The Best Games for the NES that No One Played (PART 1)
I’ve got a pretty extensive NES collection and have for years been writing about the best games for the system while also trying to collect every title. As such, I feel like I’ve spent tons of time playing all the great games while the lesser known titles usually come in the mail and go straight onto the shelf. I wanted to make more of an effort to explore the entire library of the Nintendo Entertainment System, not just the classics or even the hidden gems, and so I tried out some buddies I either popped in and immediately out or never played in the first place. I spent about half of 2019 going through the games alphabetically and then posting some reviews of these oddball games I figured most folks never touched.
All in all, it turned out to be a huge project, longer in word count than probably every paper I slogged through in college. I thought it might be cool to collect the 10 best and worst obscure games I played and share those with y’all and if people want to read the entire articles I’ll link those as well. A quick disclaimer before I get into the “Best” obscure games. Some weeks I reviewed letters that only had a few applicable titles such as E or V so I just reviewed every title. While there are some obscure games worth mentioning, I also reviewed titles like Excitebike, Xexyz, and Vice: Project Doom. All of those games are awesome, but none fits this level of silly obscurity so they were not included here.
The entire series A through Z can be found here.
10. DRAGON FIGHTER | 1992
Oh snap, finally a good game! Dragon Fighter was developed by Natsume who are like the unsung heroes of the NES library with titles like Shatterhand, Shadow of the Ninja, S.C.A.T., Abadox, and the almighty Power Blade 1 & 2. Seriously, if you’ve made your way through all the games Nintendo, Konami, Capcom, and Taito released you’ll find that the Natsume games are all the hidden gems you were missing. Except for Dungeon Magic, a first person 3-D RPG which I almost reviewed in this week’s edition but I just couldn’t get far enough into it to say anything one way or another (P.S. it sucks).
Anyway, when you start playing Dragon Fighter you may be wondering “hey, why is my human sprite so comically small but the screen is so huge?” Well, that’s because this game is half platforming/action and half shoot-em up! Once you merk enough bears and snowflakes, you can transform into a flying dragon at which point the screen starts automatically scrolling a la Gradius or Lifeforce and your character can access all areas of the level. It’s a super cool mechanic seen in other games like Monster Party, but executed so much more smoothly here. Unfortunately like Monster Party you can only stay in dragon form for a limited time so you need to be strategic about when you switch between the two forms. It’s a really fun gameplay mechanic done especially well here.
My only complaint with Dragon Fighter is that the levels can be accomplished without ever changing into the dragon. They are of course more difficult, but not impossible. How cool would this be if there were sections where you could only fly as the dragon or had to walk as the man like in Blaster Master? Seriously, some extra level design would take this from barely known title to at least a revered hidden gem.
Despite or perhaps because of its incredibly generic title, Dragon Fighter is one of the rarest NES games in existence commonly going for $200–300. I tried to verify where it places in the overall value/rareness category but it was much harder than I thought, even with Nintendo Age and Pricecharting. Generally I’d place it in the “not sought after but still very expensive” realm occupied by other weirdo titles like Cowboy Kid and Sword Master. Of course in order to unlock this awesome pricing knowledge you’d have to reach the level of eBay wizardry achieved only by myself and a select few other plastic hoarders. Don’t despair however, we are hosting a seminar next week on how to reach this unbelievable elevation! Simply bring two friends and a money order for $50 to the Cobb County Civic Center and we will SHOW YOU HOWWWWWWW!
Similar Games: Xexyz, Monster Party, Dynowars: The Destruction of Spondylus
9. FREEDOM FORCE | 1988
If there’s one thing I’m going to be a hater on the NES for, it’s the games developed for it’s accessories. R.O.B.? Yeesh. The Power Pad? Short Order / Eggsplode is passable. The Power Glove? Get the fuck out of here. And the Zapper? Well…
Duck Hunt is king shit: it’s super fun, satisfying, and I’d honestly say a better experience than Lethal Enforcers or Revolution X. After that? Wild Gunman? Gunsmoke? Bill Barker’s Trick Shooting? Naw player, you’ve been looking in the wrong direction. Face south, and behold Freedom Force.
Made by Sunsoft who also made such NES classics as Blaster Master, Gremlins 2, Batman, and my personal favorite the PAL exclusive Ufouria. You can choose between either Rad Rex, who looks like Rutger Hauer in Blade Runner, or Manic Johnson, who looks like Faith era George Michael. In fact, I’m 100% sure that’s Rutger Hauer on the box art. I love that your “Function” is Terminator/Combat and his “Mission” is Neutralize Terrorists. BAD-ASS. You think he’s got that on his business cards?
