20 NES games hold up. I ranked them. (Part 1 of 2)
The NES is a console everyone knows about, and many people love, but only a handful of its games are actually played and talked about. I'm not here to change that. For the most part, the popular games are the ones that stood the test of time. Since that's the case, though, I might as well rank the best ones.
#20 - Kirby's Adventure
Let's start with a hot take: I don't think most Kirby games before Return to Dream Land are very good.
They're well-made, don't get me wrong, and that's why Kirby's Adventure is on this list. It's a technical marvel on the NES, with lots of content to dig into if you're looking for a chill platformer to relax with.
The Kirby formula lacks what its own creator calls "game essence", though. That's how Masahiro Sakurai describes risk-and-reward dynamics. 2D Mario games have a ton of this. It's fun to blast through stages quickly by running, but this requires fast reaction times to pull off. You risk taking damage for the reward of extra satisfying movement and speedy progress. Even without the run button, jumping on or around enemies has "game essence" because you have to take a risk (engaging the obstacles) to be rewarded (making progress). Kirby does not work this way. You can run, but only awkwardly, and Kirby puffing up to fly when you jump kills any momentum you're building. Much of the time, the most effective way to clear an area is to fly over all the enemies instead of engaging with them.
Kirby's Adventure as a platformer feels designed to subvert "game essence" in the name of approachability. The market of the 90s needed games like that amidst lots of tough-as-nails competition, but that doesn't make it fun to revisit. Modern Kirby games have more depth to the copy abilities, or, by being 3D, the simple act of moving through levels. If you want to get into the series, play the modern games helmed by Shinya Kumazaki – everything from Kirby Super Star Ultra onwards. By comparison, Kirby's Adventure is fine. It's very well-crafted for what it is, but I'd much rather replay the 19 games ahead of it.
#19 - River City Ransom
I'm not a 8-bit beat-em-up guy. I'm not a 8-bit RPG guy. Those genres got better later, but almost no 8-bit games from them are compelling in the year 2026. Except for River City Ransom.
This is a beat-em-up open-world RPG best played with two people. As a beat-em-up, it's easily the best one on the NES. You start with a decent array of punches and kicks, and learn more moves as you progress. The game feel is really good considering it's a beat-em-up on the NES controller. You can even grab your co-op partner and throw them around. The gameplay is just deep enough to avoid getting stale during River City Ransom's several-hour runtime. This might be the best 8-bit co-op experience you can possibly have.
As an RPG, that beat-em-up gameplay lets River City Ransom avoid a lot of the early genre's problems. In theory, you can finish it without ever taking damage, so grinding is never truly mandatory. Combat encounters take place during exploration instead of interrupting it to go to a battle screen, letting players actually settle into a flow state. Since defeating enemies is quick, the game is short and replayable. It doesn't hurt that kids getting into street fights is a more unique setting than the generic heroic-fantasy-like-Dragon-Quest one most old RPGs use. In terms of absolute game design quality, this is easily the best 8-bit game with RPG elements.
#18 - Zelda II: The Adventure of Link
That said, Zelda II is my favorite. It's extremely flawed. It's a worse game than Kirby's Adventure and River City Ransom. I still really like it though.
Its platforming elements and sword combat ooze "game essence" in spades. Even leveling up is a risk-and-reward decision. The RPG elements make even the toughest obstacles feel surmountable (in the first 2/3 of the game. After that... good luck). The music is fantastic. The sword combat is the best on the NES. It's basically an 8-bit Soulslike. Oh, and it's an 8-bit RPG from 1987 where you can see encounters on the overworld map and try to avoid them if you choose. Why did it take 15 years for this to become standardized? You can even see how tough the encounter is likely to be because they have different enemy sprites. JRPGs. Come on. The first Final Fantasy wasn't even out yet.
Zelda II gets tougher, and worse, as it goes on. It throws more and more "bad 80s platformer" bullshit at you the more you play it. It's a childhood game I've finished exactly once, but I've revisited the early sections over and over. There's just something about that game feel that keeps me coming back. Again, it's basically an 8-bit Soulslike. The fact that this is #18 on the list and not #1 is an absolute crime.
#17 - Ninja Gaiden
Ninja Gaiden is a similar story to Zelda II. The level design? Complete garbage. There was no level designer. This is why truly well-designed 8-bit games were so few and far between, you were basically rolling the dice on whether the programmer had a good eye for it. No one actually beat this game without cheat codes. If someone says they beat it, they're lying. If you remember beating it, see a doctor. The last world comes from an alternate reality where Tecmo released a "Ninja Gaiden Maker" and some six-year old's enemy spam level got mixed in with our reality's version of the game. There's no way this level non-design would ever be published by a reputable studio in this day and age.
But the game feel? It's perfect. Perfect! Jumping around and slicing your foes in one hit without stopping really makes you feel like Ba... like a badass ninja. It's a game I come back to regularly, not to finish it, but just to play it at all. That's what playing all games used to feel like as a child. The point wasn't to "beat the game" and on some level complete a task. The point was the experience. Having such well-designed controls and such poorly-designed endgame levels forces me into that childlike mindset. Every now and then I just want to play Ninja Gaiden, not finish it. That the game innovated cinematic presentation with incredibly stylish cutscenes also doesn't hurt.
#16 - Castlevania
You know a brutally tough game that does have great level design, though? Castlevania! Meet this game on its own terms, and you'll put the lie to the myth that old games were only hard by being cheap and unfair. Simon Belmont's actions take commitment, but they feel good to pull off, and the levels are carefully crafted around his abilities. I wrote a whole post about this one. Suffice to say, it's great.
