Bionic Commando should be here. Its a great game on the Nes. But the fact that you dont jump turns off people right away. If you give the game a chance you learn that there is a reason for the jump limitation and it has an awesome play style. Definitely a classic.
I disagree. The reason Bionic Commando should NOT be here is because it was never really UNDERAPPRECIATED. I seem to remember back then that it was appreciated quite a lot! And yes, it is definitely a classic, and most NES gamers will tell you so.
I like to think Faxanadu is also an underappreciated gem. I'll confess the NPC chat leaves a lot to be desired, but i found it had a delightful mix of exploration, combat, and just overall was a fun RPG game to play. edit: almost forgot - despite being chiptunes, the Music, is very very memorable too. Still love the second area (Tower of mists)
Faxandu was like my 3rd NES game - I couldn't find Legend of Zelda anywhere and the box art and the demo they had of it at Toys R Us that I played made it look pretty intriguing so we picked it up and man that was like one of my favorite games right after Metroid and Super Mario Bros. It's also one of the few NES games from my childhood that I still have my original cartridge for - I even ended up finding a second one in a box of 'garbage' games that I hung onto - game still worked just fine - in case I met someone that wanted to borrow mine - Faxandu also sorta was fun to play listening to the Ghostbusters 2 Soundtrack - I used to always have a tape player with me in the late 80s/early 90s and I liked to play video games late after my parents went to bed so I'd turn off the volume on the TV and listen to music while I played - some of the songs really suited the game - at least to me.
I wouldn't necessarily say that Faxanadu was a BETTER version of Zelda II - Adventure of Link (which was really more of an adventure game with some RPG elements), but Faxanadu does have more of an RPG feel to it--which is why you may like it better. In any case, both Zelda II and Faxanadu were pretty well liked, and therefore NOT underappreciated.
Re: the SMB glitch, I think what's going on is this: When you get hit by Bowser at the exact same frame as you touch the axe, the game triggers the level end and "forgets" to shrink Mario because that code routine is not executed. When you touch a super mushroom, the code routine for making Mario into Super Mario works by setting his status to "super" but it toggles the sprites used for drawing Mario. Normally this works out because Mario is always small when he touches a super mushroom, but when the NES is confused because it is treating Mario as small but still drawing him as Super Mario, it switches *back* to the small sprites. When Mario touches a Fire Flower, it doesn't change sprites -- it's just doing a palette swap. When the animation plays for Mario throwing a fireball, the NES displays the only graphic that exists on the ROM for that, the sprite of Super Mario, being drawn with the Fiery Mario palette. Then it switches back to using the previous sprite it had been using to draw Mario, in this case the small mario sprite, but drawn using the palette used for drawing Fiery Mario.
Crystalis will always have a place in my heart. It was, and still is an epic game. No other came close to the in depth complexity during the NES days. I never finished it though. It was tough. Even tougher than the patiance/skill needed to beat Zelda 2 Adventure of Link. Maybe its time to give Crystalis another try. Its sunday and i have no responsibilities today.
Definitely Crystalis on NES, and then Soul Blazer or Lufia 2 on SNES are the best games I bring up a lot that for some reason few people I know ever played. Crystalis, in particular, just ran so smoothly. I bought the game again about ten years ago or so only to get it home and find the battery backup totally dead. Ever tried playing that game in one sitting? Yeah...
I knew a few kids who owned Captain Skyhawk. Beating that first stage earned you some serious neighborhood credit back then lol. Eventually 3 of us beat that whole game after taking turns.
Crystalis was a great game and one of my favorites. There is some others I can think of like Kid Niki, Legendary Wings, Yo! Noid, Karnov and Journey to Silius. They were solid games.
Thee trees do move in the Japanese version of Contra. IIRC the game used a special chip to help with effects but for some reason they weren't allowed to use the chip in the US market so certain effects were cut.
@@SecondOpinionGames1 it can, the special chip is in the cart not the NES itself. The JP version of Contra runs fine in a US NES as does the ROM on a flash cart that supports the mapper.
It's a little late, but small fire mario isn't a different Sprite - it's the same sprite as when mario is actually small. The nes doesnt store color data with the sprites, instead the sprites have "potential colors." Each sprite can have 3 colors so let's say the "potential colors" are A, B, and C. Normal mario uses the standard color palette that fills the "potential colors" with the normal colors we expect mario to look like. When mario gets the fire powerup the game doesn't switch anything about the way Mario's sprite looks, it just switches to a different color palette that makes mario look like fire mario. The glitch just tricks the game into thinking that mario should look small, but the game also thinks mario can shoot fire, so it switches to the color palette for when mario has the fire powerup. The reason he gets big when he shoots the fireballs is because the sprites for the animation are only drawn for big mario, so the game thinking mario can shoot fireballs just plays that animation not realizing it's wrong. The dev's must have not thought that you would ever be able to do this, or didnt fix it because it would require extra processing power that the nes didnt really have.
Sky Hawk, GI Joe and Crystalis were some of my favourite games as a kid. Well.. Captain SkyHawk was too tough for me, but I have a lot of memories watching my friend's older brother play through it.
Yes Astyanax, so glad you did that one. Just had such an effect on me as a kid. Such a world to get sucked into and imagine yourself saving that world. It was an NES game and had so many cutscenes! I'll stop fanboying, it was very good, thanks.
Xexyz and Ironsword: Wizards and Warriors II also came to mind after seeing this list. But yes, The Guardian Legend is awesome! I spent so many hours trying to beat it and finally did after some weeks of work. The soundtrack is also one of the best that I ever heard on the NES.
