The game engine developed for Quake, the Quake engine, popularized several major advances in the first-person shooter genre: polygonal models instead of prerendered sprites; full 3D level design instead of a 2.5D map; prerendered lightmaps; and allowing end users to partially program the game (in this case with QuakeC), which popularized fan-created modifications (mods).
The release of Quake marks the end of the classic lineup at id Software. Due to conflicts with game design and ideas, animosity grew during development that majority of the staff resigned from id after the game's release including Romero, Abrash, Shawn Green, Jay Wilbur, Petersen and Mike Wilson.[30] Petersen claimed in July 2021 that the lack of a team leader was the cause of it all. He volunteered to take lead as he had five years of experience as project manager in MicroProse, but he was turned down by Carmack.[31]
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Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles was a smash phenomenon in the late 1980s. Naturally, it was only a matter of time before a videogame followed the television show and toys. Developed by Konami and published by its subsidiary Ultra (a ghost publisher created only so that Konami could publish more games per year than Nintendo allowed), TMNT proved to be a fun, challenging game with crisp graphics and compelling gameplay. The great thing about TMNT was its ability to let gamers use all four Ninja Turtles at will, even though it was only a one-player action game. It also had multiple fields-of-view, from top-down navigation to side-scrolling sequences, the perspectives were mixed up considerably at a time when games were usually from one outlook only. Unfortunately, this game didn't satisfy everyone. Many gamers wanted a port of Konami's arcade beat-'em-up of the same name instead, but had to wait until 1991, when a port of the arcade classic came to the NES under the TMNT 2 moniker.
Mega Man is one of the few franchises on the NES that made it to four games. The fourth game in the franchise had little to offer fans that was different, other than a new cast of interesting Robot Masters, a new character (Eddie) and a new ability for Mega Man to exploit (charging your arm cannon). But when something isn't broken, you shouldn't attempt to fix it, and Capcom released what was in essence the same experience from the three earlier titles in the series. And guess what? No one complained. What was most interesting about Mega Man 4 was its ability to tell a deeper story than what was told in the past three iterations in the series. Capcom seemed to remove Mega Man's classic foil, Dr. Wily, in lieu of a new creator of evil robots, Dr. Cossack. But when it's revealed that Wily is indeed behind Cossack's deeds, Mega Man is forced to trek through not one end castle, but two, a trend that is kept up in Mega Man 5 and 6 as well.
Little Samson arrived at the tail-end of the NES era, when most gamers had moved on to newer, although not necessarily better, consoles. While it clearly adopted its non-linear level select structure from Mega Man, the similarities end there. In Little Samson you play as one of four different characters: a mouse, a robot, a dragon and a boring ol' human boy. Each character has its own powers and limitations, for instance the mouse makes up for its measly health meter with its ability to cling to ceilings and walls. Little Samson is one of the most technically impressive NES titles, featuring eye candy like rotating character sprites and colossal bosses in what was ultimately a futile effort to try and entice 16-bit-smitten gamers back to their NES. The atypical confluence of high quality and low sales of Little Samson ultimately resulted in it being one of the most sought after cartridges for collectors today.
Featuring a half-and-half game design that blends two distinct types of gameplay into one excellent whole, The Guardian Legend is one of the most influential games in the history of the gaming industry. You play as The Guardian, a female cyborg warrior tasked with preventing Earth's impending destruction via a collision with a rogue alien world, Naju. The Guardian must thwart the planet's demise by setting off Naju's self-destruct sequence before it reaches Earth. Gameplay is balanced between controlling The Guardian in humanoid form during overhead exploration and shooting sequences and faster-paced forced-scrolling shooter sequences where she transforms into a fighter jet and blasts, and among other things, gigantic robotic alien crustacean creatures. The Guardian Legend's developers went on to craft several more classic shooters on platforms beyond the NES, and modern game makers like the creators of Sigma Star Saga at WayForward Technologies continue to laud the game for its innovations in genre-blending.
Out of all of the games on the list, Journey to Silius might have one of the most interesting histories. Created by Sunsoft, which was at the top of its game in the late 1980s with classic release after classic release, Journey to Silius was originally supposed to be a licensed Terminator game. Evidence of this is all over the place, from the enemies to some of the music. But when Sunsoft had the license stripped at the last minute, it made due with what it had, and with limited editing, Journey to Silius was released. Thankfully, Sunsoft didn't throw this game into the dumpster after losing the Terminator license, because Journey to Silius is one of those seldom-played but everyone-should-play-it NES gems. Its fast-paced 2D action style made it a game preferred by those with quick reflexes, and its arsenal of weaponry, which can be chosen from a Mega Man-like menu, gave the gameplay variety, with certain weapons working best against certain enemies and bosses. Journey to Silius wasn't experienced by many gamers in its time, but it has more than earned its place on our Top 100 for its smooth gameplay alone.
