Sam's video game collection essentials

This isn’t a big, trailblazing, historic or even well-known game like some of the others you’ve been seeing, but it stands out to me as one of the coolest and best sports games on the NES on a system that’s loaded with them. Unlike most sports games, you don’t simply pick a team of players. Instead, you draft your team from a large roster of quirky characters. All the draftable characters have different attributes, and some have special abilities like being able to dodge tags while running the bases. There are even different ball fields that have quirks to them, such as a school yard where you can make an out instead of a home run if a ball breaks a school window. The gameplay itself is nice and smooth too so the game thankfully doesn’t just rely on gimmicks. A small issue is that the game itself doesn’t tell you any of the players’ attributes when you’re drafting them, just their names and faces. But all you need is the internet to either look up a guide or a scan of the game’s instru

A game that you almost certainly have played if you were a child of the ‘80s and/or ‘90s, Duck Hunt is probably the most famous light gun game of all time! This is largely thanks to the fact that the game got bundled with most NES systems sold in the U.S., so many millions of copies flocked into American homes like ducks migrating en masse for the winter. Duck Hunt has three modes. Two of them involve shooting ducks and one has you shooting at “clay pigeons” (which are not actual birds, rather, white-colored discs). In the first mode, one duck flies onto the screen and you have three bullets to try and shoot it with. The second mode is the same only there are TWO ducks to kill with your three bullets, forcing you to be more accurate. In all three modes, once 10 ducks or clay pigeons have gone by, the amount you were able to hit determines whether or not you continue to the next round, with the threshold being raised the longer you play. Ducks also tend to get a little faster and more e

  Originally this game was called Dragon Quest in Japan, but the name was changed to avoid a copyright battle with something else called “DragonQuest”. After 15 years of going with the “Dragon Warrior” change, the series switched to being “Dragon Quest” worldwide. Dragon Warrior is on this list because it is a genre pioneer. It is known for being the first “JRPG”, which is short for “Japanese role-playing game”. Video game RPGs were descended from tabletop role-playing games like Dungeons & Dragons. There were RPG video games before Dragon Warrior, but the game’s creator wanted to change up and simplify the complex gameplay seen in such games to make a new and more accessible type of experience that anyone could get into. The game came out in Japan in 1986 and was a big success, and Dragon Quest as a series became an absolutely enormous phenomenon in its home country. Overseas, it never came all that close to reaching such popularity. Perhaps part of this was because Dragon Warrior

Dr. Mario is our first “falling blocks puzzle game” on the list. There’s a certain super-famous game that starts with the letter T which popularized the genre that I haven’t gotten to yet, so due to the nature of the alphabet we’ll have to wait for that one. In a “falling blocks puzzle game”, you have to arrange blocks or objects in a certain way that will cause them to disappear. If you fail to make them disappear, eventually the stack of blocks or objects will reach the top of the screen and you will lose. They tend to deliver gameplay that is easy to grasp and play, but challenging to master and fun to play with a friend.  In Dr. Mario, the game starts out with a series of viruses already in play which need to be eliminated. You can customize how many of them you want to deal with, so it’s easy for either a beginner or expert to jump right in with whatever’s just right for them. The viruses come in three colors: red, blue and yellow. Dr. Mario throws two-sided pills that also come i

  The third Donkey Kong game is the most obscure of the trilogy and a bit of an odd one. Mario is out of the picture, and in his place is a generic-looking panicked dude named Stanley who Nintendo wouldn’t bring back. That was probably a mistake. The gameplay is completely different, and really not even a platformer at all. This is closer to what one would call a “tower defense” game…well, plants instead of towers in this case. Stanley is a gardener whose plants are at the bottom of the screen, and for some reason Donkey Kong has decided to destroy Stanley’s garden and has teamed up with the local insects to accomplish this task. Donkey and the insects will slowly descend and try to take Stanley’s plants, and you as Stanley must move back and forth and shoot bug spray to ward them off. You clear a level and get a bucket of points if you manage to push Donkey Kong all the way to the top of the screen. Donkey Kong 3 wasn’t as successful as the first two and Nintendo probably shouldn’t ha

  Released a year after the first game, Donkey Kong Jr. pulls somewhat of a role reversal. This time, Mario is the villain! He’s kidnapped Donkey Kong, and you play as the young son of the big ape in an attempt to rescue him. This was also one of the three 1983 launch titles for the NES in Japan. The basic gameplay format is pretty much the same as the first game, as it involves getting through four one-screen stages of platforming (thankfully all four levels are here this time!) until you rescue the character in distress, and then it throws you back at the beginning with increased difficulty and repeats until you run out of lives. However, in practice Donkey Kong Jr. plays quite differently from the first one. This game primarily revolves around climbing rather than jumping. All four levels involve some kind of long and thin things for our little monkey friend to climb. He can hold onto two at once to climb upwards faster, while holding onto one lets him descend faster. There really w

