Trox's Top 5 NES Games!

    
       WHAT IT DO?! Alright now just settle down. Before you guys start on me for providing you with next to nothing in the way of content for about the last week or so..be sure to keep a couple of things in mind.

1.) I was sick for a few days...the last thing you probably want to do when you're under the weather is sit in front of a screen and try to be funny.

2.) A dear friend of mine got married this past weekend, so the crew here at TroxTalk was a little tied up with visiting old friends, the big bachelor party (I might do a post on it if anyone can accurately recall what took place), and then of course, the wedding itself. Congratulations Mr.and Mrs. Meier!!

3.) Traditional sabbaticals generally last anywhere from 2 months to 1 year. You guys got off light and only had to live without me for a short time. You're welcome.

        So there are my poor excuse for keeping you chomping at the bit for a few days. Don't worry there are plenty of more exciting lists on the horizon....Now, back to our regularly scheduled programming. Sort of. Did anyone check out the Robocop Movie Tracks episode I did with the guys over at The Best Podcast? Hopefully, I've managed to rake in a few new listeners for them, and if I have, you know that they close the show every week with a segment called the Top 5. This past Friday TBC's Top 5 topic was "Top 5 Games for the Nintendo Entertainment System." My brain instantly went 8-bit and I began to recall some of the greatest moments from my early nerdom.
       One thing I noticed is that, because great minds think alike, Dave and Phinny rarely have an opinion that differs from mine during their weekly Top 5 segment. After talking with them, we decided it might be fun to conduct a little experiment. They are going to give me their Top 5 topics in advance for the next few Fridays. (At this point it looks like they will all be somehow "old school video game" related.) What we are going to do is, without any correspondence between TroxTalk.com and The Best Podcast, reveal our respective Top 5 lists at the same time on each topic. TBC's list will be one their podcast and mine will be here on the blog. We are very aware that this is a shameless cross-promotion, but from what I gather, many of their listeners are my readers and vice-versa anyway. We may as well have some fun with it.
       Just so you kids have a feel for how this is going to work, The Best Podcast list of the Top 5 NES games can be heard here... Episode 26: One Giant Cash Grab 

The Best Cast Top 5 NES Games

5. Duck Tales

4. Mike Tyson's Punch Out

3. Tecmo Super Bowl

2. The Legend of Zelda

1. Super Mario Bros. 3

        That was their list and it wasn't bad. This time around I've already heard what they had to say. This Friday it looks like we're going to do the Top 5 SEGA Genesis games, and I won't have any prior knowledge of Dave and Phinny's picks, so there's a chance some of the games we select will be the same... For this countdown I purposely selected a totally different group of NES games. Lets do this.

TROX'S TOP 5 GAMES FOR THE NINTENDO ENTERTAINMENT SYSTEM:

#5

         I'm kicking off the countdown with somewhat of a sentimental pick for me. I bought my very first video game console the Nintendo Entertainment System using birthday money, and a collection of stolen bills from my mother’s purse at the age of 6. (To a 6 year old, video games were like meth. Any kid would beg or steal to get their hands on some.) I could only afford this base model NES which included Super Mario Bros., a game I actually hated at the time because “my man kept jumping in the dumb holes” This is a problem which would later re-manifest itself in my late teens and early 20s. Maybe we’ll discuss that in another post. My Gram felt sorry for me having saved all this money all by myself…errrr….and only being able to afford a single shitty game to go with it, so she forked out the dough for me to choose a second game. I picked Mega Man 3 based on the only tried and true selection method for a child. The box art was fantastic! I should note that a young boy struggling with the complications of Super Mario Bros. has absolutely NO business in the world of Mega Man 3.
           There are still levels on this one which I find almost impossible without cheat codes. I eventually grew to love both Mega Man 3 and the first Super Mario Bros. game out of necessity. It was either learn to like these tough games I had and get good at them, or have it turn into another situation like the puppy, the goldfish, the hamster, and the turtle… In short, Gram would see me showing no interest, and kill my NES. (Just joking, but I knew if I didn’t play Mega Man 3, she wouldn’t by me anymore games, and Christmas was coming up.)
 

#4

       I can't think about Excitebike without referencing a famous scene from the movie Lucky Number Slevin. It went something like this...
  
Mr. Goodkat: There was a time.
Nick: [groggily looks at his watch] 4:35.
Mr. Goodkat: You misunderstood. I wasn't asking for the time, I was just saying... there was a time.
Nick: There was a time?
Mr. Goodkat: Mmm-hmm. Take Brown Sugar back there, for example. She's pretty fuckin' foxy, right?
[indicates old lady asleep in next row of seats]
Nick: [incredulous] She's 70.
Mr. Goodkat: If she's a day. But there was a time.