The gameplay of Freedom Force is essentially an 8-bit version of Lethal Enforcers. You’ll have to kill an insane amount of potato sack on their heads terrorists all while avoiding civilians and hostages. The civilians? Not too hard to miss. The hostages? I mean it seems like they’re giving you the “bad guy is holding a gun to your friend so you’ve got to make the impossibly tight headshot” scenario, but every time I try I just shoot the bad guy, I annihilate the hostage right in the gut. It’s horrifying. Then I remembered that the Zapper does not have the shooting precision of a few heads-width of pixels, and I’m just wasting my time trying to Lethal Weapon this bisch.
In your pursuit of these bagmen, and yes they are called that in the game, you’ll visit a highjacked airplane (too soon!) with a million exterior doors, a highjacked jetway which is a physical space I was unaware could be jacked in the first place, then the airport concourse, then the area outside the airport, then into the city; I mean holy shit these bagheads really expanded the scope of their operation once they flew into the country at the beginning of the game. My only hit against this game is that the locations didn’t continue to comically spiral out until you’re clearing the terrorists out of the White House, The Taj Mahal, The Great Wall of China, and finally THE MOON. Anyway, eventually you will defeat enough bad guys to rescue the girl and get an adorable cheek kiss cutscene. Such a wholesome reward for your epic Commando-levels of super murdering.
Similar Games: Mechanized Attack, Laser Invasion, Operation Wolf
8. ELIMINATOR BOAT DUEL | 1990
I’ve been pretty negligent so far in covering sports titles, military simulators, and racing games because 1) there’s so many of them in the NES library, 2) they’re mostly indistinguishable from each other, and 3) there’s not really a lot to say about them. I have a tradition whenever my buddy comes into town that we play nine innings of baseball but spread out across three NES games. We’ll play Baseball Simulator 1.000, Legends of the Diamond, Bo Jackson’s Baseball etc. At this point we’ve played all of them, and other than Baseball Stars and Basewars I cannot tell you which ones were good, bad, or just 8-bit baseball.
And I say this because if not for the shortage of Letter E games, I would’ve never played Eliminator Boat Duel which would’ve been a real shame as this game kinda rules! Eliminator Boat Duel is like an NES version of Better Off Dead: everyone’s high, hilarity always ensues, and there’s hot bikini babes EVERYWHERE. It does little for me now, but 8 year old me? Whoa boy, I would’ve slept with this game under my pillow.
Eliminator Boat Duel is a speed boat racing game where you take on a collection of colorful characters in one on one competitions. There’s Surfer Bob, Weird Willy, Mangler Mike, and Veronica Alabaster (hubba hubba) who of all the “We Want Slo Mo” ladies represented in this game is apparently the love interest. Although <spoiler alert> when you beat the game and ride off into the sunset with her, you’re on a sail boat. A SAIL BOAT? Sell out!
My favorite character is Aquarius Rex who is just a poorly drawn caricature of Jerry Garcia complete with super hippie quotes like “My groovy guru vibes help my boat skim the waves. So long unenlightened one!!!” and “Oh Wow, man! Your karma is bad. Get your life aligned.” Solid advice shower avoider!
The size of your boat varies within the race from super huge to extra tiny, but the goal is still the same: go faster and avoid more obstacles than your opponent. Along the way you can gain cash and other letter based items I haven’t deciphered and between races you can upgrade various parts of your boat. It’s all very reminiscent of R.C. Pro Am, but considering that’s once of the greatest racing games of all time, a speed boat based imitation of it is not a bad thing. This game has a ton of personality and is totally worth playing, check it out!
Similar Games: Galaxy 5000, Cobra Triangle, R.C. Pro Am
7. HATRIS | 1992
I would have loved to have been at this pitch meeting: “Guys, I hope you’re ready to have your mind blown by my new game idea: it’s Tetris…but with hats! Yes, for your head! I mean, need I say more?!?” And then a giant thought cloud appears above his head, filled with the copious sacks of dollar bills gained from Hatris sales, stacked aboard his private yacht the S.S. Titty Coke.
Whoa crazy, I didn’t realize that this game was designed by Alexey Pajitnov, the guy who created Tetris, arguably the most famous video game of all time. Well never mind, no need for the thought bubble fantasies, this guy was obviously knee deep in yacht hookers and blow already!
