gotten used to the mechanics.
Elite
Chris B: I'd never felt such freedom before.
Tulpa: You're better off playing any other version of Elite, this is certainly the worst port.
Faxanadu
Kitten ClanClan: While the difficulty is sometimes poorly balanced and the game lacks direction, fans of
Zelda II and early
Falcom will find much to enjoy.
Gumshoe
ry0n: A auto-scrolling platformer played with the Zapper. You shoot obstacles out of the way of your character as he walks to the right.
NeoZeedeater: It's worth trying simply because there's nothing else like it.
Gyromite / Robot Gyro
The Blueberry Hill: Designed to be played with ROB, but skip that and enjoy it as a fun co-op puzzle game: one player controls Professor Hector, the other operates gates in the environment. Some cartridges are also useful for harvesting Famicom to NES convertors.
Holy Diver
Kitten ClanClan: An almost satanically difficult action-platformer in the vein of Castlevania from
Irem. Extremely tight, but equally unforgiving. Based on the song by Dio, and features pastiches of Zack Wylde and Ronny James Dio. Only released in Japan.
Jackal
Mr Mechanical: is a lot of fun in both singleplayer and co-op. It's a game about driving a jeep with a machine gun on it and rescuing captured POWs. Stages are pretty big and of course get progressively more difficult.
Aderack: Overhead-view Contra with jeeps. Can't pass that up.
Kitten ClanClan: One of several NES games that shames its arcade counterpart with its heavily improved design. An overhead shooter that I recommend playing with rapid-fire on an NES Advantage, I consider it one of the best games on the NES.
Kabuki Quantum Fighter
Aderack: Ninja Gaiden except more awesome and not as good. Balances out, I think.
boojiboy7: You fight in a computer with your hair as a kabuki. Seriously, this description alone makes the game worth playing.
Take It Sleazy:
My own personal obsession. An incredible name and concept for a better-than-mediocre Ninja Gaiden clone. A great soundtrack and a wild, Giger-esque technorganic world go a long way into make this rise above other games of the same type. This spot would probably be Shatter Hand if I owned that one when I was a kid.
Karnov
chompers po pable: You are Karnov, a giant bald circus man from Soviet Samoa, who has magical powers to shoot fireballs from your hands. You must overcome giant dinos, huge seahorses, and evil demon wizards to make your power the ultimate…an interesting premise for a very memorable game. Level design is questionable, yet the premise kind of makes up for that.
Kickle Cubicle
sharc: Expanded port of
IREM's arcade puzzle game, dropping Buddhist themes for further adventures in fairytale Food Land. Maybe the gold standard for using varied enemy behavior patterns to create dynamic challenges for the player; different types will attack randomly, attack you specifically, hunt you down, remain completely oblivious to you, try to mess with the ice blocks you use as weapons and tools, try to
disguise themselves as said ice blocks, attack you with your own powers, etc. Stage solutions feature a good blend of being logistically difficult to figure out and technically difficult to pull off.
King's Knight
shnozlak: A
squaresoft made sort of vertical shooter thing. In which you walk with a scrolling screen trying not to get trapped by scenery. You have 5 (I think) characters you play one after the other that you must get to the end of the game to play the last segment as all of them together. Then you will be crushed by the wall of death.
Legacy of the Wizard
CubaLibre: If you want to try other exploration games with layered, simple mechanics try
LEGACY OF THE WIZARD. Like
Zelda it seems a lot more free-form than it is. Unlike
Zelda it is much looser and quicker. You'll probably enjoy it less but it's still a great game for that “venturing into the unknown” feeling.
Legendary Wings
Kitten ClanClan: Tremendous improvement over the incredibly mediocre arcade game. Primarily a vertically-scrolling shooter, it also features horizontal stages where your character can actually walk on the ground.
Capcom produced a great soundtrack for this one that sounds like it was taken from a Mega Man game.
Low-G-Man
boojiboy7: You have a gun, yes, but not a gun that kills. It stuns the enemy, freezing them for a few moments while you jump (incredibly high and far thanks to that Low G) onto them and stab them with a spear that can only be thrust up or down. Killing is so very intimate.
aderack: The soundtrack's pretty awesome.
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The Blueberry Hill: It has my favourite NES music. The first time I—well, actually, one of my brothers—got far enough into the solo mode to hear the change in the score, coupled with the palette changes that happened as you progressed still seem unique, and magical, to me. The Virtual Console version lets you save the tracks you've made!
Mega Man (also on: 3DS VC, Gamecube, PS1, PS2, PSN, Wii VC, Xbox)
Kitten ClanClan: While Mega Man gets off to a rough start with this entry, this game is a great example of fledgling NES design before it blossoms into something significant in just about every meaningful way. While it might frustrate, it is one of the best examples of early NES design.
