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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."
Has someone finally gotten around to finishing the translation of the FFIII ROM?
I know that I had tried playing it a while back (ie years ago), but the project was still only in the initial stages (and, unfortunately, many translation projects die out shortly after they are started.)
Or has Square finally released a translated version outside of Japan?
(Or perhaps you can read Japanese? I dunno...)
Those funny guys at Square, not being able to keep counts... Final Fantasy 1 was the only FF NES game to make it over to the States on the NES, Final Fantasy 4 and 6 on the SNES made it over as FF 2 and 3 - this is the FF 3 most people have played. Once Square went over to the PSX they synched the game numbering with FF 7, and have brought over FF 2 and 5 as part of collection CDs on the PSX.
To have played the original FF 3, you would need either a translated ROM image, or you would need to know Japanese and have imported it or something.
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.
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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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.