The Top 10 Best NES Games of all Time Ever! The Best Original NES titles, from cool NES games to awesome NES games. Only the greatest Nintendo NES classics!

10. Contra

You know your main character is a bad ass when he's buff and smoking a cigarette on the title screen (just like daddy! Minus all the drinking... That we know of). Famous for its almost necessary Konami code (you all know it) which gave you thirty lives and a fighting chance in this strikingly strenuous, but satisfying, sidescrolling shooter.

And while the platforming was great, the weapons upgrades were even better (gotta love the spread shot)! And the amount of people trying to kill you at one time really made this an intense game to shoot your way through. Even the third person view segments were fun. Another game best played with a friend (if you had one).

9. Mike Tyson's Punch-Out!!

Look, it's that awesome boxing game where Mario is the referee and you get to play a pipsqueak boy who beats up on (or more likely, gets beat up on by) many large characters with questionable stereotypes! And when you make it past them all, you get floored by Mike Tyson (yes you did... I know I did).

This fast paced boxing game made memorization and flawless execution of each enemy fighter's weakness mandatory for victory. Famous for its "training" cut scenes where the fat guy (your "trainer") on a bike pedals ahead of our intrepid hero Mac while he struggles to keep up in his pretty pink jumpsuit. The real Soda Popinski would never lose to such a man!

8. Dragon Warrior

This was the game that forever hooked me on RPGs (you know, Role Playing Games!). Never before had I encountered the concept of “leveling up” in a game to get stronger so that you could stand a chance against even stronger enemies and level up some more. Beating up on poor little slimes so that you could stand a chance against wyverns so that you could eventually beat Goldman and get rich (that's what the game was about right?)! It was such a fun and innovative concept for me at the time, never mind the lack of an engrossing plot, hours of dialogue, and multiple main characters that would be in future RPGs.

7. Mega Man 3

OMG Protoman is Megaman's brother (sorry... spoiler)! Well, in as much as robots can really be brothers. In which case, wouldn't every robot Dr. Light (or Right, or whatever he's called in this one) created been brothers? Not that any of this matters at all...

Here we have another excellent Mega Man game with all of the difficult (but amazing) platforming, shooting, and some of the greatest game music for its time (or ever).

The new “slide” move introduced new play mechanics, but it was really just more of the same awesome Mega Man that won this game... a place in my heart!

6. Super Mario Bros.

This is it, the game that started my video game addiction! If only my parents had had the foresight of this, I'm sure they would have smashed the NES cartridge (and the NES) and given me a football instead. But alas I will always love this game, no matter how many times the princess seems to be in another castle.

Everything about this game was brilliance, even the underwater stages and we all know how much we hate those (I'm looking at you Sonic). And the first time you discovered a bean stalk leading to a cloud level, or a warp zone... gaming bliss! Oh, and the awesome iconic powerups!

5. Bubble Bobble

🎶Do do do do do do do do do do do do do do...🎶 That's how the opening music theme song goes, then its: 🎶Do do do do do do do do do do do do do... 🎶🎶 It will be stuck in your head for the rest of your life. Provided you've played the game, otherwise you'll just think/know I'm crazy. One of the most ingenious little platformers I've ever played.

You see, you start out as these little lizard monsters which shoot bubbles out of their mouths to trap enemies and pop them to clear each level. Then, next stage repeat. There are 100 levels and a secret door that unlocks another hundred. They start off whimsical and fun, but end up seemingly impossibly difficult. With stages that almost need the “kill all enemies” power up to randomly appear to be beaten (my finger of anger is pointed at you stage with the downward lazer firing robots that cover the whole ceiling with no platforms to assist me up to kill you , left to jump on my own bubbles in a corner hoping you won't shoot me... then you do... bastards!).

Nevertheless, this is a ridiculously fun game and should be enjoyed with friends (Wii Ware has a four player version)! Oh and all of the delicious and colorful snackfoods and diamonds that fall from the ceiling and explode out of enemies when you kill them add to the game's magic!

