The original Nintendo Entertainment System is famous for being the gaming system which single handedly saved console gaming. Before the release of the NES, video game sales were tanking and nearly everyone was writing the industry off as a fad which had run its course.
The NES changed all of that, delivering better gameplay, audio, and visuals than anyone had ever seen before in the medium. Stacked with over a hundred classic titles, it remains one of my favorite video game systems of all time because of its pick up and play simplicity.
Now without further adieu, these are the 10 best NES games of all time.
10 – Maniac Mansion
Starting off the best NES games list at number 10, Maniac Mansion was well ahead of its time and helped pave the way for the popular point and click adventure gaming genre which LucasArts Games would find success with in the early to mid 90’s.
That plot is simple enough: Dave’s girlfriend has been kidnapped so he recruits a few of his high school friends to help get her back.

The game was conceived in large part by Ron Gilbert who would subsequently become well known for helming the first couple Monkey Island games. Gilbert’s whacky sense of humor is on full display as players contend with a mad scientist in Dr. Fred and his family, a couple tenticle henchmen, and an evil meteor which has been mind controlling Dr. Fred in an effort to take over the world.
The game had a cool eery feel to it, beautifully colorful and distinctive graphics, and a pumping and unique soundtrack for each character to reflect their personalities.
It was also one of the first games to pioneer a sense of real time gaming as certain events in the game would only occur as time elapsed.
Anyone who played this game as a kid will remember that feeling of dread knowing they had a finite amount of time to get out of the kitchen before Ed would come down for a snack.
Besides this being a wonderfully unique game for the NES and one of my favorites of all time, it holds a special place on this channel as being the most often cited game which introduced folks to Let’s Play With Brigands.
9 – Bionic Commando
Our first Capcom title on the best NES games list, Bionic Commando is an example of a game with a great hook, no pun intended.

You play as a commando codenamed “Ladd” who has been charged with the task to locate and rescue the greatest soldier of all time who has been lazily been named “Super Joe”.
What sets Bionic Commando apart is the gameplay style. In a rarity for platform games, this is one of the few where you can’t actually jump.
Instead you’ve got a grapling hook to swing over gaps and reach otherwise inaccessible areas. The gameplay thrives on the player’s ability to swing over obstacles and enemies and really made this game unique.
It also offered a semi-non linear approach as occasionally you could choose which order you went to certain areas. You could stop off at “neutral” zones to collect powerups and information, as well, until you couldn’t help yourself and you’d inevitably blast an enemy officer in the face just for getting a bit salty with you, or hell, was just minding their own business.
As you progress in the game, your equipment is upgradeable as you pick up better and better weapons. You can also pick and choose which equipment you take into battle, forcing you to make the all important choice between health recovery or iron boots (hint, ALWAYS take the health recovery).
And finally, like most entrants on this list, it has a great soundtrack, a common theme amongst a lot of the Capcom developed NES titles of this era.
Oh, and it’s also the only game on this list in which you can kill Hitler. Sure, they renamed him “Mr. Badd” due to anti-Nazi censorships in western markets… but yeah… you fuckin kill Hitler in this game. (Badd and Ladd… is there something there?… probably not)
8 – Blaster Master
If you are looking for a versatile gameplay experience for the NES, look no further than Blaster Master from Sun Soft. This is the story of a boy whose pet frog escapes, eats some toxic waste, grows 100 times its size, escapes, and presumably begins destroying the world. (Ah that old chestnut). In giving chase, the boy finds an awesome tricked out tank which just happened to be parked in a pit just by his house.