Mega Man 2 (also on: 3DS VC, Gamecube, PS1, PS2, PSN, Wii VC, Xbox)
Quick Shot II Turbo: The best game ever, even though it hardly ever appears in any top-whatever charts — except for that IC one. This game will be you coming of age ceremony. Playing it, you become a man (or a woman with manly gaming skills, I think). You will die, a lot. This isn't MGS or Sonic. This is Mega Man. If you've never played a classic Mega Man and would like to know what the fuss is all about, then try this one and keep a copy of the third one handy once you've finished it. You'll never look back. PS: Metal Man goes first!
Isfet: Mega Man 2 is the kind of game that will never get boring, even after repeated playthroughs over more than a decade. This was the first Mega Man game I ever played and I've been hooked ever since. It probably has the best soundtrack out of any Mega Man game ever. Also, be sure to play this game (or rather, any Mega Man game with a difficulty option) on Hard for the maximum effect.
Boojiboy7: I wrote a shitload of words about it for the long gone Axe top 100.
Kitten ClanClan: I consider this the 2nd best game on the NES and one of the ten or twenty best games ever made. Incredibly solid mechanics are accented by superb level design, clever non-linearity and a huge amount of variety. Features some of the best sound and visual design on the NES.
Metal Storm
Kitten ClanClan: One of the few NES games to feature any sort of parallax scrolling, this is one of
Irem's better games. Although much of the game's charm comes from its visual feats and interesting gravity-switching gimmick, it is quite well-designed and an often overlooked gem.
Metroid (also on: 3DS VC, Gamecube, GBA, Wii VC)
forum thread
SJ: The birth of the Metroid formula, abilities are gained that allow the player to reach new areas and more abilities. The limitations of early NES programming actually aid the atmosphere, and “Hip” Tanaka delivers a brilliant score.
Sniper Honeyviper: Must have really been something to behold in 1986. Absolutely unplayable for modern gamers.
Max Cola: And thanks to this forum and a thread I made a while back, my hatred of
Metroid has grown into a grudging appreciation, and then into a genuine crazy enjoyment. Once you get a decent supply of missiles, the game becomes much easier and more fun, while still being a stiff challenge. Still like
Metroid 2/Super Metroid better, though. Map or no map.
Kitten ClanClan: Although mechanically difficult to appreciate by today's standards, it's still a hallmark NES game for its innovation and sense of exploration. Playing your first time through with a map will heartily remedy much of the game's frustrations.
Monopoly
kerobaros: Why I played this so much growing up is.. yet to be explained. Why I refuse to be without an emulated copy of it on my Tapwave Zodiac is even more odd. Take it from a Monopoly fanatic: no other version (SNES, GeNESis, Game Boy) approaches the sheer dead-on-NESs and tightNESs of this adaptation. Also, up to eight players on an NES game? Yes.
ManekiNeko: You ever try the Master System version? It got the ball rolling on video game adaptations of Monopoly.
Moon Crystal
T.: a cross between a cinematic platformer and a
ninja gaiden style action platformer. i like it a lot!
sharc: The game's gorgeous animation is always worth mentioning. Comparable to Prince of Persia or Castlevania (the first) in how aware you need to be of quirks in the hero's movement, especially the slight delay in changing directions while running. The platforming is enjoyably tough, though bosses are a distinct weak spot; you have to either flawlessly navigate a nail-biting route through their attack pattern, or just show up with max health and have a button-mashing damage race.
Ninja Gaiden (NA) / Shadow Warriors (PAL) / Ninja Ryukenden (JP) (also on: 3DS VC, SNES, Wii VC, Xbox)
Tomonobu Itagaki: best game Tecmo ever made, hands down.
Kitten ClanClan: Although its difficulty becomes notoriously frustrating (due much in part due to enemies spawning when their spawn point is on the edge of the screen), the game is quite well designed and an NES classic. Often remembered for its cutscenes, Ninja Gaiden is memorable for its method of storytelling.
Over Horizon
Kitten ClanClan: Somewhat obscure space shooter that shouldn't be. Although Wikipedia states otherwise, I believe it was only released in Europe and Japan, making it hard to find. Visual and sound design are both stellar, and the game features an interesting mechanic allowing the player shoot both in front of and behind them.
sharc: Was indeed released only in Japan and, for who knows what reason, Germany. One impressive setpiece after another that the game runs like a champ, with an impressively detailed editing mode that allows you to change the placement of your options and fiddle with various weapon parameters. Music is amazing; just let that title screen loop. Hell yeah.
Power Blade
HarveyQ: Good for some
Mega Man meets
Castlevania style action. You play an Arnold Schwarzenegger look-alike with a boomerang that increases in range and speed with various powerups. You get to choose the order of the levels you want to play.
RC Pro-Am
Invisibleyogurt: I started console gaming with a
snes so I don't have any
nes childhood memories but
Rare's
RC Pro-Am is one of the best pure-fun experiences I've had.
Daphaknee: also fuck i love
rc pro am, the controls were always so alien whenever i would start playing and then theyd just fucking CLICK and id get through like 20 levels. i love how the game is endless and eventually the orange car just goes faster than your car can EVER GO god that is so good,
rare nes games always fall to pieces at the end like that
Rolling Thunder
bavariankumquat: Well-done port of the classic
Namco arcade game, with high difficulty, stylish animation, and great control. One of the first games to truly make you feel like a spy.
