rdrunner

It's been a while, but I seem to remember racing through this section. I don't stop to shoot the mouths and the only time I even fire is to take out the blue aliens. Not firing helps to see and dodge any mouths that may appear in your path.

Just played through "Metroid: Samus Returns" on the 3DS. It was interesting seeing elements from the entire series integrated into this one. Lots of remixed music and power ups old and new. For a while I thought I was playing a 2D version of Metroid Prime, since a lot of it was from that game. The one thing I didn't like was the melee counter system. The game really forces you to use these timed attacks against practically all enemies, at least early on. Every time I would try to rush through an area with guns blazing, I'd end up losing tons of energy. This obviously improved as the game progressed and I got better weapons. I ended up getting 100% completion, but it took me a slow 17 hours. Part of that is me exploring like a completionist, but a lot of this had to do with how long it takes to get around safely. My favorite part of the game was the boss battles. It was nice that the Metroid mutations had some actual AI instead of just always bum rushing at you. Without spoiling too much, I was also surprised to see some new non-Metroid bosses. Totally didn't see that coming, but I think they were nice additions to the game. Overall, Samus Returns wasn't at all what I expected and it honestly made me miss the original a wee bit, but it was still a fun experience. Side question: I know some people seem to prefer AM2R and other remakes, but I'm not sure why other than Nintendo made theirs after. What do you like about these other games and are they really better?

Those challenge rooms are seriously evil. I once got through them all as well, but it wasn't pretty. Nicely done!

I voted no, though I can see some exceptions, like an extra final boss or cutscene for beating hard mode or getting 100%. In general though, if you beat the game, you should get a real ending, credits and all. It's ok if "try hard mode" appears after that, but don't punish casual players that just earned something.

Huge kudos for finishing this project! Not sure how you find the time for all that you do, but the gaming world is better for it! Your posts over the years have been one of my favorite to things to read on the internet. Whether the topic was about a bad or a good game, you have a knack for making it interesting. I especially liked hearing about your personal experiences with each game. Well done, man!

Interesting way of thinking on Mario All Stars. In a world where I no longer own (and could never get) an NES, this may actually be a fair position. Better still for people who never played these games on the NES first. For me personally though, I usually ignore compilations and remakes when I rank games. Whether the content came from NES, arcade, or any other platform, I find that it's simply not an apples to apples comparison when games are from different eras. The only reason I even own a copy of All Stars is for The Lost Levels. Otherwise, I prefer the original versions of all 3 NES Mario games. I could say the same things about Tetris & Dr. Mario, Ninja Gaiden Trilogy, Arcade's Greatest Hits, Ms. Pac-Man, or even one of my personal arcade favorites, Mr. Do. I do make some exceptions to this depending on how different the games play compared to their originals, but the above examples I gave are mostly just straight up ports. That said, the goal here is to rank every SNES game ever released, including compilations, so here we are. Decent spot.

Never played and never will. I get why it's famous though. It's still fun reading everyone's comments.

Super Punch-Out is a great game and is totally worthy of that spot, especially since it shouldn't lose any points for how it compares with MTPO or anything else from other systems. I personally always preferred the return back to the original single-round arcade style format. As much as I enjoy reading the banter between rounds in MTPO, I still prefer going for the one-round KO. There is nothing quite as annoying in MTPO (at least for me) as finishing round one just a couple of hits just shy of a TKO. Also worth noting is that Super Punch-Out is the only console entry in the series with a large number of unique boxers. There are 10 fighters in the game that were never seen before in previous games (Jay, Charlie, Muscle, Ryan, Kagero, Clown, Prince, Quarlow, and the two Bruisers). MTPO only has 5 (Kaiser, Honda, Flamenco, Hippo, Tyson). Is Nick Bruiser a worthy replacement for Tyson? Probably not, but he's a capable final boss and does all the things one would expect. Honestly, other than having all of his punches cause one-hit knockdowns there wasn't much else that could be done to make him approach Tyson's legendary first 90 seconds. If nothing else it could have been worse. At least they didn't call him Mr. Dream...

My digital copy of the Switch remake is...oh never mind. Great game though. Wish I had heard of it before the price soared on the original.

@Reed Rothchild Just because I'm curious, is Super Bomberman 2 your favorite overall version of Bomberman or just SNES? Really loving the countdown. Can't wait to see it play out!

Anyone ever tried playing past the first loop on SNES Gradius 3? It gets crazy pretty quick. Hardest part is the first stage, when you have to power up your ship from scratch while everything else just got faster. Best I used to be able to do was the 4th loop on normal (stage 9) and 2nd loop on the hidden arcade setting (stage 7).

Even though it may not count when Capcom plays off their own stuff, "Street Fighter 2010: The Final Fight". It's absolutely nothing like the two games in its title, almost as if they were trying to fool people into buying the game based only on name recognition.

I picked SNES Final Fight. In spite of all its flaws, it's still a decent port of a great game. I also think the music is slightly better than the original arcade OST. Mighty Final Fight never impressed me enough to bother with it. There's something fundamentally wrong with taking an intense game like this and trying to make it cute.

