5 of the greatest NES games you might not have played.

There will probably be a whole heap of these guides that go through various classic gaming machines (I was debating whether I should do one for the NES, the SNES, or the Dreamcast, which in my opinion are 3 of the greatest consoles ever) and their best games. But for this NES guide, rather than go through the canon of must own games which I’m sure most of you already know and own eg. Super Mario Bros, Legend of Zelda, Metroid, Donkey Kong, Kid Icarus etc, I thought I’d go through 5 of my favourite games which you may have seen on your travels, but never put away the time or the cash to try. Here is that list, in no particular order:

Contra
One of the historic video games that defined co-operational gameplay. Contra was ported from its arcade version to the NES in 1988, and for an 8-bit conversion it was near arcade perfect. The weapon upgrades, the strategic positioning of players, and different modes of gameplay made for an extremely engrossing experience.

Excitebike
It’s hard to explain what makes Excitebike such a cool game because the gameplay if so simple: ride your motocross bike across various jumps, control the landing, don’t run into obstacles or other riders. I think the key was in the mastery of all of these elements, then the ability to take them and build your own tracks. Excitebike was one of the first console games to give the player the ability to create their own maps to interact in!

Battletoads
Basically take Double Dragon, replace your kung fu kicking heroes with 3 amphibious heroes called Rash, Zitz, Pimple; mix in some 3D gameplay with your basic 2D beat-em-up and you’ve got a classic mix of bashing, dodging, and jumping. Beware though, this game was hair pullingly hard at times.

Punch-Out!!!
Since the dawn of time gaming developers have strived to make the process of beating someone up more fun and less monotonous. In 1984 Nintendo unleashed a game that took beating someone up in a ring to a whole other level of fun. Punch-Out gave enough control over your punching and dodging, and removed enough control over your boxer so as to not make the game play confusing. The end result was one of the most fun boxing games ever made and even to this day can’t be beaten for gameplay.

Balloon Fight
You have 2 balloons strapped to you. You can flap around to get around. You have baddies with the same get up trying to pop your balloons, you can even have a 2nd player in and you can try to pop each other balloons. The concept was too easy for it not too work, and the gameplay made it so fun, that you’d spend hours with a buddy popping each others balloons.

If you’ve got your own 5 favourite games on any console, get them up. I’d love to be reading them!