  A big and hugely significant arcade classic, Donkey Kong was the game that really put Nintendo on the map in 1981. It was one of the three launch titles for the NES/Famicom upon its Japanese release in 1983, and was one of the main motivators for Nintendo to create the console in the first place, as a way for fans to enjoy their arcade games in the comfort of their own home. Donkey Kong marks the first appearance of probably the most famous video game character of all time, Mario, the hero of the game, as well as of course the eponymous villain, Donkey Kong. The game was one of the earliest platformers, and was groundbreaking in the way that it involved a plot (albeit an extremely simple one) that advanced as you played the game. The arcade game has you traversing four different levels as Mario tries to save his girlfriend Pauline (and rack up a high score in the process). Once you get through all four levels, the game loops you back to the first level and the game becomes a little m

Another Capcom Disney game. DuckTales was, perhaps surprisingly, Capcom’s best-selling game on the NES, and it has a reputation as one of the best platformers on the console. You play as Scrooge McDuck traversing several levels in search of treasure. The game has a non-linear structure, as you can pick any of the five levels when you start the game, and you’ll sometimes have to revisit old levels, and you’re also highly encouraged to explore everything in the levels in search for more treasure. Scrooge has a fun attack where he can hold his cane down in the air to defeat enemies by bouncing off their heads. The game is also famous for having a very good soundtrack, with the song for the moon level being particularly revered. DuckTales (not the pictured copy) was one of the first NES games I owned when I finally got one as a young teenager, but I guess it came at the wrong time, because it didn’t really click with me back then and at some point I must have sold it. Even playing it now I

  Here’s another one by Capcom. Back then, Capcom had the license to make Disney games. Licensed games (i.e., based on a movie/show/book/non-video game thing) are a bit infamous for being mediocre or worse, because developers tend to be less motivated to make a great video game since they know the license itself will drive sales. But Capcom was awesome and really tried to make their Disney games great. Chip ‘n Dale is a platformer where the main gameplay feature is being able to pick up and throw many different objects. It’s also notable for having two-player cooperative play, which wasn’t very common in platformers back then. I don’t have a ton to say about the game, it’s just really darn fun. The only complaint is that it’s maybe a smidge too easy, probably because they wanted to make it kid-friendly, but you certainly don’t have to be a kid or even a Chip ‘n Dale fan to enjoy this game.

  It’s Konami again, this time with their very best NES game. Contra is what is commonly called a “run ‘n gun”, what you could call a platformer, but equal or greater emphasis is placed on shooting stuff, and not getting shot back. In addition to platforming levels, Contra also features levels from a behind-the-back perspective to mix things up. It was originally an arcade game, and normally when games were ported to home consoles, they had to be downgraded to accommodate the inferior hardware. But despite the hardware limitations, Konami went above and beyond and made the NES port BETTER than the arcade version. With this game, Konami basically perfected this genre, all the way back in 1988. Contra nails all the fundamentals of good game design. To me, good controls are critical to enjoying a game like this, and Contra gets everything right. You can shoot in all eight directions, you can crouch, you have a lot of control with your jump, and you can easily drop down below from whatever

  Last time was the first time I showed off a Japanese release, but that was side-by-side with an American version. This is our first example of a Japanese game that did not come out anywhere else! It’s Kid Dracula! Konami back in the day sometimes liked to parody their own work, which I think is amazing. This game is a cartoony parody of Castlevania. Dracula is the main antagonist of the series, and in this game you play as his son, Kid Dracula. The game is very cartoony and does not carry the vibe of a Castlevania game at all. I find the background music of the first level absolutely delightful, as they took the epic ominous first-level theme from Castlevania III and remixed it to sound bouncy and fun. Brilliant!! Kid Dracula is a platformer like Castlevania, but plays differently. Instead of a weapon, you have a projectile attack that you can charge up by holding the button down for a stranger blast (much like a certain blue bomber we’ll get to soon enough). Kid Dracula also obtains

  What’s this, a double feature? And one of these games comes on a weird Japanese cartridge?? Yes, there will be many Japanese games in this series. Japan was the king of the industry for a long time. Many hundreds of games only were released in Japan, including very many good ones, unfortunately. Other reasons to get a Japanese game could be a cost difference, or because changes were made upon bringing the game overseas that make the Japanese version stand out in some way. In this case, what you see here is two versions of the same game. But more on that a bit later. First, about the game itself. Castlevania III, unlike II, is the type of sequel to the first game that you’d expect to see. In other words, it takes the basic formula of what the original did and builds on that concept. And they sure went above and beyond in doing so. They could have simply designed several new levels with the same gameplay engine and called it a day. But they wanted to make something with a lot more cont

  Rather than simply build on the foundation set by the first title, Castlevania II goes in a very experimental direction. Gameplay initially feels the same, as it’s still a side-scrolling platformer featuring the same dude with a whip as before. But the structure of the game is completely different from the original. In this game, you aren’t given a gauntlet of levels to take on one-by-one. Instead, you’re placed in a rather open-ended area and you have a bit of freedom on how you want to progress. There are some elements here borrowed from role-playing games, as after defeating enough enemies you are able to permanently increase your power and amount of health. There’s also a day/night cycle, and enemies are tougher by night. Castlevania II wasn’t the first game like this, but this was still certainly before this type of design became common. And in fact, years down the road Castlevania itself would completely change its basic formula that was closer to this style than the original.

