Favorite NES game?

[Trench_Man]

What's your favorite game for the Nintendo Entertainment System/Famicom? Personally I think mine is either Dragon Quest/Dragon Warrior or River City Ransom, I've always loved games on the NES that were RPGs or had RPG elements. River City Ransom has always been one I find myself coming back to because of how reminiscent it is to later even modern beat em ups.

[ocean]

I really love the NES, theres so so many wonderful games on it when you really explore the library. The poplar ones everyone knows are great, so I won't sing the praises of Mega Man 2 or whatever.

A really good one that I will openly recommend is Bonk's Adventure. It's super fun on NES and has a lovely little OST. Great platformer game. I also really enjoy the Famicom / Japan exclusive Hello Kitty World. Extremely unique platformer design with really charming graphics.

[IndigoGolem]

I think The Legend of Zelda is still good, but also it's probably the second or third most well known game for the system.

Kirby's Adventure is also very fun. Maybe i like it better than Zelda. Good music (even on period appropriate hardware, as i recall), interesting mechanics, minigames,..

Big names, sure, but the question is favorites, not obscures. I'm aware of Yo! Noid! but i don't much care for it.

And then yes, Tetris and Mario are also great. I know a guy who really likes Bubble Bobble. But Kirby's Adventure is probably my favorite.

[stellarfieldanomaly]

I have not played many NES games to be fair. But I really enjoyed the original Castlevania. It's very hard and a bit primitive, but the single cohesive map is very impressive for the time and hardware.

[AbsurdPirate]

Super Mario Bros 3 for me. It's probably one of the best platformers of all time. I want to put LoZ on here, but it's hard to be able to play that game without a guide, thus I dock it points for that reason.

[ocean]

Kirby's Adventure is also very fun. Maybe i like it better than Zelda. Good music (even on period appropriate hardware, as i recall), interesting mechanics, minigames,..

Kirby's Adventure on NES is so outstanding! The graphics on it are absolutely crazy for NES. It looks so so so good!!!!

[milo]

I guess my favorite favorite game for the NES is Super Mario Bros 3. I spent hours playing that game at my grandma's house and I still come back to it all the time.

My grandma also had a couple other games that I got hooked on... One was called Time Lord and the game itself is decent I suppose but... with a name like Time Lord I can't help but love it... and it's got a great soundtrack!

The other game is called Rad Racer. It's a fun little Outrun style driving game published by Squaresoft with a customizable soundtrack. It even had a 3D glasses mode... I didn't realize what that was as a kid and was very confused as to why the game had a "glitch mode" where the graphics went funny.

[BasilABST]

I also choose Kirby's Adventure. I've played it countless times now and I can honestly say it probably holds up the best out of all of its well known contemporaries. While Super Mario Bros. 1 and 3 (even 2US?? I like it, personally.) are still really fun games, Kirby's Adventure's physics and mechanics hold up way better IMO.

While I think Mario Bros. 1 specifically is one of the most objectively competently designed games around (the TL;DR of my train of thought here is that it cemented its mechanics and such so well that it made every game following needs to iterate and evolve upon what SMB1 did, thus defining the genre's image... I should make a thread asking people what they think the most objectively well made game is tbh. Sounds fun) it has definitely aged a bit, primarily in the jump physics department. Meanwhile, you can snag Kirby's Adventure today and it does not feel as clunky.

There's also the matter of copy abilities. They are way more engaging than the fire flower or the SMB3 powerups imo, they lead into a bit more variety when you replay the game. Not that they're all created equally though :P

[daiko]

mendel palace/quinty without a doubt! it's this really fun arcade-y level-based game where you flip floor tiles to try and launch these enemies into walls. the floor tiles have powerups and stuff and the enemies get some pretty devious abilities the further into the game you get. it's also the first game ever developed by a little known game development studio called Game Freak

it's crazy fun. i really like NES games that feel like arcade holdovers, but maybe it's just me liking score-based games in general

[Bakartridge]

I have a lot of NES games I love but for some reason can't really name what would be my absolute "favorite", but just a few games off the top of my head that I constantly replay would be Mega Man 6, Shatterhand, River City Ransom (and Super Dodge Ball), and Super C.