Top Five Games for the Nintendo Entertainment System Everyone has their own childhood memories that they cherish--scoring that first touchdown in a flag football game, making friends on your first day of school, and finally sticking it to that annoying boss that you knew you could kill if you just kept trying. In case you didn’t notice, the third example comes from video games. One of my favorite memories as a kid was exploring all the different worlds that the little gray box would unfold before me. I have ranked the following five games based on my nostalgic memories of playing them for the first time and how playable they are today. #5--Baseball Stars Who needs a sports license? Back in the late ‘80’s video baseball fans didn’t have the yearly updated rosters of today’s modern sports games. We were happy with players that actually looked like people, let alone recognizable sports icons. One game that didn’t need licensed sports teams to succeed was Baseball Stars, produced by SNK in 1989. With fictitious teams like the Ghastly Monsters and the Lovely Ladies, who needs the Royals or the Blue Jays? I personally loved this game because it was the first sports game in which you could hire and fire players and build their statistics (such as their fielding and hitting abilities). There’s just something about building up super teams that could destroy any opposition that was very satisfying. I also had countless hours of fun pummeling my dad in this game. He didn’t regularly play video games, but he’d always have time to play a game of Baseball Stars with me. #4--Contra Up, up, down, down, left, right, left, right, B, A, select, start. If you’ve ever played a game produced by Konami, you’ll know this code. Originally found in an earlier game (Gradius), Contra made it famous as the thirty man cheat code that made this otherwise frustrating side-scrolling shooter a breeze to beat. Although easy as pie with the cheat code, this game was still incredibly fun because of its two-player simultaneous option that allowed you to tackle the invading aliens of Red Falcon with a friend. The power-ups to your weapon, such as the laser and the spread shot, were also inventive. I can’t tell you how many friends I made in 4th grade because I could play Contra. People I never would’ve even spoken to became known to me because they wanted my help to beat the game. I was invited over to their house to play a little Contra, and the rest is history. #3--Metroid “He’s a girl?” This game probably caused more pre-pubescent grade school kids to yell this at their televisions than any other video game before or since. Forget the fact that this game was the first non-linear adventure game where you found power-ups for your character as you explored the alien planet Zebes. Forget that this was also one of the first games to employ a password system to save your progress. Forget that the game’s end boss (Mother Brain) was one of the most memorable boss battles of all time. This game had thousands of players shocked after watching the end credits and realizing that they had been guiding the main character, Samus Aran, this entire time completely oblivious to the fact that he was, in fact, female. This game did more for girl power than the Spice Girls ever did. This was the first game that I had to finally break down and buy the strategy guide for. The game’s intertwining paths and overlapping levels were a little too much for my third grade brain. After attempting to make several of my own maps by hand by using graph paper, I finally gave up and headed off to K-Mart to buy the guide. Although I’d read it over and over whenever we’d visit the store, I soon realized that looking at it for five minutes a week just wasn’t going to cut it. I still have the guide. #2--Mike Tyson’s Punch Out!! It is fairly accepted among the NES geeks of the world that one of the hardest bosses ever to be included in a video game was Mike Tyson. The final boss of his own self-named game, Tyson was impossibly frustrating. His game, however, was one of the most entertaining and fun sports games that I have ever played, and is still considered by many to be the best boxing game to date. With characters from all over the world and creative names like “Bald Bull” and “King Hippo,” this game had tons of personality to spare. This is the one game that I had to let go. My secret shame of my Nintendo-playing era is that I never beat Mike Tyson. Many years later I re-purchased the game determined to take Tyson down. I beat the game in three days. It was one of the most satisfying endings to a video game that I have ever seen. #1--The Legend of Zelda Anyone who knows video games couldn’t dispute placing Zelda at the top of the list. This game is probably the most innovative NES cartridge in existence. It was the first to offer a battery back up system, which enabled a player to save his progress. This made it possible for games to take hours or days to complete instead of minutes. It also was one of the first games to allow the player to freely explore an existing world and make sense of it all. Many exploration games have come since, but Zelda was the first. My reasons for listing this game as number one are almost too numerous to list. I play it regularly and annually, even though I have most of the game’s items and dungeons committed to memory. The graphics and sound are, by modern standards, horrific, but there’s just something about them that feels timeless. It’s the first game that I bought for myself right after receiving a Nintendo for Christmas when I was seven years old. Playing this game made me realize that I would be playing video games for a very, very long time to come.