My Favorite NES Games: Facebook posts expanded

Before you get all huffy and puffy about me not having a certain game or franchise on the list, remember a few things. These were my favorite games while I had the NES as my main gaming machine.

Number 5: Excite Bike and why no Ninja Gaiden

I loved Excite Bike. You could put the game in and be playing in seconds. You had to write down your best times because there was no real way to save your times, but I did not care really. Then, when no one was around to play with you, you could create your own track. Its like Little Big Planet before there was Little Big Planet. Great stuff.

Ninja Gaiden is not on here because of something we call "The 5 O'clock News". Once we all got home from school, we had only a little amount of time to play before the news came on. Just about enough time for us to get to the snow level or the mines level of Ninja Gaiden and then have to turn off the game. No save feature and no way to skip levels that we already mastered...

Number 4: Mike Tyson's Punch Out and "I thought you loved Metroid"

Punch Out was the game the teens and adults whipped out once the kids got their fill of Mario. In a circle they would play round after round, switching off the controller in between fights, and hollering out the ways to beat certain fighters as they went. It was good times. F' Mr. Dream. How come the white man is always trying to bring the black man down?

I do love Metroid. Metroid though was always intimidating for me as a kid. I only saw fragments of it while at people's houses, and it seemed that if Metroid was in the box, THEY were playing it... not me. I only got to play it at night... in the dark. Do you know how earie metroid music is and how lonely that game feels at night? Anyway, I only recently played through it the "old school" way. While its a favorite now... it wasn't back in the day.

Number 3: Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles 2 and Why is there no Castlevania?

The first ninja turtle game was absolute trash. I was just the correct age for the Ninja Turtle craze when it hit. I saw the movies, I had the figures, I watched the cartoons like they were oxygen. I had played the Arcade game at Walmart every time I went. When I found there was a Ninja Turtle game and rented it as one of the first games I ever rented, my mind did somersaults trying to justify what I was seeing. "Maybe when I go to a burning building it will change to the game I know" and such stupid things, but it was the only way I could keep my sanity at the disappointment that was Turtles 1. Turtles II fixed all of that once I had come to grips with Turtles 1 just being horrible. I played that game non-stop for years.

Castlevania is a favorite series of mine. I only ever had part one, and it was always part 2 that I wanted. I barrowed part 3 for a while from a friend, but still it was not part 2. I know now that part 2 wasn't particularly well liked, but it seemed like the best idea ever to me. Symphony of the Night was probably the closest thing to what I had in my head as a kid as to what Castlevania 2 would be. Anyways, I was never happy with part 1 because it only reminded me I did not have part 3. So no Castlevania in the top 5.

Number 2: Dragon Warrior and No Final Fantasy.

Dragon Warrior is like the Chicken and the Egg with me. There was an event that really truly did change my life. Before then I hardly read, I couldn't stand being at school, and I certainly didn't care about my schoolwork. That's when I found Dragon Warrior and King Arthur. King Arthur was in a set of encyclopedias and I liked it so much my teach came to my home and gave me my own King Arthur book(I still have it). Dragon Warrior was owned by a couple of people and I had played it a bit before(I thought Chain Mail was mail you could send to the princess from other towns). I got it from my friend Roger when he got it for free when he subscribed to Nintendo Power magazine. All the posters and maps, all the artwork inside the book, it was amazing. I needed all that stuff because the game looked horrible lol. My first RPG I ever beat, I loved that game.

My first Final Fantasy was Final Fantasy 2(4) for the SNES. We have this location in my town called "old walmart" where the Walmart used to be. One of the last thing I got from Old Walmart was Final Fantasy. For some reason they had a very large display of unopened boxes of old NES games. My sister Christy bought it for me, and by then I knew exactly what it was. The game rocks. I still have it in very good condition. But by then the SNES was out so its not on my list because the NES's time had passed by then.

Number 1 Mario 3 and Where the hell is Zelda

I played Mario 3 to death. I actually got 2 and 3 at the same time, and 2 hardly got played. I loaned it out to Eric, who promptly dropped it in the mud. 3, however, got babied. I swear there were a couple of years there where I played Mario 3 at least once a day. The controls are spot on, the graphics are top notch(Mario did a freakin' flip when he had a star), and its every bit as fun as it used to be.

Zelda is not on my list even though I played much of Zelda when I was younger. I feel like a poser if I claim I liked Zelda a ton when I was younger because EVERYONE that claims to be a geek today uses Zelda as their name drop. Which is totally fine, but I'm not going to lie, I was a Dragon Warrior fan. That was my Zelda, I always wished Zelda was more like Dragon Warrior. I'm just being honest. Now, next generation, Link to the Past. I could draw that world and every dungeon in my sleep. I could almost get a Link to the Past tattoo and not feel like a poser. I'd get one of the boy on the stump playing his flute stuck in dark world.

So, that's my 5 favorite NES games during the NES era. Most of the things I listed after my favorites would have been in a top 10 and certainly in a top 20. But I chose 5 because there are 5 days in a week and this was on Facebook first.