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. And here's the kicker the pit stop comes to you! It's still a blast to this day and Tecmo should bring it back. Many gamers of today's generation know Popo and Nana best for their recurring role in the Super Smash Bros. franchise. Konami's Castlevania was followed up by Castlevania II: Simon's Quest, a game that strayed entirely from its origins. From a technical standpoint, Metal Storm is something of a tour de force. Now you can see why I'm so messed up. And Kid Niki was indeed a radical adventure, starring a young ninja-in-training whose own princess-rescuing adventure was set apart by two defining features his spiked-out, punk-rock hairstyle and his vicious spinning sword. It goes down something like this: an extra-terrestrial force named Darc Seed has zombie-fied the world, oh and there's some kind of stolen sword involved or something. Asset Pack 'Spy Fighter' NES. We politely declined and purchased it later, but Showtime Video must have made a good $100 off of us on that one cartridge in the meantime. Capcom seemed to remove Mega Man's classic foil, Dr. Wily, in lieu of a new creator of evil robots, Dr. Cossack. Sure, Duck Hunt's gameplay was as simple as pointing-and-shooting, and one could easily cheat by standing an inch from the television. "A winner is you!" 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. In the game, our pajama clad mascot navigates the often psychedelic Slumberland with the help of wild animals. To this day I still vividly remember the cutscenes that showed my sword becoming more powerful. I added level configs for 102 NES games in CaD Editor. Don't let the title or the source material fool you this game will grab you right from the start and won't let go (just like it did me more than 20 years ago). Gameplay is balanced between controlling The Guardian in humanoid form during overhead exploration and shooting sequences and faster-paced forced-scrolling shooter sequences where she transforms into a fighter jet and blasts, and among other things, gigantic robotic alien crustacean creatures. I guess some things never change, eh Ikari Warriors? And I get to hit him with a whip? Game developer Compile Game publisher Brderbund Software, Inc. Game published 1988 Game perspective Top-down Game theme Sci-Fi / Futuristic 5 votes Share on Facebook As the boy treks into the underground maze, Blaster Master presents its deviously challenging mixture of side-scrolling platforming, shooting, and overhead dungeon exploration with action taking place in and outside of the cockpit. And that's saying something when I was surrounded by a dozen new G.I. Kind of like Pixar's Toy Story, this was a world seen from a toy's perspective races took place on top of massive billiards tables or in backyard with gigantic, looming flowers and blades of grass. It only took a year for Tecmo to follow-up the smash-hit status of the original Ninja Gaiden with its sequel. All of the terrain was interconnected into one big map, an idea later expanded upon and matured by the SNES's Super Metroid. Rocket? The game simply used the convenient foundation of the sport to construct a deceptively deep, endlessly addictive gameplay design that's all about pattern recognition, fast reaction times and comically over-the-top cartoon personalities. I probably played the first level of Section Z more than any other NES game I owned. 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. technology that allows it to flip from floor to ceiling with abandon. I remember playing this a lot with my dad when I was younger. "Blades of Steel!" 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. Legendary Wings may have the distinct honor of being the weirdest result of Capcom's efforts to diversify shooters in the 1980s. 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. But those few weeks I spent with Metal Storm remain precious. Created by Sunsoft, which was at the top of its game in the late 1980s with classic release after classic release, Journey to Silius was originally supposed to be a licensed Terminator game. Friggin' troll, I've got only a copper coin! Built side-by-side with Metroid on the same engine and released at identical times, Kid Icarus is often the brother that's overshadowed. 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. It's a weird gory little body horror shooter, you're working your way through a giant planet-sized being trying to rescue a princess who's the last surviving member of her race. A pretty solid movie, really. 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. Fusing action with platforming, and even some RPG elements, Kid Icarus is one of those key first party NES games that often finds itself ignored. Happily, this fine action platformer broke with the stereotypical dungeon crawlers, allowing you to hop around, bashing enemies with your Wand of Whatever without a single roll of multisided dice, virtual or otherwise. It's bright, colorful aesthetic, awesome enemy designs, amazing music and incredible replay value are all storied parts of the game's history. arcade nes original game science fiction shoot em up space top-down v-scrolling shoot-em up . Some of them are good. Its action-platforming style was well-known by Mega Man 3's release, and with the addition of two important new characters, Rush and Protoman, and a new skill, sliding, Mega Man 3 is many fans' favorite in the franchise. Little Nemo, an American comic strip, had received the anime treatment in Japan at the time and thus the game was created, but the license was no doubt long forgotten by American audiences when Nemo came stateside. It has been called a combination of Zelda and 1942. Wow 15+ years later and I can still find fun in this game? Setting those aside, though, SMB2 is a wonderful platformer that is wrongfully considered the black