The Nintendo Entertainment System is one of the most important releases in the history of the video gaming industry. Atari sparked a home console boom with its Atari 2600 that featured interchangeable cartridges and let consumers bring the fun of arcades into the comfort of their homes. The Atari 2600 had many great games such as Pitfall! and Raiders of the Lost Ark, but it also had two games that almost destroyed the home console industry.
Those two games were Pac-Man and E.T the Extra-Terrestrial. Both sold extremely well, but are considered to be two of the worst games ever made. The awful arcade port and lackluster movie tie-in crashed the industry, causing consumers to return to the arcades.
Because of this, the NES was fighting an uphill before it even released. The console needed to do something special to win back consumers who felt betrayed by the aforementioned Atari 2600 games. The NES hit the ground running with its iconic launch title Super Mario Bros. and kept the momentum going with numerous other excellent games like Metroid and The Legend of Zelda. If it wasn’t for the NES’ many great games, including the ten on this list, the gaming industry wouldn’t be where it is today. Sales numbers are sourced from VGChartz.com
10 Excitebike (4.16 million)
Excitebike is the first entry in the Excite series that also featured games like Excite Truck for the Wii and Excitebike 64.
As the name suggests, Excitebike isn’t a game where players race on gentle, smooth plots of land. Racetracks are littered with obstacles like ramps, sand, and shallow water that players must either avoid or ride over. Commendably for its 1984 release, Excitebike has a Design Mode, where players can create and customize their own tracks.
9 Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles (4.17 million)
Konami’s Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles is one of the NES’ many side-scrolling action games inspired by arcade classics like Contra and Double Dragon. The four iconic turtles are all in the game and players switch between them in the pause menu. This leads to engaging, tactical gameplay as the four characters have separate health bars and weapons that vary in power, speed, and reach.
To say that the game had mixed reviews would be an understatement. Gamespot gave the game a 2.7 out of 10, criticizing its level design, whereas former gaming magazine Your Sinclair gave it an impressive 9 out of 10, praising the game’s visuals and stage variety.
8 Zelda II: The Adventure of Link (4.38 million)
Those that say Breath of the Wild is the least Zelda-like Zelda game probably haven’t played Zelda II: The Adventure of Link.
The Legend of Zelda series’ second installment is almost unrecognizable from its predecessor on the same system. The game has many features that weren’t used again in other Zelda games such as experience points, limited lives, and a heavy focus on platforming.
7 Dr. Mario (4.85 million)
Mario has had many spin-off games over the years. From Mario Kart to Mario Party, to Mario Strikers Charged. Undoubtedly one of his strangest ventures is when he ditched his plumbing career to become a doctor.
The puzzle game was similar to Tetris and almost surpassed the game in sales on the system. Dr. Mario’s successful sales and addictive gameplay led it to be re-released on many other Nintendo consoles over the years.
6 Tetris (5.58 million)
The classic block-building puzzle game came to the NES in 1989. It’s one of the most played and most recognizable video games ever made.
Atari’s founder Nolan Bushnell once said that “All the best games are easy to learn and difficult to master.” There are few games that exemplify this better than Infogrames’ Tetris. Nintendo is still profiting off of Tetris today, with the online multiplayer Switch game Tetris 99.
5 The Legend of Zelda (6.51 million)
The first entry into The Legend of Zelda series is one of the most revolutionary games ever made. It introduced players to the gameplay formula that is still used in the series today, of puzzle & action-adventure gameplay centered around completing dungeons.
Although they look vastly different to the naked eye, the latest Zelda game Breath of the Wild has many similarities to the first game. Predominantly the lack of hand-holding, allowing players to freely explore the game and complete quests & dungeons in any order that they choose.
4 Super Mario Bros. 2 (7.46 million)
Super Mario Bros. 2 is unsurprisingly one of three Super Mario Bros. games that appear in the top four.
Interestingly, the second Mario Bros. game wasn’t originally intended to be a Mario game at all. A game named Yume Kōjō: Doki Doki Panic released in Japan in 1987 that had a similar playstyle to Super Mario Bros. Nintendo was planning to release the game in North America, but were concerned that it would sell poorly. So, Nintendo made alterations to the game, turning it into Super Mario Bros. 2. The game was later released in Japan under the title Super Mario USA.
3 Super Mario Bros. 3 (17.28 million)
Despite initially releasing in 1988, Super Mario Bros. is still considered to be one of the best platformers ever made. The game perfected the gameplay mechanics that its predecessors had created and put players in some of the most well-designed side-scrolling levels in gaming history.
Super Mario Bros. 3 didn’t offer as much innovation as its predecessors, although it did give Mario a few new abilities. Such as sliding down poles, climbing up vines, and even the ability to fly.
2 Duck Hunt (28.31 million)
Sandwiched between two of the most iconic video games ever is Duck Hunt. The NES launch title is comparable to Wii Sports in the sense that it isn’t an amazing game, but was important to the sales of its system as it showed off the console’s hardware.
The game made use of the NES Zapper, an electronic gun accessory that lets players shoot targets on the screen. The game’s high sales are due to Duck Hunt being bundled in the Nintendo Action Set, along with the NES console, the Zapper, and Super Mario Bros.
1 Super Mario Bros. (40.24 million)
Super Mario Bros. tops this list in style, with over 10 million more copies sold than 2nd place and over 20 million more copies sold than 3rd. The game is one of the most important releases in the history of video gaming, as it showed consumers that home console games weren’t just poor imitations of arcade games, a belief that stemmed from Atari’s E.T the Extra-Terrestrial and Pac-Man.
Super Mario Bros. is still great fun to play today and is one of the most popular games in the speedrunning community.
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