Rare japanese famicom games

I, for example, don't play the New Super Mario Bros. Not all of that can result from overfamiliarity with a game, mind you: I also have played MegaMan Legends several hundred times, and still do with regularity.

I think I'll leave this philosophical argument for another time however: the summation is that Holy Diver offers an appropriate, engaging level of challenge. The nature of the difficulty in Holy Diver results partially - if not mostly - from its puzzle-solving characteristics.

Throughout the course of the game, at the end of levels, you will find magic spells. These spells have a number of functions: for example, the Blizzard spell can be used to freeze lava such that you can walk on it and destroy it for a brief time, which will be very useful in the second stage, for example.

The explicit uses of these spells are not really detailed, so the game can often become a trial-and-error test as for what to do in a given situation.

Admittedly, with few choices, the process becomes quite simple. The main thing counteracting this are the enemies themselves. The enemies are the main proponents of difficulty in this game, even moreso than the puzzle-solving part. They come in endless waves, doing everything to impede you.

This game is as much puzzle-solving as it is learning about the enemies and how to dodge them and ultimately defeat them, for you will often be doing the latter in the midst of solving a problem.

This complicated nature of the game, especially given the variety of enemies, helps to make Holy Diver very engaging, for you're never "just doing" something: in reality, you're probably doing two or three things hectically and simultaneously. That is perhaps the biggest thing that sets Holy Diver apart from most platformers.

As an FAQ author, I often stray away from platformers because they often devolve to "go right, go right, go right", the kind of monotony that would bore a person in writing, especially when there's nothing to cause a deviation between those instructions. Holy Diver would be an exception to that rule, at least from the player standpoint: the environments are relatively complex much different from the "go right" style popularized by Super Mario Bros.

Holy Diver is, overall, a fun, challenging, and engaging platformer. Release Date: "What is Dezaemon? The question of "why? Dezaemon is not by itself a good game; Dezaemon 's qualitative value is only derived from what you make of it: you yourself make it terrible or make it excellent. In the most superficial of terms, Dezaemon can be best described as a do-it-yourself shooter game.

Rather than make a preset shooter game that would no doubt end up bland like the myriad shooter games that plagued the NES and Famicom Disk System in the '80s and '90s, Athena put a new spin on the idea by making you do all of the work. And, when I say "all of the work", I literally mean all of it. At the title screen of Dezaemon are seven options, six of which are related to the game's do-it-yourself nature.

From the title screen, you can edit virtually everything about the game: this includes your ship's sprite design, enemy sprite designs, level designs and structures, design the game's title screen, design a credits roll, and even create and compose background music themes! Everything is designed so as to lower the threshold for programming one's own game; rather than have to learn the complex assembly language of the NES and spend some years learning about computer programming, Dezaemon lays the framework for the game and allows you to intuitively edit anything you wish to.

You can, in essence, make your own shooter game. The value of such a concept is further emphasized by the sample game Athena includes with it. Like a number of shooters from the '80s and '90s - Gradius III 's arcade variant comes to mind - the sample game in Dezaemon is more than a fair bit difficult. There are often so many enemies in the third stage of play, for example, that even emulators allowing for more than eight sprites per scanline get overloaded and start that "flickering" effect you get when the game starts to get really "busy", as it were.

It's not often seen in most games since that kind of stuff is often removed in debugging. Of course, the difficulty is not always so simply caused; sometimes it can be the game's "one-hit wonder" nature or the relative skill the AI seems to have compared to you; it won't by necessity boil down to simple numbers.

Dezaemon helps to unintentionally emphasize this fact: rather than force you to play a game you're far too underskilled or just outnumbered to play, you can create your own game for a variety of purposes, even if it's just to make the game in Dezaemon easier. Rather than be forced to play something that is itself inferior, you can create something far superior with what is truly little skill. You can create a huge variety of different games and have fun playing them. It may have a "do-it-yourself" aspect to it, but the influence of that on the game's own value is massive.

