I didn't say it's better. That's subjective. While I personally like the games on the NES better, I think they're both fantastic systems with amazing libraries.
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Every time I see Era users slam the NES's library as being "unplayable," I die a little inside.
- Thread starter Deleted member 15125
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This made me laugh.
The hyperbole is so strong with this comment, and somehow, so true.
It's funny because I grew up with a SNES, when NES was already old news, but I prefer classic Mega Man over X, I prefer all 3 Marios on NES over World, etc.
Playing fighting games was the only edge SNES had over NES in my view, back then.
I have not encountered a good River City Ransom sequel on the SNES that outmatches the NES classics.
The SNES sequels and GBA sequels don't have full multiplayer. It wasn't until late-era 3DS that we start to have them.
Personally, there's over 100 NES games still worth playing. But that's me.
NES is like what, 30+ years ago? "Unplayable" is hyperbole but many of its limitations doesn't make sense for people who started playing games after that. It's true for basically anything though, you just need to accept that people move on and don't have the same goggles as you.
A lot of NES games were always horrible but the great ones hold up. Especially if you play them on original hardware on a real ass CRT. Modern displays are really a step down when it comes to response times compared to CRTs and it's extremely obviously in NES games where the timing and precision are very demanding.
I will always love the great NES games because the feeling of accomplishment you get when you beat many games is just not something you get in most other generations of games and also they are short and it's all intense so they are the most replaysble games, at least for me.
The only thing that limits the amount I play NES games is I don't have a CRT in my house. A friend of mine has a CRT and a huge NES collection and I still enjoy playing those games on his setup.
I will always love the great NES games because the feeling of accomplishment you get when you beat many games is just not something you get in most other generations of games and also they are short and it's all intense so they are the most replaysble games, at least for me.
The only thing that limits the amount I play NES games is I don't have a CRT in my house. A friend of mine has a CRT and a huge NES collection and I still enjoy playing those games on his setup.
Yep. While there are certainly 600-1000 Famicom/PAL NES/US NES games that are no good at this point, there are so many great ones.
Some games the Famicom version remains the pinnacle of the genre IMO.
- Contra and Super Contra have not been beaten for pure speedy run-n-gun fun even by their own sequels
- Solstice is the best isometric puzzle platformer ever
- Jackal is the best overhead run-n-gun ever
- Goonies (1) is the best side scrolling puzzle platformer ever. It's a genre the Famicom/NES era excels at (Montezuma's Revenge etc) and subsequent generations overcomplicated it making them 'deeper' but worse.
- Punch Out is the best twitchy sports game ever
- Double Dragon II the best beat em up adventure game ever (River City gives it a run for its money too)
Facts honestly. People bringing up NES online as if Nintendo's limited selections for it are the entirety of the NES library.
I think listing a hundred great NES games that hold up on the would be super easy (the hardest part would be the time commitment of writing them all out). Hell, you could probably get pretty close to half of that with just Capcom and Konami games alone. Add Nintendo to that and you are probably most of the way there. NES is an ATG console, right up there with the SNES and PS1.
It depends on what era you come from. I don't play Atari or Commodore 64 games like Pong and Pitfall because they just look too old to me, but for others they get nostalgic over it (do people really play Pong still?)
My first console was the NES so I can see it from the perspective from that era.
And just for good measure I never had a PS1 (or a N64 or Saturn) so first gen 3D graphics always looked awkward for me.
My first console was the NES so I can see it from the perspective from that era.
And just for good measure I never had a PS1 (or a N64 or Saturn) so first gen 3D graphics always looked awkward for me.
The things that are good about the NES are extremely playable and still hold up to this day.
There is just a lot of stuff on the console that doesn't hold up even from first parties, Far more than on later consoles.
There is just a lot of stuff on the console that doesn't hold up even from first parties, Far more than on later consoles.
These people are wrong but, hey, we can't change their minds. Personally, I'm fine with it. Hopefully as the gaming audience ages NES carts will get less expensive as young gamers coming into new money drop it on ugly N64 games and Pokemon fakes.
