NES Classic Recommendation

[consumer]

I've had just enough alcohol to proclaim myself a video game quality expert.  I am not the foremost pro-player, or retro-historian, but my opinion on game quality is, no doubt, unparalleled and supreme. So, having considered which NES games to add to my NES classic without adding on so many that some icons appear off screen (you know what I mean!), I have settled on the following additional games...

1. Abadox

2. Batman

3. Castlevania III: Draculas Curse

4. Cobra Triangle

5. Double Dragon

6. Dragon Warrior 3

7. Final Fantasy 3 (EngTranslation)

8. G.I. Joe

9. Little Nemo: The Dream Master

10. Marble Madness

11. Ninja Gaiden II

12. Princess Tomato in the Salad Kingdom

13. Tetris

14. Vegas Dream

And so, with finally a perfect list of additional games for the NES classic, let the debate be settled! Also, let credit go to Nintendo's choices of games, all of which I kept, and most of which are worthy of being retained. Nice job Nintendo! If only you had employed me, your list would have been perfect, or so my Ouija Board interaction with Mr. Perfects opinion of NES classic additions would suggest. In all seriousness though, its a pretty good list.  Anybody got a better 14? I'll read'em, but I won't believe'em.

[kitsunebi]

Only 14, huh?  I applaud your choice of G.I.JOE, which is a criminally overlooked game, in my opinion.

I'm going to cheat and swap out Punch-Out!! and replace it with Mike Tyson's Punch-Out!! without counting that as a selection (because #$%& Mr. Dream...)

1. Adventures of Lolo - no point adding all 3, since they're pretty similar.  I'll go with this one, since I played the most.
2. Bionic Commando - even without Hitler, this game rocks
3. Contra - I never even try playing it without using the Konami code.  I don't want a crazy hard challenge, just a fun game I can finish.
4. Double Dragon - Is the second game better?  Dunno - this is the one my nostalgia appreciates the most
5. Double Dribble - Tecmo Bowl is a good start, but the NES had some other sports classics from a time before sports games got too realistic for casual players to enjoy
6. G.I.JOE - As I said, this game is an overlooked masterpiece.  You get to finish it not once, not twice, but three times, each more challenging than the last.
7. Ice Hockey - I almost added Blades of Steel instead (because punching people in the face is awesome), but I think the strategy of choosing between the three types of players makes this one more fun.
8. Kickle Cubicle - Never played this one until years later on an emulator, but it's an impressive little puzzler.
9. Maniac Mansion - Holy balls, what a killer soundtrack this game has.
10. Metal Gear - it kind of sucks, but there's something inescapably fascinating about it as well
11. River City Ransom - I wish I'd owned this as a kid instead of Mickey Mousecapade, Rambo, Bad Dudes, or any other number of shitty games I owned instead.
12. Shadowgate - OK, I guess there isn't a lot of replay value in a game like this.  But every ten years or so when I forget the solutions, I can enjoy it again!
13. Super Dodge Ball - I play dodgeball all the time since I started working in Japanese schools and it's just like this.  Balls rocketing at ungodly speeds, knocking the life right out of people and sending their souls to heaven.
14. Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles II: The Arcade Game - the graphics were crap compared to the arcade version, but the two-player gameplay was still just as fun.

 

[consumer]

I initially added about 50 games, but decided to cut it back.  My expanded list included all of your choices, kitsunebi77, with only 4 notable absences: Double Dribble, Ice Hockey, Kickle Cubicle, and Super Dodge Ball. Super Dodge Ball is an awesome game, I know. The others I am less familiar with.  I'm not familiar with Kickle Cubicle at all, so I'll have to read up on that.

7 hours ago, kitsunebi77 said:

I'm going to cheat and swap out Punch-Out!! and replace it with Mike Tyson's Punch-Out!! without counting that as a selection (because #$%& Mr. Dream...)