sheep of the canon. A game no one bought, but everyone had. I lived in Maine when Mega Man 5 came out, which was an SNES-dominated era in my life. Evidence of this is all over the place, from the enemies to some of the music. When the eight stage select-bound stages were defeated, players entered a more linear part of the game, where both Protoman's and Dr. Wily's multi-stage castles had to be completed for the gamer to see any light at the end of the tunnel. Totally killer! And, because our hero loves Fred so much that he doesn't care if he's a giant, disgusting mutant toad, he takes command of the equally-massive armored tank S.O.P.H.I.A. Now why couldn't real NHL be like that? So, if you just hack away with short, quick slashes each one will be pretty wimpy. I used to apply the Konami code to every game from Konami just to see what would happen. Linux Xbox One Nintendo Switch stadia vita Playstation 3 Playstation 4 PC Windows Mac OS. 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 . . Who ever thought I could be addicted to such a simple, repetitive game? Discovering each new level was a joy. Demon Sword is a ninja action game that plays out at a break-neck speed compared to some of its contemporaries (cough Kung-Fu cough). A small contingent of NES gamers actually prefer Klax to its main competitors the simple, but accessible, Dr. Mario and even to the great Tetris, which does seem a little stuffy when stacked against the Day-Glo extravaganza that is Klax. In premise, the Lolo games were as simple as can be. 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. Taking a chance on a game with a title like "Wizards & Warriors" in the video game section of my local rental store was a risky venture in an era of a crappy Dungeons & Dragons-inspired RPGs. What stuck out most for me about Double Dragon II was how varied the game was. I had hoped there might be some special secret, which there wasn't. The Cobra Triangle gunship was a versatile vessel, and the power-ups it could obtain were what made this one a blast to play. Feeding jellybeans to Blobert to transform it into different items and it was fun just to experiment with, such as making a blow torch with a cinnamon bean and a rocket with a root beer bean. 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 . Punch-Out!! Yeah. Alternates between sidescrolling and top-down scrolling. 2. 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. Before you knew it, your screen was full of viruses with scant a place for your pills to go. 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. 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. I guess it's no wonder that Super Metroid and Metroid Prime remain my two favorite games of all time. 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. While a clipper ship and canoe allow you to access new areas of the map, it's the airship that's worth holding out for. 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. Today, the game known as Tengen Tetris is a rare title to have in your collection, but it's a worthwhile play. 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. The hero, Mike Jones, is just an average kid from Seattle who's looking for a lost archaeologist in the tropical archipelago of Caribbean-esque islands. Demon Sword's ninja is surprisingly agile, with the ability to hop to tree tops in matter of seconds. You'll soon realize how much better off you are without a rookie to keep track of. Their next door neighbors' kids ended up being me and my siblings' friends as time passed, and they had a basement dedicated to NES gaming. 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. But Section Z separated itself from the likes of Gradius and Life Force with a non-linear path to forward progress after each side-scrolling section you successfully survived, you'd be presented with two different teleporters. 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. Our own Mark Bozon has been working diligently to bring this title back to life, perhaps by way of the Virtual Console. Several classic NES series seem to follow identical paths. Any discussion of Contra wouldn't be complete without a nod to its iconic 8-bit soundtrack. What a glorious game, from the overall design down to the visuals and music. The hero begins the game by awakening from cryogenic sleep, and then goes on to collect a set of four elemental swords to save the world. programmer and designer David Crane abandoned his traditional Activision backing, formed Absolute Entertainment, and went on to create what has become known as one of the NES catalog's quirkiest games, A Boy and His Blob: Trouble in Blobolonia. Let's be honest if you are going to play Maniac Mansion, you really should try the uncensored Commodore 64 version. The Guardian must thwart the planet's demise by setting off Naju's self-destruct sequence before it reaches Earth. Before Baseball Stars was released in the summer of 1989, the NES wasn't looked at for its ability to simulate real sports. Although the NES had trouble tackling some of its arcade contemporaries, games like 1981's Qix were a perfect match for its capabilities. Punch-Out!! Try to spot the Hulk Hogan and Big Van Vader rips! Getting him to grow a body was the goal of each stage, and that was accomplished by consuming the dot/pellet/balls of semi-sentient foodstuff known as Nibbley Pibbleys. Oops. The concept added some strategy to the mix, and makes this one fondly remembered to this day (along with that unforgettable name). In fact, I liked Willow so much that I'd put it up there on my top list of NES RPG favorites with games like Dragon Warrior, Final Fantasy and Crystalis. Our Fondest Memories Voodoo?) Gamers take the role of Scrooge McDuck, who goes through various stages to collect wealth, defeating enemies with his pogo stick attack. 