What are your top 5 black box games?

[Bearcat-Doug | 5,104]

Since the other thread with the poll for the best launch title is a runaway vote for SMB, I thought it would make for some more interesting discussion top make it a top 5 and include all of the black box games. My top 5 would be:

1. Super Mario Bros.

2. Excitebike

3. Kung Fu

4. Donkey Kong

5. Pro Wrestling

[themisfit138 | 523]

Mario

Kung Fu

Wrecking Crew

Duck Hunt 

Excitebike

[mbd39 | 2,017]

It's crazy how much better SMB is than the other black box games.

 

Super Mario Bros.

Kung Fu

Pinball

Popeye

Donkey Kong Jr.

 

 

[BortLicensePlate | 652]

No balloon fight fans eh? I always enjoyed that one.

SMB is a given. 

Excite bike is fun in short bursts.

DK Jr and Mario Bros are fun but I prefer the arcade originals.

Overall I think SMB and Balloon Fight are the ones I'd go back to any day

[mbd39 | 2,017]

34 minutes ago, BortLicensePlate said:

No balloon fight fans eh? I always enjoyed that one.

SMB is a given. 

Excite bike is fun in short bursts.

DK Jr and Mario Bros are fun but I prefer the arcade originals.

Overall I think SMB and Balloon Fight are the ones I'd go back to any day

Oh yeah. You could replace Pinball on my list with Balloon Fight.  I had fun playing BF for the weekly contest tournament finals.

I prefer NES DK Jr over arcade because it doesn't start out as difficult. There is a much better difficulty curve.

 

 

 

Edited January 4, 2020 by mbd39

[Hammerfestus | 3,820]

Nice topic.

1. Super Mario Bros

2. Ice Climber (I’m surprised there’s not more love for this one)

3. Pinball

4. Duck Hunt

5. Popeye

[BortLicensePlate | 652]

@mbd39 Glad I'm not the only one, balloon fight is great. though I did enjoy pinball for what it was, kinda like excitebike fun for a bit but gets old quick. And yeah I've only played dkjr in the arcade a couple times and its definitely tougher. I just was the original Dk had all the levels

@Hammerfestus I like ice climber, just wish the jumping was closer to SMB. It feels a bit slippery, though it is ice so maybe that's what they were going for

[Link | 2,708]

3 hours ago, Hammerfestus said:

2. Ice Climber (I’m surprised there’s not more love for this one)

I think this is just because it’s hard to come by. If it were a common cart, maybe it would be more known. I know I have only seen it in emulation and didn’t give it a lot of time. But now that you mention it there are some pretty good copycats on PC. I’ve put many an hour into Icy Tower. So it’s a good model.

Edited January 4, 2020 by Link

[Link | 2,708]

2. Kung Fu - I just love this game. I need to check out other versions (especially arcade) more than cursorily, as well as Vigilante.

3. Baseball - many people find it too primitive but I don’t 

4. Gyromite - another weird one, but it’s fun to play with somebody who’s not a gamer. And it’s interesting by yourself, using both controllers at once.

5. Tough to narrow down to only one more. Donkey Kong, Mario Bros., or Popeye. Today I will go with DK, because I can run the table way more reliably than Popeye (can’t at all on Mario Bros.)

[Tanooki | 4,929]

Super Mario Bros, Balloon Fight, Hogan's Alley, Duck Hunt, and Pinball.

I never had pinball until the mid 90s second hand, but we did have 5 launch games as we did have wrecking crew but it never really did it for me after I took down the maps as making my own sucked as it didn't save password or otherwise.

 

I'd rather have put Mario Bros of Donkey Kong 3 in that slot but they weren't there immediately were they?  I owned those two, but I'm using your list on the original thread for best game at launch.  If I can use either of those I'd edit my post and remove pinball.

 

Can we get a list of the acceptable games to choose from?  We looking at all black box, or just the stuff out around the launch window, and I know that's testy since some people feel the window went well into 1986.

[Tulpa | 3,488]

1 hour ago, Tanooki said:

 

I'd rather have put Mario Bros of Donkey Kong 3 in that slot but they weren't there immediately were they?  I owned those two, but I'm using your list on the original thread for best game at launch.  If I can use either of those I'd edit my post and remove pinball.

 

Can we get a list of the acceptable games to choose from?  We looking at all black box, or just the stuff out around the launch window, and I know that's testy since some people feel the window went well into 1986.

The arcade classics came out in 1986, late spring, I think. All three DKs, Mario Bros arcade, and Popeye. I know that they weren't there at launch.

 

I think by black box titles, he means the first thirty releases. He mentioned Pro Wrestling, and that was a 1987 title.

Edited January 5, 2020 by Tulpa

[Jaden | 151]

Oh, this should be fun. I personally love the black box series quite a bit. Sure, a lot of them don't age the greatest, but there's definitely some great titles in this collection. I find them to be really fascinating just because of how early they are. It's cool to see previous arcade developer Nintendo slowly but surely forming their new identity as a console manufacture.

5. Donkey Kong 3 - My favorite game of the Donkey Kong trilogy. Rather than doing another platformed, Nintendo did something completely different and made a really fun shooter with the Donkey Kong character.