Way back in the 90s, that Super Mario Bros bug happened to me once, but I was to young to understand what had happened, or repeat it again. Glad to know someone managed to find out the bug and now I can tell my old neighbors I wasn't joking.
I find Atlantis factor harder and it has branching paths you can take. I prefer real American hero I like the fact you start out with 3 g I Joe's from the beginning and it's not as difficult but still a good challenge both good nes games
Metal Storm was a late game in the life of the NES, and even though it is short, it is so original. If you play the second quest, the difficulty gets ridiculous!
Astyanax is one of my favorite side-scrolling action/adventure games for the NES. It has pretty nice graphics for a title on an "8-bit" gaming system, great play-control, really fun boss battles, a nice story too with a little bit of a plot twist at the end (lol), and even some RPG elements like being able to use 1 of 3 weapons (effects the way you attack physically and use magic), and being able to use a few magic spells, although the game levels were pretty straightforward and linear. Still a great game overall.
@@SecondOpinionGames1 LOL... The game is pretty short though. I think you can play through it normally (not even speed-running) in around a half-hour or so.
Over Horizon is another one that goes under the radar, but it's awesome. It's "Nintendo hard", but it's unlimited continues, and it never kills you with cheap unavoidable shots. It just as fun as it is difficult.
+Second Opinion Games You definitely need to check out the game "KickMaster", that game is criminally unknown. It's basically an action-platformer with RPG elements, where you gain Experience Points (which naturally increases your Level, HP and MP) and learn new attacks and spells, and some of the spells are hidden in secret areas. Fantastic game, I can safely say that it is one of the best action-platformers on the whole system.
@@Peter_1986 kabukimfighter and kickmastwr really banked on weird themes. It was good..but nowhere near the best, you can tell it was made SPECIFICALLY so people could try to get hooked and talk about it for years. Not made to actually last through the years. I like it, but it's just that
+Agon Leed The reasons why I rank "KickMaster" very highly are because it is well-designed in general - the graphics are crisp and clear, the music is fantastic, the controls are intuitive and the replay value is quite high since the game has a second loop on a higher difficulty, and also a second final boss. I also really like how you can do lots of different physical and magical attacks, and I enjoyed the HP/MP system since I have always found it very satisfying to gain Levels and become stronger. Either way, another game that is extremely unknown relative to how good it is would be "Summer Carnival '92: Recca" for the Famicom. That game is basically a furiously intense scrolling shooter with a very unique style - it has wavy psychedelic backgrounds and a convincing rave soundtrack, which makes some parts almost feel like a rave party or something. It's also extremely hard - it's one of those games were beating stage 1 is an achievement.
Jackie Chan's Action Kung-Fu was really good. I first saw it a long time ago at a friend's house and searched high and low for it, at first thinking it might have been a Master System game because of the very large colorful sprites. Later when I discovered it was a NES game I was pretty impressed.
you have a good voice for this. I think if you improve your editing and you never, never, never quit, you could be one of the biggest channels out there. keep going past the point where everybody else would quit and you keep going past that. that's the trick to it. can't wait to see more from you
Thanks man, I just finished my top ten chainsaws video and I think its great but no one is watching it just gets me sad but I plain on going at least for 5 more years :)
I think it never got huge because GI Joe was getting less popular when it came out (probably largely due ho video games being so popular at the time and marginalizing physical toys, ironically). By any objective measure, it's an excellent NES game. I remember trying out the sequel and finding it to be nowhere near as enjoyable.
interesting list, a game i knew for the NES that i feel was underappreciated is Legacy of the Wizard and it rarely gets talked about, if at all when bringing up great games for the system.
I always was partial to Werewolf: The Last Warrior. Super hard, but the gameplay was absolutely fantastic. Definitely the most underrated game on the NES of all time for me. Good list though, but with 700+ games to chose from, a top 10 is almost impossible for anyone to ever agree on.
Ugh!! I loooooooved Karnov! And the way his own entering a level via lightening sounded like "Twice Surviv-ing" to me. Listen to it again, you'll get it. Anyways, with the exception of Ghosts & Goblins, no other game did I love as much as I hated.
Have to say I knew about that glitch way back since 1988. My brother in law would do it all the time as Luigi. He called the trick "The Gumby" for some reason. Maybe because Luigi was green.
Fire-powered Mario isn't a sprite swap, but just a pallet swap. That's why the game is able to render small Mario in his fire power suit even though it was never intended. It doesn't mean that Miyamoto & co. put something in the game that they never used. It's just a few bits being changed to render white and red instead of red and brown, and under normal conditions, those bits would never be in that state if you weren't already big.
Great set of games! Funny thing, when we were making Console Nerds in '09 we hit on a lot of your list, ah memories! Also, I hadn't seen that spitfire Mario glitch, awesome work on that!
Dragon warrior was great too, you can nearly become a dragon any time you want and when you finish the game it gives you a secret code to make it more hard
Second Opinion Games + my suggestion would be to power through to after the first boss (the skeleton boss). After which you know if you like the game or not (make sure you get the heal mace!!! (talk to someone in the dew village BEFORE you fight the first boss)).
Still have my original Astyanax, I also played Iron Tank a lot at one of my friends house, never played the others though. I remember small fario, forgot how it was done but that and level skip were the only tricks I remember seeing growing up. Sweet vid!
I noticed that RIGHT AWAY!!! lol CHACKIE CHAN lol My first thought, and reaction was ..."CHACK? - ie? Whaaat? :D then I thought of how Jackie Chan would react to it lol Shameful!