So Hatris, Hatris is more like Dr. Mario than Tetris in that you control a unit comprised of two hats and you drop them on other hats of various design. The mechanics differ slightly in that you have to build from the bottom of the screen (which is a row of living heads!) while in Dr. Mario the viruses are positioned vertically so you can move the pills around/below/above them. Unlike Dr. Mario, in Hatris once one of the two hats touches a pillar of hats below, the second hat detaches and you can move it over to another stack if you’re fast enough. So there’s some skill, and for sure some strategy to how you combine your head wear so you can best position everything. It starts off easy enough, but as the levels go on your screen never clears of it’s mistakes and once the fifth and sixth hats get added to the mix things get real tricky real quick.
These two bearded guys (who I now realize are probably the Russian programmers costumed as factory workers but to me look more like a couple of obnoxious mixologist dudes who wear vests in the summer) release the hats down onto the heads of their various customers until ten are sold, then the faces horrifically morph into the next bizarro hat aficionado. There’s a Charlie Chaplin look alike, a Dracula, a Frankenstein’s monster, Abraham Lincoln, and even a woman! Another wizard crown m’lady?
It sounds really dumb, and honestly I was expecting it to be horrendously bad, but in truth it’s actually really fun. The graphics and music are decent enough, but like every puzzle game the only thing that matters is how addictive the gameplay is. While not as entrancing as Tetris or the later amazing-ness of the Puyo Puyo series (Dr. Robotnik’s Mean Bean Machine / Kirby’s Avalanche), Hatris is definitely worth a run-through.
And now that the word “hat” has been written so many times that it’s lost all meaning, I will never ever let one adorn my head again. Hmmmm…unless i get turned into a vampire (fingers CROSSED <wink>), because then that bowler is gonna look pretty fetching on this future blood vaping prince of darkness.
Similar Games: Yoshi, Wario’s Woods, Yoshi’s Cookie, Dr. Mario
6. THE YOUNG INDIANA JONES CHRONICLES | 1993
Not gonna lie, it’s been a lonnnnngggg time since I last saw an episode of The Young Indiana Jones Chronicles so I don’t really have a ton of nostalgic context to add here other than I remember the show being pretty decent. Would I or anyone have guessed that an NES game based on this relatively obscure TV show would come out as late as 1993? Well if not for my obsessive quest to catch em’ all and collect the whole library, I don’t think I would’ve ever known this bad boy existed.
The NES saw the release of four games based on Indiana Jones, the obnoxious Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom, the identically titled but totally different games that were Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade (one made by Taito and another by UbiSoft), and lastly The Young Indiana Jones Chronicles. There was no Raiders of the Lost Ark, but if those other games are any indication, we probably dodged a bullet there.
Starting off, you’ll see on the title screen that the dreaded “Music On/Off” option is present, usually a prime indicator of a horrific and repetitive soundtrack anddddd….yep it totally is. It’s one of those short loops that isn’t that offensive on it’s own, but since every time you enter a room it starts at the beginning again you’ll start to get real sick of hearing the truncated repetition of those opening five seconds. The graphics here are strangely hard to pin down. On the one hand the sprites and landscapes are pretty decent and remind me a bit of the excellent Monster in My Pocket, but on the other hand the colors are really bland, like only three can exist on the screen at a time. It’s very similar to the UbiSoft Last Crusade which looks like it was an early Gameboy Color title or something, almost monochromatic. It’s just strange for a game released this late in the system’s lifespan to look this dreary. Little Samson for instance came out around this time and uses 8 million more colors.
The game itself I’m surprised to say…is pretty fun! Seriously, if you’ve played those other Indy games there’s no way you’d believe me that this is good but I promise you it’s at least better than the other three titles combined. One thing I love for instance is the life meter. You start with a whip and a hat, but you can add other weapons and items. As you get hit you lose these items until you’re down to just 1-hit and the use of your fists. It’s subtle, but this kind of weapon downgrading happens all the time in the Indiana Jones movies and I feel like this is a tiny nod to that. The controls are smooth, the cutscenes and story are great, and most of all the gameplay is actually enjoyable! It’s kinda like a cross between Shatterhand and Castlevania. Your character moves quickly which makes the pace more speedy, and unlike so so many NES games the hit detection is accurate and the jump mechanics are responsive. It is for sure an 8-bit action platformer so it’s not easy by any means, but unlike almost all the other games I’ve reviewed the last 24 weeks, I would actually play this game again. AGAIN! IT’S A MIRACLE!
Similar Games: Shatterhand, Monster in My Pocket, Castlevania
OTHER LETTER OBSCURE NES GAMES WORTH TRYING
Castlequest, Burai Fighter, ORB 3D, Hunt for Red October, Heavy Shreddin’, Flying Warriors, Ghost Lion, Arkistra’s Ring, Robowarrior