I strongly considered doing the same thing, but I decided against it, because I wanted to keep all of the pre-loaded games.  I knew if I swapped out one game, I'd swap out others, like maybe Super C for Contra. Balloon Fight, Donkey Kong Jr., and Tecmo Bowl would have been good swap out candidates for something, anything playable! And in the end the two games games are so similar, it hardly mattered to me.  I rarely box long enough to make it to the final bout anyways.

7 hours ago, kitsunebi77 said:

Shadowgate - OK, I guess there isn't a lot of replay value in a game like this.  But every ten years or so when I forget the solutions, I can enjoy it again! 

I like the game style of Shadowgate, but I've never gotten far into it without getting frustrated and stopping.  I prefer Shadowgate's cousin Deja Vu, which may have been my #15. In any case, one game of that style is enough and I settled on Princess Tomato in the Salad Kingdom, because I have fond memories of playing it as a youngster, and it is easy to pick up and progress in recalling the solutions or no.

7 hours ago, kitsunebi77 said:

G.I.JOE - As I said, this game is an overlooked masterpiece.  You get to finish it not once, not twice, but three times, each more challenging than the last. 

I was pleased to hear your praise of G.I. Joe.  It is definitely one of the best NES games produced.  I don't know if many fans of that title realize that all of the playable characters and bosses in that game were toys you could purchase at department stores.  Everyone of them was available just as they appeared in the game: their attire, weapons, and vehicles.  I tried to find them all back in those days, but fell a little short.  Never could find that cool looking version of Cobra Commander on the shelves, but had seen pictures of him through mail order brochures.

7 hours ago, kitsunebi77 said:

Double Dragon - Is the second game better?  Dunno - this is the one my nostalgia appreciates the most

In my opinion Double Dragon is a better game than its' sequels. If I were desperate to add more games, DD for DD2 is another swap I'd consider.  I just settled for both.

7 hours ago, kitsunebi77 said:

Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles II: The Arcade Game - the graphics were crap compared to the arcade version, but the two-player gameplay was still just as fun.

When I had the extra 50 games loaded, all three of the NES TMNT games were included.  If one had made the 14 cut for me, it probably would have been TMNT 3.  Mostly because TMNT3 is, to the best of my knowledge, an NES exclusive title, but also because I haven't played it as much as TMNT2, which makes it feel somewhat like a new experience.

7 hours ago, kitsunebi77 said:

• Maniac Mansion - Holy balls, what a killer soundtrack this game has.
• Metal Gear - it kind of sucks, but there's something inescapably fascinating about it as well 
• River City Ransom - I wish I'd owned this as a kid instead of Mickey Mousecapade, Rambo, Bad Dudes, or any other number of shitty games I owned instead.

Agreed.  100% agreed.

[kitsunebi]

3 hours ago, consumer said:

I initially added about 50 games, but decided to cut it back.  My expanded list included all of your choices, kitsunebi77, with only 4 notable absences: Double Dribble, Ice Hockey, Kickle Cubicle, and Super Dodge Ball. Super Dodge Ball is an awesome game, I know. The others I am less familiar with.  I'm not familiar with Kickle Cubicle at all, so I'll have to read up on that.

I strongly considered doing the same thing, but I decided against it, because I wanted to keep all of the pre-loaded games.  I knew if I swapped out one game, I'd swap out others, like maybe Super C for Contra. Balloon Fight, Donkey Kong Jr., and Tecmo Bowl would have been good swap out candidates for something, anything playable! And in the end the two games games are so similar, it hardly mattered to me.  I rarely box long enough to make it to the final bout anyways.

 

It sounds like you weren't into sports titles.  That's actually incredibly common around here.  In fact, I've never heard anyone at Retromags say a kind word about sports games.  Which is strange, when you consider how popular they are, but I digress.  I consider myself fortunate in that regard.  I dislike sports - I hate playing them, and I have no interest in watching them.  And yet, I'm fortunate enough to not have allowed that to turn me off from sports-based video games.  Two-player simultaneous games on the NES were fairly scarce, but games like the ones I added were endlessly playable alone or with a friend.  And (again, speaking as someone who doesn't give a #$@# about football) Tecmo Bowl definitely deserves its spot on the official list.  I never owned it as a kid, but I rented it several times and wished I owned it.  Years later, sports games would become more realistic to the point where knowledge of the rules would be helpfiul if not necessary, but in the NES days it was all about simplicity of gameplay.

