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Japanese Fans Vote On Top 30 NES Games
Thanks to 1UP for their report on a Japanese poll rating the top 30 Famicom (NES) games of all time, as conducted for an upcoming Tokyo museum exhibition. The report comments that this poll is "an interesting look at the titles that were big in the early days of Japanese gaming, as well as what's held up in retrospect", and the Dragon Quest series (Dragon Warrior in the U.S.) is particularly well-represented, since "...all four Famicom games in the series made the top 10, compared to only one Final Fantasy." Also pointed out: "It's also interesting to see what's ahead of Super Mario Brothers 3, the most popular NES game in the United States. In Japan, they'd rather play Ice Climber and Balloon Fight."
#1 was good at lest
That list is so different from my list. I think the american one would look like this
...
1. Legend of Zelda
2. Super Mario Brothers 3
3. Super Mario Brothers
4. Metroid
There's too much I can't even choose myself. Anyway, I'm glad that River City Ransom made the list, it seems appropriately placed.
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Japanese and American game tastes are not that different. Consider:
Super Mario Brothers - 2
Mario Brothers - 3
The Legend of Zelda - 4
Final Fantasy III - 7
I've never owned a Nintendo yet have played all these. Definitely deserving of their placement in the top 10.
Nostalgia isn't what it used to be.
I'm a pretty avid NES collector. I don't play any systems more advanced and so my view of 'goodness of games' is basically relative to other NES games.
I think certain franchines (such as Final Fantasy) have gone on to do wonderful things, but all things considered, I feel that "NES Dragon Warrior IV" is probably a better game than "NES Final Fantasy".
I wonder how much of this list is influenced by how these games were further developed on other platforms. Surprisingly, it doesn't seem terribly bias in that catergory. However, I believe it was done in the US, we'd have exactly that problem.
I'm surprised 'Destiny of an Emperor' didn't make the list, because that was a really solid title. Also, there are several sports titles (like the excellent Famicom-only Soccer games) which aren't listed. I would also expect a historical strategy game like 'Romance of the Three Kingdoms' or some other Koei title.
I'm exceptionally surprised that 'Goonies II' made the list because that's a real random footnote in the history of NES games.
indeed..
How did 'The Goonies II' make that list ... :)
man
No manual entry for
Tokyo Metropolitan Museum of Photography recently published the results of a poll
I'd be more inclined to believe in the acuracy of the poll if the museum conducting it was to do with technology or video games or something.
THIS THING CAN TURN ON A DIME, MACROSSZERO STYLE ALSO FUCK BETA, ~NYORON
Although it surprised me that it made the list as well, really in hindsight, it was a very solid game. From Platform to first person and such, was pretty good. Gameplay and challenge was pretty good. Best movie rip off on the NES i can think of.
Yes, I was thinking of FF II, which I played back in 92-93 on a friend's SNES.
Nostalgia isn't what it used to be.
parent link is a re-direct. do not click.
**Action**
/Uninvited - Really cool games.
SMB I (Spent countless hours exploring secrets), II (At the time it was very weird and III (Pinnacle),
MegaMan 1 (challenging),2 (most popular) & 3 (pinnacle) (The rest are just fillers)
Castlevania 1 (Challenging), 2 (What's up with those weird clues?) 3 (Pinnacle),
Ninja Gaiden I (Cinema Displays!!!!), II(Great Music, action, etc), III (Hmmm.. Paralax scrolling and a Strider-type sword.. kool)
Shadow of the Ninja and S.C.A.T (Great games from Natsume)
Journey To Silius (Sunsoft's masterpiece, after Blaster Master, Fester and Batman - Not counting Return of the Joker
Contra (WOOWWWWW...), Super C (Double Wooow...)
**Adventure**
Zelda I (Dodongo.. what kind of name is that) II (Very challenging, great graphics.. masterpiece)
Metroid & Kid Icarus (VERY Unique games!!)
Crystalis (Much better and Refined than Zelda)
The Inmortal (Wow, american companies can make games!!)
Bionic Commando (Hitler?!?!?!?)
Goonies - Really cool...
**Beat'em up**
Double Dragon I (challenging), II (Fun!! 2 Player action), II (What happened here??)
River City Ramsom (Who can't forget fighting the final stage while listening to the Double Dragon BGM)
Battletoads - Hard and Weird!!!
**Shooters (Not the like of Doom/Quake we're talking THE original shooters)**
Zanac (Wow that's intense!!!)/Guardian Legend (Intensity with great graphics and RPG/Adventure)
Gradius (Hard) / Lifeforce (Cool.. 30 lives, I guess they're making up for the first one)
Gyruss (Really cool)
**Sports**
Baseball Stars (Greatest baseball game on 8 bit.. first to create your own players)
Tecmo Bowl (Just plain fun - Hide your controller from your oponent)
Baseball - Just fun.
Track n'Field - 1st to do In game adverstisement???, Game within a game (gradius).
Excitebike... (track editor??)