What makes Blaster Master unique is that it offers two completely different styles of gameplay and visuals. There’s the standard two dimensional side scroller while controlling or getting out of the tank, but there’s also a top down third person shooter when the character goes into inside and boss areas.
The tank as well as your character continue to develop as they pick up power ups to manage the increasing difficulty of the 8 levels, and the game boasts a huge somewhat non-linear world with plenty of areas which are only accessible once certain powerups have been attained.
Graphically it’s colorful as well as far fun to pick up and play in both modes and it boasts a great soundtrack for each world to boot. It’s also a decently and time consuming outing, so this one will keep you busy longer than most titles for the NES.
7 – Double Dragon
At number 7 of this best NES games list Double Dragon for the NES was a tweak on the arcade and PC version of the same game, and outside of a lack of simultaneous co-op for the main game, it translated beautifully.

The original beat em’ up, Double Dragon saw the adventures of Billy and Jimmy, two world class martial arts instructors, fighting through four stages to rescue their girlfriend Marian… wait… THEIR girlfriend? But yeah, a lot of girlfriends went missing in the 80’s and 90’s in the world of gaming, bit of an epidemic.
The fighting system grows increasingly complex and more satisfying the more your character levels up from earning points earned through, well, fighting. It made for a great reward system which the developers abandoned by the time the sequel rolled around.
With a decent variety of enemies, moves, and weapons to pick up and use (and inexplicably lose when the original owner dies), the gameplay keeps you engaged throughout. It’s also decently challenging without being impossible, making it a fun game to pick up and knock out in 20 minutes time.
And while its sequels provided more co-op value in letting you actually fight together on screen at the same time (that is, outside that is of the sometimes awkward, sometimes fun Street Fighter precursor mode), the replay value and beat em’ up genre blazing status of this game put it on the top 10 list for greatest NES games of all time.
6 – StarTropics
Remember before sequels were a thing, at least in the video game world? Actually forget about sequels and let’s go one step further to back when the video game world was as uncharted as the old Wild West, and developers had to come up with great concepts from scratch rather than just copy and pasting a formula which had already proven successful. Just a second while I get down off this soap box… StarTropics is a prime example of an original concept which worked.

You play as Mike, the high school baseball pitching phenom who comes to visit his scientist uncle on a set of remote islands only to discover upon arrival that he’s gone AWOL. Armed with nothing but a yoyo which proves deadly when combined with Mike’s pitching prowess, Mike fights through dozens of dungeons and solves a number of puzzles to track down his missing uncle.
StarTropics features both an overworld where you talk to the locals to get information as well as a number of dungeons filled with dangerous enemies, traps, and memorable boss fights.
It’s a mixture of Final Fantasy, Indiana Jones (Mike’s Uncle is named Dr. Jones for pete’s sake), and unique gameplay set in an exotic locale. And, like most original titles from Nintendo at the time, it was a creative and outside the box bunch of fun. As an example, the game was packaged with a physical letter which required the player to dip it in water to reveal a necessary code (747) at a certain point in the game. Sure, anyone renting the game was screwed, but who does that kind of thing anymore?!
The game had a somewhat forgettable sequel years later which deviated too much from the original formula to make near as big a splash (and yes, I admit the obvious hypocrisy of that statement when I LITERALLY just got done praising the original for its originality), but the original StarTropics stands as one of the best games for the Nintendo Entertainment System and one which is well overdo for some kind of revisit on this or future gen Nintendo systems.
5 – Mega Man 2
Speaking of sequels (this is one of two on this best NES games list)… well before there was a Mega Man for virtually every day of the calendar year (I’m pretty sure they just finished another one as I’m completing this sentence) there was Mega Man 1. It was fine, quite presentable actually, but really the only notable thing about Mega Man 1 is that it sold well enough to warrant making a sequel.