3 hours ago, consumer said:

I like the game style of Shadowgate, but I've never gotten far into it without getting frustrated and stopping.  I prefer Shadowgate's cousin Deja Vu, which may have been my #15. In any case, one game of that style is enough and I settled on Princess Tomato in the Salad Kingdom, because I have fond memories of playing it as a youngster, and it is easy to pick up and progress in recalling the solutions or no.

I started life as a computer gamer.  As such, adventure games were my bread and butter.  Of course, third-person adventure games like the text-parser-based Sierra Online games or the point-and-click LucasArts styles were far better than Shadowgate, but outside of Maniac Mansion, no other third person adventures were brought over to the NES, at least not sucessfully.  The first-person variety never caught on in the USA, outside of the 4 Macventure games (The Uninvited, Shadowgate, Deja Vu, and Deja Vu II.)  Whereas in Japan, the 1st-person menu-based adventure became one of the most popular and successful genres (with Princess Tomato being the only one to ever make it stateside.) 

I'll tell you why I prefer Shadowgate: Deja Vu has an invisible time limit.  Take too long, and you just die.  You can't see how much time you have left, so it always comes out of the blue.  Totally unfair, and I dislike all games with time limits, especially ones where exploration is key. 

As for Princess Tomato, it suffers the same fate as all Japanese games in the adventure genre - it's completely, nonsensically linear.  It isn't really an adventure game in the American definition of the genre.  You aren't so much solving puzzles and gathering items to use elsewhere to solve puzzles as you are simply going where the developer wants you to go, in the order they want you to go there, and clicking on the menu command that they want you to click.  For anyone unfamiliar with adventure games, this is what I mean:

In an American adventure game, you can travel about mostly unrestricted.  You may encounter a barrier to your progress, such as, say, a locked door (although it will probably be something much more creative).  The solution to getting past that barrier is probably found elsewhere, and is probably done by creative use of items in your inventory (again, a key would be boring and unlikely) or interaction with other characters or the environment.  And it's entirely likely that as you explore the many screens of your environment, you will discover multiple puzzles that need to be solved (I don't mean arbitrary puzzles like sliding tiles or other such B.S. that you find in terrible games like Myst.  Perhaps "obstacle" is a better word to use.)  They don't necessarily have to be overcome in any particular order, although sometimes getting past one obstacle will alow you to find what you need to get past another elsewhere.

In Japanese adventure games like Princess Tomato, everything you do is in a completely straight line.  An example of gameplay (which I've made up, but is true to the experience):

Imagine you are on a screen with a guy sitting on a log.  You click the move command to leave the screen.  No paths are available.  You (the player) don't know it, but this is because the developers want you to talk to that guy sitting on the log first.  OK.  So you talk to the guy.  Now you click "move."  Still no available path.  OK.  Talk to guy again.  And again.  Exhaust all dialogue until he has nothing new to say.  NOW, click "move".  Suddenly, there is a path to the north.  Why wasn't it there before?  Because the developers wanted to make sure you heard everything that guy had to say first.  This is pretty much how the entire game plays out, based on the style of gameplay made popular by the Japanese-exclusive (and massively successful) Portopia. It makes no logical sense, and removes the element of free nonlinear exploration that defines American adventure games.

(Sorry, adventure games, or "graphic adventures" as we used to call them to differentiate them from text adventures, are my favorite genre of all time, so I have a lot of opinions on the matter.)

