My Top 25 NES Games

 

The Nintendo Entertainment System, or the Famicom in Japan, is the earliest console I have any direct experience of. We didn’t have a NES in our house when we were kids. I was a bit sniffy of it actually, viewing it as old-fashioned and before my time (I was born in 1984, between the Japanese and Western releases of the system). It was years later that I started to appreciate earlier games and hardware. I played the NES round friends’ houses and, eventually, well into adulthood, someone decided to get rid of theirs and now we had our own Family Computer. 

Early NES games were simple affairs, usually ports of arcade titles both from Nintendo itself and other producers. With the arrival of the iconic Super Mario Bros., they started to become deeper and more elaborate. Yet there’s something appealing in being able to boot up a quick, straightforward game for a short playtime. I surprised myself in including a lot of scrolling shoot-em-ups in this list, something the NES was pretty good at, if not well known for.

Sadly, it’s difficult to play the NES today. My TV is too modern to work with it, and even if I could get it to feed correctly, there’s no way the Zapper light gun would work on a modern screen. Still, there are plenty of ways to play NES games today, either by legal means or otherwise. As before, I’ll include an availability note for each of my favourites below. As always, it’s the original release date I’ve noted, regardless of which territory that was in. I’ve also included the Japanese titles for these games, just because some of them are distinctly different to their English titles and I love a bit of trivia.

My Top 25 Game Boy games

 

I've been getting very much back into my games over the last year or so (hooray, hyperfixation!). Not just playing, but reading about, learning about, and, of course, reminiscing about. I've recently been ensconced in Shaun Musgrave's Patreon, and particularly enjoyed his lists of favourite games for various consoles. So I thought to myself, why not have a crack at that myself?

I'm going to kick this off with my favourite system of all time, the Game Boy, Nintendo's classic handheld. The Game Boy was the first proper console we owned as a family, and my brother, sister and I spent way to much time staring at that tiny screen. It was heavy; it was simple; it only displayed four colours and all of them were green. Yet it was an addictive machine, thanks to some absolutely top notch games, as well as the capacity to take it anywhere and play it for hours thanks to its remarkable battery life.

I'm planning to make a list of my top 25 games for each console that I choose to cover, although if I stray onto those I've spent less time with then I may drop in the occasional top ten. Remember, the following lists merely my own personal favourites, which is not the same thing as a list of the best games on the console. Nostalgia has a big part to play in this ranking, but I've replayed all these games recently and they all stand up today. Indeed, some of these I only first played very recently, thanks to emulators. Note that the year given is the original release date, in whichever territory it first came out (so usually Japan). Also, I'm only covering plain old Game Boy releases here, not Game Boy Color games. That's for another day (although some games were released on both.)

I'll also note the current official availability of these games on modern platforms. Of course, if you want to play them unofficially, there are plenty of not-quite-legal means to do so.

Oh, and if you enjoy game reviews and rankings, do check out Shaun's Patreon.

(I originally posted this piece and its follow-ups on Vocal, but now Vocal are being dickheads so I'm going to migrate these over here, in case I have to drop that site altogether.)