11) Strider
Strider was a pretty good arcade game, but turned out to be much better for the NES. How that happened, I’ll never know. You are this futuristic dude with a bad-ass Scimitar (no Drow here), cool hair, and mindless enemy fodder for to slice.
10) RC Pro AM
This was a much better game versus a few friends… Luckily I had a few. On it’s own it doesn’t stand up as well, but is still a blast.
9) Metroid
One of the true classics for the NES. Many attempts have been made to capture the magic of this the first, but they have all fallen well short. You are this flipping futuristic chick (although this fact is not revealed until the end, allowing for the maximum emasculating effect) that blasts the snot out of many baddies and doors.
8) Wizards and Warriors
This game ruled. It was the only one on this list that I was never able to complete.
7) The Uninvited
I remember seeing the commercial for this game (which rocked BTW) and immediately dropping major coin on it. It was the best horror game available for any 8-bit platform.
6) Kid Icarus
One of the most purely entertaining games for any platform, ever. When the final quest was beaten, the entire quest was started anew with the uber-weapons obtained previously… and it remained infinitely great. I must have run that loop dozens of times.
5) Castlevania
While technically a horror themed game, it is not considered by myself to be the best ever (the nod goes to #7 above) of that genre. Why? It wasn’t scary. However, the gameplay was beyond compare.
4) Baseball Stars
I grew up playing baseball, so naturally one should make this list no? It was the first baseball game that I could recall with a builtin mechanism for editing player abilities (I figured out how to do it on Hardball for the C64, but it was a hack).
3) Bionic Commando
Again, the theme of futuristic hero took hold of me. You are this German guy (I always imagined so anyway) with a bionic arm that would fire out (ala Inspector Gadget) and latch onto things. It was also a great arcade game.
2) Super Mario Brothers 2
While part 3 started this whole list, SMB2 is by far the shining star in the family. You can choose between one of four characters to beat levels, each of which had unique strengths and weaknesses. I preferred the short, strong guy… can’t remember his name.
1) Dragon Warrior
Perhaps one of my top 5 favorite electronic RPGs for any system (alas, a list for another day). I spent endless hours building my warrior up only to find that he still was not strong enough to complete the quest. I then spent endless hours rebuilding my warrior up to even higher levels to finally beat the game. Of all the games listed, it is perhaps the only one that I would willingly spend endless hours on to this day.
Honorable mentions: Metal Gear (the first strategy based shoot-em-up game that I played), Mike Tyson’s Punchout (it was just fun), Final Fantasy (another great RPG, but much better on other systems), Karnov (you are a fire spitting circus freak), Legend of Kage (was Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon before CTHD was), Tecmo Bowl (Bo Jackson was unstoppable), Tetris (simple, yet compelling), Zelda 1 and 2 (world-building at its best), Excite Bike (I liked making my own tracks), Ninja Gaiden (hot ninja action), Dusty Diamond’s All-Star Softball (I think that I owned the only copy, but I wore it the hell out).
-m