From the pictures on the back, I took it to be a Zelda-like, top-down adventure game. I will never forget my first experience with The Guardian Legend.
Besides, reading another list that just confirms what’s on every other ‘top 25’ list is a bit boring and pointless, especially if you’re looking for games/roms that might not be top of mind.Īlso, when it comes to how many games you can put on your hacked Sega Mini or add to your OpenEmu collection on your Mac ( or on whatever other modern way you’re playing retro video games in the 2020s), there isn’t really a limit to how many games you can add - so just think of my ‘top 25’ list as some games that are maybe worth adding/playing on top of whatever else would be on your own personal list of however many games you want in your collection.The Landers act helpful most of the time, but they are shady merchants… Ok, that’s it for my personal ‘Top 25 Nintendo (NES) Games That Are Still Fun To Play Now’ list - I know that there are some classic titles that seem crazy not to have included, but, again, this is not meant to be a ‘Top 25 All-Time Best Ever’ list and it’s also not meant to be your list. You also get to pick from 4 different characters + all in all, it’s just got it’s own unique style and feel to it, which I like. Instead of jumping on baddies, you’re picking vegetables to throw at them, or you’re picking up the baddies themselves to throw at other baddies (so I guess you’re still jumping on baddies, but it’s different). I think it’s because it’s so much different than all the other Marios (probably because it was originally not meant to be Super Mario game). It’s not that the others aren’t as good, #1 is a the OG legend and #3 is probably the best looking, but I just enjoy playing #2 more. But since I’m only making a list of 25, it’d be a waste of space to give 3 spots up for one franchise, so I will state the obvious in that you should definitely add all three Super Mario games to whatever you’re playing NES games on, and then I will go out on a limb and say that I think Super Mario 2 is the best of the three. It would be sacrilegious to make a ‘best NES’ list and not include a Super Mario Bros game - and that’s because Super Mario 1, 2 & 3 are bonafide classics that still hold up today.
AND NOW THAT WE’VE GOT ALL THE EXPLAINERS & DISCLAIMERS OUT OF THE WAY… HERE’S MY LIST OF 25 NINTENDO (NES) GAMES THAT ARE STILL FUN TO PLAY TODAY: This is just a list of games that I have personally found the most enjoyable to play as an elder millennial in the 2020s + it should also be noted that I don’t really care much for fighting games or button-mashing beat ‘em ups / shoot ‘em ups or turn-based RPG games ( no matter how critically acclaimed / loved they may be by others). Please keep in mind that this list is not really in a ranked order and it is definitely not an attempt at creating a “best Nintendo / NES games ever” list ( so prepare to adjust your “how could you not include _?!” outrage appropriately).
And since I also did a lot of searching for “best NES games” or “most underrated NES games” or “best NES games that are still worth playing today”, once I was done googling the same kind of “how to hack a sega mini” queries that have been directing people to my blog lately, I figured I should re-hash my ‘best games to add to your hacked Sega Mini’ lists and put together some console specific content for the Google search algorithms. More recently, I’ve been noticing that my most visited website pages, month after month, were my blog posts about retro video gaming, and most of those visits were coming from Google’rs. I guess that’s why they say hindsight is 2020. And once one goes down that online retro video gaming rabbit hole, one eventually realizes that one could have been playing any old retro video game right on one’s old iMac the whole time.
This was heavily influenced by me ordering a Sega Mini to hook up to the tv I won at a Super Bowl party right before the world went on a never-ending lockdown quarantine, but the thing that really kicked the new hobby up a notch was realizing that the Sega Mini could be hacked to add any old retro video game from any old retro video game console. As I mentioned in my recent ‘Top 25 Sega Genesis Games’ + ‘ Top 25 Super Nintendo Games’ + ‘ Top 25 PS1 Games’ + ‘ Top 25 GBA Games’ + ‘ Top 25 TurboGrafx-16 Games’, 2020 was the year I got back into playing retro video games from my youth.