Dezaemon not only perfectly showcases what often went wrong with the shooter genre before the turn of the millennium, but also one way to remedy it: by giving the players the tools they need to make their own game. That can be tenuously linked to the most basic of reviews, simple feedback. Rather than create games without regard for the ability of the player, without regard for the game's inherent qualities it could otherwise have Gradius again pops up as a good example , giving the players the ability to change something about the game is important.

It doesn't have to be something like Dezaemon , but it could be as simply as telling the developers that the game is poor for whatever reason, as happened between the arcade and SNES releases of Gradius III , or a simple difficulty option, even.

Release Date: Among Famicom games, Moon Crystal is the kind that hits hard and fast from the beginning, and keeps it up until the end. In a way, I look at Moon Crystal as what should be the Dragon Quest of 2D platformers - it's not the best of the genre, it has flaws, but it has a great formula with great potential: the clones obviously wouldn't be of as great a quality as the original, but Moon Crystal itself should have been "cloned" to create its own influence on the platformer genre, for this game does almost everything right.

Perhaps an explanation would be more effective than hypotheticals; I shall begin with the storyline. As I said earlier, Moon Crystal hits you pretty hard from the beginning, opening with the quote, "You mustn't go out during a full moon.

That's when the dead walk the woods. The general plotline of Moon Crystal revolves around the powers of a particular stone, known as the Moon Crystal. It is a stone said to hold mystical powers, among those being the revival of the dead, although these are only active during the full moon. It is the plan of a certain individual to steal the Moon Crystal from those holding it in Cirrus Village and, in doing so, all the residents are abducted in addition to the Moon Crystal.

Only one of them, Ricky, manages to escape from the kidnappers; it is now his task to release his neighbors and his own family from the unknown individual's clutches, and to regain the Moon Crystal before it can be used for that person's nefarious uses. When it comes to the typical 2D platformer, the plot is often very superficial or light, if it even exists at all - platformers by nature tend to rely on their gameplay to generate some level of entertainment value.

That's not to say they're often successful in that regard; a fair number of platformers based on movies, television shows, or other media often play terribly or, at best, fall flat , being the kind of quick, obligatory type of game. Spider-Man itself is an exciting comic series, yet it's hard to deny that games like that do nothing to help attract video gamers to Spider-Man.

In the case of Moon Crystal , in relation to typical platformers, the plot is rather heavy and enjoyable; rather than just "being there" for the sake of "being there", the storyline is actually a rather attractive portion of the game. Of course, the plot is not the only thing worth picking up Moon Crystal for: playing the game itself is rather enjoyable. The main benefits to this, really, just includes expansion of the gameplay experience: you would get that warm feeling you get for doing everything in the game.

Of course, there are also more tangible benefits this is where the Zelda II -esque gameplay comes in , such as the collection of additional power-ups that are able to alter your available actions and weaponry. In any case, the stages are also challenging, albeit not obscenely so, unlike a number of Japan-exclusive platformers. Super Mario Bros. There are quite a few enemies in the game, yet they don't swarm on you; if anything, you almost have to fence with them at times, something I've never done in a platformer before.

Gaps in levels are not insanely large; the levels have power-ups properly distributed so you're not always without aid; the levels themselves are constructed around a balance of difficulty to keep everything actually doable. The only real issues I found were when I had to use the ledge-grabbing mechanic: for some reason, the ability to grasp the edges of platforms seemed a bit glitchy, though that mechanic itself is interesting since most platformers rarely include such a "safe yourself" mechanic that doesn't require the use of collision glitches.

In terms of aesthetics, Moon Crystal is also, at least at first glance, complex and attractive. Normally, I don't attribute much to the superficial qualities of a game - call it a habit as a reviewer for GameFAQs, but I highly value gameplay and story over anything else. Yet, this is one rare instance where I feel the graphics and audio are worth mentioning. The graphics in Moon Crystal are beautiful, at least for the 8-bit era.