       By today's standards of Call of Duty and Portal 2, Excitebike isn't much to write home about. It's hard to believe that during it's prime back in 1985 it was completely cutting edge. 4 independent racers could be on the screen at once, the sound (while annoying today) actually gave you a sort of motocross feel, and it's the first game I can recall with a custom map creator. OH YEA! AND..IT WAS FREAKING FUN!! I used to spend hours with my friends overheating and crashing into each other on purpose. Sadly, when I revisited this game (yep, still got it) for this countdown, I realized an awful truth..Excitebike has almost zero staying power. To try to play it now, it may as well be called "Monotonous-boring-as-shit-bike". I consider making this game my fourth pick an homage to the forgotten.. Many of these throwback titles we have been talking about have withstood the test of time, and if you pop them in you could still have a blast playing them through. This unfortunately is not the case for Excitebike...But there was a time...

#3

        Kung Fu is the O.G. of the fighting game genre. It was one of the earliest releases on the NES and it marked the birth of one of the most static and ironclad fixtures in the entire video game universe. VIOLENCE. The first time I mashed the red B button on my NES controller, heard that little *pewt* sound made by Thomas, and put one of those 8-bit size 10 sandals upside a baddies head I was HOOKED. This was a game that I borrowed from a friend on 3 separate occasions, and the third time I didn't bother returning it. (I was a stealin' ass scandalous little kid.) In Japan, Kung Fu was titled Spartan X and it was based off of a Jackie Chan movie called Wheels on Meals. In America, it paved the way for virtually every "kick ass and save your woman" game to come along since..In some ways, without Kung Fu, there is no Mortal Kombat. That's why Kung Fu gets my #3 slot, and these other great games do not. 

 #2

    If you are a regular here on TroxTalk you are fairly certain of one thing by this point. I love me some sports. I'll watch just about anything on ESPN apart from poker and Nascar. I love Reds baseball, Bengals football, and Red Wings hockey! For me, part of being a huge sports nut and a part time video game geek is that I play a TON of sports games. I've had every Madden Football game since about 1991.. (Back then it wasn't Madden NFL, it was called 'John Madden Football') However, the very first sports video game I ever played was Blades of Steel. It had it all. The roar of the 8-bit crowd, the horn sounding loudly when you score a goal, and fighting..That's right. FIGHTING! I went back and played a game of Blades not too long ago, and I'm here to tell you, it's still pretty bad-ass. To this day when I pop open the latest title from 2kSports or EA, I am just chasing the dragon in search of that high I felt playing Blades of Steel in my bottom bunk (I was one of those spoiled kids who had bunk beds even though there was just one of me at the time).

Here are a couple of other notable NES sports games that I would beat you at...

#1

      Contra, at it's core, is the greatest NES game of all time. It was one of the first times a video game was able to immerse you deep inside what felt like an actual adventure. It took the muscles and guns of a 1980s action movie and put them right in the palm of your hand. It was revolutionary because every kid between the ages of about 5 and 80 wanted to be a hero, and to that point, all you could really do is save a frog from getting hit by cars, or help a yellow circle escape from a buncha rainbow colored sheets with holes in them, or try to run down some bratty chick from a keg tossing monkey on top of a ladder...You get my drift. I feel like just about every big game that hits retailers nowadays is a shooter, but back then, Contra was THE shooter. And it was one of the only games on the market to offer 2-D side-scrolling levels along with bottom-up 3-D levels which were the earliest stages of the modern first person shooter. Think about that the next time you play Halo or Fallout: New Vegas. Yes, Contra made you feel like a soldier..at least until you realized how tough the game actually was. In fact, it's still challenging even after all these years, but at least everyone, including people who never played the game, no the secret to Contra's demise...

↑ ↑ ↓ ↓ ← → ← → B A start

        I know that this has been a pretty long post, but I needed to knock some of the rust off. Thanks for sticking with it and as always I'd love to get your thoughts.  Maybe you can send me your top 5 or you can cuss me because you strongly disagree with mine. Either way I'd love to hear from you @troxtalk on twitter or you can just email me trox@troxtalk.com . Thanks again to the dudes from The Best Podcast! If everyone who ever played Nintendo were to make their own top 5 list, I bet know 2 people would give the same answers, and that's why this little project with TBC is gonna be so much fun. Stay tuned for Friday when we see how my Top 5 SEGA Genesis countdown matches up to theirs. I wonder if anything will overlap? Deuces.

P.S. I've also decided to include a "Hipster Pick" at the bottom of each Top 5. You know, the obligatory "this game wasn't very mainstream, so you probably haven't ever heard of it" act. The NES Hipster Pick is a no-brainer. If you haven't played Crash-N-The Boys Street Challenge, you should check it out. You can thank me later.