Tiger Heli, Rolling thunder, Xevious, Iron Tank, Metal Gear, Metroid, Friday the 13th, Ninja Gaiden, Gyrus, 1943 or 2 , Mario bros 1 2 and 3,etc. I prolly had 40 games when's I gave my Nes collection away last year with consol and extra controllers... Good times...
@@SecondOpinionGames1 oh it does feel like part of me died letting it go. I have a lot of PlayStation 2,3, and 4 to catch up on...Don't know if I'll ever catch up.I'll be alright...
In my time, I've had or have come accross people who owned the games on your list, from Felix the Cat to a Beta version of Crystalis, but I've never seen a copy of Adventure island 3. Dude with the Beta of Crystalis even has a copy of little Samson, but has also never owned a copy of Adventure island 3. For the record a beta NES game comes in a cart with a flashable Eprom and no real label but a cheap sticker with some Sharpy letters written on it. All the same with all of that, never have I seen a copy of Adventure island 3. Good list though, however, I feel that Adventure island 3 is underappreciated becuase no one knows about it.
Astynax is a game I got for my 6th or 7th Birthday and I love it still (long after not having an NES); its boss battles were hard as hellI powered through the game and Still think of that purple and blue swamp level as a nightmare of an enemy gauntlet where if you can clear it with out damage your crazy because some enemies land mine you... Crystalis I played so much growing up that I could probably act as a players guide until the ocean (80% of that part at least). Both of which need to have part 7's already but never got sequels.
Yes. All of them. Many Capcom and Konami games were also little known. Game critics were never a great help. Better to give many games the chance than let somebody else to decide for you
I LOVE Captain Skyhawk - I think I rented it and then went out and bought it and an NES joystick controller for it - which made it MUCH easier to control, since you could use your other hand to control the select and start buttons easier.
I doubt Mario's outfits are separate sprites. More likely it's a color palette swap, so it makes sense that small mario would have the same colors if the game thought he should be in fire mode.
Just speculation, but I think the fireflower small mario sprite might be used for the 'getting hit' animation, because you lose both the fireflower and turn small, so it might be a transition sprite between those two states? Dunno. More investigation needed. :P
My bet on the mario glitch is that they didn't make a small fire mario sprite OR a big fire mario sprite, but rather just swapped the pallette when the power up was active. Palette swapping and cycling were frequently used to reduce rom storage requirements.
I got that glitch just by passing bowser and getting hit by his flame as the ax dropped the bridge. I had the fireflower and lost the height but kept the fire power while being small the next stage.
They didn't make a sprite for small fire Mario. It's just a palette swap, but it looks like there is a sprite for shooting the fireball which is why it sometimes goes large.
all the fire flower does is change the color of Mario. that is what makes it so you can have a small fire flower Mario. Saves ROM size by not having a different sprite.
Crazy SMB trick at the end there! I grew up in the '80s with the 99 lives trick but never even heard of that. If someone told me, I'd think they were full of it. I have an underappreciated game that I still today consider to be my favorite game for the NES, and I never even owned it, we rented it just before moving on to the Genesis and didn't play it again until downloading the ROM. That game is: Super Dodge Ball. Ever play it? I'm actually much more into action/adventure than sports, but you've got to find the ROM of this if you haven't played it. The designers set up their own sport of dodge ball (with offensive and defensive positions), and as Team USA you tour the world, with the final team being.. The Soviet Union. And just by looking at them, you'll realize that the league that sets up this international Dodge Ball sport has really got to update their policy on performance enhancers, because every player on the Soviet team is juiced to the max. You can actually get the arcade NeoGeo version on the Playstation store for PS4, maybe PS3 as well but I don't know. This version is harder than I remember the NES version being, and the NES version was already pretty challenging. Fun fact: If you going to play Super Dodge Ball, the second team you face is Great Britain, where the game music when playing these guys borrows melodies (and changes them just enough to avoid litigation, but you still somewhat hear it -- I've been composing music most of my life and have a college level understanding of music theory, so this isn't an arbitrary observation) from "I Want to Hold Your Hand" in the intro, then the verse of "Get Back", and then the middle 8 of "Hard Day's Night" when it goes, "When I'm home / everything seems to be alright / When I'm home / Feeling you holding me tight" and then back to the verse of "Get Back". Again, it's different enough to avoid copyright infringement, but you hear it if you listen to it. You might be able to tell that I've played this game A LOT! -- Actually I just found a RUclips video that plays this very theme: ruclips.net/video/heqRqfq7dYQ/видео.html
The Mario trick was first mentioned in the Nintendo News Letter in 1987. The small Mario fireflower sprite is just the product of a palette swap rather than an unused character model.
Love me some Captain Skyhawk. I remember my friend bringing it over to my house to play when he was staying over for the weekend and we played the shit out of it. He had never beaten it before, but he beat it that weekend while at my house. Beating it must have made it wear off the desire for the game because after that he offered to sell it to me for like $5. That was about 27 years ago, and I still have the game to this day.
The problem with many of these games, while great, came out during the reign of the Sega Genesis. Early 1990 was pretty much all Sega as they made so many games that were just epic in their day. By the end of 1990 Nintendo began taking Sega as a serious threat and announced the Snes which also hurt these fantastic titles. We simply wanted 16-bit and were leaving the 8-bit machines behind.
"Hi, my name is unpronounceable and unreadable because my parents are assholes. Can I please wear mini-skirt armor and tire out my arm after each attack?"
When I was a kid, the older kids I knew showed me that SMB glitch. It reminded me of the old Mario cartoon from the SMB Super Show where Mario didn't get any bigger when using a fire flower.
If the internet and E-bay existed earlier, I would of bought Ikari Warriors ...I looked and looked everywhere and gave up thinking it wasn't on NES... Just found out they did make it... Bummer...