4 hours ago, consumer said:

I was pleased to hear your praise of G.I. Joe.  It is definitely one of the best NES games produced.  I don't know if many fans of that title realize that all of the playable characters and bosses in that game were toys you could purchase at department stores.  Everyone of them was available just as they appeared in the game: their attire, weapons, and vehicles.  I tried to find them all back in those days, but fell a little short.  Never could find that cool looking version of Cobra Commander on the shelves, but had seen pictures of him through mail order brochures.

I think its the opposite, actually.  Almost everyone growing up in America during the 80s is familiar with the GI JOE cartoon and toyline.  But almost no one knows about the game.  GI JOE's popularity had waned somewhat by the time the NES game came out, so even a lot of the fans of the cartoon and toys had moved on by then.  Hell, even I would have preferred if they used earlier figure designs for the characters in the game.

Because will always be cooler than

[kitsunebi]

AHA!  I found something that shows exactly what I'm talking about with Japanese adventure games.  This is specifically about Princess Tomato, but almost all Japanese adventure games play in a similar fashion.  The video should link directly to the relevant section:

 

[consumer]

22 hours ago, kitsunebi77 said:

It sounds like you weren't into sports titles.

I'm not very interested in them, it's true, but I'm not opposed to them either.  In fact, I tried Based Loaded on my NES Classic at one point, but it seemed to crash it, so I removed it.  For Snes, I added Hal's Hole in One Golf, and Super Black Bass (if you consider fishing a sports title), but later removed those as well (I limited my Snes Classic to only 10 additional games).  I have liked many more Sports games over the years, but without a 2nd player, the NES ones really don't seem very interesting to me.  Use to love Tecmo Super Bowl III for Snes, but still wouldn't make my additional 10 cut but a long shot.

22 hours ago, kitsunebi77 said:

I started life as a computer gamer.  As such, adventure games were my bread and butter.

I'm a little envious of that fact! I started with NES and didn't have a computer in my home until I was in my late teens.  I had bumped into a few adventure games on computers at relatives homes over the years, and always wanted to spend more time with them, but it was not to be.  I also always liked screen shots of adventure games. Would loved to have played the game that kid in the Tom Hanks movie "Big" was enjoying on a computer near the beginning of that film! Adventure games seemed fun, mysterious, and challenging from what little I dabbled in them.

22 hours ago, kitsunebi77 said:

As for Princess Tomato, it suffers the same fate as all Japanese games in the adventure genre - it's completely, nonsensically linear.

Yeah. I get that. The video you linked tells it like it is.  You get stuck on that game, you just systematically go through all the actions you can take on each screen until you "unlock" a new event or choice. Still, I remember this as my first and only adventure game available to me for many years.  I didn't learn about Deja Vu, Shadowgate, Uninvited till much later. I knew about Maniac Mansion, but none of the stores in my area rented it back in the day when I was looking to play it.  Never got to play Metal Storm in its hey day either for lack of stock in my local rental stores :(.  If you have any recommendations for some good old style "graphic adventures" I can play on my PC today, I'd love to hear them.  Not too interested in anything as advanced as myst.  I like the older style simple 8-bit like ones.

22 hours ago, kitsunebi77 said:

In an American adventure game, you can travel about mostly unrestricted.

Sounds like my brother in law preaching.  He loves Rogue type games.  He is a NetHack fanatic.  He's the only person I know personally that finished Ultima: Exodus for the NES.  I got into ADOM (ancient domains of mystery) for a while, but it was short lived, as I lost interest after I exploited the save files to get essentially infinite wishes and walk through the entire game with little difficulty.  Generally, I feel a  little overwhelmed by rogue-type games, and/or don't have the time to play them.  I haven't even played through an easier jRPG since I finished Final Fantasy 12 back in 2011.

On 12/1/2018 at 3:17 AM, consumer said:

I've had just enough alcohol to proclaim myself a video game quality expert.

And now I've been sober just long enough to un-proclaim this! Haha! Besides, you're wide-ranging video game knowledge has humbled me. Nice Job kitsunebi77.

[kitsunebi]

16 hours ago, consumer said:

I started with NES and didn't have a computer in my home until I was in my late teens. 

