Happy 25th Birthday, Classic 8-bit Nintendo NES

[knellie22]

The most vivid memory I have of my old NES was the first Final Fantasy - I used to sit like a foot in front of the TV playing it for hours in my kitchen. Then I asked for a SNES for Christmas one year, and my mom thought that meant that it was ok to sell the NES and the games to a used games store...I'm still bummed that she sold my in near-perfect condition original copy of Final Fantasy along with Dragon Warriors 1, 2 and 4 and a bunch of other classics. :-(

Though now when my dad complains about how his mom threw away his baseball card collection, I can totally relate.

 

[rwpritchett]

Ah memories... my brother and I painted the entire outside of my dad's house to earn that first NES in 1986. Took 3 days. The increase in detail from the Atari 2600 was massive: characters were no longer uni-color blobs... Mario actually had a mustache!

Top 5 games for me:

5. Metroid
4. Mike Tyson's Punch Out
3. Pro Wrestling (Starman ruled!!!)
2. Contra
1. Legend of Zelda

 

[RazberyBandit]

[citation][nom]Nakal[/nom]No, the Konami Code was U U D D L R L R B A {select} startselect was in there for 2player Contra and Gradius/Life Force.http/en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Konami_Code[/citation]
It's obviously been far too long for me then.

I can recall the B A B A Start sequence working a bunch of games... Guess it worked for games from other makers, like CAPCOM, Midway, Data East, and/or more.

 

[PLATTERMAN]

I still have this one, the 64 and Game Cube consoles. Techmo Bowl, Punch Out and the Madden and Knockout Kings, Fight Night games for that last 2 consoles 64, Game Cube. I have the Elway football game too. Never bought any other consoles but Nintendo, no Wii and no intentions to do so though.

 

[mlopinto2k1]

You had NES and Sega, I had an Amiga 500 with over 200 games. Ahh, memories.

 

[TheWhiteRose000]

Legend of Zelda.


And FINAL FANTASY FTW!!!!

 

[afrobacon]

My top 5
1) Legend of Zelda (All time favorite game)
2) Blaster Master (Still very addicting to this day)
3) Super Mario 1 & 3
4) Final Fantasy I
4) Castlevania

 

[dustcrusher]

Final Fantasy, Zelda, Metroid, Pro Wrestling, the first Mega Man, and the frustration-in-plastic that is Deadly Towers are some of my fondest memories of the NES. I was playing PC, Commodore 64, and old ColecoVision games in the meantime, but something about the NES made it really fun again.

[citation][nom]mlopinto2k1[/nom]You had NES and Sega, I had an Amiga 500 with over 200 games. Ahh, memories.[/citation]

Temple of Apshai and the Archon games kicked ass on the Amiga. Sad that they updated Archon years later but not Archon II...

 

[Guest]

Personal Top Games for NES before I sold it to buy a SNES-

1.River City Ransom
2.Mario + Duck Hunt
3.Skyshark
4.Contra
5.Blades of Steel
6.Paperboy
7.TMNT
8.Metroid
9.Zelda

Might be playing some RCR after this post-

 

[badaxe2]

Happy bday NES, even though I did most of my early gaming on your younger sibling, SNES.

 

[NuclearShadow]

My childhood was dominated by the NES. So many great games that I wouldn't mind playing even to this day. The classic mario's, double dragon, river city ransom, Zelda, Metriod, Final Fantasy, Castlevania
and so many other titles that would make a seemingly endless list.

I think I still have a working NES and games in my attic perhaps its time to take it out of retirement.

 

[nottheking]

As an aside, I'd point out that Windows 7 isn't the 7th version of Windows. For one, it's based on the Windows NT Kernel, which debuted in 1993 as a branch-off of Windows 3.1. Also, as little logic as it makes, Win7 is actually WinNT version... 6.1

But as for the NES... I lost count on the number of cartridges I've had. Way too many games. I'm surprised others have played some of the more obscure ones I had, like Faxanadu and Shadowgate. Can't really say if I had a SPECIFIC favorite, though... But perhaps the Ninja Gaiden trilogy contended.