4. Popeye - A pretty faithful port of the arcade game. I personally find Popeye to be more fun than any of the Donkey Kong games.

3. Mario Bros. - The best of the arcade series. Mario Bros. is a really great game and one that I revisit quite often.

2. Balloon Fight - Basically, it's Joust but much more fun to play and with more personality. Plus, Hip Tanaka makes almost any game better.

1. Super Mario Bros. - I kinda wanted to put something above Mario just because it's too obvious, but it's obvious for a reason. Super Mario Bros. is an expertly crafted platformer that hasn't aged a bit since it was first released. And personally, it's the one I go back to the most of the original trilogy.

This was a challenging list to put together, as there were many games that I wanted to include (Ice Climber, Excitebike, Hogan's Alley, Kung Fu, Slalom, Pinball) that didn't make the cut. However, I'm pretty satisfied with the five titles I chose. I'd also like to give an honorable mention to Ice Hockey, which is not a black box game but looks a lot like one and is one of the best sports games the NES has to offer.

Edited January 5, 2020 by Jaden

[Bearcat-Doug | 5,104]

10 hours ago, Tanooki said:

Super Mario Bros, Balloon Fight, Hogan's Alley, Duck Hunt, and Pinball.

I never had pinball until the mid 90s second hand, but we did have 5 launch games as we did have wrecking crew but it never really did it for me after I took down the maps as making my own sucked as it didn't save password or otherwise.

 

I'd rather have put Mario Bros of Donkey Kong 3 in that slot but they weren't there immediately were they?  I owned those two, but I'm using your list on the original thread for best game at launch.  If I can use either of those I'd edit my post and remove pinball.

 

Can we get a list of the acceptable games to choose from?  We looking at all black box, or just the stuff out around the launch window, and I know that's testy since some people feel the window went well into 1986.

You have all 30 to pick from. I wanted to give more options than just the launch titles.

[Bearcat-Doug | 5,104]

9 hours ago, Tulpa said:

The arcade classics came out in 1986, late spring, I think. All three DKs, Mario Bros arcade, and Popeye. I know that they weren't there at launch.

 

I think by black box titles, he means the first thirty releases. He mentioned Pro Wrestling, and that was a 1987 title.

Yep, that's what I meant. I wish I would have thought to post that picture since I was too lazy to type all 30 of them out.

[MuNKeY | 241]

Super Mario Bros.

Ice Climbers

Kung Fu

Balloon Fight

Pro Wrestling 

[Tanooki | 4,929]

Ok SCRATCH my last post, if it's strictly the black box games, nothing else (even the samey style silver trio of fun) which makes total sense I'd have to revise my list.  Also I had popeye back when that came out, hours of fun there, damn good conversion of the arcade game.

My old list was: Super Mario Bros, Balloon Fight, Hogan's Alley, Duck Hunt, and Pinball.

I've owned everything there but stack up pver time second hand, and pinball is overly thin and the light gun games get boring fast even if they're insane fun for short bursts of time.  I never got the DK games in the day other than Donkey Kong 3, got the other as a pair sometime in the earlier 90s in the 'Classics' 2 pack so I refuse to count that no matter how darn well DK Jr was done.

 

But the list I'd stick to now of those black box games: Super Mario Bros, Balloon Fight, Kung Fu, Mario Bros, and Donkey Kong 3 (with Popeye being an honorable mention) as I had all those myself and enjoyed them the most, still do.

 

Edited January 6, 2020 by Tanooki

[Bearcat-Doug | 5,104]

13 hours ago, Tanooki said:

Ok SCRATCH my last post, if it's strictly the black box games, nothing else (even the samey style silver trio of fun) which makes total sense I'd have to revise my list.  Also I had popeye back when that came out, hours of fun there, damn good conversion of the arcade game.

My old list was: Super Mario Bros, Balloon Fight, Hogan's Alley, Duck Hunt, and Pinball.

I've owned everything there but stack up pver time second hand, and pinball is overly thin and the light gun games get boring fast even if they're insane fun for short bursts of time.  I never got the DK games in the day other than Donkey Kong 3, got the other as a pair sometime in the earlier 90s in the 'Classics' 2 pack so I refuse to count that no matter how darn well DK Jr was done.

 

But the list I'd stick to now of those black box games: Super Mario Bros, Balloon Fight, Kung Fu, Mario Bros, and Donkey Kong 3 (with Popeye being an honorable mention) as I had all those myself and enjoyed them the most, still do.

 

Popeye is a good choice. I played the arcade version a few times as a kid, but I never could find the NES version, so I wonder if it was a shorter print run than some of the other arcade series games. 

[BortLicensePlate | 652]

Anybody like Slalom? I feel like I played it a long time ago but remember nothing about it. I wanna say I had fun with it though back then

[Bearcat-Doug | 5,104]

27 minutes ago, BortLicensePlate said:

Anybody like Slalom? I feel like I played it a long time ago but remember nothing about it. I wanna say I had fun with it though back then

I think it's a fun game. I usually finish it for the yearly Beat Every NES Game contest. A friend of mine had it when he first got his NES and we played quite a bit.