The graphics are very varied and vibrant, all befitting the environments they attempt to represent. They are also deceptively complex at points; for example, the NES is only known to support one graphical background layer, unlike the SNES which can have up to four. Certain stages of the game seem to defy this notion, though; Stage 2's end, with the scrolling background, is special evidence of this. That Hect would bother to go beyond what is needed with this game, to do something so complex as an effectively-multilayer background, is truly impressive.

There is also the soundtrack for the game. Again, the soundtrack is unusually complex for the 8-bit era: Moon Crystal makes very full use of all of the Famicom's sound channels to create a complex, harmonic, and accentuating track for all of the levels. I know it's seems weird to simply leave it at "the forest level's music feels like forest level music", but that's the way I feel about it.

In any instance, the soundtrack is undeniably complex and very harmonic for its time; personally, the thing I actually like most about Moon Crystal is its soundtrack: it's simply something you would find it worth looking up on YouTube or something if you don't have access to the game itself.

In conclusion, Moon Crystal one of a few platformers that can actually satisfy all of your wants. Most games would rather focus on their gameplay or their storyline - and still even fail in that, as some platformers tend to do - and make a good game out of that.

The difference between a good game and a great game is explemified very well in Moon Crystal. Moon Crystal is much more than a fun 2D platformer: it is a balanced, entertaining 2D platformer, with a good, entertaining plotline, beautiful graphics, and complex audio.

It is appealing to all of the video-game-relative senses, and is one of a few rare games that can truly leave you fully satisfied in every way. Release Date: Like a number of the other games on this Top 10 List, Sansara Naga is one of a number games given the label of " Dragon Quest clone", although why it is given that designation is more than a fair bit beyond me. Sansara Naga only lightly - if at all - draws upon Dragon Quest. Examples of this are noticeable in this RPG's field and battle interfaces - for example, the need to still enter a menu and use "Search" to open chests, or the very turn-based nature of battles.

At the same time, those are common factors noticeable in pretty much any turn-based RPG through the bit era. It worked well enough for this game, though: it got a sequel Sansara Naga 2 on the Super Famicom, and the two were later compiled into one, graphically-enhanced game on the GameBoy Advance.

In a way, I suppose you could say that Sansara Naga plays as a simplified, more-challenging version of Pokemon or most of the games of the MegaTen franchise. Sansara Naga is about the story of a young boy who wants to become a dragoon - a trainer of dragons.

In his home village of Orissa, there conveniently lies an egg that is supposedly that of a dragon; thus, the boy hatches pardon the pun a plan to steal it. However, he is caught in the act and chased from his own hometown, forever forbidden to re-enter. And, yet, it seems this effort was all in vain: once outside of town, the egg hatches in an ostrich , not a dragon: the boy could just easily return to town and note the truth, but who would believe him?

No, he has to become a dragoon now: he's gone too far now for anything else but what he originally intended.

It is after a trip to a lone house far to the south that the boy receives a different egg that is also supposedly that of a dragon. He now needs to head to the capital of the Akupala continent, Hoverpool, for that is the only place that has a nursery for dragons. There, he gets intwined in a plot that will have great effects on his life. He originally only went there so as to nurse and train his dragon into adulthood as he himself trained to become one of the few, rare dragoons of the world.

However, in doing so, he is slowly nudged by Ala Singh - the most legendary dragoon - onto a path that will make him the savior of the world. Dragoons are becoming increasingly few these days, and the threats to humanity to continue to grow. In part, this is a result of the Holy Dragon having been killed by the Chaos Dragon in the dragons' realm. The Holy Dragon is essentially the God of this world, although it is, in a sense, a replaceable position: whoever is the ruling dragon will have their influence wraught upon the world.

Thus, with the Chaos Dragon "playing God", as it were, both dragons and humans are in danger. The only remedy for this threat is the elimination of the Chaos Dragon, and Ala Singh believe this boy from the town of Orissa to be the only one capable of the job.

Despite what may seem like a heavy storyline, Sansara Naga is largely motivated by gameplay - most of the storyline is something that you can only extrapolate as an afterthought from playing the game. Sansara Naga is almost more of an explorative RPG than anything else: the Akupala continent is huge with a lot to see and explore.

