Yoshis Island finally put gamers in control of Marios pet dinosaur/steed/friend. It's impossible to calculate how many hours we spent chasing each other around maze-like battlegrounds or avoiding ricocheting shells in an effort to pop balloons. When a full row or column was completely, down the hatch they went they dashed off the playing field and straight into Yoshi's waiting mouth. Create one starring some of the world's most popular comic book characters and, while you're at it, directly adapt one of the comics' biggest storylines to serve as your plot. Now if only we could get a true sequel. The new dynamic, while gross, actually added a lot to the experience and made us decide to give Earthworm Jim 2 a loftier position on the countdown than its predecessor. Before remakes and upgrades were common, Nintendo pulled together some of Mario's grandest adventures, included the original Super Mario Bros. 2 from Japan (it's a long story, just go with it) and boosted the graphics to SNES standards. Mario has visited many established genres and franchises, but with Super Mario Kart he started something new. It remains as one of the few Western-themed games to use a top-down shooter approach and it's a fine game that will appeal to fans of . Over there it was Dr. Robotnik's Mean Bean Machine, starring Sonic the Hedgehog's arch-nemesis in the title role. Man, Kirby is killing this countdown this is his fourth featured game after Kirby's Avalanche, Kirby's Dream Land 3 and Kirby Super Star. The first racing game to make the cut for our countdown, Kemco's Top Gear 2 represented a step up from what racing games had been in the previous generation but not too drastic a step. It's secretly kind of brilliant in its own right. Top-down, twin-stick styled shooter. Though the Super Nintendo's role-playing genre was undeniably dominated by the efforts of Squaresoft, Capcom offered capable competition with its own JRPG franchise born on the platform Breath of Fire. It was Nintendo's new Mode 7 technology that made it possible, a software technique that created the illusion of depth by taking flat surfaces and presenting them from any angle. Zombies have overrun pop culture by now, but back in the SNES age, one incredibly fun and funny game predated it all Zombies Ate My Neighbors. Blue. But at least things looked a whole lot prettier this time around. ISS was done so well, in fact, that it inspired an entire line of sequels that have continued to this day though now you'd know them under the Pro Evolution brand. That's what Software Creations and LJN offered in Spider-Man & Venom: Maximum Carnage, a side-scrolling beat-'em-up starring everyone's favorite friendly neighborhood superhero. You could choose your character color, I think. You can't get too deep into digging up memories of the 16-bit era before you unearth the age's most amazing annelid, the mutated, cyber-suited superhero Earthworm Jim. Smash T.V. Upon its debut, the SNES managed to make the impossible somehow possible. Even crazier was the fact that Capcom went the extra mile for this SNES port, actually infusing it with even more options and upgrades than the arcade original had. Super Mario 3D World. The enemies in this game are, to say the least, unusual. Whatever the reason, A Link to the Past remains our choice for the greatest game of possibly the greatest system of all time. (And few experiences that feel as shameful as getting blown up by your own misplaced explosive.). This classic Taito puzzler took happy-go-lucky dinosaur twins Bub and Bob, and almost permanently retired from the action-oriented Bubble Bobble games, just so they could stand at the bottom of the playing fields of this puzzler franchise and just look cute. The SNES console is decades old, but it is still loved by players and is one of the most . Following one of the early '90s most popular Spidey comic book arcs, the game let players team up as Peter Parker and Eddie Brock's alter-egos in a ceasefire truce while they tracked down Carnage, a new, murderous symbiote spawned from Venom. BATMAN! They really don't make 'em like Jim any more, and though subsequent generations have tried to revive him, it's always been with limited success his unique brand of oddness was just more at home back in the oddball '90s. Somehow, someway, Natsume's Harvest Moon series managed to make managing a farmstead in a video game feel exciting and rewarding and this first game was so successful, in fact, that it spawned an entire franchise. Maciejewski (crazyaejay): Haha - Trouble Shooter is a lot of fun! Bigger, badder, and more barrel-filled than the original, Donkey Kong Country 2 took the DKC recipe and pumped it up with gorilla steroids. Pocky & Rocky is one of my favorite top down shooters from that period. Tetris & Dr. Mario at first appeared to be a simple 16-bit repackaging of Nintendo's two most popular 8-bit puzzler the classic falling block puzzler from Russia, Tetris, and the color-matching capsule-dropper, Dr. Mario. "Final Fight Guy" came out a few years later to bring ninja fighter Guy back as a playable option he'd been cut from this first version, leaving only Cody and Mayor Mike Haggar to beat the Mad Gear gang out of Metro City. While the original game adhered pretty closely to the pen-and-paper/Dragon Warrior formula, Final Fantasy IV ditched common role-playing elements that dated back to Dungeons & Dragons like starting with blank-slate characters. While it couldn't quite match what was available in the arcades, if you wanted to pit Ryu against Ken in the comfort of your own home, you couldn't do much better than this. Street Fighter had a certain elegance and simplicity back in the early '90s, something that no doubt contributed to its lasting appeal. Far and away one of the Super Nintendo's most unique role-playing games, Shadowrun eschewed the medieval fantasy settings most prominent in the genre in the '90s and offered, instead, a sci-fi cyberpunk scenario taking place in the year 2050. Wild Guns is a gallery shooter developed by . Nintendo's online service for the Switch boasts a library of classic NES and SNES titles, and now Nintendo 64 games. Playing out like a gritty, futuristic version of the classic Prince of Persia designs, Blackthorne casts you as an alien commando raised among humans who must return to his homeworld and blast everyone in sight in order to reclaim his birthright and reign as king. Video games bearing the Star Wars license have appeared on nearly every gaming platform released through the last three decades, but the Super Nintendo's exclusive trilogy of film adaptations are some