Maybe these aren't unheard of but I think they are. My choices for best unheard of NES games: Robin Hood Yo Noid Kick Master Little Nemo, Dream Master Spy Vs Spy North vs South Caveman Games Snow Bros Swords and Serpents Monster Party If you love NES games and haven't played any of these, do yourself a favor. They're some of the very best NES games, not just unheard-of ones.
![Digital Circus Episode 4 [TRAILER]](http://i.ytimg.com/vi/abZtsmMUbJo/mqdefault.jpg)
Bionic Commando should be here. Its a great game on the Nes. But the fact that you dont jump turns off people right away. If you give the game a chance you learn that there is a reason for the jump limitation and it has an awesome play style. Definitely a classic.
I disagree. The reason Bionic Commando should NOT be here is because it was never really UNDERAPPRECIATED. I seem to remember back then that it was appreciated quite a lot! And yes, it is definitely a classic, and most NES gamers will tell you so.
Yeah, I don't think that a game that got two remakes recently can be considered underappreciated.
@@joesshows6793 and what's funny is, as much as I loved it as a kid, the NES port of Double Dragon is kinda shit
I feel like Bionic Commando gets appreciated.
Totally agree, even after reading the comments. I rarely hear people talk about it.
I like to think Faxanadu is also an underappreciated gem. I'll confess the NPC chat leaves a lot to be desired, but i found it had a delightful mix of exploration, combat, and just overall was a fun RPG game to play.
edit: almost forgot - despite being chiptunes, the Music, is very very memorable too. Still love the second area (Tower of mists)
Faxandu was like my 3rd NES game - I couldn't find Legend of Zelda anywhere and the box art and the demo they had of it at Toys R Us that I played made it look pretty intriguing so we picked it up and man that was like one of my favorite games right after Metroid and Super Mario Bros. It's also one of the few NES games from my childhood that I still have my original cartridge for - I even ended up finding a second one in a box of 'garbage' games that I hung onto - game still worked just fine - in case I met someone that wanted to borrow mine - Faxandu also sorta was fun to play listening to the Ghostbusters 2 Soundtrack - I used to always have a tape player with me in the late 80s/early 90s and I liked to play video games late after my parents went to bed so I'd turn off the volume on the TV and listen to music while I played - some of the songs really suited the game - at least to me.
Faxanadu is like a better version of Adventure of Link, just with a kind of ugly color palette.
Absolutely agreed.
I wouldn't necessarily say that Faxanadu was a BETTER version of Zelda II - Adventure of Link (which was really more of an adventure game with some RPG elements), but Faxanadu does have more of an RPG feel to it--which is why you may like it better. In any case, both Zelda II and Faxanadu were pretty well liked, and therefore NOT underappreciated.
Classixish all of this!
Re: the SMB glitch, I think what's going on is this:
When you get hit by Bowser at the exact same frame as you touch the axe, the game triggers the level end and "forgets" to shrink Mario because that code routine is not executed. When you touch a super mushroom, the code routine for making Mario into Super Mario works by setting his status to "super" but it toggles the sprites used for drawing Mario. Normally this works out because Mario is always small when he touches a super mushroom, but when the NES is confused because it is treating Mario as small but still drawing him as Super Mario, it switches *back* to the small sprites.
When Mario touches a Fire Flower, it doesn't change sprites -- it's just doing a palette swap. When the animation plays for Mario throwing a fireball, the NES displays the only graphic that exists on the ROM for that, the sprite of Super Mario, being drawn with the Fiery Mario palette. Then it switches back to using the previous sprite it had been using to draw Mario, in this case the small mario sprite, but drawn using the palette used for drawing Fiery Mario.
This is some cool stuff!!!!! :) Thanks
haha came here to mention the palette swap ;) cool explanation
@ADEBISI ADEBISI I rmemebr that
I used to trigger this glitch every now and then, it was HILARIOUS to 5 year-old me. And that is indeed how that happens and what it does. OP GLITCHES
Chris, I came here to explain the palette swap and there you are doing it for me you brilliant fellow :)
God I miss the 80's & 90's.
Crystalis is the best! The music is sooooo good.
For years it was my favorite game of all times. I love it even though I didn't beat it until May 27 1996. A big day for me.
one of my favorite NES games too!
Crystalis will always have a place in my heart. It was, and still is an epic game. No other came close to the in depth complexity during the NES days. I never finished it though. It was tough. Even tougher than the patiance/skill needed to beat Zelda 2 Adventure of Link. Maybe its time to give Crystalis another try. Its sunday and i have no responsibilities today.
The music really added so much more to an already awesome game. Goes to show the genius that can be done with such a limited instrument set.
Definitely Crystalis on NES, and then Soul Blazer or Lufia 2 on SNES are the best games I bring up a lot that for some reason few people I know ever played. Crystalis, in particular, just ran so smoothly. I bought the game again about ten years ago or so only to get it home and find the battery backup totally dead. Ever tried playing that game in one sitting? Yeah...
I knew a few kids who owned Captain Skyhawk. Beating that first stage earned you some serious neighborhood credit back then lol. Eventually 3 of us beat that whole game after taking turns.
Crystalis was a great game and one of my favorites. There is some others I can think of like Kid Niki, Legendary Wings, Yo! Noid, Karnov and Journey to Silius. They were solid games.
I think some of those is in my fan favorite Video :)
Thee trees do move in the Japanese version of Contra. IIRC the game used a special chip to help with effects but for some reason they weren't allowed to use the chip in the US market so certain effects were cut.
