Top 111 NES Games, #80-71

80. Snake Rattle 'n' Roll (Rare, 1990)

Rare had some hits and misses on the NES, and some games that were honestly quite good but just didn't sell very well.   Snake Rattle & Roll is one of those, and it hits all of the company's hallmarks - bright, colorful and eye-catching graphics, smooth animation, a fantastic and energetic soundtrack by David Wise, polished controls, and utterly punishing difficulty, particularly in the later stages.  The premise is simple enough - platforming through isometric stages, avoiding obstacles, defeating enemies and collecting enough "Nibbly Pibblies" to grow your snake's tail and open the exit by standing on the scale (okay, so it's not that simple), but the difficulty quickly scales up.  Strict time limits, aggressive enemies, tons of traps, very precise jumps required to cross vanishing platforms, and even some surprisingly robust physics so slopes and ice actually make you slide around and water will actively slow you down.  Still, it's well-made enough that it never feels unfair, just tough, and being able to say you finally surmounted all the challenges and completed the game is reward enough in itself.

79. Deja Vu: A Nightmare Comes True! (ICOM, 1990)

Part of the so-called "ICOM Trilogy" for the NES, Deja Vu was a slightly more realistic take on the point-and-click adventure genre. As an amnesiac framed for murder, it falls to you to recover your memories, clear your name and uncover the real culprits behind the crime. As with the other two games in the series, some puzzle solutions are a bit obtuse and it's possible to get stuck in an unwinnable state if you're not careful, but the solid, atmospheric soundtrack and tense narrative make it an unforgettable experience regardless. Deja Vu also had a sequel was never released on the NES; however, it did eventually get a Game Boy Color port in late 1999.



78. Zoda's Revenge: Startropics II (Nintendo, 1994)

One of the very last games officially released for the NES, and it was quite a good one. A followup to Startropics - a game curiously programmed by a Japanese development team but only ever released in the west - Startropics 2 featured tighter controls, crisper graphics and a new plot involving Mike travelling through time searching for the seven magical Tetrads. Oh yes, Nintendo had the Tetris license at the time and they wouldn't let you forget it.

Another welcome change was the general softening of the difficulty curve - while still very challenging, cheap shots that took off a third of your health bar were now a thing of the past, and making contact with the bosses wasn't an instant death sentence - you simply lost a large chunk of your health. Just a touch more of the problem-solving aspect and solid narrative of the original and this may very well have surpassed it!

77. Lemmings (DMA Design/Sunsoft, 1992)

Lemmings was an enormously popular puzzle game back in the early '90s, spawning numerous sequels, spinoffs and ports on just about every platform you could think of.  Sunsoft did a great job on the NES port too, retaining the same gameplay as well as the high-quality animation and music that made it a hit on various computer platforms.  The goal of the game is a simple one - get a quota of lemmings safely to the goal - and to that end you assign a few of them tasks like blocking the others from walking into hazards, giving them umbrellas to safely drop long distances, digging through dirt or building staircases to clear a path.  Sounds simple enough, but it quickly becomes very challenging, with later levels requiring very careful planning and precision to complete.  Still, Lemmings is a classic puzzle game, and is definitely worth a look if you somehow haven't played it already.

76. Arkanoid (Taito, 1986)

Another game known for its wacky plot, introducing a wireframe Moai head named "DOH" pulling Earth's space forces into a pocket dimension or some such nonsense.  It's all a bit arbitrary, though, since this never comes into play until the final stage of the game; until then, it's all about smashing bricks with a ball and paddle in a game heavily inspired by Breakout.  The gimmick that sets it apart, though, is its powerup system - broken bricks drop icons that enlarge your paddle's size, give you multiple balls to break bricks with, allow you to "catch" the ball and release it at a more favorable angle, and my favorite, the ability to shoot lasers from your paddle to break bricks and destroy enemies.  The game even came packaged with a custom-made controller that featured an analog knob, which made the gameplay much more smooth than with a standard controller.  It's a bit of a scarce collector's item these days, but if you can track one down, give it a go with this game.  It will not disappoint!