I started on a Commodore Vic 20 when I was...I dunno, around 6 or 7, I guess.   The NES was the first console I ever had, but that wasn't till I was in the 5th grade.

16 hours ago, consumer said:

Would loved to have played the game that kid in the Tom Hanks movie "Big" was enjoying on a computer near the beginning of that film! 77.

Me too, but that wasn't a real game.  Pretty similar to adventure games from the early 80s, though (but very outdated by the time the film was released in '88).

16 hours ago, consumer said:

If you have any recommendations for some good old style "graphic adventures" I can play on my PC today, I'd love to hear them.  Not too interested in anything as advanced as myst.  I like the older style simple 8-bit like ones.

You're gonna regret asking me this...

It's a difficult thing to recommend at this point.  Anyone not raised on playing them can often find them too difficult and hard to get into.  Kind of like me trying to appreciate the old Ultima games which I never played as a kid - I know they're classics, but when I try to play them now I just find the UI not to my liking and can't see what all the fuss was about.

Anyway, there are two names that mean classic adventure games: Sierra and LucasArts.

Old Sierra games used a text parser to enter commands.  So you might walk up to a tree and type "look hole" to peer inside the hole visible at its base, and then "get egg" to pick up the golden egg you are told is inside.  Lucasarts did away with the text parser and made everything menu driven (and later icon driven), so you would click the "look" (or eye icon) in the menu and then click again on the hole in the tree to look inside, and then click "take" (or a hand icon) and then click again on the hole to take the egg you found inside.  Sierra would later switch to the icon-based interface as well beginning in 1990 or so.

Also, in Sierra games, you die.  A LOT.  Which is a lot of their charm, frankly, dying in all sorts of gruesome and hilarious ways.  You can also deadend yourself accidentally by doing (or not doing) something that makes it impossible to do something else later.  Multiple saved games at various points are necessary.  LucasArts games are simpler in the sense that (aside from a couple of early exceptions) you can't die or deadend yourself.  You can still get just as stuck by not figuring out what you should do, but you won't be able to bring about your demise through your own action or inaction.

I imagine all games from both companies are available from GOG or Steam (and can easily be found for free if you wear an eyepatch and have a talking parrot on your shoulder.)  Many of the games have been remade at various points, so there may be vastly different versions of the same game.

Again, it's an almost impossible thing to recommend an oldschool adventure game to someone unfamiliar with oldschool adventure games, since its a hard genre for the uninitiated to truly appreciate at this point.  They also probably require some knowledge of DOSBox in order to run correctly (for example, the versions available for purchase at GOG are configured to display the image by default at 16:9 fullscreen, stretching the image horizontally to fill the screen.  It requires manual alteration of the config file to make the game display at the proper 4:3 (square) aspect ratio.)

But anyway, for Sierra, I'd say a great game to start with is Hero's Quest (now known as Quest For Glory 1.)  It's a bit of a cheat, since it isn't exactly like the rest of their games in the sense that it also incorporates RPG elements and simple action combat scenes, but the traditional adventure gaming elements are fairly straightforward, so it's actually one of their easier games to finish.  There was a VGA remake that uses an icon-based interface if you're too timid to attempt the original.

For LucasArts, the go-to standard is the Monkey Island series.  The first three games are masterpieces, but should be played in order, so you'd have to start with the first.  It exists in multiple forms - EGA original, a VGA upgrade with a CD soundtrack, and a much more recent "Special Edition" remake that has all new graphics and the characters are fully voiced.  Which you choose really depends upon how "purist" you want to be.  The voice-acting in the special edition is excellent and uses the same actors as were previously used in the 3rd game (the first to have voice acting, originally), but I'm not really a fan of the "new improved" graphics.