Mike Tyson's Punch Out (Remember, dodge Mike for 1:30)
**RPG**
Dragon Warrior I (What's this weird game...), II (Hmmm.. I'm kinda liking this type of games).. III (Masterpiece)
Final Fantasy - (Wow.. cool RPG..with Graphics!)
ShadowGate / DejaVu
Ultima Quest of The Avatar - Really LOONG.
Startropics.. Fun in the islands.
OK, many might be surprised to see these two up there, but it's not surprising at all.
Think about it, what are your favorite games from NES/Genesis to play with your friends? If you're like me and my friends, it was Contra, Streets of Rage, etc.
What do these games all have in common? - 2 players simultaneously! Play Halo on co-op mode, Mario Kart: Double Dash, hell, even the original mario bros was a so-so game that became SO much more fun with 2 players on at once. Ice Climber was simply from an era before NES became really popular (when games were labeled as part of the "Action Series," "Sports Series," etc.)
I'm ecstatic that Ice Climber took such a high position... It was underappreciated in the US at the time, where the game playing public wasn't ready to appreciate the extremely japanese characters. As 2-player games went it was in a class of its own, especially in the early days. It was a 2-player game where you could help your fellow team-member or hinder them, where you weren't allowed to attack them directly but you could really mess them up. You could cause them to die by scrolling too high, or you could give their jump a huge boost by jumping up underneath them. You could hammer away at bricks under their feet, or hammer away at enemies about to attack them. You could wait for your friend to join you in the bonus level, or you could heartlessly skip ahead and take all of the plunder for yourself.
It was never clear if you were supposed to be friends or foes, and that lack of distinction kept the game sessions hot and fun.
Personally, I hope someone in Japan sees this list and makes a GBA version of Ice-Climber, so that 4 people can work with / compete against eachother to reach the top of that mountain alive. It was a genius design then, and it would be a breath of fresh air now.
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Personally, I hope someone in Japan sees this list and makes a GBA version of Ice-Climber, so that 4 people can work with / compete against eachother to reach the top of that mountain alive. It was a genius design then, and it would be a breath of fresh air now.
You can get Ice Climber for the eReader, but the problem is that it's single-player only -- there's no link features. It seems like a waste, as although the game is entertaining in SP, it really shines in the friend-and-sometimes-foe MP mode you describe.
I don't know who did the list, but they can't count. Super Mario Bros. 3 received 465 votes while Balloon Fight only got 461. Last I checked 465 > 461.
A computer without a Microsoft operating system is like a dog without a brick tied to its head.
Where is RC ProAm, or Rad Racer?
Pretty Pictures!
This is particularly interesting in the realm of RPGs, in my opinion. I find games like Dragon Warrior I and Wizardry to be the most interesting, despite or because of their primitive graphics. I find newer RPGs (aka Neverwinter Nights) less satisfying because the graphical interface seems to sometimes interfere with roleplaying. Then again, I still play pencil&paper D&D, so perhaps I just have elevated expectations for a video game RPG.
Are games these days more derivative? Is it inevitable? Where is the creative stuff found?
Under capitalism man exploits man. Under communism it's the other way around.
ExciteBike?
Goonies II?
This is even worse than Nintendo's own top 100 list.
It's amusing Ballon Fight is rated that highly when it was essentially a Joust clone. Nintendo prides itself on original games, but this was their first real blatent clone of another game. Was Joust itself ever released for the NES?
Joust came out in arcades in 1983, Balloon Fight on the NES in 1986.
/// Zoid.
I really enjoyed digging up my old system right before leaving for college. It'd been lost for years despite frantic searches, but I managed to locate it in the dark depths of my basement.
Funny story: I went to FuncoLand to pick up some games that I always wanted but never had. I mentioned my old console and the kid behind the counter rolled his eyes, "It's not worth a lot." I informed him that I would sooner cut out my liver than sell my NES and he perked right up and told me all about his top NES picks, which I immediately purchased as well.
My picks for action RPG:
Faxanadu
Wizards and Warriors
According to something I read (can't remember the exact source), Spelunker is in the so-bad-it's-good category and has become something of an in-joke among Japanese gamers.
He's right. I look it up and found that Japan has a current population of around 127 million. If you use a tool like Creative Research's Sample Size Calculator ( http://www.surveysystem.com/sscalc.htm )you'd find that you only need a sample size 15,092 to obtain a 99% confidence level of accuracy +/- 1.05% If there really was 15,670 people surveyed [the number of votes], that's pretty good work.
indeed..
wheres Blaster Master or Tecmo Super Bowl? .. i know they're japanese .. but come on .. how could you not love those games ...
I would like to go on record to point out how much I hate Japanese RPGs. Am I the only one? I know Japanophiles love them (for the same unfathomable reason they love manga), but I find them boring and generic. This is not to say that I don't love other Japanese games. Nintendo is my favorite platform. However, the RPGs suck!
Doesn't SMB3 contain Mario Bros? If so, how can someone rank the latter higher than the former? Is this a case of less-is-more at work?
grandparent link links to what he says it does
parent is typical "link is goatse/tubgirl/<insert nasty site>" troll
Use PocketNES, then you can link up!
