80s 90s NES games

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Not technically NES, but I picked up a SNES mini last year to relive my video gaming youth. Spent the last year playing through The Legend of Zelda: A link to the past, Super Metroid and currently working through Earthbound. I forgot how damn long some.od these games were and how amazing the stories are. Final Fantasy 3 to be stared soon.

The good old days when you had to buy a magazine for the walkthrough!

In no particular order:
Super Mario Bros 1-3
Legend of Zelda
Final Fantasy
Dragon Quest/Warrior 3-4
Castlevania
Ninja Gaiden
Mega Man 2
Kirby's Adventure

Oh geez, I remember those. I dunno about everyone else, but I really miss them. I usually didnt actually NEED them to get through a game, but I still liked reading them. Sometimes I could find out about interesting tactics I never thought to try, or maybe learn about secrets that I'd missed.

And now... none of that. Freaking Prima is shutting down. Shutting down! That... that's depressing. I normally dont exactly get bothered about a company closing it's doors, but every now and then there's an exception, and Prima is one of them.

And there's seriously just something missing in the process of looking up a walkthrough online. It's like the difference between a physical book, and an e-reader... something is just lost there, but I'd have a hard time explaining it to someone that doesnt already understand.

I remember buying the walkthrough book for the 90's Role Play/point and click adventure game The Dig (mainly because it made little sense and I got majorly stuck, and my head was getting sore from banging it against the monitor). It was beautiful. The artwork and "extras" included, the detail and finish. I've still got it today and it's in virtually pristine condition

Kids have it easy these days, boom you're online and the hard work is done. I had to actually go to the shop and buy the damn thing if I wanted to cheat, it took actual effort!

You don't get games like that any more,

Monkey Island (and 2, and 3),
Day of the Tentacle (awesome!!),
Simon the Sorcerer,
Full Throttle,
The Dig,
Discworld.

.......ah.

There's still plenty of those sort of games being made nowadays. All the Telltale games, the Life Is Strange and To the Moon series, Return of the Obra Dinn and Firewatch. Broken Sword is still getting sequels. And those are just the western developers; there's localised versions of the 999, Danganronpa, Ace Attorney and Kara no Shojo series.

VR has tons, too many to list, including the Gallery series, Red Matter, Obduction, A Chair In A Room: Greenwater, Blind, and Xing. Next to wave based shooters they're probably VR's most prolific genre of game.

But they're not like that any more. Same genre, different games. Games where the graphics were s**t, so all you had was story and/or gameplay. Of all the 100's of games I've played over the years I find it hard to beat the basic gameplay and control of the original Super Mario Kart, a game where the game became irrelevant and you'd just spend weeks playing battle mode on circuit 4. It's a game I could pick up now, 20 years later, and still kick ass at. In fact, the game play is so good, my 5 year old has almost mastered the finer points of battle mode In a few days having never held a games controller before. And it's a D pad.

You didn't need any VR in Day of the Tentacle, and you'd never need any. The puzzles, humour and story was simply all that was required.

There are plenty of games just like that now though.

I dont mean things like Telltale's games or other AAA offerings. If you want those older retro-style stuffs, or games that focus on imagination rather than graphics, believe me, they're out there.

Not only have I been a fan of retro games since forever, but AAA gaming totally lost it's hold on me years ago. I got fed up with them, WAY too fed up, and said "screw it" and went over to indies instead. So I've seen LOTS of these sorts of things, the games that are more like older ones... focused on gameplay rather than graphics. Or story, if that's what you're after. Frankly, it doesnt matter just what you're after: Some indie dev out there went and made it already.

Even games made entirely in ASCII are not just still being made, but COMMON, all these years later. Amazing how popular THAT remains. And graphics do not get any more primitive than ASCII. If you really want games that are all about imagination... I could list tons of them (and most of them would indeed be ASCII-based, since I've a fondness for that).

The AAA side of the industry may have lost alot of that magic years ago, but there are LOTS of devs out there that never lost it. And others that may not have known those older games, but learned from those who DID.


Honestly even VR can be infused with these old ideas or old visual styles. Which might not sound like it makes much sense, but believe me, it's been done.

I agree. I don't understand when people say they long for games like in the 'good old days'. There's no shortage of that sort of game at all, rather it's the complete opposite - there's so much that it takes quite some effort to sift through what's available. There's tons of sprite based adventure games like Oneshot and Ib, and if you really want to go old school, there's an extraordinary quantity of text adventures available.

That's the problem: It takes effort.

The big publishers, over the years, have sort of trained most gamers to just sort of expect things to come to them. The AAA side of the industry, you dont have to search at all. The Big Guys jump up and down and scream "LOOK AT THIS SHINY THING" and basically shove it in your face over and over. I genuinely dont buy AAA games outside of the occaisional Nintendo product, and even I know everything that's going on in the AAA side because of how LOUD they are.

Indie devs, on the other hand, cannot do this. Hell, most cant do any advertising. You wanna find a game? You'll have to genuinely search for it. Actually take real time to browse. And Steam sure doesnt make it easy. Hell, Steam is such a bloody mess that the actual main store page is damn near useless... MOST games dont show up there. I actually find most of my games from the activity feed, which is outright pathetic. Since Valve is allergic to effort, Steam just continues to get harder and harder to browse.

But yeah, most consumers are trained to NOT do that. If it aint loud and in their face, they dont know it exists. Unless of course some really big Youtuber picks it up. Then you get the FNAF/Undertale sort of situation. But that's very rare.

The mini NES has a good library and here's the games I can play over and over again;

3. Ninja Gaiden.

2. Megaman 2.

1. Super Mario Bros. 3.

The Turtles game, Zelda, Duck Hunt and Mario 3 were my favourites.

SO many good ones. I'd say Legend of Zelda, Super Mario Bros. 2 (The Doki Doki one, not Lost Levels), the Mega Man series as a whole, Batman, Bucky O'Hare, and Little Sampson are amazing and I'd love to see a way forward to re-releasing these treasures.

I think the most memorable for me are zelda and mario (no surprise there), but also the frickin' lion king. Uniracers was my absolute favorite racing game. Earthworm jim was an... experience. A great game though. I still remember the music for castlevania clear as day.

Not a favorite by any means. But for some reason every once in awhile the theme to cruis'n world gets in my head. CRUISSAAAAAAN CRUIS'N THE WOOoooOOORRRLD (YeahaHaH) You've got the beat, you've got the power, to cruise the world. Kill me lol.

My favorite NES game is Super Mario Bros. 3. It’s still fun!

I am obsessed with the Castlevania series and i love Double Dragon as well. Apart from that there is a fairly obscure Roller Derby game called "Roller Games" which i like. Out of the classic black box games my favorites are Kung Fu and Pro Wrestling.

My favorite ones are Mario, The Jungle Book, Pugsley's Scavenger Hunt and Hook. I played them so many, many times in a row back in the 90's.