Nintendo's 25th Anniversary: Top NES Games Of All Time (PHOTOS)

On Oct. 18, 1985, exactly 25 years ago, the Nintendo Entertainment System was released in the United States with a limited batch of consoles in New York City. The launch took place two years after it debuted in Japan.

The video game console affectionally called "NES" forever changed the gaming world. It has been Nintendo's second most successful system ever with 61 million sold (only to the Wii's 70 million). It preceded other popular consoles like the Super Nintendo, SEGA Genesis and Sony PlayStation.

After Nintendo released the NES in North America in 1983, it launched the Gameboy in 1989, Super Nintendo Entertainment System in 1991, Nintendo 64 in 1996, Nintendo GameCube in 2001, and the Wii in 2006.

By December 2009, more than 3.5 billion NES games had been sold. Here are some of the most popular of all time! Vote on your favorites, add yours if it's not here, and reflect in the comments section about your best memories with the NES.

 

Share Your Favorite NES Video Game!

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Duck Hunt

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HuffPost Blogger Travis Walter Donovan said on 18 Monday 2010 pm31 1:53 pm: Loved 'em all, but Super Mario 3 takes the cake. Oh, the days of having to leave the console on all the time for lack of saving, and having to blow on cartridges to get your game to work...

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this game

Rank #2  |  Average: 4

Not the best Legendary!

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Top 5 NES Games

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Comments

[SmoothMineral]

07:56 PM on 11/01/2010

I am saddened at the lack of Mega Man 3 on this list.

[AntonioVTorres]

01:30 AM on 10/30/2010

GUN SMOKE

It was like a precursor to the entire GTA franchise.. top-down shooter.. what more can you say?? LOL

[goomack14]

10:00 AM on 10/29/2010

Are you a bad enough dude?

[CoffinRide]

09:18 PM on 10/24/2010

How did CRAP FILLED Wizards and Warriors make it to the list and not Shatter Hand? And Duck Tales? Seriously?

[MaxPowerXP]

06:21 PM on 11/06/2010

Duck Tales was awesome, you're way outta line

[GEM-592]

09:15 PM on 10/20/2010

Metroid. The brain you killed was your own.

[mathme]

11:18 AM on 10/20/2010

Hmm... since people are making lists...

1. LoZ (I probably replay it once a year)
2. SMB2 (I love it and I won't apologize!)
3. Zelda 2
4. Contra (da da da, da da da, da daa da da daaaaaaaa, Consider yourself a hero!)
5. Golgo 13

I'm not sure if that's the absolute order or if #5 is really in the top 5, but that's off the top of my head :)

[mathme]

11:01 AM on 10/20/2010

Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles is generally regarded as an atrocious, gawdawful game. The worldmap music still gets in my head, though, but it was a bad, bad game in almost every respect. I just scrolled down to post this when I came to it, but so far, I haven't seen any good games... maybe Dragon Warrior, but that's just what I've heard.

[SmoothMineral]

07:55 PM on 11/01/2010

The Turtles worldmap music has been in my head since I saw the picture up there 10 minutes ago even though it's been close to two decades since I've heard it.

[Adam Story]

04:59 AM on 10/20/2010

Did anyone ever make it past that scooter level in Battletoads? That's the hardest game ever! My top five: Super Mario Bros. 3, Super Mario Bros. 1, Metroid, Mega Man 2, Legend of Zelda, and Ninja Gaiden (Where is it on the list).

Bottom 5: TMNT 1, Where's Waldo, Barbie, Athena, and X-Men.

[Cryostatic]

07:57 AM on 10/20/2010

Yeah, I can recall having a friend over and spending, literally, hours getting past that level.

There are a few unforgiving games out there today, but that one was damned near impossible.

TMNT wasn't really bad, IIRC, just sort of strange. I can vaguely remember Athena, but I think the X-Men game I remember was specifically a Wolverine game, and that was a decent platformer.

[JasonMcl]

09:37 AM on 10/20/2010

Nes games didn't really appeal to me so much as Snes back in the day. When I go retro its almost always with a Snes game anyway, the music and graphics are decidedly more bearable.

You can also crank up the filters, remove all pixelations and make the games look sort of like flash apps on a large TV. It's an interesting effect overall.

[JasonMcl]

09:37 AM on 10/20/2010

The reason those older games were so difficult was the fact that there was literally no content to them. Only 5 or six stages at the very most. So to keep the quarters flowing and justify the sale, the games had to be ridiculously hard which we can counter nowadays with savestate emulators. Some emulators even let you live rewind, which is pretty awesome.

You can contrast this with modern titles most of which are packed full of graphics and still devoid of content with the exception of a few.

[Lee Erickson]

12:59 PM on 10/20/2010

Also, the games were often ratcheting up the difficulty because in Japan, there was no system to rent games. The theory was that Americans would either spend the money to buy the game since it was too hard to beat in one rental...or spend more money to keep renting the game. Either way it was to bring in the cash...but I think it instilled a never give up attitude for us young American gamers :p

[Adam Story]

06:22 AM on 10/21/2010

Exception of a few like Orange Box, Mass Effect 2, and Uncharted.

[Jarrod38]

07:07 PM on 10/19/2010

I'm shocked that someone liked StarTropics besides me. Man that was a great game to play. I spent many hours playing that game and still never been able to finish the game. Also I had to add R.C. Pro-Am on the list. To me it's the best racing game on the NES.

[Realitylost]

05:04 PM on 10/19/2010

How is excite bike not on this list? That said Contra should be #1 followed closely by Super Mario 3.

[mathme]

11:14 AM on 10/20/2010

Excitebike > Duckhunt, that's for sure. It needs to be on this list :)

[jbc15157]

03:09 PM on 10/19/2010

TMNT the Arcade Game is still my all time favorite.

[Adam Story]

05:00 AM on 10/20/2010

That then X-Men, the Simpsons, and that Revolution game with Aerosmith.

[mathme]

11:15 AM on 10/20/2010

But wasn't the NES port pretty shoddy? I mean, considering that they were turning an, at the time, cutting edge side scroller arcade game into a NES title, I don't hold that against the NES, but still.

But, yeah, besides Samurai Showdown(s), that game probably ate the most money of any arcade game.

[JasonMcl]

01:43 PM on 10/20/2010

You are right, the best way to play TMNT is with MAME. The original voices are all still there.

[clsmithj]

01:00 PM on 10/19/2010

Metroid, Zelda II, Super Mario Bros 1,2,3 for me.

[PhillyKing]

12:42 PM on 10/19/2010

Zelda, Mario Bros 3, Contra FTW

[Kardii]

11:57 AM on 10/19/2010

anyone ever play Kick Master?

[Kardii]

11:52 AM on 10/19/2010

Gotta love how Mega Man looks an old man in a flight suit on the classic box art.