The original Battletoads was definitely awesome, but I seemed to favor the design that paired up those TMNT-ripoff characters with the classic brawler characters. This game was much tighter in control and actually gave a better sense of accomplishment to the player.
After releasing several games for the Atari 2600 and other computer-based consoles, famed Pitfall! programmer and designer David Crane abandoned his traditional Activision backing, formed Absolute Entertainment, and went on to create what has become known as one of the NES catalog's quirkiest games, A Boy and His Blob: Trouble in Blobolonia. What at first appeared to be an awkward platformer quickly revealed itself to be a true test of gaming mettle. The nameless Boy and his pet Blob would overcome obstacles, defeat enemies and progress through the game by way of using special Jellybeans that would allow the Blob to become different objects and perform different feats. Feeding the Blob flavored jellybeans from apple to vanilla caused the Blob to transform into everything from a car jack to an umbrella. The Boy was virtually helpless without his Blob and his stash of flavored Jellybeans, making this title an interesting mix of action-adventure and puzzle gameplay.
Qix is one of the finest examples of the NES's prowess at emulating arcade classics. Although the NES had trouble tackling some of its arcade contemporaries, games like 1981's Qix were a perfect match for its capabilities. While Qix was never lauded for its graphical flair, the NES got not only the look but the mechanics of this strange geometric puzzler down perfectly. In Qix, the titular entity bounds randomly about the playing field while the player attempts to gain ground by drawing boundaries with a stylus of sorts. Complete a shape and the area is yours. If the Qix interrupts your line mid-stroke, you are destroyed. There is an art to snagging territory, and players eventually must learn how to manipulate the irrepressible Qix itself. Qix for NES is the definitive home version due to its spot-on emulation and availability, although it was also resurrected on various PC platforms and Nintendo even published a GameBoy version featuring characters from the Mario pantheon.
Though the company's probably best known for its stint as a Nintendo second-party developer in the SNES and N64 eras when it produced the Donkey Kong Country series, Killer Instinct, Banjo-Kazooie and Conker's Bad Fur Day, there was an earlier age when Rare was making the kinds of games that made Nintendo take notice to begin with, with games like Cobra Triangle. This boat-based action/racing design was based on the engine the studio had developed for the classic R.C. Pro-Am, and cast players as the captains of a high-speed, heavily-armored attack ship cutting through tropical waters to take on sharks, rival watercrafts and giant sea serpents. The Cobra Triangle gunship was a versatile vessel, and the power-ups it could obtain were what made this one a blast to play. You could upgrade its engine, increase the rate of fire of its bullets, increase the number of its bullets, give it the power to fire secondary missiles and even wrap it in a force field. It's like someone took the Gradius series' Vic Viper and transformed it from a spaceship into a jet ski. Totally killer!
What an unsung classic this, and the Game Boy version, is. Half RPG, half Ghosts & Goblins-inspired gameplay Gargoyle's Quest is another hard to beat, yet totally memorable experience. This is another one that really paved the way for others too. Demon's Crest, perhaps one of the biggest under-selling games of all time compared to its quality, wouldn't have been possible without cutting its teeth on the NES and classic Game Boy. Amazingly enough, this game still holds up too.
By the time Mega Man 6 hit the NES, the console was virtually dead. The top-loading NES replaced the classic system, the Super Nintendo was over two years old, and the 16-bit battle was waging all around it in full force. Capcom considered the NES obsolete at this point and refused to publish the game in the United States. That's where Nintendo stepped in and published the game itself for a spring 1994 release. Mega Man 6 is considered by many to be the last worthwhile NES release in the catalog, and though that's not saying much when looking at the title's contemporaries, Mega Man 6 is still as good as it gets in many respects. The new Rush Adaptors combined Mega Man with his robotic dog into one unit for the first time, and yes, Dr. Wily is again behind the robotic destruction coursing through the game, this time masquerading as the ill-disguised Mr. X. And while all Robot Masters since Mega Man 2 have been designed by the Japanese, Mega Man 6 totes a few created by North Americans. 2ff7e9595c
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