Two other things I learned long, long after the fact on some NES things:

- For one, the revised "NES 2," as much as I knocked it, had one compelling feature: it lacked the lockout chip, which meant not just that it'd play games from any region, it also meant that it was immune to the "won't start; light blinks" problem the NES had. (as that was 100% the fault of the lockout chip unable to get a signal through the connectors to validate the cart)

- The actual paper manual for Blaster Master... contains a map of 6 of the worlds. When I discovered this after snagging a virtually-new copy (including the opened cellophane wrapper) the game became infinitely easier.

 

[JOSHSKORN]

In 1985 I was playing computer games on a TRASH-80.

 

[Scanlia]

...when some of you, who are reading this now from a Windows 7 machine, weren't even born yet.

Agreed

 

[mywifehas36DD]

The good old days. I remember those marathon weekends as a kid. 2 hrs of sleep and a lot of Tecmo Bowl, Super Mario Bros, Mega Man(my personal favorite)and whatever else we got our hands on. Those were fun times...just like this:

http/www.youtube.com/watch?v=8PBvOxicz-0

 

[aj327]

I remember going to the electronics department as a kid and clearly remember my Dad discussing Nintendo vs Sega with the salesguy. Sega was the superior device he was told, so we ended up getting the Sega. It didn't take long for us to figure out how wrong he was - so my Dad in his infinite generosity went back and got us the NES as well. I was the envy of all my friends, but not just because I had two systems but because my Dad got me the fully decked out version of the NES...the one with the robot!!!

Does anyone else remember the robot? You could only use it for the gyroscope games...and there were maybe only 3 or 4 of those...all of which sucked. If I remember correctly, pushing one of the buttons on the control pad activated the robot to pick up a gyroscope and set it on one of two platforms which corresponded to one of the two buttons. Once the gyroscope was placed on the platform, the platform lowered and THEN something would finally happen in the game. But all you had to do was have someone push the panels down with their hands to get the same effect so the gyroscopes just became an annoyance. I never hear anyone talk about the robot these days...I wonder how long it actually lasted in stores and what it would be worth if I had actually held on to it.

Also does anyone else remember minus world in Super Mario brothers? It was a deathtrap water world that you could get to at the end of world 1-2. You stood on the end of the last pipe and jumped just hard enough, and just enough to the right to get sucked into the wall. You'd then get drawn over to the warping pipes and if you went down the first pipe before all the other pipes became visible you'd end up in the world -1. You couldn't get out of it but it didn't matter...anyone I showed this too was immensely impressed. It kind of felt like finding a secret passage way in an old house or something...trying to find these backdoor secrets in my games was more fun than trying to win them.

Anyone remember nintendo power magazine? I remember calling up the help line asking if it was possible to jump over the flag pole. One of my friends swore he saw it done but the nintendo power guy told me it was impossible...sad day.

When we moved years later we lost all of our games except for super mario brothers. I didn't play it that much anymore but it's all my sister ever did - so how's this for impressive...she could win the game in one guy...WITHOUT WARPING. I watched her do it...it took a long time, but I was on the edge of my seat the entire time.

Those were the days...

 

[aj327]

Oh yeah I forgot to mention my personal favorites...in no particular order...

1) Super Mario Brothers
2) Zelda (probably my favorite)
3) Megaman
4) Metroid (loved this game)
5) Castlevania
6) Dragon Warrior
7) Kung Fu
8) Mike Tyson's Punch Out
9) Pro Wrestling

Personal best: Beating Rygar the day I bought it
Personal worst: Never beating Gauntlet...I think I got up to the high 80s or low 90s but those high levels were just ridiculously hard...

 

[aj327]

Looks like that Nintendo power guy was wrong about jumping over the flagpole...

http/www.youtube.com/watch?v=rDVoqLK9g4k

 

[JamesT5192]

Who remembers the game Bad Dudes... Best quote EVER: "The president has been kidnapped by ninjas. Are you a bad enough dude to rescue the president?"

 

[zak_mckraken]

Wow, reading some of the personal favorite titles really bring back awesome memories. I'm glad people also enjoyed some most obscure titles like River City Ransom and Ducktales.

I'm from Quebec so, as a kid, my english wasn't as good as it is now (videogames is the main reason why I'm bilingual today), so I had a hard time playing most RPGs which were, ironically, my favorites. I still remember Dragon Warrior with "ye olde english". I was like "WTF mom, that game can't spell properly!"

Fortune smiles upon thee.. Thou hast found the Death Necklace!