Hi! Long-time lurker here. Short story Long:
Back in March, I had bought a CRT and decided I wanted to play, what I decided were the 60 "essential" NES games, original carts & manuals, a few authentic boxes but most are printed out, and play through them chronologically. Starting with Mario, and ending with Star Tropics 2. So interesting seeing the Run & Gun, RPG, and Action Platformer genres evolve. Like, say, what Castlevania 1 does in '86 vs what Mega Man 6 would do in '93. And even techincal achievents, we will never see another huge graphical leap on the same console, like from Mega Man 1 to 6, or Mario 1 to 3, ever again. The only games I used a Game Genie for was infinite lives in Battletoads (Not Pictured), and Continues for Double Dragon 2. Battletoads/Double Dragon is also not pictured. Everything else was played straight. This sub has been absolutely essential for me, so thank you. What started so humbly ended with buying a lot of games on Ebay, Facebook Market, and local retro shops, then Gamebit screwdrives, erasers & alcohol on carts, and even opening up the NES and disabling the lockout chip with a guitar string and boiling that pin thing for like 2 hours. The only Repro carts I got were for FF2 & 3, since they never came out in America. Also huge shout out to the "U Can Beat Video Games" youtube channel, that dude does the lord's work. The Nintendo Power guides for FF1 & Ninja Gaiden 2. The NES Game Atlas. And also the Jeremy Parish "NES Works" channel, so cool learning about the development of a lot of these games. I love the NES because it's before any pre-conceived notions of what a "game" was, or had to be. It's like reading Greek Myths, or listening to folk music recording from the 20's. The birth of a genre. It also reminds me of old Hollywood, the way these businesses looked at games less as "art," and just a business. And that attitude lends to a rawness we'll just rarely, if ever, see again. For better or for worse. And it's interesting to see what "auteurs" emmerge out of this scene. I have a theory that Tokuro Fujiwara is the most influential director of the era, and that without him Capcom would never be as big as it was. Also people like Keiji Inafune, Hitoshi Akamatsu, Masato Kato, Gunpei Yokoi, Satoru Okada, Hironobu Sakaguchi, and of course Miyamoto, Tezuka, Satoru Iwata, & Masahiro Sakurai. It's truly insane to me that the world will never look at these men like we do at John Ford or Kubrick or Hemingway or whoever we deem more "artistic." But I think in the future these men will be recoginzed as pioneers of the most important artform of the 21st century. We'll see.
Top Games: Zelda 1 & 2, Mario 3, Castlevania 3, Mega Man 2, Ninja Gaiden 1, Punch-Out, Contra. Bottom Games: Double Dragon 2, Dragon Warrior 1, 2 & 3, Deja Vu, River City Ransom, Faxanadu, and Crystalis.
Hardest game: Blaster Master, easily. People way over exaggerate Ninja Gaiden, TMNT's, Zelda 2, or Castlevania 3's difficulty. Blaster Master is insane.
Biggest surprise: Gradius. This game is amazing. Way better than Life Force, I can't believe it's not regarded as a Top 10 NES game more often.
Oh boy! Thanks for reading! Just hooked up the SNES and the Super Gameboy, gonna play through the 30 "best" Gameboy games. Have a wonderful day.