I’ve completed a slow-but-sure project over at USgamer: A year-by-year breakdown of the most essential NES games. It actually began with a simple attempt to highlight the best games of the system’s early years, since those tend to go overlooked when people make top 10/top 20 lists, but eventually it turned into a more comprehensive thing. I’ll probably add a final video for import picks later.
In any case, I apologize for the inconsistencies in this series of videos. The earliest ones were produced by some outsourced help, but eventually we brought all video work in-house. You can tell when the transition happens because suddenly the editing’s a bit rougher, but the aspect ratios become more consistent, and video sources suddenly receive credit…
There’s also an ugly feature that goes along with this series at USgamer, which aims to break down where to play these games legitimately. Some of the older entries may be a bit out of date — I think a few games have been reissued on VC since I began compiling this list — but on the whole it should be a helpful guide for those who eschew piracy and emulation.
It seems that the link to the “ugly feature” at USGamer is not correct.
Here’s one I found that matches up with the first video, but haven’t been able to find any others:
http://www.usgamer.net/articles/the-greatest-games-for-nes-part-1-1985-87
The feature was momentarily offline but is back up. I think you must have checked during the hiccup. Thanks though!
I greatly enjoyed this feature. I was more of an SNES / Genesis kid growing up, so I enjoyed revisiting the landmark games from what I was just a little too young to have played. Thanks, and please consider doing a similar retrospective on other systems from that era.
Will do!
Yeah, I was rubbing my eyes and shouting “WHAAAA?” in disbelief when I saw Final Fantasy 3 being played for the Final Fantasy entry, “how the heck would Parish of all people get that wrong?” Figured it must be some outside contracting.
Yeah, that one hurt me right in the soul.