8/10 - It's no Zelda 2, but I agree that this game gets a bad rap thanks to the internet (Bayou Billy is my other favorite example of this). I was a child of the 80's and during that time I didn't hear anything bad about this game. Well, that's not completely true, I do remember a back-handed review from one of those Jeff Rovin books where I believe he said that Ghosts N Goblins was "as much fun as having your gums tattooed, but at least you get your money's worth.". He still gave it high ratings despite this comment. On the other side, I had my copy of The Official Nintendo Player's Guide with a nice review of this game. Other than laughably using "The Magic Castle" as part of their titles for three different stages, it was a great read that really made me want to play the game. Almost every game reviewed in this book was a genuine hit and this was no exception. Anyway, I definitely believe that this game lives up to the challenge hype. I struggled through this game as a kid with a ton of continues and had a good time with it. Even today I have yet to 1cc the whole thing, having only reached stage 6 on the second loop. I didn't find the gameplay annoying at all. The only minor gripe I have is that slow map screen that displays every time you start a life. Seriously, couldn't they speed up that thing or just nix it? I've also played this in the arcade and honestly I like the NES version more. Not sure if it's just my long-time experience with the NES prior to playing arcade, but I found arcade to be lacking a bit, if only because I could spot all the ways that it was different and kept thinking that they felt "wrong". That probably makes me resistant to change more than anything else, but at least I'm aware of the issue. Anyway, solid game!

4/10 - On the N64 alone, I prefer Diddy Kong Racing, F-Zero X, and even Cruis'n USA more than this. I haven't even played all the racing games on the system either. I do like Mario Kart games (who doesn't?), but 64 is also my least favorite Mario Kart. Out of the games I have played, I would rank them like this: MK8, original, Double Dash, DS, 64. Without rehashing every flaw people have already brought up, I'll just list the biggest reasons I don't like this game: Races are slow and take too long (especially Rainbow Road). Rubberband AI at its worst. Introduced blue shells into the series. Plenty of better racing games out there in my experience, hence the score.

Love seeing everyone's picks on this thread! Especially liked seeing Battle Kid show up. I think my combined death count is in the 7000-8000 range, but I beat both of those games (will there ever be a third?). Sticking with NES, here are some toughies I beat without any help, then wrote guides to help others: Deadly Towers Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom Solomon's Key

I dunno if "serious" is the right word for how I play, but I do like to deep dive into a game in the name of competition (months of "Kangaroo" high score attempts being the latest example). I don't use the word for a simple reason: When the game stops being fun, I just stop.

Pinbot on NES is fun, but I agree that they should not have added the monsters. I will say that they are avoidable, just don't get the "solar value" bonus during multiball. Anytime a ball locks into one of Pinbot's eye sockets, I would just catch one ball and wait for the other to drop. Haven't really played the other NES pinball games, though I did notice the lack of "bump" controls on most of them. It's not really pinball when you can't make any saves.

I picked horizontal. Love both, but Gradius and R-Type immediately came to mind.

8/10 - Not sure why people hate the sound of Baby Mario crying. Real baby crying is way worse.

No joke, I played pretty much nothing else when I first got a Switch. I just really love Tetris with online multiplayer and this appeared to be the ultimate version of the concept. I have since acquired tons of other Switch games as well that I was also interested in beforehand (notably Mario Kart, Smash, DKC Tropical Freeze), but Tetris 99 was the game that tipped the scales for me. It took a lot for me to buy my first Nintendo console since the GameCube!

Pretty much every NES game I ever saw before I got my own system. :). I suppose more specifically I really wanted SMB, Zelda, and Mike Tyson's Punch-Out the most. Other systems: Genesis: Revenge of Shinobi, Sonic 2, Ecco the Dolphin SNES: Super Mario World, Gradius 3, Super Ghouls N Ghosts N64: Zelda Ocarina of Time, NFL Blitz PS1: Castlevania SotN, Final Fantasy 7 GameCube: Super Monkey Ball PS2: Friend offered me a deal when he upgraded to PS3 X360: Another friend offer 3DS: Neighborhood garage sale Switch: Tetris 99

Tried it for about 3 minutes and said "nope". Not enough to qualify for a vote, so I've officially just never played it. I actually like a lot of racing games, but apparently not this one.

9/10 - Easy vote. One of my all time favorite experiences with my NES. I'd probably vote the same for parts 2&3, perhaps dropping the other NES episodes to 8's. No 10's here, since those are reserved for stuff I just love a wee bit more. You'd probably not be surprised to hear that I only own physical copies of 1-3. Original trilogy all the way! I also played and beat this game before any sequels existed, which while I admit allows me to forgive a few shortcomings that would be improved in future games, it also gives me a different perspective on the sequels and their added features. For example: E-Tanks? Hardly ever used them, since I was so used to not having them. Beating Yellow Devil, Clone, and the last boss rush without any powerups will do that. Rush who? Just give me the magnet beam any day! Charged Shots? Discourages the use of sub-weapons. Final note: Gutsman is my favorite robot master in the series!

Haven't played any of these and I don't have a PS3 or higher. Probably not gonna happen. Can't play everything.