0blivi0n100 the USA Nintendo can’t read it to cut production costs
@@SecondOpinionGames1 it can, the special chip is in the cart not the NES itself. The JP version of Contra runs fine in a US NES as does the ROM on a flash cart that supports the mapper.
Also, Wizards & Warriors. Definitely a highly, HIGHLY, underrated game. I still can't get that music out of my head, 20 yrs later.
Absolutely loved Captain Skyhawk.
I wish I remember how to do the glitches I found when I was a kid. There is a lot of them and they are cool
@@SecondOpinionGames1 If you remember we will tune in :D
It's a little late, but small fire mario isn't a different Sprite - it's the same sprite as when mario is actually small. The nes doesnt store color data with the sprites, instead the sprites have "potential colors." Each sprite can have 3 colors so let's say the "potential colors" are A, B, and C. Normal mario uses the standard color palette that fills the "potential colors" with the normal colors we expect mario to look like. When mario gets the fire powerup the game doesn't switch anything about the way Mario's sprite looks, it just switches to a different color palette that makes mario look like fire mario. The glitch just tricks the game into thinking that mario should look small, but the game also thinks mario can shoot fire, so it switches to the color palette for when mario has the fire powerup. The reason he gets big when he shoots the fireballs is because the sprites for the animation are only drawn for big mario, so the game thinking mario can shoot fireballs just plays that animation not realizing it's wrong. The dev's must have not thought that you would ever be able to do this, or didnt fix it because it would require extra processing power that the nes didnt really have.
This is the best break down I have seen of this phonoma
Sky Hawk, GI Joe and Crystalis were some of my favourite games as a kid. Well.. Captain SkyHawk was too tough for me, but I have a lot of memories watching my friend's older brother play through it.
Justin Kline their is some cool glitches in the game to
The SMB glitch was in Nintendo Power back in the day.
Surf Wisely.
Cobra triangle and snake rattle and roll are some really great games that went unnoticed by most.
Fun fact: Wario's Woods was the last licensed NES game.
That and Star Tropics 2: Zoda's Revenge
Last U.S. release. I believe the lion king was the last official nes title. pal only.
Yes Astyanax, so glad you did that one. Just had such an effect on me as a kid. Such a world to get sucked into and imagine yourself saving that world. It was an NES game and had so many cutscenes! I'll stop fanboying, it was very good, thanks.
This is one of my first top tens so sorry if it is a little crude :)
I see your liking the channel :)
@@SecondOpinionGames1 Yes I am really liking your channel! You still need to get me some contact info though!
The Guardian Legend?
Yes! Such a good game, so much to it
Cult classic. So good. Not enough people talks about that one....
My favorite on the system.
Xexyz and Ironsword: Wizards and Warriors II also came to mind after seeing this list. But yes, The Guardian Legend is awesome! I spent so many hours trying to beat it and finally did after some weeks of work. The soundtrack is also one of the best that I ever heard on the NES.
Way back in the 90s, that Super Mario Bros bug happened to me once, but I was to young to understand what had happened, or repeat it again. Glad to know someone managed to find out the bug and now I can tell my old neighbors I wasn't joking.
Zenn virus 😀
Gi Joe looks like a cross between Contra & Lifeforce wish i would have known about this little gem back then and thank you for memories Main👈
The boss battles in Iron Tank are the epitome of 8-bit greatness.
Those last tanks are huge!!!!!
I don't know why no one appreciates the sequel to G.I.Joe the Atlantis factor. Its a phenomenal game. I never see anyone review it.
I find Atlantis factor harder and it has branching paths you can take. I prefer real American hero I like the fact you start out with 3 g I Joe's from the beginning and it's not as difficult but still a good challenge both good nes games
Both games were awesome.
Hey Hey, really enjoyed this. I now know what my next couple purchases will be. Sincerely appreciate you taking the time to put this together.
New videos every week. Best job ever :)
Metal Storm was a late game in the life of the NES, and even though it is short, it is so original. If you play the second quest, the difficulty gets ridiculous!
Nice
Astyanax is one of my favorite side-scrolling action/adventure games for the NES. It has pretty nice graphics for a title on an "8-bit" gaming system, great play-control, really fun boss battles, a nice story too with a little bit of a plot twist at the end (lol), and even some RPG elements like being able to use 1 of 3 weapons (effects the way you attack physically and use magic), and being able to use a few magic spells, although the game levels were pretty straightforward and linear. Still a great game overall.
Fact Checker and even for less than five dollars people still take a pass on it
@@SecondOpinionGames1 LOL... The game is pretty short though. I think you can play through it normally (not even speed-running) in around a half-hour or so.
Vice: Project Doom needs more love.
Over Horizon is another one that goes under the radar, but it's awesome. It's "Nintendo hard", but it's unlimited continues, and it never kills you with cheap unavoidable shots. It just as fun as it is difficult.
Son Brimmer I remember liking it😀
Karnarv, loved that game. No one even herd of it.
Karnov*. I had the tiger handheld too
Karnarv was so one to put on this list but forgot 😦
I was in a band that was briefly named Karnov. We ended up changing it because no one had heard of the game.
You should have also had Rygar on that list.
Agree-great game that's never talked about. I still catch myself whistling the music every now and then.
Astyanax was the first NES game I played that WASN'T Mario/Duck Hunt. Until then it didn't even occur to me that games could be gritty and serious.
Jonathan Unger Yea it was cheap even then 😀
I think kabuki quantum fighter is pretty good and nobody really seems to talk about it
ill check it out :)
@@SecondOpinionGames1 cool but its not like a masterpiece
+Second Opinion Games
You definitely need to check out the game "KickMaster", that game is criminally unknown.