Skykid
Dvaergen: this one kind of sums up the
NES aesthetic and is just really gorgeous.
Snake's Revenge
Sniper Honeyviper: The America-only sequel to the terrible NES
Metal Gear. A marked improvement over that version, but still not really worth it.
Spy vs. Spy
Cycle:
spy vs spy is the only game i've played with friends that concluded in an actual fist fight. it will always remain a favourite.
Super Dodge Ball
kerobaros: Best multiplayer on the NES, as long as you can deal with some flicker.
wourme: This is the only sports game among my all-time favorites. I think that this version is much more attractive graphically than the arcade/Neo Geo one.
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Isfet: So different and bizarre that it's hard to see how this was passed off as the sequel to
Super Mario Bros.; however, it's one of my favorites for the
NES.
dvaegen: Call me crazy, but this is probably my favorite 8-bit “Mario” game. Everything about it feels mysterious and alive in ways that mario 3 almost touches, but ultimately can't. Running from that horrible mask thing is one of the highlights of the generation.
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waxpoet: A Capcom game that contains many elements of the Biohazard series years before Playstation was released. It is a kind of horror RPG with cool enemies, graphics & superb sound. You have a group of 5 players but can only control 3 of them at a time, which creates a greater sense of isolation while giving the game a unique gameplay twist.
dvaegen: Pprobably the only genuinely frightening 8-bit game. there's an fc game with a pretty sophisticated approach to videogame horror.
Sketch: It is genuinely scary despite being a NES/FC game, and also extremely disturbing in places (and it's worth making the distinction). The story is, as you say, very mature and sophisticated in the way it's put across. When I first played it, I never thought that any designer at that time could or would have even conceived of such a game. It is extremely excellent. For me it stands as the crowning moment NES/FC RPGs (I'm tempted to say 8-bit RPGs, but Phantasy Star beats that award). While it uses a DQ style battle system, it does a whole bunch of other unique things - like the ability to separate the main characters and have them in different parts of the mansion doing their own thing. For those who've never played it: it's basically Resident Evil on the NES, except you control 5 characters at once, and the story isn't about a virus, it's about a woman who murders children.
Sword Master
T.:
Sword Master isn't a platformer. Just a simple 2d action game, really. Feels like an arcade port even though it isn't. Fantastic visuals and music, very strong atmosphere.
Vice: Project Doom
Sketch: Kinda overlooked, it takes everything cool about Contra, Ninja Gaiden, overhead action racers and Operation Wolf, and blends them into its own unique awesome game. Plot is amazing too.
RT-55J: Like the NES
Ninja Gaidens except more polished, with proper spawn points and all.
Willow
Laurel Soup: It feels like a nice midpoint between
Zelda and
Crystalis.
The Blueberry Hill: I feel a bit silly for not playing this before 2011. It has that really smooth, late-NES, type feeling. Lovely graphics and sprite work, interesting structure. I highly recommend it.
Yume Penguin Monogatari
NeoZeedeater: Half platformer, half shooter. It's a neat game from
Konami.
ManekiNeko: A strict diet has never been this much fun! Yume-peng is the first game to actively discourage the hero from eating. Swallow the food in your path, and you'll double in size, incapable of fighting the bad guys or winning the heart of your kidnapped penguin girlfriend. Stick to your diet and exercise, and you become a lean, mean fighting machine; the world's deadliest arctic fowl. It's truly a metaphor for life. Also worthy of note: the ending is a hilarious surprise.
Zanac
The Blueberry Hill: A
really fast paced shooter by
Compile. Most interestingly the game adapts to the player's performance; easing off on poor players, and getting tougher for better performers. Also available on
MSX,
MSX2 (As
Zanac Ex),
Playstation (within
Zanac X Zanac), and
Wii Virtual Console. In Japan it was released for the Famicom Disc System.
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dmauro: Has the best sword fighting of any Zelda game.
The Blueberry Hill: The dungeons in this game are more threatening than the
Zelda before, and any since.
HarveyQ: You're sure to enjoy the combat, which is simple yet interesting and often challenging. It's based largely around high and low attacks; Link automatically guards against melee attacks with his shield, but you'll have to duck to block an attack at the knees, for example. The tougher enemies can guard and attack in both places, so you have to be quick and figure out their movement cues to survive. I don't think I'm coming across very clearly; just try it for yourself, you'll like it.
Levi: Probably the greatest single thing about Zelda 2 is how “random encounters” can mean blindly stumbling into eerie Stonehenge altars or plummeting hundreds of feet below a graveyard that is the single largest contiguous landmass in the entire world. If game worlds sometimes come off antiseptic and dry, Zelda 2 feels like a place that was tactically annihilated.
Levi: Every skirmish worthy of the name feels like whipping that one skeleton out of the air in Castlevania. It also pulls the neat trick of having more characters than its predecessor while feeling even more lonely
gatotsu2501: Zelda II: The Zelda That Was Castlevania.
See Also