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. and seeing that the game was in 3-D. That was enough for me. Apart from its fun gameplay and difficult boss battles, Kung Fu had inherent replay value simply because the game started over once you beat it with a higher difficulty level. It should come as no surprise that the man behind the rock is Yoshihiro Sakaguchi, a composer that worked on the Mega Man series, also distinguished for its 8-bit anthems. Konami even tossed in two new, NES-exclusive extra levels, making it even more "in-demand" when it hit store shelves. Although, in hindsight, going up against the Tetris juggernaut probably wasn't the best strategy, but still, some lucky NES players found time for both. 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. Note: the Power Glove will not enhance gameplay, but you'll look pretty darn rad, we promise. The top-loading NES replaced the classic system, the Super Nintendo was over two years old, and the 16-bit battle was waging all around it in full force. The Big N's amazing 1980s home console reinvigorated the videogame market with classic, genre-defining games including Super Mario Bros. and The Legend of Zelda. I remember getting this game like it was yesterday. For instance, a giant mouth spouts out vortexes that suck you into a side-scrolling stage with a creepy worm mini-boss. Although originally an arcade game, the NES port of Legendary Wings is especially welcome on the NES due to its cooperative mode, which allows you to experience the weirdness with a pal. - Sam Claiborn, IGN Game Help Associate Editor. You were fighting the clock, too, and if you ever ran out of torches then it was Game Over for you. I also loved the take-offs of popular wrestlers that Tecmo had going on here. The cartoony visuals manage to. An incredibly popular release in both sales and lasting fan opinion, RC Pro-Am was an innovative racing game developed by Rare. I could whip through Super Mario Bros. in 10 minutes without losing a life, but progressing Link toward his final battle was an epic undertaking and one filled with surprises and satisfying rewards throughout. 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). Why is Baseball Stars so important? Konami's classic NES hockey sim started out with exactly that, which was incredibly impressive for the time. It appears Dr. Wily is behind the madness yet again. Early adopters who made the next-gen leap without looking back missed an incredible game design. You'll find a few other games that got thrust into the limelight the same way on this countdown, like VICE: Project Doom. Your objective is to take them all down for the joy of the audience. You could choose from three different player body types, and outfit your team with any combination of them; fast but weak Skinny Guys, brawny but slow Fat Guys, or well-balanced, middle-ground Normal Guys. And, like DuckTales, this led to a high quality NES platformer from Capcom. He then leaps down a nearby hole in the ground and disappears into a vast subterranean labyrinth without a trace. Dumb, I know. The grappling animation between the two fighters makes it look like they're just hugging each other, and the boxers' interaction with their cornermen between rounds is even more, well, provocative. The ship rising out of the scrolling ocean, the . Although the game offers a fairly decent challenge, the experience of kicking serious alien ass can be had by less talented players, thanks to the legendary Konami Code, which, in its most famous implementation, gives you 30 lives to burn through as you please. We're on our way. You play an M-308 Gunner mech, which features awesome (Magnetic? Thankfully, Zombie Nation arrived in the latter days of the NES to smash the zombie barrier. Yes, please! No sooner would an unprepared adventurer leave a town and cross a bridge into a new area than he would find himself smashed by an enemy much stronger than he. 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. One of the few games I remembered beating without the Game Genie (but done on an NES Advantage for sake of the turbo function). - Levi Buchanan, IGN Wireless & Retro Editor. Then you've got "Ninja," which summoned up the best emotions from Ninja Gaiden, the Ninja Turtles and Zen: Intergalactic Ninja. 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. While The Legend of Zelda and Super Mario Bros. are unarguable pinnacles of videogame creation, if we were stranded on an island with a power source, an NES and a single game, it would unquestionably be Super Mario Bros. 3. This grappler was unmatched in its diversity of moves and over-the-top personality, and remains today a favorite of thousands of fans across the world. Batman didn't try to do anything unique, but rather took a cue from a few already-established NES staples to make Batman a fun, worthwhile experience. Unnecessary, sure, but so necessary. Go back and grab it, either on cartridge or through the Wii's Virtual Console, and experience for yourself the defining console debut for one of the Big N's biggest mascots. I'm a lifelong boxing fan, so being able to "sim" matches this early was something of a breakthrough for me. Little Samson arrived at the tail-end of the NES era, when most gamers had moved on to newer, although not necessarily better, consoles. The visuals weren't as vibrant and the animations weren't as fluid, but the gameplay was spot-on. Pro-Am without it, racing games might have just been all about steering and accelerating. Its top-down view makes it a bit of an action-shooter, while its emphasis on collecting items and upgrading weapons lends it more to the RPG and adventure crowd. American gamers weren't privy to subsequent releases until Dragon Warrior VII hit the PlayStation in 2001. Eventually, you must learn to apply your gravity-defying skills to puzzles, while at the very same time applying your