4. Metroid

One of the earliest NES games I ever played and also one of the most satisfying. The dark foreboding intro music with a glimmer of... what is that, hope at the end? Really put me in the mood... to slay alien creatures!

I loved how the game just drops you on a planet and lets you explore freely. You'll see so many places you can't quite reach or get to, only to find the awesome power up later that lets you explore further. Masterful platforming and boss battles (eww, look how gross Mother Brain looks!) add to this masterful game... masterful! Also, Samus is a chick and she likes to wear a bikini under that robot looking suit of hers!

A fantastic start to a fantastic franchise!

3. Mega Man 2

So I realize I've been writing a lot about the music in my top games, but that has certainly been a large part of why these games latched themselves onto my child self's brain and stayed there for so long. Mega Man 2 probably has the best music of any NES game (of course, my opinion, just like this entire list). And that intro scene with the simple scrolling up of the skyscraper to show Mega man looking like a bad ass at the top while the “rock out” music plays hooked me from the very beginning. Combined with the awesome and true to gameplay box art (sarcasm), I didn't even need to actually play the game to like it (sarcasm?)!

Thankfully, it's not just the music that is good here. I was finally at an age where I began to grasp the “certain boss weapons are strong versus certain bosses” concept and really started to own those poor hapless robot bosses. The platforming was still just as devious as Mega Man 1 (How many times did I die at Quick Man's stage before I discovered the “cheat” of using Flash Man's technique to stop time?), but the game actually had difficulty settings so youngins could beat it without resorting to one of those Game Genie contraptions.

On a final note, remember how awesome it was at the beginning of Dr. Wily's stage when he comes down in that UFO and then you see his epic castle and then the epic music plays and the you have to jump across blocks out in space while a robot dragon chases you and then you have to kill it? Epic!

2. The Legend of Zelda

This is the game that popped up all over my childhood at friends' houses and whatnot. Every time I'd dig through someone's collection and find that golden cartridge, I had to play it. And they always had some new trick or hidden area to show me. This game took exploration to a whole new level, unmatched by any other NES game (again, my opinion... but right). And the action, the weapons, the enemies, the triforce! There is just so much awesome packed into this one game that it is unreal.

When I finally owned the game for myself and could explore it in its entirety, I grew to love it even more. I still hate those freakin' hands that take you back to the beginning of a dungeon!

Oh yeah, and the music was so good!

And the number one NES game of all time is (of course)...

1. Super Mario Bros. 3 (yep, you guessed it)

So it was really really difficult for me to choose the order of my top 10 best NES games with the exception of this one game which will always be number one. And did you doubt it? I mean, what game is in everyone's collection? If you went to one of your friends' houses who has a Wii, what is the one game they most likely have from the Virtual Console? Super Mario 3! Well, I'm sure if Sesame Street ABC was on the Virtual Console, things would be different...

This game took the Super Mario Bros. And just blew it out of the water (even out of that Midus stage). Everything was bigger, everything was better. The stages, the graphics, the powerups... The first time I found the leaf and realized I could fly as raccoon Mario (or tanooki or whatever) totally blew my mind. The levels went from a simple left to right sidescrolling experience to a whole new dimension (well not literally but still).

Again, playing with friends opened up so many of the game's secrets. How else would I have ever found that one whistle where you have to press down on the platform for three seconds? I mean who does that on every platform until they happen to find a secret?

And the uber powerups the Princess somehow seems to sneak out of her Bowser captivity to send to her dear plumber protagonist! Flying through an entire level, the ability to “cloud skip” the really annoying levels, the stupid music box... God this game was awesome.

Oh yeah did I mention: Cloud world and that silly green boot thing you could jump around on piranha plants with (Yoshi has nothing on this), the awesome giant world, the fox suit that let you hide from enemies, airships, all of world eight, mushroom house powerups, minigames, end of level one-up slot machine boxes, etc. etc?

I could fill a novel (well probably not) with all of the reasons this game was awesome (music) and should be (and is) number one in any self respecting NES gamer's library (well, I might listen to arguments of why Zelda was better).