I just read a question that I find strange. Someone wanted to know the best NES games, with the understanding that most of the big ones would be superseded by later, better remakes. It was pointless to play
Metroid, for instance, though maybe the first
Zelda did a few unique things. Were there any games that were still worth playing?
The reason I find this strange is that the approach seems so askew. The reason to go to NES games will be less in terms of what they have to offer mechanically from a contemporary perspective; the main appeal here will be their method. It’s in the look, the sound, the technical limitations that result in the problem-solving that forms the basis of most of the design.
The most interesting things that you’ll find here are informed by these ephemera of a context that doesn’t exist anywhere else. Metroid isn’t interesting on the NES because of the shape of its world or what the buttons do; it’s because the game is both glitchy as fuck and designed so that most of its genuine surprises come off like possible glitches. The experience of playing the game feeds from a sort of cognitive dissonance between what you’re seeing and what might be, that creates a sense of endless possibility.
The best NES games feed into that dissonance, to create an idea that anything could be out there.
I guess I mean to say that the experience of the NES is one of uncertainty. The system is like a Schrodinger’s Box. Nothing is clearly defined except in the moment of experience — a moment that for all you know may never be recaptured.
- Why do the rocks in Zelda look like turtles?
- Wait, there’s a second quest? Where the world has different rules?!
- Could there be another world entirely, if you burn the right bush?
- Can you get to the end of the minus world?
- What exists outside the normal Metroid levels?
- Can you hit Deborah’s Cliff with your head?
Super Mario Bros. a third time?
- What happens if you climb off the screen?
- Am I meant to be able to do the thing I’m doing?
It’s childhood myth and legend encoded in inconclusive living hieroglyphics. Whispers in the night. Nightmares in silicon, filtered through corroded contacts, coaxial cable, and the roughly traced path of an electron gun.
Back then it was very hard to pass judgment on what was a “good” or a “bad” game; it was more that some things were more opaque than others, and better at hiding their secrets.
And then you get to the chaos wrought by the Game Genie, which at first wasn’t exclusively a cheating device — it was a hacking device, allowing you to fundamentally alter the experience of playing. Make Mario walk backwards. Be Small Firey Mario at any time! Make the entire world black, so you have to feel your way around…
To that end, Simon’s Quest is one of the most definitive NES games. It is pure ambiguity, obfuscation, and interpretation from start to end. It even has three endings, to enhance the what-might-be.
I should make a list of the definitive NES experiences, in the sense of those games that most embody the uncertainty that we have so dearly lost over the years.