of the most memorable ever made. Super Bomberman 2 wasn't the first game to include this feature, but it did offer expanded options over its predecessors and a memorable single-player campaign. They were so similar, in fact, that many people thought Flashback was an Out of this World sequel. Breath of Fire was Capcom's original attempt at carving out their own piece of the 16-bit RPG pie, the first installment in a role-playing series that would go on to see four future sequels including one we've already featured earlier on this list. This delightful action RPG shook up the genre with its fun and deep battle system, incorporating real-time action with a brilliant use of timed attacks. When you made it to dry land you could evolve legs bred for hopping or running. The game that made Will Wright a household name and really put the simulation genre on the map, SimCity had already been a success on home computers for a couple of years before the SNES was released and Nintendo, liking what they saw, worked out a rare deal to develop their own version of the title for the new 16-bit console. What made the game even more fun was that the cars were given life and personality, too way before Pixar dreamed up Lightning McQueen, we had the Coupe, the F-Type, and the 4WD smiling along and blinking their headlight eyes. The success of that rival series didn't mean Double Dragon itself was done, though, and in 1992 this SNES-exclusive sequel arrived. Zombies Ate My Neighbors is a top-down run and gun that allows you to play solo or . While it was certainly possible to wear an enemy down, even taking advantage of low defenses, most of your foes featured openings that would instantly take them down. SNES: Pop'n Twinbee is a top-down shooter. Remember Soul Blazer, placed just two spots back at #76? Though he debuted on the Sega Genesis in Rocket Knight Adventures, Konami's jetpack-equipped, sword-toting, armor-clad opossum offered Nintendo owners an exclusive sequel shortly thereafter. It certainly won't be the last. Kirby's kind of got a thing for being the last guy left at the party. A selection of courses set around the world, a vehicle upgrade system and new weather effects kept Top Gear making progress toward what more traditional racing titles would eventually offer in the future, but in the end the SNES was more defined by its all-new takes on racing (like F-Zero's futuristic hovercrafts and Super Mario Kart's item-shooting go-karts). The resulting adventure to recover Jake's identity and learn what led up to his attempted assassination was a milestone for the introduction of film noir style into the gaming industry, though, so we can forgive the game for only being 90% groundbreaking. Seriously, all the best character got introduced in MK II. Developer: Thing Trunk. Cuphead is the newest game on this list and is set in a 1930s cartoon. Notable characters: Nothing too notable. From the moment you set foot on Zebes to the moment you leave it exploding in your wake, every moment of this game is unadulterated fun, and it only gets better the further you get. Kirby's Dream Land 3 was pretty tried-and-true Kirby, pairing the little pink guy up with an array of animal buddies both old and new. I'm rich! There are still few multiplayer experiences as satisfying as successfully sandwiching your friends between a wall and your about-to-explode bomb. But E.V.O. Top Gear 2 looks, feels and plays a lot like NES titles like Rad Racer did years before, with the boost of 16-bit processing power giving the whole experience a fresh coat of paint. Here it is the first official four-player game for the SNES. As awesome as it was fighting Mike Tyson, the more surreal and exaggerated characters of Super Punch-Out!! ReelDeadOne 4 days ago. The R-Type series is known for taking the shoot em' up genre and adding in obstacles you must dodge, giving it almost a platformer feel. Castlevania IV took the original premise and added five new levels (including ones that take place outside the castle), as well as tighter controls and a few additional gameplay mechanics (like enhanced whip functionality). X2 also succeeded in bringing series sidekick Zero back to life. This was 3D gaming not 3D as we would later come to define it with polygon counts, but 3D nonetheless in that you could take to the skies here and feel the experience of free flight and sense the depth and distance of the ground below in ways the NES could never hope to present. A robot fighting game which was heavily hyped and released on multiple consoles, claiming that enemies would learn and adapt to players' tactics, though it failed to live up to such lofty expectations. These are the 25 most underrated NES games that are still worth checking out: 25. You had Gourmet Race, a hybrid racing/platformer where King Dedede challenged our hero to see who could simultaneously run and stuff their faces with food the fastest. They've been kidnapped by an alien emperor who wants to put them on display as part of his intergalactic zoo, and they've got to escape and make their way back home to good old Norway. 4. That bit of legal trouble kept Uniracers from having the larger print run it deserved, which means there's a good chance you never got to experience its inventive design that combined high-speed racing on wild, looping courses with a unique stunt system. -. I am the night. Total Carnage. Street Fighter Alpha 2 was released even later than Ultimate Mortal Kombat 3, and was the kind of late-to-the-party release that seemed just a little nonsensical but, when you played it, it felt like a real labor of love. Final Fantasy IV is all about character development, with copious amounts of dialogue and back stories for each of the wildly different fighters on your team: the young wizard twins, a kung-fu master, a girl who can summon crazy gods to kick butt. SNES Top Down Shooter. The Magical Quest Starring Mickey Mouse was seemingly yet another title starring the iconic cartoon character, but it mixed spectacular platforming with costume-based action to great effect. Not nearly as awesome as Smash T.V. Match three of the same color and smash, they all disappear. 9. Pokmon. But we'll get to that. Seriously, that was the main villain. Give him a backpack stuffed full of snot. And I thought SNES had a lot. Bringing 2D Shoot'em Ups (shmups) to Modern Consoles. Contrary to its numbering, Lufia II is actually a prequel to the first Lufia released on the SNES it's set 100 years earlier in the timeline and chronicles the events that led up to the first game's story. 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