96. Wario's Woods (Nintendo, 1994)
95. Fire N' Ice (Tecmo, 1993)
M.C. Kids is a game that's frequently overlooked, but I can't give people too much crap for that. Between its late release and being an advergame for McDonalds, it's one that few people paid any mind to in the 90s and most who learned of it later dismiss immediately. However, those who gave it a chance found a highly polished and fun platformer that takes several cues from the Super Mario Bros series. One can pick up and throw blocks to defeat enemies or weigh themselves down to spring higher on springs, flip their own gravity and traverse stages upside-down, and of course find a huge plethora of secrets and bonuses in each level. Even the visual style is similar, with some smoothly animated characters and detailed sprites. Virgin would go on to make several highly-acclaimed games (most notably Aladdin on the Sega Genesis), but M.C. Kids never quite got its due.
A relatively unique and well-crafted puzzle game by Irem, where you play as a snowman-esque character named Kickle who can create ice pillars and freeze enemies with his breath to turn them into cubes. Said cubes can then be pushed into the water to create floors, or pushed into other enemies to eliminate them, or ricocheted off of springs or hammers to redirect their motion (though they can easily clobber you as well, so you must be careful). Your goal in each stage is to collect the three "dream bags", though as in any good puzzle game, this quickly becomes a daunting task - avoiding enemies, being careful not to trap yourself and setting up pillars in the right time and place to avoid hazards are all skills you will have to master (especially in the bonus stages, unlocked after completing the main game). There are boss fights too, which require some quick movement and reaction speed to overcome.
91. GI Joe: The Atlantis Factor (KID, 1992)
89. Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles (Konami, 1989)
A game which may be the focus of a lot of mockery and ridicule these days for having very loose ties to the source material and some occasionally baffling design, but one must also remember that this was the first video game based on a popular property, and weird or not, your game doesn't sell over four million copies without doing something right. TMNT was certainly ambitious for its time, combining side-scrolling action segments with top-down, open-world exploration broken up into several stages, and the variety of enemies, sub-weapons and creative stage designs make it well worth a look. That, plus Konami's consistently high standards for visuals and music, quickly made it into a pretty big hit. People nowadays mostly talk about the arcade beat-em-ups, but being one of the first games I owned and played quite a lot of (but never actually finished as a kid), this one will always hold a special place in my memories. And an occasional revisit on a lazy Sunday afternoon.
88. Gremlins 2: The New Batch (Sunsoft, 1990)
Based on the film of the same name, Gremlins 2: The New Batch was handled by Sunsoft, a company that had impeccably high standards in everything they did, even if it was a licensed tie-in. Gremlins 2 is certainly no exception, basing its levels, enemies and bosses on the film with surprising faithfulness, large sprites and immaculate graphical detail that makes all of them instantly recognizable. The music is equally good, lending much of the film's frantic and chaotic tone to the game, and the controls, while they take a bit to get used to, are finely polished, letting you platform, evade enemies and throw attacks with ease. It's not an especially long experience and having level passwords and unlimited continues definitely doesn't make it one of the NES's most challenging games, but I can't complain when the end result is so fun.
The NES had perhaps more baseball games than any other genre in its library, and while most of them were decent for the era, the overwhelming majority have not stood the test of time well, lapsing into obscurity not long after their release as sports games tend to do. Base Wars, however, remains a standout title for putting some clever spins on the formula. Rather than human players, you form a team of robots (with four varieties - legs, wheels, treads or hovering) and rather than simply being forced out at base, one can engage in hand-to-hand combat to make it there safely; the closer you get to the base, the more health you'll have to spare in the ensuing duel. It's a bit basic and button-mashy, but the concept is hilarious, and it is also possible to win by playing dirty - beating up the opposing team enough and causing the destruction of three of their players will force them to forfeit the game. Season mode also adds some clever twists by allowing the player to upgrade their team's weapons and parts to make them better equipped for games. Pretty fun stuff, and the baseball mechanics themselves are solid too, of course. It's just a pity the Cyber Stadium Series never produced another game.
Konami was definitely one of the most prevalent and successful names in 8-bit gaming (just see all the other games on this list they've produced), and it got to the point where they weren't just cashing in on licensed properties, but they were even making fun of their own IPs. Wai Wai World was just that - a mashup of several Konami franchises all in one cartridge, revisiting levels, characters and mechanics of all of them. Wai Wai World 2 is more in that vein; you go through scrolling shooter stages, platforming stages and even a racing level. Throughout it all you can collect powerups to transform into a number of Konami heroes - from Simon Belmont to Upa to Goemon to Bill Rizer of Contra fame, each with a different set of abilities to utilize. It may not be an especially deep experience, but it's a fun and charming action game, and that's what the NES platform (and Konami) really did best.