Mega Man 2 is the game which established this behemoth of a franchise as a platform gaming staple for years… and years… and years to come. Capcom did their market research in advance of Mega Man 2. They concluded that kids liked 8 evil robots more than 6. They also found that kids had no issues with slightly tweaked iterations of the same robots. Sadly they wouldn’t discover that kids like dogs until Mega Man 3, but Mega Man 2 did allow for a few extra powerups to help the titular hero get around.
The robots, level designs, and Wily Stage bosses were all incredibly memorable (that giant fire breathing mechanical dragon with just three tiny platforms to stand on, for example).
The music is also some of the best of the series, which technically makes it some of the best video game music of all time. I mean Yuukichan’s Papa was really on his game. Bubble Man remains a personal favorite of mine, and if you haven’t checked it out, give “The Minibosses’” “Mega Man 2” a listen as they put together a rock version medley of most of the score from this game.
In the interest of full disclosure, I personally give Mega Man 3 the slight edge as being my pick as the high water mark of the franchise, but I can give credit where credit is due and recognize that for most people, Mega Man 2 is the sweet spot of this franchise. But seriously Mega Man, one of these days when you have the thousandth chance to do it, just shoot Wiley in the face when he’s inevitably cowering in front of you after thwarting his scheme’s AGAIN. And maybe think about revoking his medical license while you’re at it.
4 – Final Fantasy
At number 4 on the best NES games of all time countdown, the original Final Fantasy was director Hironobu Sakaguchi’s final attempt at gaming. The story goes is he was planning on ditching making games altogether and transitioning into a more conventional career if Final Fantasy didn’t hit (hence the clever name). I always liked that story, but sweet and inspirational backstories aside, the original Final Fantasy kick started one of the greatest series in video game history, full stop. It’s a series which contains my single favorite game of all time in Final Fantasy 7, but let’s not get ahead of ourselves.

If you played Final Fantasy in the late 80’s or early 90’s, you know how revolutionary it was for its day. It was the first really great video role playing game, combining a great story, a customizable party/character selection, and a beautiful soundtrack from Nobueo Uematzu.
I rented this game on a lot of weekends as a young kid in the early 90’s, always hoping that the game hadn’t been rented out during the week so that my party would remain intact because there was only one save file which came with it.
That said, I never minded when it would invariably be written over because it meant I got to start fresh again, choosing and naming my party from the ground up which was always half the fun. Do I go with a ninja or a thief? Do I go with a dedicated black and white magic, or do I try to save party space by choosing the red mage who can do a bit of both, albeit not as well?
The macro story was pretty basic, just four heroes working together to defeat evil and save the world. But along the way you encountered many interesting places, people, and enemies. I alluded to the customization options. While it was limited by today’s standards, at the time the level of depth was unheard of, even if that just meant choosing from a vast array of weapons, armor, and spells.
There was a fair bit of grinding associated with it like with many RPGs, but admittedly if you were new to and just getting into the genre (and were open to it), it just invested you that much more in your game. Which again, maybe meant this title wasn’t perfect for rentals at the time, but it still stands as one of the greats of the NES and the game which popularized the genre and kickstarted one of the greatest franchises of all time.
3 – Metroid
Metroid is one of those games for the NES that just bewilders me. This game came out in 1986. Think about what we had in 1986: Alf, The Pet Shop Boys, Reagan, etc.

… and we had Metroid. This game was SPRAWLING. I mean hours and hours to complete and find everything sprawling. Obviously it’s all relative on the heels of Final Fantasy in this countdown, a game which took over 20 hours, even if you managed it without much grinding.
You play as Samus Aran, a well reverred bounty hunter charged by the Galactic Federation to infiltrate Planet Zebes and destroy the Space Pirates, what are basically space terrorists who are using the titular “metroids” as weapons in an effort to take over the universe.
Samus eventually reaches the core of the planet to take on Mother Brain itself in one of the more memorable bosses for the NES.
This game was also a big deal because gamers discovered only at the end (if they beat it within a certain time frame) that the protagonist they had been playing as the entire game, Samus, was a woman (very progressive of you Nintendo, nice.) The developers definitely took some cues from Ridley Scott’s “Alien” in more than just the protagonist.
The Metroid series has been full of great titles over the years, and this is the one that kicked it all off, earning it’s place on this best NES games list.
2 – Zelda 1
Can I repeat what I just said about games that blow me away for their day? Again, this game came out in (early) 1986.
Think about some of the other games coming out in 1986: Zanac, Chubby Cherub, and Circus Charlie.