What holds Castlevania 1 back is its brevity and its difficulty spikes. You're only getting six levels, and to compensate, the bosses in the second half are insanely tough. They're essentially puzzles where you have to bring the right sub-weapon and apply it thoughtfully. Unfortunately, doing this takes reaction times that are just tight enough to be frustrating. Lose all your lives and you have to start the whole level over. It kills motivation to keep going, and this game is already short enough if you don't quit before the final stages. When it's good, it's really good. There's just not a whole lot there.
#15 - DuckTales
DuckTales is basically a Mega Man spinoff focused on finding treasure instead of new weapons, and jumping on enemies with a pogo stick instead of shooting them. It's got great level design, great music, and a lot of freedom afforded to the player. It can be as easy or hard as you want it to be, compared to other NES games, and I can't think of another level-based platformer on the console whose stages have this many secrets to find. It's not just great for a licensed game, it's a great game, period.
What holds DuckTales back is the slightly awkward button combination you need to hold to pogo jump (AKA one of the most basic actions the whole game is built around) and the lack of continues. I understand this game is super short, with only five levels, but I think a better solution would have been to only offer the game on hard difficulty and provide infinite continues. That's essentially what Mega Man does, and it fits the open-ended level structure DuckTales borrows from Mega Man. Still, that doesn't stop DuckTales from being one of the more low-key classics of the NES.
#14 - Mike Tyson's Punch-Out!!
Dodge. Attack. React. Few games are a purer expression of this gameplay than Punch-Out. In a way, it feels like the first Mario Sports game, despite Mario only being a referee. Instead of making an accurate boxing adaptation, Nintendo captured the essence of boxing through the language of video games and distilled it into a really fun experience.
Punch-Out!! is a boss rush. It does exactly one thing and does it really well. If you like one-on-one bouts where memorizing and mastering enemy patterns is the key to victory, Punch-Out!! is the game for you. Zelda II feels like a 2D Soulslike, as do the Castlevania games, but Punch-Out!! has the same appeal as Dark Souls III. If you like action or action-ish games for the boss fights, this is a game for you, whether you follow boxing or not.
#13 - Mega Man 5
Mega Man 5 is not the weakest Mega Man game. That's Mega Man 1, where Capcom tried their best but didn't really know how to design Mega Man levels yet. Mega Man 5 is more refined than that, but I've always found there to be something "off" about it.
The level concepts are phenomenal. Before Super Mario Galaxy, we had Gravity Man. Before Resident Evil 0 opened with a train level, we had Charge Man. Before Wave Race... was six months old, we had Wave Man. Capcom had no shortage of memorable ideas when developing this game. The problem is that the level designs, boss designs and weapon designs aren't very refined from a gameplay perspective. It doesn't come together the way Mega Man 2,3,4, and 6 do on the same console.
It feels like the developers needed an extra month to tweak and polish what they had, but Capcom laughed in their faces and said "Are you kidding? Akira Kitamura built Mega Man 2 in three months, in a cave, with a box of overtime slips!" then slapped Mega Man 5 on store shelves. It's a good game, but strong evidence that Mega Man games didn't actually need to release semi-annually. A crazy thought. I know. But tell that to Capcom in the 90s.
#12 - Contra
The Contra games are probably the best run-and-guns on the NES and SNES, and the first title is no slouch. Getting a Game Over in three hits is ridiculous, but that's what the Konami Code is for! It may have worked out for the best, because if you're making a game that kicks the player back to level 1 after taking nine hits, you'd better make sure the mechanics and level design are extremely tight. Konami knew this, and that's exactly what they did. Contra is one of those games that may not have a single standout part of it, but everything it does, it does extremely well.
Aside from a couple questionable mini-bosses, the levels are very tough, but very fair. The variety of sub-weapons keeps the moment-to-moment shooting engaging. The boss fights are some of the best on the NES. The player must always engage with both platforming and shooting, but there's an ebb and flow to which part matters more as the player moves through the excellently-paced levels. Having different gameplay in 2nd and 4th stages keeps the adventure from becoming monotonous. The art direction improves drastically on the arcade game by balancing cool action-hero "realism" with the bright, cartoony color palette of the NES. Oh, and the soundtrack kicks ass. Not that I needed to tell you that. Every soundtrack on this list kicks ass.
Contra is a game in a genre big companies don't make anymore, crafted by the industry-leading talent big companies have.
#11 - Mega Man 4
Mega Man 4 is often dismissed as "just more Mega Man", because it's the very moment the series became "just more Mega Man". Mega Man 4, 5, and 6 all play identically. However, if Mega Man 5 and 6 never existed, I think 4 would be remembered a lot more fondly. It's got great level design and theming. The special weapons are excellent. It introduced the charge shot, giving it a distinct identity compared to Mega Man 2 and 3. The Mega Man formula is great, and this game more than any other is "the Mega Man formula".
I could praise individual aspects of Mega Man 4 like I did for Contra, but most of that would also apply to every other Mega Man game. Mega Man has a better formula than Contra, but it's also more oversaturated than Contra. That makes it difficult to talk about individual games from Mega Man 4 onwards, but regardless, this game holds up. It's a little plain, but it's executed at the same high quality level you'd expect from a classic game in 1991. It's just that most of those games were on the SNES or Sega Genesis, and Mega Man 4 is on the NES.
This has been a long post, so that's it for Part 1. Coming soon: Part 2, the 10 best games on the NES.