It's basically an action-platformer with RPG elements, where you gain Experience Points (which naturally increases your Level, HP and MP) and learn new attacks and spells, and some of the spells are hidden in secret areas.
Fantastic game, I can safely say that it is one of the best action-platformers on the whole system.
@@Peter_1986 kabukimfighter and kickmastwr really banked on weird themes. It was good..but nowhere near the best, you can tell it was made SPECIFICALLY so people could try to get hooked and talk about it for years. Not made to actually last through the years.
I like it, but it's just that
+Agon Leed
The reasons why I rank "KickMaster" very highly are because it is well-designed in general - the graphics are crisp and clear, the music is fantastic, the controls are intuitive and the replay value is quite high since the game has a second loop on a higher difficulty, and also a second final boss.
I also really like how you can do lots of different physical and magical attacks, and I enjoyed the HP/MP system since I have always found it very satisfying to gain Levels and become stronger.
Either way, another game that is extremely unknown relative to how good it is would be "Summer Carnival '92: Recca" for the Famicom.
That game is basically a furiously intense scrolling shooter with a very unique style - it has wavy psychedelic backgrounds and a convincing rave soundtrack, which makes some parts almost feel like a rave party or something.
It's also extremely hard - it's one of those games were beating stage 1 is an achievement.
Jackie Chan's Action Kung-Fu was really good. I first saw it a long time ago at a friend's house and searched high and low for it, at first thinking it might have been a Master System game because of the very large colorful sprites. Later when I discovered it was a NES game I was pretty impressed.
Rosemary Marie The turbo grafx had a good version of it
you have a good voice for this. I think if you improve your editing and you never, never, never quit, you could be one of the biggest channels out there. keep going past the point where everybody else would quit and you keep going past that. that's the trick to it. can't wait to see more from you
Thanks man, I just finished my top ten chainsaws video and I think its great but no one is watching it just gets me sad but I plain on going at least for 5 more years :)
Loved Iron Tank. The bosses, the music and the enemy variety, oh man!
That GI Joe game is always out of my price range, like over the last 15 years
I lucked out back in 2000ish and got G.I. Joe, and the sequal the Atlantis Factor for like $5
Get a flash cart.
I think it never got huge because GI Joe was getting less popular when it came out (probably largely due ho video games being so popular at the time and marginalizing physical toys, ironically). By any objective measure, it's an excellent NES game. I remember trying out the sequel and finding it to be nowhere near as enjoyable.
interesting list, a game i knew for the NES that i feel was underappreciated is Legacy of the Wizard and it rarely gets talked about, if at all when bringing up great games for the system.
I have lots more lists to I even have a cool Chainsaw video soon ;)
Legacy of the Wizard might be the hardest NES game to figure out without the manual.
Battle of Olympus... OMG was it awesome
Battle of Olympus is one of the best games ever
I've never even heard anyone mention this game before. One of my favorites. Just played it again.
The haunting melody at the opening screen brings back memories.
Yes! That game was amazing.
Yeah, its easly the best game on the NES. It's one of the best games i've ever played period.
Clash at Demonhead is a sorely underrated gem
sadly I cant get into it.
SNK games were always quality
And it has some games that were mentioned on here 😍
I always was partial to Werewolf: The Last Warrior. Super hard, but the gameplay was absolutely fantastic. Definitely the most underrated game on the NES of all time for me. Good list though, but with 700+ games to chose from, a top 10 is almost impossible for anyone to ever agree on.
Yes I really see that. thanks :)
Werewolf is almost awesome, but it has a handful of really terrible design desicions that make it a giant headache.
I'm surprised that Karnov isn't on this list.
Yeah I played Karnov years back it was a great game. I recently modded my NES classic so I have it again....
Ugh!! I loooooooved Karnov! And the way his own entering a level via lightening sounded like "Twice Surviv-ing" to me. Listen to it again, you'll get it.
Anyways, with the exception of Ghosts & Goblins, no other game did I love as much as I hated.
I still have karnov great game
I remember when I was a kid, Nintendo Power magazine had that tip for Mario Bros for level 2-1, called "little man fire power".
Summer Carnival ‘92 RECCA is the most underappreciated NES game imo
Cool :)
This is how a top 10 list is done. Subbed
Thanks lots more Top Tens to come.
Agreed. If you see Felix the Cat in a bargain bin, DO NOT PASS IT UP.
yeah... same with Stadium Events, Little Sampson and Bonk's Adventure. They're all in bargain bins...
You're welcome for me passing it up!
Have to say I knew about that glitch way back since 1988. My brother in law would do it all the time as Luigi. He called the trick "The Gumby" for some reason. Maybe because Luigi was green.
Destiny of an Emperor was the BOMB
I will try them both :) Thanks
Second Opinion Games Really? Wow... awesome! Thanks!
100% agree Destiny of a Emperor is one of the best jrpg games of all time
This list was actually really good. Most of these titles I really didn't know anything about. Thanks.
Fire-powered Mario isn't a sprite swap, but just a pallet swap. That's why the game is able to render small Mario in his fire power suit even though it was never intended. It doesn't mean that Miyamoto & co. put something in the game that they never used. It's just a few bits being changed to render white and red instead of red and brown, and under normal conditions, those bits would never be in that state if you weren't already big.
Star colors :)
Great set of games! Funny thing, when we were making Console Nerds in '09 we hit on a lot of your list, ah memories! Also, I hadn't seen that spitfire Mario glitch, awesome work on that!