Those games might be considered okay if the original Legend of Zelda hadn’t come out at the same time and ruined the curve for everyone. You play as Link and I wish I could tell you this is the last game on this list in which the main quest involves saving a woman… but I can’t. Link must travel to 8 underground dungeons and defeat countless enemies in order to collect and piece back together pieces of the triforce and take on Ganon in the end.
It was the first game of its kind in establishing the open world, non linear gameplay model which is still wildly popular today. For its day, the world was huge. It takes a good 10 minutes to get from one side of the map to the other.
And throughout the world were dozens of hidden treasures and shops which only the tenacious gameplayers (or those with an internet connection or friend in the know) could find. Throughout the game were several items designed to give Link more of a fighting chance as well as discover and access subsequent areas of the game.
This game took hours to beat, and even more if you wanted to do everything, namely the infamous “second quest” where all the locations were swapped and all the dungeons were shaped like letters of the alphabet.
The first Legend of Zelda is a perfect example of a video game which proved what the medium was capable of after years of skeptivity and, let’s be honest, could have easily could have been swapped out with my number 1 pick for the best NES games of all time.
It’s hard to argue with Super Mario 3. My older brother and I somehow scrounged together enough money to buy it the day it came out which is notable because I believe it was the first video game of its day to hit $50. I vaguely remember buying it from a now defunct KB Toys and playing the hell out of it (my favorite expression as a little kid).

My mom had just taken my brother and I to see “The Wizard”, one of the first movies I remember seeing and what was basically a huge ad campaign for Super Mario 3. I didn’t care, though; I was just in aw that there was a movie about the only thing I cared about for the first ten or so years of my life in Nintendo games. In fact I think my brother and I stopped off at KB Toys to reserve a copy immediately following the movie. We had our eyes on it regardless; we were both Nintendo devotees and our allegiance was strong in the late 80’s/early 90’s.
As great as Mario 2 was, the Nintendo opted to return to the design style of the game which put them on the map years earlier in the original Mario. In many ways, Mario 3 was the sequel that North America at least never got to the original Mario, and it got that treatment in every way possible.
This meant more varied worlds, more levels overall, more powerups, more enemies, more story… well okay, the same story technically. I mean, we are still working to rescue the Princess (as an aside, I guarantee you that this is THE LAST game on this list where you rescue a princess).
I mentioned the different worlds; Mario 3 saw the titular hero travel from deserts to oceans to ice to sky to… pipe. And I can’t finish this video without mentioned most everybody’s favorite, giant land.
Each one had a great overworld soundtrack to fit its theme along with interesting levels which presented a decent challenge for Mario and Luigi.
As a nice bonus, they even threw in the original Mario Bros. game within the Super Mario 3 game if you were playing with a friend and clicked on their space while it was your turn.
There were tons of powerups which I alluded to earlier, some of which only appeared in the game once or twice and you could actually miss if you weren’t looking for it.
Mario 3 is number one on this best NES games of all time countdown, but it truly is one of the greatest games of all time, NES or otherwise. Plus it’s great if you want to make an afternoon/evening out of playing it through in full or if you just want to grab a couple warp whistles and head straight for dark land you can knock it out an a half an hour.
As an aside, can we talk about how bullshit it was that Jimmy, despite having never played or even heard of Super Mario Brothers 3, knew exactly where to kneel down and for how long to get the first warp whistle? Oh right, he was the wizard…
All right, there you have it, my picks for the top 10 best NES games of all time. Why not let me know exactly how wrong I am by leaving a comment? And make sure to subscribe to Let’s Play With Brigands for more top 10 lists, let’s plays, live streaming, and fun fun times.