75. Journey to Silius (Sunsoft, 1990)

Journey to Silius is another highly-regarded title by Sunsoft, and it isn't hard to see why just from a screenshot - the game looked absolutely phenomenal for 1990.  Large, stylish sprites, detailed backgrounds, polished mechanics and high quality music showed up too, all of which helped cement Sunsoft as one of the NES's premiere developers.  A slightly less savory element to their games, though, was the punishing difficulty, and Journey to Silius is definitely no different there.  Enemies require some very well-honed tactics to get past, ammo for your special weapons is rare to come by, health even moreso, and dying at any point (even at the stage boss) forces you to redo the entire gauntlet from the beginning.  Bosses are no slouches either, often requiring extremely precise pattern-dodging and firing to get through intact.  It's an impressive and very polished game, but it certainly feels like punishment at times too.

74. Solar Jetman: Quest for the Golden Warpship (Zippo Games/Rare, 1990)

The sequel to Rare's "Lunar Jetman", and a much different game overall, as it's based much more heavily on exploration and physics simulation.  The player visits thirteen planets with differing gravity and hazards and seeks out various treasures and items.  Some upgrade the player's pods with new weapons or additional capabilities like shields and thrusters, while others simply provide money to spend at the shop in-between rounds.  The goal on each world is to fuel up your mothership and collect one of the pieces of the Golden Warpship; collecting them all will allow you to enter the final stage and defeat the boss at the end.  Some amazing graphical effects and music (provided by the legendary David Wise) round out the package, making it a game that plays as good as it looks.  The only thing holding it back from greatness was its extreme difficulty level.

73. Dragon Warrior II (Chunsoft, 1990)

The second game in the Dragon Quest franchise was a big leap over the original in just about every respect; the world was larger, battles now pitted you against multiple enemies at a time and in general there was leagues more to see and do.  To even the odds you now had three playable characters, all of whom were descendants of the first game's hero - the Prince of Midenhall is a strong fighter with the best equipment choices but cannot use any magic, the Prince of Cannock is your primary healer but a fairly weak fighter, and the Princess of Moonbrooke is a powerful magician but the weakest character physically.  Dragon Warrior 2 is also infamous for its difficulty, with some downright brutal enemy encounters and dungeons (including an infamous one that loops you back to the start if you take a wrong path at any point). So if you want a well-made but still exceptionally challenging '80s RPG experience, Dragon Warrior II should be pretty high up on your list.

72. Fire N' Ice (Tecmo, 1993)

A late-comer to the NES scene, which of course means it fetches insanely high prices on the secondary market these days.  It's also the sequel to Solomon's Key, though for whatever reason they decided to downplay this fact when they localized it.  The fact that they don't really play much alike may have been a factor, though - while the original was an actiony puzzle-platformer where you tried to uncover secrets, capture fairies and avoid hazards on your way to the exit, this is more of a straight puzzle game, having you create icy surfaces (though only in diagonal spaces below you) and extinguish all the fires in the level by pushing ice blocks into them or dropping them on top.  There are also 'boss stages' of sorts with mechanics like scrolling screens or moving fires that require some extra strategy to extinguish.  A fun little puzzle game with some deceptively deep mechanics.

71. Monster Party (Human Entertainment, 1989)

Monster Party probably isn't remembered by most as one of the best-playing games on the NES, but it is certainly one of the most memorable.  This is in no small part due to featuring some surprisingly gruesome imagery, including even some blood and gore, as well as some of the most creative and outlandish bosses seen in any NES game.  From a bubble-spitting pitcher plant to a transparent mummy to a cat that throws smaller cats to a giant bouncing onion ring, Monster Party has panache and weirdness to spare, as well as giving the player clever means to fight them; either transforming into a winged gargoyle-like creature to launch fireballs or utilizing a short-ranged baseball bat to deflect their own projectiles back at them.  One of those games that still stands out today just based on the merits of the imagination employed in its design.

Fun fact: An unreleased Japanese prototype of the game reveals that many of the bosses within are actually parodies of famous films, from Planet of the Apes to Alien to Gremlins to The Thing.  Unsurprisingly, most of these were changed in the US version because of copyright concerns.

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