And they both worked. The likelihood of both happening felt really low. And yet, it happened. But now with the adapter and physical cart, he could manually reverse engineer the files. CaH4e3 kept those files for nearly 10 years, he told Polygon, before he learned that Russian Geek had an adapter.

After some work, CaH4e3 and Russian Geek were able to get the files dumped — and now the cartridge and three more of the seven Space School game files that CaH4e3 already had are playable online with an emulator. Konami's ultra rare Space School series was completely undumped yesterday.

We like it a lot. Many of the best Famicom games are super-cheap. Because of the sheer number of systems sold, any game that got any traction saw huge print runs.

Or did it, though? It has the weirdness of Parodius and the fanservice appeal of Smash Bros. A puzzle game designed to improve Russia-Japan relations? Yeah, Gorby no Pipeline Daisakusen is a weird one. Much like the scenario of Duck Tales and Duck Tales 2, Chip and Dale Rescue Rangers 2 is a solid follow up to the original and will make fans happy, but when arrived in , the NES was all but dead, and the novelty of the cartoon franchise was already in limited syndication.

Complete copies especially with manual have actually skyrocketed. It is a horizontal shmup that features a bizarre setting with a fusion of zombies and samurai. Zombie Nation could use some additional refinement, but it does show off some technical skill with the amount of activity occurring on the screen without slowdown. Complete copies with Manual are extremely difficult to come by.

It was developed and published by Atlus in and is actually a relatively challenging but beatable platformer that has a nice cartoon presentation and will feel at home with some of the of the best licensed platformers the 8-bit era had to offer. Game makers were quick to turnaround the property into a digital experience, but were right at the transition between 8-bit and bit consoles.

Irem has a special place in the hearts of shooter fans and Sqoon is one of their lesser-known gems. It was originally published by Irem in Japan on the Famicom a year before releasing their defining shooter , R-Type in the arcades and Sqoon arrived in North American on the NES soon after in late The game itself looks simple on the outside, but is actually feels like a mix between Gradius, Defender, and Choplifter.

Initially, it feels like a traditional horizontal shmup in which you pilot a submarine with horizontal torpedos and diagonal depth charges that can only be deployed once at a time. You receive extra fuel with each extra survivor you retrieve. Compared to the likes of Gradius, Sqoon looks like a simple shooter for , but it actually has a great deal of gameplay depth compared to most 8-bit shooters.

Check for Sqoon on eBay. While there was a lot of noise in the genre, the Tournament Fighters title got a lot of promotion, but this was mostly for the Super Nintendo and Sega Genesis ports. The NES version was a bit of a gamble to capitalize on the large NES install base late in its lifespan and actually released a few months after the bit versions. Interestingly enough, the NES version was not released at all in Japan.

It was a hit in the arcades in and received a successful Super Nintendo port in Once came around, Capcom wanted to try to bring the successful game to the still-surviving NES but obviously needed to make some graphical changes to make it work on the older hardware.

And more so than TMNT, each character in your roster has different skills and advantages. Even though the NES game came out before the arcade game, it was in and well into the era where the Super Nintendo was around and thriving.

Things plateaued a bit for the next few years. It was in our honorable mentions section in our guide, but just this year rocketed into the top 20 North American retail listings — accelerating nicely while others slow down a bit.

It is a very interesting hybrid of a platformer and shooter that can either be incredibly frustrating or, with some practice, a zen-state action experience.

This is one of the better examples of a valuable game that has some solid and interesting gameplay. While the original Duck Tales game was released in , sold quite well, and is a regarded as a challenging but thrilling classic in the NES library, the follow-up title was not released until , dooming it to be a slow-moving title. For those who enjoyed the original Duck Tales game, you will mostly likely find enjoyment here. There are a few subtle changes, but some argued that the game was rather short.

Duck Tales 2 has been high on this list of NES collectibles for quite some time. It will be interesting to see if the new and enjoyable, IMO Duck Tales cartoon reboot will add more collector appeal to this release. Games based on professional sports leagues were just becoming mainstream in the early 90s — especially thriving on the new bit systems.