This is the best “hidden gems” style video on RUclips for the system
Thanks I'm off to too many games this weekend so hopefully I can get the word out ☺️
Dragon warrior was great too, you can nearly become a dragon any time you want and when you finish the game it gives you a secret code to make it more hard
Willow was an amazing Legend of Zelda like game that I’m not sure is that known
for some reason I cant get into willow but I wish I could. :(
Second Opinion Games + my suggestion would be to power through to after the first boss (the skeleton boss). After which you know if you like the game or not (make sure you get the heal mace!!! (talk to someone in the dew village BEFORE you fight the first boss)).
Still have my original Astyanax, I also played Iron Tank a lot at one of my friends house, never played the others though. I remember small fario, forgot how it was done but that and level skip were the only tricks I remember seeing growing up. Sweet vid!
Thanks I have so many more top tens in the works this Wednesday is my masterpiece ;)
I knew about Minnie fire when it was just a Nintendo out back in the 90s
No one seems to talk about it what up with that :)
Yeah I'd pull off that trick once in a while back in the 80s. But it is true, dont see anyone on youtube at least, talk about it.
Well, It seems you haven't seen Games Done Quick
Captain Skyhawk, so good. First game I beat as a kid.
That's a hard first beat.
Chackie Chan? I believe his name starts with a J
I noticed that RIGHT AWAY!!! lol CHACKIE CHAN lol My first thought, and reaction was ..."CHACK? - ie? Whaaat? :D then I thought of how Jackie Chan would react to it lol Shameful!
lol
dude has some kind of speech impediment, or just does his voice overs in one take with no proofing or editing. @ 5:16 he starts saying "advrenture"
Lol he called Chip N Dale "Chip N Dale's" which is a male strip club franchise.
Tiger Heli, Rolling thunder, Xevious, Iron Tank, Metal Gear, Metroid, Friday the 13th, Ninja Gaiden, Gyrus, 1943 or 2 , Mario bros 1 2 and 3,etc. I prolly had 40 games when's I gave my Nes collection away last year with consol and extra controllers... Good times...
I keep all my games . It might be sad but their a part of me.
@@SecondOpinionGames1 oh it does feel like part of me died letting it go. I have a lot of PlayStation 2,3, and 4 to catch up on...Don't know if I'll ever catch up.I'll be alright...
The Magic of scheherazade I think is under rated
It was unique and excellent, very underrated indeed.
Definitely, but that game is confusing as fuck and the level is capped per world.
That was cool thank you especially the ending with the spitfire bit!! Still secrets revealed after all of these decades paased
Thanks!!!!
Great list! I want Felix the Cat bad!
tiny fireball mario was encountered pretty often in the arcade version.
In my time, I've had or have come accross people who owned the games on your list, from Felix the Cat to a Beta version of Crystalis, but I've never seen a copy of Adventure island 3. Dude with the Beta of Crystalis even has a copy of little Samson, but has also never owned a copy of Adventure island 3.
For the record a beta NES game comes in a cart with a flashable Eprom and no real label but a cheap sticker with some Sharpy letters written on it. All the same with all of that, never have I seen a copy of Adventure island 3.
Good list though, however, I feel that Adventure island 3 is underappreciated becuase no one knows about it.
Adventure Island 3 was not a bad game by itself.. but it was a carbon copy clone of Adventure Island 2. That's why it was under appreciated.
Agreed :)
I wouldn't leave any nes game in a $1 bin.
True that. my best friend told someone else to buy it when it was just a dollar.
Second Opinion Games
You used to be able to find retro games in thrift shops but it's been years since my last good find.
Astynax is a game I got for my 6th or 7th Birthday and I love it still (long after not having an NES); its boss battles were hard as hellI powered through the game and Still think of that purple and blue swamp level as a nightmare of an enemy gauntlet where if you can clear it with out damage your crazy because some enemies land mine you...
Crystalis I played so much growing up that I could probably act as a players guide until the ocean (80% of that part at least).
Both of which need to have part 7's already but never got sequels.
Have you ever herd of Vice project doom? I just got it and the review is coming but what a great game :)
Yes. All of them. Many Capcom and Konami games were also little known. Game critics were never a great help. Better to give many games the chance than let somebody else to decide for you
Alex Riskbreaker Yes I try not to be to serious. My channel it more about getting people to try something different 😀
they made that mario sprite because it's one of the colors you flash when you get the star.
Nice list!
Ed's Retro Geek Out Thanks 🙏
I LOVE Captain Skyhawk - I think I rented it and then went out and bought it and an NES joystick controller for it - which made it MUCH easier to control, since you could use your other hand to control the select and start buttons easier.
Chuckie Chan?
IDK it sounds racist.
I doubt Mario's outfits are separate sprites. More likely it's a color palette swap, so it makes sense that small mario would have the same colors if the game thought he should be in fire mode.
Astyanax and Crystalis are two of my favorite games of all time! Loved your list!
Have many of you heard of The Roller Games?
Yea it was ok , but I dont think the kids today would like it much :)
Just speculation, but I think the fireflower small mario sprite might be used for the 'getting hit' animation, because you lose both the fireflower and turn small, so it might be a transition sprite between those two states?
Dunno. More investigation needed. :P
BurnEdOutOne 🤔
My bet on the mario glitch is that they didn't make a small fire mario sprite OR a big fire mario sprite, but rather just swapped the pallette when the power up was active. Palette swapping and cycling were frequently used to reduce rom storage requirements.
Something like that 😃
I got that glitch just by passing bowser and getting hit by his flame as the ax dropped the bridge. I had the fireflower and lost the height but kept the fire power while being small the next stage.
They didn't make a sprite for small fire Mario. It's just a palette swap, but it looks like there is a sprite for shooting the fireball which is why it sometimes goes large.
Three games I really like and play all the way through are; Rolling Thunder, Blaster Master and [Battletoads & Double Dragon: The Ultimate Team]
You beat all 4 stories of Rolling Thunder?