blasters to the faces of many, many enemy robots. Main character Ryu Hayabusa wielded a katana with deadly precision, and he had a grouping of special weapons to use as well. ** No Japanese exclusives ** The likes of Jackal doesn't count but Gunsmoke does because the screen automatically scrolls up even though it's not your traditional. Along the way you'll score various weapon upgrades, although Kuros's trademark duds never change. - Mark Ryan Sallee, IGN Game Help Editor-in-Chief. If you have to play one Mega Man game to familiarize yourself with the series, make it Mega Man 2. When one stage is cleared, Scrooge can pick from any of the remaining stages to undertake his next quest. I was totally paranoid that I'd come back from school (or day care or whatever) and the game would be turned off. The music rocks, the night/day system inspired my brother's own work with Shantae, and like Zelda II it's truly unique among the series. ), 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. There's nothing wrong with combining RC Pro-AM with boats, guns, and dragons. If you're stuck, quit crying and grab a guide, since you apparently can't hack it. A puzzler in the same style as HAL Laboratory's famous Adventures of Lolo series, Kickle Cubicle put players in the role of a character aptly named Kickle, who is on a quest to liberate his kingdom from the grasp of an icy evil. Best nes shoot em up games. Arcade, Famicom, NES: Nintendo: A 1984 light gun shooter adapted from a 1974 EM arcade game. Top down light artillery robot. Developed by Konami and published by its subsidiary Ultra (a ghost publisher created only so that Konami could publish more games per year than Nintendo allowed), TMNT proved to be a fun, challenging game with crisp graphics and compelling gameplay. With a friend you can tag-team your opponents. All the while, Pit must work his way through four unique worlds, each with multiple unique stages and an end fortress where Pit must navigate through a labyrinthine set of screens to reach the boss. VPD may in fact be in my top 10 NES games of all time personally, and I didn't discover it until back in 2002 when a few of the WayForward guys all got into retro gaming together. An arcade-inspired action run and gun starring sweaty shirtless men charging through tropical jungles and blasting everything in sight with an overhead, birds-eye perspective, Ikari Warriors was the definitive videogaming outlet for bottled-up aggression. But not all licensed titles are bad. Life Force's moderate difficulty sets it apart from its peers in a genre generally geared towards the masochistic. Little did I know that Nintendo put the NES hardware in the arcade cabinet. I can't tell you how many hours I left my NES on simply because I wanted to show off my created course to a bunch of my friends. The Guardian Legend is an action-adventure/top down shooter released for the NES in 1989. I'd always have the 30 man code active in the beginning, but eventually stopped using it as I got better over the years. the primary challenge is to obliterate chains of arthropods that creep down from the top of the screen. Vague memories of a strange, somewhat girly shooter plagued me as I restocked my NES collection a few years back. The Game Pak is truly worth tracking down for its multiplayer selection, including a wacky cooperative mode. Fester's Quest was an amazing game that was both deep in its delivery and excruciatingly difficult in its execution. 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. 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. - Sam Claiborn, Associate IGN Game Help Editor. And who could forget Mr. X's maniacal laughter each time he defeated Thomas, keeping his kidnapped girlfriend for his own. Released in 1988, it pioneered something very important for the racing genre. 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. Something about Adventures of Link scared memaybe the dark backgrounds in the forest stages, or the increased detail in the enemy designs. Continuing the tradition started in Mega Man 2 of having eight Robot Masters to start out with instead of six, gamers could choose one of eight starting stages, inherit defeated boss robots' weapons, and move on to the next stage to exploit possible weaknesses with the player's ever-growing arsenal. The game, presented in a manner similar to Epyx's popular California Games, came to the Commodore 64 and the NES. The gameplay mechanics of the original Castlevania remained intact, but there was a whole lot more that had been added that transferred it from the realm of action-platformer to the realm of action-RPG. I hear it all the time when talking to fellow gamers. Each character has its own powers and limitations, for instance the mouse makes up for its measly health meter with its ability to cling to ceilings and walls. We would have like to see more from our little balloon-riding friend. Above all else, what surprised me most about Rescue Rangers is that it was so fun to play. The fourth game in the franchise had little to offer fans that was different, other than a new cast of interesting Robot Masters, a new character (Eddie) and a new ability for Mega Man to exploit (charging your arm cannon). Developed on the same engine as Kid Icarus, and released around the same time, Metroid toned down the action-platforming found in Icarus and focused on exploration. Kidnapped girlfriend for his own remaining stages to collect wealth, defeating enemies with his stick. The Super Smash Bros. franchise familiarize yourself with the Help of wild animals a perfect match for capabilities... I restocked my NES collection a few years back 's saying something when I was younger why n't. I had hoped there might be some special secret, which features awesome ( Magnetic stuck, quit crying grab... 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