All 751 NES Games Put to the Test

For Japan fans, that number also opens a little window into the Famicom era, where pixel art, tight limitations, and pure game design had to do all the heavy lifting. Sounds weird, but it's true.

All 751 NES games sounds like a dare, not a review project. Yet that's exactly what one critic set out to do, going through the full North American Nintendo Entertainment System library, from obvious legends to obscure cartridges that most people have never even held. The scale alone is wild: 751 titles means hundreds of platformers, shooters, puzzlers, sports games, licensed oddities, and the occasional ugly gem. My tip: if you love retro gaming, treat this less like a ranking and more like a time capsule. See what I mean?

What makes this especially fun for jpnerd.com readers is the Japan angle hiding under the plastic shell. The NES was the export face of the Famicom, Nintendo's 8-bit system that launched in Japan in 1983, two years before the U.S. version arrived. That means a lot of the DNA here comes from Kyoto, not Silicon Valley, and you can feel it in the way games reward pattern learning, repetition, and clean controls. Compared with back home, where many people think of the NES as a Western childhood machine, it's really part of a bigger Japanese story. Convinced yet?

Why ranking all 751 NES games matters

Fun fact: most retro lists cherry-pick the obvious names, but this project goes straight through the whole library. That changes the conversation. Instead of just talking about Super Mario Bros., The Legend of Zelda, Metroid, or Castlevania, you also see how much filler the era produced, and how often publishers leaned on quick tie-ins, sports licences, or recycled ideas.

The critic behind the ranking, as reported by CBC Radio's As It Happens, did the slow, stubborn work that most people only joke about. That kind of project matters because the NES library is big enough to make selective memory dangerous. If you only remember the hits, it's easy to forget how brutal the 8-bit market could be. One bad level, one awkward jump, one unfair hitbox, and a game gets stuck in the bargain bin forever. Wild, isn't it?

The gap between classics and curiosities

Trust me on this one: the top of the list is exactly where you expect, but the middle and bottom are where the real archaeology begins. A game can be historically important and still be awkward to play. Another one can look cheap, then surprise you with tight pacing or a clever mechanic that feels ahead of its time.

That's why these full-library rankings are better than nostalgia-fuelled top 10s. They show the NES as a messy, living ecosystem, not a museum shelf. And for Japanese learners, there's a small language bonus too, because a lot of classic game vocabulary still pops up in fan discussions: ゲーム (gemu), ステージ (sutagei, stage), コンボ (konbo, combo), boss, 向き (muki, direction; facing), and of course the endless debates around difficulty. See what I mean?

Mega Man 2 and the art of 8-bit polish

Before I forget: if you want a single game that explains why the Famicom and NES still matter, Mega Man 2 is a great place to start. Released by Capcom in 1988 in Japan as Rockman 2, it took the basic formula from the first game and sharpened almost everything. The music is punchy, the robot master order invites experimentation, and the controls feel crisp in a way many later games still fail to match.

The best part: Mega Man 2 is also a lesson in how Japanese game design of the era often balanced challenge with readability. Enemies telegraph their moves, stages teach you through repetition, and failure usually feels like your fault, not the game's. That's a huge reason it became a benchmark for 8-bit action games, both in Japan and overseas. Compared with back home, where some Western licensed titles leaned on brand recognition, Capcom was making something that asked players to get good, then rewarded them with real momentum. My tip: if you're learning Japanese, look up fan discussions about Rockman 2 and notice how often players use words like 読み (yomi, reading; prediction), 判断 (handan, judgment; decision), and 外れる (hazureru, to miss; to be off) when they talk about boss patterns. Convinced yet?

What the full ranking reveals about the era

Unlike what we're used to with modern game launches, the NES era had no patches, no updates, and no safety net. If a game shipped broken, that was that. So when someone ranks every title in a 751-game library, they're also ranking ambition, technical limits, and studio discipline.

And there's a clear lesson here for anyone who loves Japan-focused media: the 8-bit era wasn't just cute nostalgia. It was an industrial moment shaped by Nintendo, Capcom, Konami, Namco, and dozens of smaller teams trying to squeeze whole worlds into tiny cartridges. Some games still hold up because their design was built for clarity, not flash. Others survive mostly as historical artefacts. The gap between those two outcomes is exactly what makes the list so entertaining. My verdict:

On a related note: if you enjoy game history, this kind of ranking can train your eye. After enough 8-bit titles, you start spotting patterns, enemy cadence, level grammar, and the little tricks that let a game feel bigger than its memory chip. That's the real magic, not just the score at the end. See what I mean?

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Sources

1. CBC Radio: Nintendo Entertainment System games ranking