Post 1987 Konami and post 1988 Capcom made better Famicom games than Nintendo. Nintendo must have pivoted to focus on the Game Boy then Super Fami by then.
I mean Konami was there from Castlevania 1 era onward - Maze of Gallious, Gradius II, Castlevania III, Contra, Super Contra, Turtles 3, Crisis Force, Ai Senshi Nicol, King Kong 2, and Capcom Rockman 2-6, Duck Tales/Disney series - as soon as Capcom got past the micronics junk basically.
What did Nintendo have post 88? Like Startropics, made specifically for kids in the US?
Is just that everything on snes was plain better. Maybe it's hard for someone born before that to grasp, but for us that came after, is like going to a typewriter after using a computer.
Yeah, it's really crazy how times have changed. NES games used to be untouchable.
Came into this thread expecting some trashing of some of the average NES platformers but find instead people disrespecting Mario 3 holy shit wtf is going on?
Mario World is a fine game but Mario 3 is just as enjoyable. I'm baffled honestly at how someone could consider this game to 'not hold up'.
Mario World is a fine game but Mario 3 is just as enjoyable. I'm baffled honestly at how someone could consider this game to 'not hold up'.
Action puzzle games, yes. Logic puzzlers, I literally don't know a single one. There's a huge distinction between the two. Tetris has more in common with Contra than with Picross.
I haven't. I don't like RPGs but I'll have a look.
I did not see this thread until now and I am slightly upset that I was beaten to the perfect post
Most of the games aren't very good. The classics are decent but most of the games need save states or rewind to be enjoyable.
I still love me some Mega Man but with all of the new games coming out, who has time to always go back to older games? Especially if you don't grow up with them.
I still love me some Mega Man but with all of the new games coming out, who has time to always go back to older games? Especially if you don't grow up with them.
I genuinely think there are more NES games than SNES games worth playing but I think part of that comes to NES games tending more toward smaller and more digestible affairs. There are lots of great simple action games on NES. SNES loves its RPGs and giant worlds spanning hours of playtime.
It's an interesting system since the games that push it to its limit really show the system at its limit. It's quite incredible what games were created with such limitations in place. You have to deal with a lot of sprite flickering, slow down and nametable based discoloration as a player that it makes you feel for the programmers.
It wasn't too long ago that I played a RPG called Lagrange Point that was really cool. It had a scene that was quite a shock.
It wasn't too long ago that I played a RPG called Lagrange Point that was really cool. It had a scene that was quite a shock.
It's their loss, not yours. They're missing out but I wouldn't waste any time feeling sorry for them.
Super Mario Bros. and Super Mario Bros. 3 are still two of the best 2D platformers ever made.
It has my favorite 2D Zelda and Contra games.
Mega Man 2 + 3 are still two of the best games in the entire series.
It has three, yes three, fantastic Castlevania games with the JPN version of Dracula's Curse being on par with Rondo of Blood in my book.
It has the best selection of side-scrolling action-adventure games, an awesome genre that, sadly, wasn't as big during the 16bit era.
Well-designed shmups are basically timeless and I can't see why anyone would find games like Gradius II or Crisis Force "unplayable".
It has a very large selection of highly replayable action-oriented games like Ninja Gaiden, Shatterhand, Metal Storm, Shadow of the Ninja, Vice: Project Doom, Bionic Commando, Sunsoft's Batman, Gimmick, Little Samson etc.
In my opinion, the only genres that have truly "aged" on the NES, are RPGs and Beat em Ups. There are still a few good games there, but I can see why most people would have a hard time going back to most 8bit RPGs or why an 8bit Beat em Up wouldn't hold their interest for too long.
NES is also the retro console I revisit the most, mostly due to how extremely replayable its good games are.
When you get home from work, it's super appealing to fire up something like Super C or Mega Man 2 and just have a quick blast.
It has my favorite 2D Zelda and Contra games.
Mega Man 2 + 3 are still two of the best games in the entire series.
It has three, yes three, fantastic Castlevania games with the JPN version of Dracula's Curse being on par with Rondo of Blood in my book.
It has the best selection of side-scrolling action-adventure games, an awesome genre that, sadly, wasn't as big during the 16bit era.
