10 NES Hidden Gems You Probably Never Played

Beyond the Usual Suspects

The NES canonical list — Super Mario Bros. 3, Mega Man 2, Contra, The Legend of Zelda, Castlevania — gets repeated because those games genuinely earned their reputations. But the NES had over 700 licensed North American releases, and limiting your experience to ten canonical titles means missing games that were extraordinary for their era and hold up remarkably well today.

These ten games don’t appear on most “best NES games” lists. That’s a mistake.

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1. Little Samson (1992)

Little Samson is a late NES action-platformer released in 1992 — after most players had moved to the SNES — which is why almost no one played it. That’s unfortunate, because it’s one of the best-looking and best-playing games on the platform.

You play as Samson, who has four weapons: a battle bell (melee), a hammer (short-range power attack), a bow (mid-range), and a small friend. The weapons are contextually useful rather than arbitrary — you’ll switch between them based on the situation. The level design is excellent, the boss fights are creative, and the visuals demonstrate what the NES could do in the hands of developers who had spent years learning the hardware.

The game’s rarity made original cartridges expensive (often $300+). A reproduction cartridge or emulation is the practical path.

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2. Crystalis (1990)

SNK made Crystalis in 1990, and if you’d told someone it was a lost Zelda game, they’d have believed you.

Set in a post-apocalyptic world where technology and magic coexist, you explore a world full of towns, dungeons, and overworld areas, finding sword upgrades that gain new abilities through leveling — the Fire Sword, the Ice Sword, the Thunder Sword each have distinct combat and puzzle applications. The story is more developed than most NES games and the difficulty is fair throughout.

It’s one of the great action-RPGs of the 8-bit era, and it’s largely unknown because SNK wasn’t Nintendo and “post-apocalyptic RPG” wasn’t a search term in 1990.

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3. Jackal (1988)

Konami made Jackal in 1988 and it is the ideal two-player co-op experience on the NES.

You pilot jeeps through overhead-view stages, using a main gun (directional, controlled with the B button) and grenades (A button) to eliminate enemies and rescue prisoners of war. The two-player mode splits the screen action between two jeeps that cooperate rather than compete.

The game is short (can be completed in under 45 minutes), tightly designed, and satisfying in the specific way that Konami’s NES arcade ports achieved. Find a friend and a second controller.

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4. Startropics (1990)

Nintendo made StarTropics specifically for Western markets — it was never released in Japan. It plays like a Zelda game played from above with a grid-based movement system: explore overworld areas, enter dungeons, find items, defeat bosses.

The setting distinguishes it: not fantasy but science fiction, with a protagonist named Mike Jones who travels to a tropical island to find his uncle and ends up fighting alien invaders. The game was released with a piece of paper in the packaging that had to be dipped in water to reveal a code required to progress — a physical copy-protection mechanic that was lost on rental copies.

The water-dipping puzzle is now widely documented. The game is excellent and widely overlooked.

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5. Duck Tales (1989)

Capcom made the licensed DuckTales game in 1989, and it transcends its licensed origins completely.

Scrooge McDuck uses his cane as a pogo stick (jumping on it repeatedly) or a golf club (hitting rocks at enemies). The five stages — Himalayas, Transylvania, Amazon, African Mines, and Moon — can be played in any order and contain gems and treasures that fund the ending you receive based on how much gold you collect. The Moon theme is one of the most beloved pieces of 8-bit music.

It’s available in the remastered DuckTales Remastered (2013) which adds voice acting and visual updates, but the original cartridge holds up.

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6. Bionic Commando (1988)

Bionic Commando has no jump button.

This is the design choice that defines the game. Your bionic arm fires a grappling hook that swings you across gaps, up to higher platforms, and past obstacles. Learning to use the swing mechanic — building momentum, timing the release, landing on narrow platforms — is the game’s central skill.

The level design is built entirely around the arm’s mechanics: gaps are sized for swing trajectories, enemies are placed to challenge swing timing, and bosses require using the arm creatively. The NES version is an expanded translation of the Capcom arcade game with additional story content.

No jump button. Still one of the most movement-satisfying games on the platform.

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7. Blaster Master (1988)

Blaster Master is two games: a top-down Zelda-like and a side-scrolling action game, interlocked.

You drive SOPHIA THE 3RD — a transforming battle tank — through an underground world, using the tank’s cannon and jump to traverse environments. When you exit the tank, you enter overhead-view dungeon segments where you fight enemies and find items. The items found in overhead sections improve SOPHIA’s capabilities in the side-scrolling segments.

The structure is unprecedented for 1988 and creates a surprisingly rich variety of gameplay types within a single game. The difficulty is steep but navigable.

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8. Mégaman (Mega Man 1, 1987)

Mega Man 1 gets overlooked because Mega Man 2 (1988) is so much more polished. But the original has a specific quality that the sequel — designed to be more accessible — doesn’t replicate: it’s brutally honest about how hard it is.

The six robot masters are unforgiving if approached in the wrong order. Gutsman is the intended first boss but he’s tough; Bombman is more accessible. Learning the boss order, acquiring Cut Man’s scissors to cut through enemies, using Elecman’s bolts against Cutman — the game teaches an ordered approach through experimentation.

For players who loved Mega Man 2 but want more, the original is a harder, rawer version of the same essential game.

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9. Little Nemo: The Dream Master (1990)

Capcom made Little Nemo: The Dream Master based on the 1989 animated film, and it’s one of the strangest and most inventive NES platformers.

Nemo is a child who can throw candy to tame animals, then ride them for their special abilities: a bee that flies, a lizard that climbs walls, a gorilla that punches through rocks. The mechanic of acquiring and losing animals creates gameplay variety across the seven dream-world stages.

The visual design is genuinely distinctive — a pastel, surrealist aesthetic that doesn’t look like any other NES game. The difficulty is reasonable and the game can be completed in an afternoon. Almost no one has played it.

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10. Ninja Gaiden (1988)

The Ninja Gaiden trilogy (1988, 1990, 1991) is not obscure, but it falls below the Contra and Mega Man tier in most discussions. That’s wrong.

The original Ninja Gaiden (1988) introduced cinematic cutscenes to NES action games: between levels, story scenes played out with multiple characters, motion, and dialogue that created a genuine (if melodramatic) narrative context for the gameplay. The game was also brutally difficult and fair — the enemy respawn mechanics that reset enemies when you scroll past them are the main criticism, but the base platforming and combat are excellent.

All three games are worth playing in sequence. The story is genuinely engaging in the way of a very good 1980s action movie.

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Finding These Games

Most of these titles are affordable on original cartridges:

• Jackal, Blaster Master, Bionic Commando, Duck Tales, Ninja Gaiden: $10-30 for working cartridges
• Crystalis, StarTropics: $20-50
• Little Nemo, Little Samson: $30-300 (Little Samson is rare and expensive in original form)
• Mega Man 1: $20-40

All are available through emulation and legal digital storefronts where licensed.