  Here’s a big early NES game from Konami that spawned a very long-running series highly regarded among gamers. Castlevania is another side-scrolling platformer that plays quite differently than most. Many platformers give you very precise control over your character with a lot of agility and freedom of movement, and sometimes strong and quick attacks to go along with it. Less common is a game like Castlevania, which purposefully doesn’t do this for various reasons. When you jump in Castlevania, you can’t change direction mid-jump. You have to be sure you can commit before launching your feet off the ground. You have a whip to strike enemies with and it has decent range, but it’s not very quick and can only be swung left or right. The game is designed purposefully around these limitations and challenges the player to acclimate or die. In addition to the whip, you can acquire a number of secondary weapons and items (one at a time) as an alternative move, but they have limited ammunition

  I’m not doing this series in chronological order for convenience reasons, so that can be slightly awkward at times when a game draws inspiration from one that I haven’t gotten to yet. That’s the case here, as Blaster Master borrows from a certain game by Nintendo that I’ll be covering later. So I may have to restate some points when I get to said game, but oh well. Side-scrolling platformers and action games were all the rage right from the start of the Nintendo era thanks to, of course, Mario, which basically created a blueprint for platformers going forward. The structure of a Mario game is that it consists of a series of levels/stages that you conquer one at a time. When you reach the end of one, the screen goes black and you’re dropped into the next one. But what if a game was basically one huge level? Nintendo gave us the first take on that concept, and then Sunsoft gave it a shot with this game as well as another one I’ll get to later. When a game is one huge level, progression

  Here’s the first of very many games in this blog from legendary developer Capcom. Bionic Commando is a side-scrolling platformer that immediately stands out in the genre for a certain peculiarity…you can’t jump!! How do you have a platformer with no jumping? Well, by using your bionic arm, of course. You can stretch out your arm to grab onto ceilings to either pull yourself straight up, or swing to cross a gap. As the game has a wartime setting, you’ve got a gun which can receive a variety of power-ups. Speaking of the wartime setting, the original Japanese release is literally about fighting Nazis and is entitled “Hitler's Resurrection: Top Secret”, and it’s no surprise that in the US release they changed these names to other things…but perhaps it IS a surprise that they didn’t change Hitler’s appearance, so his original identity is quite obvious! Anyways, back to gameplay, another thing that helps set the game apart is its non-linear structure. You choose what stages to tackle

  Here’s the first game in the series made by Rare, a British company that became more relevant after the NES days with some games that it’ll take me a while to get around to in this series. One of the company’s more popular series before their heyday was Battletoads, starting with (obviously) this game. Battletoads is a game that has immediate appeal. It’s an action game that starts out with a “beat ‘em up” style level. The “beat ‘em up” genre was most popular in the ‘90s due to arcades being at their peak; these games, though 2D, usually let the player move up and down in addition to simply being left-and-right side-scrollers, and gameplay mainly revolves around punching and kicking groups of enemies while trying to not let them do the same to you, with various weapons available to grab along the way. Beat ‘em ups can get repetitive, so Battletoads doesn’t restrain itself to just being a beat ‘em up. Almost every level involves you doing something different, so it’s probably more acc

  Here’s the first light gun game on the list, using the Nintendo “Zapper” gun accessory! The Zapper is especially known for one game in particular that I’ll get around to pretty soon. A note about any of these retro gun accessories is that you need an old tube TV to use them. If you have an HDTV they won’t work, because those TVs add at least a tiny bit of delay when projecting their images, so that throws off how these accessories work. This game was also made by Nintendo, but is quite obscure and strangely it didn’t even get a release in Japan. A dog that appears to be based on the one from the aforementioned more-famous game is featured here. There are four different modes of play in BBTS. One involves shooting a series of ascending balloons, one (pictured) involves shooting a bunch of thrown saucers while dealing with a bird who tries to snatch them, one involves shooting falling objects that are sometimes obscured by windows, and the last one is a marathon that involves all three

  One of the early NES games (as you can tell from the pixel-style cartridge art), Balloon Fight was one of the best games in the console’s early lineup, and to me the console’s whole library in general. Balloon Fight appears to be based on an earlier arcade game called Joust. Like in Joust, the idea is to fly in the air and attack your opponents by hitting them from above before they do the same to you. Your flying character is a dude with one or two balloons strapped to his back, and he flaps his arms to gain altitude or steer himself. The tricky part is getting used to the momentum-based physics. You can’t just stop or go at the drop of a hat, so it’s an adjustment and a challenge to pilot well. There are obstacles that complicate things, too. Flying balls of thunder are out to get you, and flippers suspended in midair can send you in an unwanted direction. Balloon Fight can be played with two players on a team (though you may want to compete in the sense that you’re playing to see