Well-designed shmups are basically timeless and I can't see why anyone would find games like Gradius II or Crisis Force "unplayable".
It has a very large selection of highly replayable action-oriented games like Ninja Gaiden, Shatterhand, Metal Storm, Shadow of the Ninja, Vice: Project Doom, Bionic Commando, Sunsoft's Batman, Gimmick, Little Samson etc.
In my opinion, the only genres that have truly "aged" on the NES, are RPGs and Beat em Ups. There are still a few good games there, but I can see why most people would have a hard time going back to most 8bit RPGs or why an 8bit Beat em Up wouldn't hold their interest for too long.
100% agreed.
NES is also the retro console I revisit the most, mostly due to how extremely replayable its good games are.
When you get home from work, it's super appealing to fire up something like Super C or Mega Man 2 and just have a quick blast.
I recently played Castlevania and its a masterpiece. I'll happily vouch for it.
A lot of the library is a flickering, ugly, barely held together mess though
A lot of the library is a flickering, ugly, barely held together mess though
Well, "playing" NES games in 2019 mostly means playing them with the aid of modern-day QoL features like savestates. It's not like you have to endure the limited continues, brutal checkpoints and trial-and-error gameplay like you did on original hardware. They are "unplayable" today in the sense that we're too used to not repeating minutes of gameplay just to get to that part that screwed us - which, truth be told, usually requires a couple minutes at the worst in most cases.
Without emulation and savestates I would surely have dropped a shitty game like Star Tropics well before I did (seriously people, it's bad), which brings me to state an uncomfortable truth: despite the console surviving on the market all the way up to 1994, most games never even equaled the quality peak that NES games reached in the 1986-1989 period. Star Tropics doesn't play half as well as The Legend of Zelda despite coming out a good 4 years later, and yet it's described as the Zelda game most people never played. Adventure Island games started coming out in 1987 and never even scratched Mario quality. Capcom's NES games were mostly ho-hum after 1990, far from the excitement of Megaman 2 and 3 and the Disney Afternoon series. Konami peaked in 1989 with Castlevania 3. Zelda 2, as much as people want to paint it as shit, is still better than so many games that came after it. Kirby's Adventure isn't as fun as Dream Land 2, and controls worse. The NES's later catalogue feels almost completely redundant, while it should have been its best considering how long the console was on the market and the expertise devs had acquired with the hardware by that point. The NES's best-looking games are far from its best, and I understand that people are put off by earlier graphics.
Anyway, I think that savestates help mitigate a lot of the problems modern gamers may have with the gameplay. It's a bit easier to go back to a NES game and appreciate it after you've beaten it with savestates.
Without emulation and savestates I would surely have dropped a shitty game like Star Tropics well before I did (seriously people, it's bad), which brings me to state an uncomfortable truth: despite the console surviving on the market all the way up to 1994, most games never even equaled the quality peak that NES games reached in the 1986-1989 period. Star Tropics doesn't play half as well as The Legend of Zelda despite coming out a good 4 years later, and yet it's described as the Zelda game most people never played. Adventure Island games started coming out in 1987 and never even scratched Mario quality. Capcom's NES games were mostly ho-hum after 1990, far from the excitement of Megaman 2 and 3 and the Disney Afternoon series. Konami peaked in 1989 with Castlevania 3. Zelda 2, as much as people want to paint it as shit, is still better than so many games that came after it. Kirby's Adventure isn't as fun as Dream Land 2, and controls worse. The NES's later catalogue feels almost completely redundant, while it should have been its best considering how long the console was on the market and the expertise devs had acquired with the hardware by that point. The NES's best-looking games are far from its best, and I understand that people are put off by earlier graphics.
Anyway, I think that savestates help mitigate a lot of the problems modern gamers may have with the gameplay. It's a bit easier to go back to a NES game and appreciate it after you've beaten it with savestates.
Saying "kids these days can't appreciate the classics" is like complaining about people who don't enjoy watching movies from the 20's-30's but still revere everything from the 40's onwards.
Sadly, which is probably why it's making me laugh a bit seeing that.
