For some reason when I grew up on Nintendo I didn’t play the same games as everyone else. Sure, I’ve played Contra now, but I had no idea what it was when I was younger. But, I do have some fond memories of the games that I did play, and while they might not make anyone else’s top NES games list, they sure made mine.

Adventures in Magic Kingdom

The premise of this game was that the Magic Kingdom’s golden key was left inside by Goofy, what a doof! So now Mickey needs your help retrieving all of the silver keys in order to get inside the castle. The game was comprised of a collection of Mini-games based off of actual rides. You had Pirates of the Caribbean which was a side-scrolling collect & avoid type game. Then you had the Haunted House which was a side-scrolling shoot dead zombies with candles type of deal. Then there was Space Mountain a test of quick reflexes by having you input the right sequence of keys in as per instructions. Then you had Big Thunder Mountain which you would have to navigate your way to the path that was assigned by Mickey at the start of the adventure, this could change each time. The last was Autopia, a racing game where you had to beat Panhandle Pete in order to get the key he stole back. On top of those Mini-Games is a trivia game that will get you the last key. You have to answer “Common Knowledge” Disney type questions posed to you from little children all over the map until you finally are led to the key.

For some reason I loved this game as a kid. I think the biggest deal was having a video game where you could call the character your own name! It was the first time that I played a game like that, and yeah it’s stupid I know, but it made me happy. This is probably a pretty lame game by standards, but hey, I still like it!

Solstice

This might actually be one of my favorite video games of all time, not just on the NES. The best part of the game, by far, was the music. I thought that it had the most impressive score I’d ever heard, and I still listen to it now sometimes. In this game you control the wizard Shadax in a quest to save some dingy broad. The game was essentially a series of isometric rooms that for the most part each had a puzzle to defeating the room and moving on. Beating the game relied mostly on evasion and puzzle solving, and there wasn’t much in the way of offensive spells. What you did have were potions. Blue (Invincibility), Purple (Destruction), Green (Reveal) and Yellow (Freeze).

The game was simple but frustrating at times, but I loved the crap out of it. I’ve been playing it again recently, and I did much better as a kid!

Friday the 13th

This game has been rated as one of the 10th worst rated games by Nintendo Power. Angry Video Game actually did a review of the game here.

I don’t really know what he’s talking about. I’m not sure if it’s because I have the ROM right now and I’m not remembering correctly… but when I walk left, I go left on the map. Also, the real trick to using the rock weapon is to kneel down, then you will hit the zombies every time. As far as having to walk across the entire map before Jason eats the kids, that’s also not necessarily true! You can go into one cabin then select another counselor who happens to be close by to where the house Jason is in! yeesh. It is an incredibly hard game, that much is true, but I don’t see how it got worst 10 games of all time!

It is the first game that says that you are “Dead” and not “defeated” or some other implication. While I suppose that could be a negative thing, I never noticed that as a kid playing this game. I got scared a little bit by the sudden whooshing music when Jason was around, but I never had any nightmares from this game, and it was my favorite game when I was a kid.

Kung Fu Heroes

This game is so goofy I’m not even sure what I was thinking. There’s not too much of a point or a story to this game. You control one of two brothers through a map defeating monsters. The goal is to kill all the bad guys, and find the hidden treasures and bonus stages on the map. Eventually when you have killed enough monsters the doors at the top will open and you can move on to the next stage. As you can see in the screen shot, these weren’t eh most accurate villains. I’m not sure how much Bruce Lee had to battle filing cabinets and jellyfish, but there you have it.

Bubble Bobble

Oh man this game is effin awesome. To be fair, I had it on the PC first, but I still consider this an NES game. There’s not much to say about it other than it’s one of the best games ever. You beat the level by being a tiny bubble blowing dragon that captures enemies in a bubble then pops them. There’s like 100 stages, or something like that. It was even more fun two player, and Bubble Bobble 2 was super fun as well!

I’m glad I thought of these games again, I’m definitely going to try to bust out the old NES and play them some more. While I have the ROMS its always much better to do on the NES itself. My sister still has my NES and my Colecovision, which I have to try to regain form her. But once I do, man, I’ll neglect my XBox360 and just play Friday the 13th all day.