Another excellent early LucasArts game is Loom, which is very easy, as adventure games go, and also very unique.  Rather than using various commands to interact with your environment and your inventory full of stuff you've picked up along the way (as in most adventure games), the only interactions you have with your surroundings are in the forms of spells that you cast by playing various sequences of musical notes.  The story is fascinating, and it's totally worth a try, but it's a bit hard to recommend due to technical reasons.  The game was originally released in EGA.  It was later rereleased on CD-ROM in VGA, with voice acting.  However, all of the voice acting was recorded as CD audio, and there wasn't enough space on the disc to fit the entire script, so a lot of the dialog has been cut from that version.  The BEST version was made for the FM Towns computer.  It features improved graphics and CD-quality music, but no voice acting, and thus all of the story and dialog is intact.  It can be played easily enough using the SCUMMVM emulator (designed especially for adventure games), but you'd have to work a little harder to track down a download of the FM Towns edition (which can't be legally bought anywhere).  Also, the manual is a necessity for being able to know what spells you can cast, so you need to make sure to get a copy of that as well (the ONLY item you can pick up in the game is a spellbook, which can't actually be looked at in the game, since it's supposed to represent the spellbook/manual that the game shippped with).  And finally, the game also shipped with a 30-minute audio drama on cassette tape that sets up the backstory to the game.  It's an excellent, professional production, and definitely should be listened to before playing, but again, you'll have to search a bit to find the MP3 online somewhere.

In the case of Loom, I can only recommend pirating it (the EGA version, or the FM Towns version, if possible), since the only version available for purchase at Steam or GOG is the VGA CD-ROM talkie version that is missing parts of the story, and it doesn't come with the audio drama, either.  Again - I can't stress this enough - either track down the original EGA version or the FM Towns version, or else don't play it at all.  The EGA graphics are beautiful, yet somehow the "better" VGA sucks all of the artistry from them. Each significant character has their own animated closeup when they're talking in the EGA version, all of which have been removed from the VGA version.   Furthermore, much of the background music (in a game that revolves around music) has been removed from the VGA version.  And as I said, the game has a wonderful story, but about 30 percent of it is missing in the VGA version.  Avoid at all costs!

16 hours ago, consumer said:

 Generally, I feel a  little overwhelmed by rogue-type games, and/or don't have the time to play them. 

I've actually hardly played any roguelikes at all.  But the very first game I owned when my family bought a Tandy 1000SX (IBM PC-compatible) computer back in 1987 was Rogue.  So I guess I never felt the need to play rogue-likes since I spent so much time as a kid playing the game that spawned them all.

[twiztor]

On 12/1/2018 at 4:21 PM, kitsunebi77 said:

It sounds like you weren't into sports titles.  That's actually incredibly common around here.  In fact, I've never heard anyone at Retromags say a kind word about sports games.  Which is strange, when you consider how popular they are, but I digress.  I consider myself fortunate in that regard.  I dislike sports - I hate playing them, and I have no interest in watching them.  And yet, I'm fortunate enough to not have allowed that to turn me off from sports-based video games.  Two-player simultaneous games on the NES were fairly scarce, but games like the ones I added were endlessly playable alone or with a friend.  And (again, speaking as someone who doesn't give a #$@# about football) Tecmo Bowl definitely deserves its spot on the official list.  I never owned it as a kid, but I rented it several times and wished I owned it.  Years later, sports games would become more realistic to the point where knowledge of the rules would be helpfiul if not necessary, but in the NES days it was all about simplicity of gameplay.

i have never really been big into sports. In real life, that is. Sports games i tend to not enjoy in the long haul, but there are some serious exceptions to that:

on the NES, i LOVE Tecmo Super Bowl. whenever friends gather at my house, we're practically guaranteed to play some TSB. i prefer it to Tecmo Bowl, as all the teams are included, the number of potential plays has doubled, and it's just more balanced and fun overall.
Back in the day we played lots of Double Dribble and Blades of Steel, but i haven't tried them out in years. Mike Tyson's Punch-Out was already mentioned as being a great game, but it is also unmistakably a sports game, so that counts as wel. 

sports games really got good by the time we made it to the N64. i prefer mine more arcadey, less realistic, so i've tended to focus that way. NFL Blitz is awesome. Wayne Gretzky's 3D Hockey (which later turned into the NHL Hitz series) is fun. NBA Hangtime (successor to NBA Jam) is amazing. i really liked All Star Baseball '99, but YMMV on that one. 
Take it a step further and games like Tony Hawk's Pro Skater or 1080 Snowboarding were hugely popular and a lot of fun too.