Honestly, the fact that I often see it used as a way to demean modern games, and even seeing that on the Final Fantasy XII HD remaster posts (specifically for the Switch version), just drove me up a wall.
Honestly, NES has a LOT of good games, that tried to deal with so many limitations of the hardware, some of which had to use a lot of trickery in order to overcome a lot of these issues. It was honestly a system many developers had to really get creative with. Did every developer succeed in overcoming these issues? No, but for the time, I appreciated a lot of the library, and still do, to this day.
It also needs to be stated that the NES is hardware from 1983 (theoretically older than that), and took almost 3 years before we got it here Internationally (it would've been sooner, but due to some deals falling through, the video game crash, a lot things got pushed back as a result). And really, for the time frame? I find the stuff that was possible on the hardware really impressive.
There's also been some neat homebrew stuff in later years people done, both as pushing the limitations of the hardware (as technical tests, not so much as games), and seeing just how far they can push and make a game running on said system.
I'd honestly suggest that you haven't given the library a proper shot then. There's a lot of gold there especially late gen titles.
Mega Man series
Shatterhand (a classic)
Gun Dec
Gimmick
Power Blade
Contra series
Journey to Silius
Bionic Commando
Castlevania 1 and 3
Kid Dracula
Duck Tales
Batman
Gargoyle's Quest 2
Little Samson
Ninja Gaiden 3 (well, JP version)
...and more
These all hold up brilliantly.
I'd be willing to bet that most "NES sucks!" folks never played on real hardware and are basing their opinion on a poorly optimized emulator experience.
Final Fantasy II and III, which I did play the NES/FC versions years later, I feel still personally hold up fairly well. Final Fantasy, though, I kinda prefer the WSC/PS1 version (which retains most of the old mechanics, difficulty, and even gives you the option regarding the hit system if you want it to miss if an enemy dies, but does improve a lot of the mistakes and issues I, personally, had with the original).
But yeah, these and among others are games that still hold up pretty well.
As in every thread of this kind:
SMB 3 Beats SMW in every way other than "saving" it's still the best 2D Mario to this Day.
Ducktales, castlevania and so on Are this awesome
SMB 3 Beats SMW in every way other than "saving" it's still the best 2D Mario to this Day.
Ducktales, castlevania and so on Are this awesome
Nope.
Super Contra
Turtles 2 and 3
Rollergames
Dracula Kun
Larange Point
Crisis Force
The Lone Ranger
Tiny Toons 1 and 2
Bucky O Hare
Monster in my Pocket
Batman Returns
Zen Intergalactic Ninja
I just blasted through Super Mario Bros 1 for the first time earlier today, I thought it held up fairly well, honestly. I'm also playing Ninja Gaiden right now and it's pretty good too.
When ever people say that there arent good games on the NES, my heart breaks :P It's my favorite system of all time and there are so much more than the IP's that has survived the times and still got games in to the 00's
I agree with the games you wrote were better on the NES as well. There were less crap on the SNES but the top games are just as good if not better.
Clearly there is a lot of sheit on the NES, but basing the entire library on it's worst games instead of it's best makes no sense. There are so many games that are still today great games but arent known to the mainstream. I'm gonna go out and say that the average ERA user has no idea about how great games like Mighty Final Fight, S.C.A.T, Adventures of Lolo, Kickmaster, Ufouria, Gun.Smoke, Mr.Gimmick, Little Nemo, Gargoyles Quest 2 and so on is because they probably havnt heard of them.
I agree with the games you wrote were better on the NES as well. There were less crap on the SNES but the top games are just as good if not better.
Clearly there is a lot of sheit on the NES, but basing the entire library on it's worst games instead of it's best makes no sense. There are so many games that are still today great games but arent known to the mainstream. I'm gonna go out and say that the average ERA user has no idea about how great games like Mighty Final Fight, S.C.A.T, Adventures of Lolo, Kickmaster, Ufouria, Gun.Smoke, Mr.Gimmick, Little Nemo, Gargoyles Quest 2 and so on is because they probably havnt heard of them.
I always find really strange how supposedly Era is about 30+ years old in average but still most of the people here love to spout dumb things that a 12 years old would say.