@@Automat1cJack 10 levels - 5 areas for each story
Nice recommendations!
all the fire flower does is change the color of Mario. that is what makes it so you can have a small fire flower Mario. Saves ROM size by not having a different sprite.
Crazy SMB trick at the end there! I grew up in the '80s with the 99 lives trick but never even heard of that. If someone told me, I'd think they were full of it.
I have an underappreciated game that I still today consider to be my favorite game for the NES, and I never even owned it, we rented it just before moving on to the Genesis and didn't play it again until downloading the ROM. That game is: Super Dodge Ball. Ever play it? I'm actually much more into action/adventure than sports, but you've got to find the ROM of this if you haven't played it. The designers set up their own sport of dodge ball (with offensive and defensive positions), and as Team USA you tour the world, with the final team being.. The Soviet Union. And just by looking at them, you'll realize that the league that sets up this international Dodge Ball sport has really got to update their policy on performance enhancers, because every player on the Soviet team is juiced to the max.
You can actually get the arcade NeoGeo version on the Playstation store for PS4, maybe PS3 as well but I don't know. This version is harder than I remember the NES version being, and the NES version was already pretty challenging.
Fun fact: If you going to play Super Dodge Ball, the second team you face is Great Britain, where the game music when playing these guys borrows melodies (and changes them just enough to avoid litigation, but you still somewhat hear it -- I've been composing music most of my life and have a college level understanding of music theory, so this isn't an arbitrary observation) from "I Want to Hold Your Hand" in the intro, then the verse of "Get Back", and then the middle 8 of "Hard Day's Night" when it goes, "When I'm home / everything seems to be alright / When I'm home / Feeling you holding me tight" and then back to the verse of "Get Back". Again, it's different enough to avoid copyright infringement, but you hear it if you listen to it. You might be able to tell that I've played this game A LOT! -- Actually I just found a RUclips video that plays this very theme: ruclips.net/video/heqRqfq7dYQ/видео.html
SDB is awesome check out Super V ball, also.
super mario it is a rare trick we used to call inverting it is very hard to pull off
The Mario trick was first mentioned in the Nintendo News Letter in 1987. The small Mario fireflower sprite is just the product of a palette swap rather than an unused character model.
Ok ☺️
Love me some Captain Skyhawk. I remember my friend bringing it over to my house to play when he was staying over for the weekend and we played the shit out of it. He had never beaten it before, but he beat it that weekend while at my house. Beating it must have made it wear off the desire for the game because after that he offered to sell it to me for like $5. That was about 27 years ago, and I still have the game to this day.
Legacy of the Wizard , it is a must play.
cool ill check it out.
@@SecondOpinionGames1 Read the manual, game gives you no goal or instructions.
I have to say I love ur comintary so much it made my night listening to u was sort of therapudic.
Astyanax was one of my all-time favorite NES games but I couldn't remember the title. Thanks for the reminder!
I loved it 😃
I think I had that with the name 'Golden Axe'
Captain Skyhawk was amazing. We played that so much as kids.
It was so fast and didn’t feel like the other shooters 😃
I think the small fire mario sprite exists as a transition from fire mario to small mario.
The problem with many of these games, while great, came out during the reign of the Sega Genesis. Early 1990 was pretty much all Sega as they made so many games that were just epic in their day. By the end of 1990 Nintendo began taking Sega as a serious threat and announced the Snes which also hurt these fantastic titles. We simply wanted 16-bit and were leaving the 8-bit machines behind.
Sinn0100 yea I was quick to jump ship to the 16 bit. Now it this day I think the 16 bit generation is the best 🤔
Astynax! Great catch. I thought I was biased back in the day...
:)
Romance of the Three Kingdoms. One of the most underrated RPG's ever. As well as Ghengis Khan & Nobungas Ambition.
I want to like those games but the ancient Japan themes hold no interest for me.
We found Astyanax about 15 years ago. In the beginning there is a pretty good cut scene that we repeat to this day.
"Hi, my name is unpronounceable and unreadable because my parents are assholes. Can I please wear mini-skirt armor and tire out my arm after each attack?"
Captain sky hawk,gi joe and Felix the cat are great games
John G fun times
It was called small fire power back in the 80s, and its actually a glitch in the game, that's why there is no small fire power animation.
We all have our Own names for things ☺️
When I was a kid, the older kids I knew showed me that SMB glitch. It reminded me of the old Mario cartoon from the SMB Super Show where Mario didn't get any bigger when using a fire flower.
Love Capitan Lu's rubber band ear rings 😀
If the internet and E-bay existed earlier, I would of bought Ikari Warriors ...I looked and looked everywhere and gave up thinking it wasn't on NES... Just found out they did make it... Bummer...
lol.
Homie I spoke up for years on Crystalis, telling people that liked Zelda to try it, still got it at home. In regards to Felix what about Rockin Kat's?
Brad Wilson crystalis is one of my favorite games
Captain Falcon and the GI Joe I thought I was the only one that ever played those games you nailed it for me you get a subscribe
Man I could do like three more lists like this
Maybe these aren't unheard of but I think they are. My choices for best unheard of NES games:
Robin Hood
Yo Noid
Kick Master
Little Nemo, Dream Master
Spy Vs Spy
North vs South
Caveman Games
Snow Bros
Swords and Serpents
Monster Party
If you love NES games and haven't played any of these, do yourself a favor. They're some of the very best NES games, not just unheard-of ones.
spy vs spy on the apple 2 back in the day was to cool.
That Iron Tank was one of the best I thought..
those last bosses where killer.