[kitsunebi]

2 hours ago, twiztor said:

sports games really got good by the time we made it to the N64. i prefer mine more arcadey, less realistic, so i've tended to focus that way. NFL Blitz is awesome. Wayne Gretzky's 3D Hockey (which later turned into the NHL Hitz series) is fun. NBA Hangtime (successor to NBA Jam) is amazing. i really liked All Star Baseball '99, but YMMV on that one. 
Take it a step further and games like Tony Hawk's Pro Skater or 1080 Snowboarding were hugely popular and a lot of fun too.

Yeah, there are all sorts of "sports" games that aren't trying to be realistic simulations, and should be accessible to anyone.  And calling games like Tony Hawk a "sports game" is really stretching the definition of what a "sports game" should be.  I mean, sure, skateboarding is a physical activity, but it isn't a game with a set of rules.  Is Assassin's Creed a sports game because of parkour?

But yeah, I get that not everyone is into sports (as I said, I'm not, either), but people have been enjoying sports for centuries longer than videogames, so there must be some entertainment value in them.  There are so many accessible titles that don't require you to know or care about the real thing that I feel there's room for some sort of sports game in everyone's collection, be it a Hot Shots Golf, a Mario Tennis, or god help you a Dead or Alive Beach Volleyball (you big perv), or what have you.  Brushing them all off collectively in one go is limiting your gaming horizons in my opinion.

[SixaraTM]

On 12/1/2018 at 5:00 AM, kitsunebi said:

Only 14, huh?  I applaud your choice of G.I.JOE, which is a criminally overlooked game, in my opinion.

I'm going to cheat and swap out Punch-Out!! and replace it with Mike Tyson's Punch-Out!! without counting that as a selection (because #$%& Mr. Dream...)

1. Adventures of Lolo - no point adding all 3, since they're pretty similar.  I'll go with this one, since I played the most.
2. Bionic Commando - even without Hitler, this game rocks
3. Contra - I never even try playing it without using the Konami code.  I don't want a crazy hard challenge, just a fun game I can finish.
4. Double Dragon - Is the second game better?  Dunno - this is the one my nostalgia appreciates the most
5. Double Dribble - Tecmo Bowl is a good start, but the NES had some other sports classics from a time before sports games got too realistic for casual players to enjoy
6. G.I.JOE - As I said, this game is an overlooked masterpiece.  You get to finish it not once, not twice, but three times, each more challenging than the last.
7. Ice Hockey - I almost added Blades of Steel instead (because punching people in the face is awesome), but I think the strategy of choosing between the three types of players makes this one more fun.
8. Kickle Cubicle - Never played this one until years later on an emulator, but it's an impressive little puzzler.
9. Maniac Mansion - Holy balls, what a killer soundtrack this game has.
10. Metal Gear - it kind of sucks, but there's something inescapably fascinating about it as well
11. River City Ransom - I wish I'd owned this as a kid instead of Mickey Mousecapade, Rambo, Bad Dudes, or any other number of shitty games I owned instead.
12. Shadowgate - OK, I guess there isn't a lot of replay value in a game like this.  But every ten years or so when I forget the solutions, I can enjoy it again!
13. Super Dodge Ball - I play dodgeball all the time since I started working in Japanese schools and it's just like this.  Balls rocketing at ungodly speeds, knocking the life right out of people and sending their souls to heaven.
14. Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles II: The Arcade Game - the graphics were crap compared to the arcade version, but the two-player gameplay was still just as fun.

 

Loved Contra and Metal Gear!