Misunderstanding the NES

[Nutmeg]

Don't really care for the atmosphere-fagging but I agree Zelda 1 and 2 are the least declined. Have you played Nazo no Murasamejou? IMO, this would have been a better template for the series, rather than the more adventure route it ended up going.

I really struggle with the adventure genre btw. I don't understand the appeal at all because all elements /unique/ to "adventure" are just bad things, and pure adventure games like the point and clicks or things like Snatcher are imo complete shit as games (although they're ok as some sort of interactive media), but yeah when those elements end up being mixed with games proper I think the end result is always worse than if they just stayed away.

Like when playing Resident Evil I never thought "wow I'm so excited to do this item matching puzzle", hence why I think RE6 mercenaries is the best of the series and something like Chaos Heat is how Resident Evil always should have been structured since day 1. Anyway veered very OT there will stop.

 

[BLOBERT]

BROS MIKE TYSPON PUNCHOUT IS ONE OF MY FAVORITE GAMES I STILL PLAY A FEW TIMES A YEAR

I REMEMBER MY FRIEDNS DAD PLAYING LOTS OF NOBUNGAS AMBITION

CONTRA STILL IS FUN AND OF COURSE SUPER TECMO BOWL

 

[YldriE]

If you think many NES games aren't worth it and suspect other people are praising them in an effort to appear cultured, if you replayed an old game you loved as a kid and found it thoroughly unenjoyable, just let it go. There is nothing to gain by forcing yourself through it out of "guilt" just because you think any monocled gamer with refined taste should like this "classic" historical piece.

Sometimes you grew out of it, sometimes it's shit but you liked it as a kid because it was one of your earliest games, sometimes it's shit but it has multiplayer and you remember fondly that time long ago where you still had friends, sometimes it's good but in a genre you aren't interested in anymore, sometimes it's an early bird in a genre that hugely evolved since and you can't go back to something so primitive... there are tons of reasons why an old game might not be a fun experience anymore, and all of them are more valid than whatever bullshit you came up with for forcing you to power through them.

Many old games don't even hold up to random Google Play Store trash, but thankfully no one is ever going to be at a point where they have only access to NES games and nothing else. That's the beauty of emulation: you cherry-pick what you like and ignore the rest. Add the few good ones to your collection and move on.

Life is too short to play shit games you don't like.

 

[Siobhan]

just let it go

That's good advice for pretty much anything. I can say the same thing about 50% of all games in the Codex Top 70 (haven't read up on the recent Top 101 yet). I don't understand the appeal of prerendered isometric backgrounds, dialog trees, the C&C fetishism (which is actually more of a "reactive world" fetishism), the love for immersion, or caring about story, world building or writing in a video game. That's all completely lost on me. At best I don't get anything out of it, at worst I find it grating. So I ignore about 90% of all games that get hyped around here. But once in a while you get a gem like LoG 2, Elminage Gothic, or Dark Spire. Point being: nobody in this thread is saying that the NES is the undisputed pinnacle of video game design, it's a-okay not to like that kind of game. But painting it as objectively shit and outdated without reflecting on the standards of evaluation is ignorant and a waste of everybody's time.

Not sure why gaming-related hobbies attract this narrow, almost sectarian mindset. You have the same in board games, where tons of classics get low ratings because $current_year players apparently can't fathom that dice aren't inherently worse than cards. They're so locked into highly specific notions of fairness, strategy, and player agency that they immediately dismiss any design that deviates from this. This would be utterly ridiculous in other hobbies. "All literature before 1850 is shit because it was written for an educated elite", "Running is a shit sport because there's no direct conflict" --- that's an okay reason for avoiding this piece of literature or that type of sport if these are important criteria for you, but nobody would accept them as informed assessments of objective value or merit. Yet in games...

tl;dr it's pointless to shit on a Y for not being an X

 

[FuckLiefeldGiveMeChew]

Zelda 2 is my favorite of the series and one of my favorite games. I beat it when I was young, then replayed it recently and got to the the final boss.

I just got Hardcore Gaming 101's book about NES cult classics. I skimmed it and it was interesting, and It reminded me of other obscure classics like Crisis Force, Little Samson, Ai Senshi Nichol, Zombie Nation, Kabuki Quantum Fighter, Rocking Kats, Joy Mech FIght, Corcoron, Xexys, Abadox and Panic Restaurant.

I never denied that the NES had its flaws: The save batteries are problematic; there are plenty of awful games like Rambo, Action 52, Mario's Time Machine and the works of Acclaim, LJN, Color Dreams and Rare; even the best games can have bad parts, like the walking stages in Guardian Legend and the ending of Mario 2; but overall, the system has hundreds of fun games and some of my favorites.

 

[Great Deceiver]

Thanks to this thread I discovered Fire & Ice (Solomon's Key 2), an absolute gem of a puzzle game. It's much better than the first one and certainly worth playing. It has a very cute atmosphere and friendly music, some of the later levels are quite devious.

 

[BLOBERT]

MANY BROS ALSO FORGET THE FIRST METAL GEAR WAS ON THE NES

BROS IT HAD SORTA ZELDA VIBE BUT FIRST GAME I CAN REMEMBER WERE STEALTH WAS IMPORTANT

LOLOLOL BROS RAMBO I PLAYED THAT GAME A BIT WHEN I WAS YOUNG

I ALSO LIKED CASTELANIA 2 ANOTHER SERIES OUTLIER THE PUZZLES WERE FUCKED BUT FOR SOME REASON I LOVED THAT GAME

 

[Siobhan]

even the best games can have bad parts, like the walking stages in Guardian Legend

I assume you know about the TGL password? But I think it makes the game worse, the walking stages give it a lot of its charm and reward thorough exploration with upgrades.

 

[JDR13]

MANY BROS ALSO FORGET THE FIRST METAL GEAR WAS ON THE NES

BROS IT HAD SORTA ZELDA VIBE BUT FIRST GAME I CAN REMEMBER WERE STEALTH WAS IMPORTANT

LOLOLOL BROS RAMBO I PLAYED THAT GAME A BIT WHEN I WAS YOUNG

I ALSO LIKED CASTELANIA 2 ANOTHER SERIES OUTLIER THE PUZZLES WERE FUCKED BUT FOR SOME REASON I LOVED THAT GAME

Is your Caps-lock key broken or something?

 

[BLOBERT]

BRO IM TOO BIG A DEAL FOR SMALL LETTERS