Final Fantasy III was pretty awesome for an NES game. Too bad it was never released in the U.S.
Well i have to say that Its a very good list of games.. Some of the more popular ones where mensioned in a Book Called "Game Over" wiched talked about the Rise and fall of nintendo.. Any how.. very cool stuff.. i just wished Maniac Mansion was in that list.. one of the best games by Ron Gilbert and one of the best ports to a console by far.. *hint *hint Lucas Arts..
no master blaster? That was one of the coolest, and hardest games i ever played on the NES!
Bubble Bobble? I don't even want to think about the number of hours I played that game when I was little. Or how excited I got when I found the arcade version in the Student Union.
I guess that's part of what makes Nintendo so cool - the sense of nostalgia that comes along with getting to play a game you haven't played in years. Or, being able to meet people you didn't grow up with, but talking about video games and how cool Excitebike was. I'm sure the same thing will happen with Playstation 2 when it becomes archaic technology.
Golgo-13 is the best. I literally had my NES on for about a month with this game in it. I don't remember if I left it on because there wasn't a Save, or if saving was just a pain in the ass.
Looks like I'll have to stop by gamestop and pick it up for $2
Rather than later third-party greats. For example, no Megaman, no Strider; in fact, very few platform games other than Mario. I think this is in part because the system was released there in 1984, the sunset days of arcade ports being console gaming's bread and butter. Afterwards, the prevaling trend was towards more complex action games with some story, and RPGs. The RPGs are much better remembered today, of course. So American gamers have a different impression of the NES than the Japanese do of the Famicom, because they got it as many stronger action titles that weren't arcade ports came around. By the later 1980s, competition to the Famicom had already started appearing in Japan, and so a few of the very best titles(the DQ series, FF3, Mario 3, RCR) were remembered.
And my opinion is that the worst NES game is not Spelunker(which is OK as they go, based on all the emulated NES roms I've played, nearly the whole library), but Super Pitfall. I got it on the basis that "the other Pitfall games sounded cool" at maybe 10 years old. I'm kind of surprised that I still have it around. Basically, you walk around an enormous generic platform map with caves and lousy scrolling, falling into unseen pits and lava and deadly monsters with zero air control, and trying to avoid the monsters that are on ground level with poor control(you can shoot them, but you have limited ammo). There's a plot where you're supposed to rescue your friends or somesuch, but I never got far enough for it to matter.
Blaster Master should easily be within the top three. Wondering if it ever made its way to Japan.
- IP
I don't understand how you all could miss this classic! Super Dodge Ball is probably one of THE BEST 2-Player games of all time! Its definately up there with the likes of Super Mario Bros 3 and Zelda.
I heard that FF Anthology (FF V [unreleased in US] and VI [US=FF3])and Chronicles (FF IV [US=FF2] and Chrono Trigger) are going to be re-released on one CD as "PSOne Classics", and sell for $20
Manipulate the moderator system! Mod someone as "overrated" today.
I used to make fun of RPG's because they were "boring" and "slow" and didn't have guns, or at the very least, didn't have mushroom people to stomp. Then I played FF2(US). I instantly found a new favorite genre. I've been a jap-RPG player ever since.
So, one day, I was wondering, "hey, does anyone make any FF-style RPG's for PC or Mac?" A friend of mine told me about Baldur's Gate, and said it was "a lot like Final Fantasy." So I bought it.
"SHOOT ME NOW," I cried as I tore my eyes from their sockets after just 5 minutes of playing Baldur's Gate...
I think you get the idea. Different people have different tastes, and it's usually because of what they grew up with. I grew up with a poor tolerance for crappy RPG's, a loyalty to Nintendo, and a distinct dislike for tedium. That tends to rule out Dragon Quest, Final Fantasys > 6, and anything closely resembling Baldur's Gate. YMMV.
While Balloon Fight on NES was definitely a Joust clone, there was one innovating successor for Gameboy called Balloon Kid.
;(
It felt much like a parody of the shoot'em up genre to me:
The game scrolled in the opposite direction, you were armed with...uhm... one or two balloons.
One button was used for flying up, the other didn't let you shoot, but release the balloons to attack some bad guys with your ass.
And you could make a new balloon by triggering down while standing on falling platforms or even enemy birds (the bird-trick only worked if you had zero balloons to fly left).
I was the proud kid in town who was the best "bird-surfer" (completing levels with the smallest amount of flying, instead jumping from bird to bird and stuff) and I guess I was also the only one in town who played the game.
And you played as a small girl who tried to rescue her little brother.
And it had no happy end
I remember the days when playing Contra was the best thing to do on a friday night. Classic games like Contra and MB are still in my head. I still remember to this day all the warps in MB and the blasted Contra code. Up Up Down Down Left Right Left Right B A B A Select!
Which gets me thinking about some of my fave games for the NES:
YOU'RE WINNER !
Another lame blog
4 people working together or against each other? Heard of the "4 Swords" Zelda games?
And you are a liar. An article on Amazon? Sure. With a name like "Captain Goatse", it should be obvious what kind of site he's really linking to.