20 Best NES Games Of All Time
Mega Man? Zelda? Mario?
Before the NES, if you weren't in an arcade you were playing games on something like the Atari 2600. That system is important, but almost everything on the console is abysmal by today's standards, and even when the thing just came out, many of the titles were considered bad.
This helped cause the video game crash of 1983, where everybody suddenly wanted nothing to do with home video games. Then the NES came out and showed people that games could be something truly special.
Thing is, the NES library is still a scary place. Pick a random title on the console and nine out of ten times it will be a poorly aged mess that looks truly awful.
There are genuinely great games on the system, though they're difficult to distinguish from what to avoid. In 2021, many people will recommend games from their childhood that they swear are actually good, but in reality, they're just clinging onto fond memories of their youth.
So let's remove the rose-tinted glasses and talk about the actual masterpieces on the original Nintendo Entertainment System.
20. Dr. Mario
Are we sure that Mario is a qualified doctor? The first of a couple of puzzle games on this list, Dr. Mario is an excellent title about feeding somebody pills to kill off an illness, although giving anybody that many pills is going to kill off more than just germs.
In Dr. Mario, you have to match up the colours of your pills with the colours of the germs. Get rid of all of them and you win and go to the next level. It's simple fun, which inevitably makes this one of the better aged NES games; Dr. Mario is just as fun now as it was when the game came out.
You can even play multiplayer so you and a friend can race to see who can overdose their patient the fastest.
If you want to play Dr. Mario nowadays but don't have an NES then you're in luck because the title has sequels on basically every Nintendo console, and if you want to play the original it's available as a part of the Nintendo Switch Online service.
Just please don't resort to playing Dr. Mario World.