Pro Sport Hockey is also one of those NES carts that have gradually increased value over time as more NES collectors have been building out their collections and noticing just how tricky this one is to score.

While most of this lists relies heavily on the rarity of the game and collectors trying to add buzz-worthy investments to their collection, Gun-Nac is one of the most serious combinations of rarity and the caliber of the game itself. There was a nice handful of great shmups on the NES, and some of the most well-known classics such as Gradius and were mainstream hits and have lots of inexpensive copies floating around.

Gun-Nac, on the other hand, is commonly on shmup fans list of top NES shooters but also has a much more limited circulation. Although Gun Nac frequently becomes hectic, it is still one of the most balanced shooters in the NES library. Weapon drops are frequent causing the penalty of dying to be less threatening than most shooters. Gun-Nac has seen a slow and steady climb.

And like a lot of these games saw a large rise between and Remember R. The Robot? Possibly the best value on this list despite the hefty price, Metal Storm packs a great futuristic aesthetics paired with fun 2D run-n-gun platforming gameplay.

Metal Storm was published in by Irem who is notorious for their punishing shooters such as R-Type. This fantastic gem has you play as a robot that can switch gravity at a push of a button a feature that was also fun the Gameboy gem, Wendy: Every Witch Way.

Metal Storm is easy to pick up and play, but it takes quite some effort to master. The advanced animation, parallax scrolling, and and mecha style would feel at home on a bit console if it had a deeper color palette. Metal Storm has seen a steady climb over the years, but loose copies have cooled just a bit just recently after Limited Run did a special edition NES cart of Metal Storm.

While they are physically different, some collectors that may have considered picking up an original cart in possibly not ideal condition may have opted to get a Limited Run copy with packaging for a just as much money or less. There are even some boss battles that features bigger puzzles, often have lava chasing you, and sometimes rise vertically.

They serve as a challenging but rewarding experience to break up the standard levels. Overall, Fire N Ice has a colorful and whimsical style that rounds out a game that would be a great addition to any NES collection.

Sword Master is a side-scrolling action platformer that relies on action, patience, and strategy. Between the hack-n-slash action and the energetic soundtrack, it has some strong arcade vibes, but it requires more thought and concentration than most of its arcade peers. Despite its challenging and unforgiving nature, it can be really fun once you get a good feel for it.

The graphics could actually pass for an early TurboGrafx 16 or a launch-era Sega Genesis game with large, detailed characters and impressive backgrounds and cutscenes. As impressive as it was for the NES, it did pale in comparison to what the SNES offered in which prevented it from getting substantial sales.

While it goes for 10x those prices now, this is another one of those gems that could be worth adding to your collection if you are fan of the genre. Combine that with the release date of late , and you can see why it is an in-demand rarity. In hindsight, more of us should have tracked down copies of all those titles. The game itself is not where its value is found.

While the graphics do a nice job of representing the cartoon, there is not much additional substance. Probably the biggest drop thus far in the top 20 releases over the last three years.

It has a lot of similarities to Ganbare Goemon 2 on the Famicom but is different enough that it has been theorized that it could have been rejected by Konami and sold off to be repackaged.

Other spots shift to either side-scrolling platforming levels or horseback stages that play like an overhead shooter. To round it out, it even has some RPG aspects and a handful of mini games like a shooting gallery, blackjack, and others. Snow Brothers is an arcade port of the puzzle platformer title of the same name and has gameplay very similar to Bubble Bobble. It is actually one of the older games on this list, being released in , but the game did not move many copies despite its solid gameplay.

In fact, Ocean had licensed the game for the Amiga and Atari ST in but canceled the games part way through development because of disappointing sales it was eventually released on the Mega Drive in , however. The Values in this section are from completes sales between August and May For most of the last few decades, collecting classic video games was pretty much limited to those that grew up with the games and continued to build their collection over time. The last five years or so, we have seen an influx of younger collectors that are broadening their horizons — digging into game libraries that are older than they are.