NES What are your favorite "obscure" NES games?

[BjornSmallpeen]

A lot of people might point to Metroid or Zelda or something that became extremely popular and grew into itself in the next generation as the best games, but in a lot of cases I don't think that's really so. The best ones are weird random things that don't have a lasting legacy (in terms of a growing franchise) but were unexpectly gems.

Master Blaster and Crystallis are probably my favorites.

I know that very little will be obscure to the type of people that use a forum like this but you can imagine what I mean.

 

[SeventhSon]

Kickle Cubicle
Willow
The Battle of Olympus
Super Dodge Ball
Jackal

 

[Dyne]

Master Blaster and Crystallis are probably my favorites.

I know that very little will be obscure to the type of people that use a forum like this but you can imagine what I mean.

Yeah I personally don't think of Blaster Master as obscure but I guess could be considered subjective.

Kickle Cubicle
Willow
The Battle of Olympus
Super Dodge Ball
Jackal

I love Jackal!

 

[RanmyakuIchi's icon RanmyakuIchi RanmyakuIchi]

Little Samson and The Guardian Legend are two I really like.
Holy Diver is another, but it's difficulty might turn some people off.
Everyone knows NES Batman, but I feel like the sequel Return of the Joker deserves more love.
Maybe not the most obscure, but I think Mighty Final Fight is a super underrated Beat Em Up too.

 

[Dyne]

An obscure one I like is Conflict.
Its a turn based strategy game. We used to rent it all the time because my dad really liked it.

 

[BjornSmallpeen]

I personally don't think of Blaster Master as obscure

yeah we live in an age of post-obscurity as well, where anyone can know every detail of every niche hobby with minimal effort. But there were lots of games I didn't know about or have until I was an adult with an emulation machine, and I find that very rarely are the first entries to the most popular franchises the best games of this console is really what I meant.

 

[Tonberry]

Does Shatterhand still count?
If so I pick Shatterhand, love that shit.

 

[thumbsdown]

I don't really think they're obscure, but my favs are prolly Banana Prince and Mitsume Ga Tooru (there's way more for sure, but those are special)

Post automatically merged: Friday at 11:42 PM

I also love this chinese bootleg which is a backport of Link's Awakening, but not really lmao (not in the Repo, you can find it on The Archive.org): https://bootleggames.fandom.com/wiki/Feng_Yin_Dao

 

[RanmyakuIchi's icon RanmyakuIchi RanmyakuIchi]

yeah we live in an age of post-obscurity as well, where anyone can know every detail of every niche hobby with minimal effort. But there were lots of games I didn't know about or have until I was an adult with an emulation machine, and I find that very rarely are the first entries to the most popular franchises the best games of this console is really what I meant.

Yeah, it's hard to list truly obscure games now that the NES and other console libraries are so well known and documented online. I take the question myself more to mean "good games that need more love"

 

[DrunkGecko]

felix the cat

 

[RanmyakuIchi's icon RanmyakuIchi RanmyakuIchi]

felix the cat

I know it's not the same game but...

HET

 

[DrunkGecko]

I know it's not the same game but...

HET

that version is fun to speedrun

 

[Zerpina]

Monster Party...

I have kind of a love/hate relationship with it. I love how weird it actually is, even for obscure Japanese to English NES games, and I hate how cheap it is. But that's standard fare for NES games

 

[Luxfin]

I love but I suck at it.

 

[χKai]

Obscure you say

 

[Nelson2001 Nelson2001]

Possibly Little Samson (1992) because he is very similar to Rockman/Mega Man and that is reflected in its game system and also apart from playing with Little Samson also play with the Dragon, Golem and Mouse that will help you a lot throughout the stages that come later.

 

[qw90700]

"Obscure" doesn't matter because the game may be very popular but you may never have heard it so here have my favourite NES games list instead lol:

Your favorite NES/Famicom game

What is your favorite NES/Famicom game? my favorites are:

retrogametalk.com

 

[otogirisou]

splatterworld

 

[BjornSmallpeen]

Cool, looks like I have some stuff to try out. I'll report back after I get a chance to try some.

edit:

Loved Kickle Cubicle, very addictive.
Jackal is nice, although feels like I want to be able to fire regular gun in all directions.
The Battle of Olympus is ... not my type of game. I could maybe have more patience for a game likle that if the controls felt good.

 

[Mr. SyS]

Bootleg ports once modders get a hold of them. Ports like Sonic 1, Donkey Kong Country, Pokemon Yellow, and Super Mario World.

 

[BjornSmallpeen]

I tried Willow. I want to like games like this but I just don't have the patience for it. It should just start you off with the sword and skip the whole thing where you have to walk through town. Every person you have to talk to does the same repetitive sequence to initiate the conversation and has the same audio, and then you're just mashing as hard as you can to make the text go and it won't go. Not for me.

 

[SeventhSon]

I tried Willow. I want to like games like this but I just don't have the patience for it. It should just start you off with the sword and skip the whole thing where you have to walk through town. Every person you have to talk to does the same repetitive sequence to initiate the conversation and has the same audio, and then you're just mashing as hard as you can to make the text go and it won't go. Not for me.

When I played Willow, I drew a map of the entire game on graph paper.

 

[Ikagura Ikagura]

Could that one qualifies as obscure?

 

[TamagotchiTamaHero24's icon TamagotchiTamaHero24 TamagotchiTamaHero24]

I don’t have much to contribute here, but I can vouch for the Bonk’s Adventure port to the NES! It’s really good, and I even liked my time with it more than PC Genjin. Both I played via emulation. Made officially by Hudson, obviously.

Another gem seems to be Dragon Buster II. It’s a Famicom exclusive (so it seems) and is an overhead dungeon crawler where you have arrows that ricochet off diagonal walls, similar to the laser ability in Kirby’s Adventure. Using just this to start, you explore vast dungeons for treasure and loot. It’s a sequel to the Dragon Buster arcade game, which itself is fun, but that’s more a side scrolling action game with RPG elements. That also got a Famicom port. Both of these games come from Namco under their Namcot home label.

 

[NeonKnights]

'Dragon Fighter" ドラゴンファイター
I had this in my childhood NES cartridge library. It was genuinely amazing with great gameplay and superb BGM. It was one of my favorites back then, though as a kid I could never get past the water level. I never knew anyone else who had this and never heard anyone talking about it. Now it's worth more than it's weight in gold probably.