Mainly kept us renting it from the video store for its novelty. After playing a fair bit of Mortal Kombat in arcades, these characters were just so strange and interesting by comparison. Loved the unique attacks on characters like the Blob

Played this so much as a kid, couldn't believe how good the sprites looked compared to the movie (at the time). Did find it challenging but was able to beat it consistently after a lot of practice. I was always terrible at the Cave of Wonders escape though. Loved revisiting it on the Disney Classics Collection for the Switch

I was expecting this game to feel like they were running out of gas after making 6 games for the NES in 7 years, but it was still a blast. Music was still tremendous, levels were still fun. The Jetpack just took some getting used to

Dang, this was pretty hard, especially being right after Super Castlevania IV (which I found way easier). The levels and music remain awesome, and the boss fights are punishing but so much fun to overcome. Final Dracula fight in particular really took me a while

Awesome vibes to this game, and really fun gameplay. Good co-op game too. I feel like I usually hit a wall around the midpoint of the game, but so many levels are still burned into my brain. Also one of the first games I experienced that had destructible environments, kinda blew my mind

I was fascinated by this game mainly because of being able to play as either Dr. Grant or a freakin' velociraptor. Always preferred to play as the raptor, but remember being very confused by the level design. Still have fond memories of it

Such a delight to play, and an incredible step up from Seiken Densetsu 1. Probably one of my earliest exposures to Action RPGs, and blew my mind that it looked and played like a Zelda game but had stats, equipment, and magic like Final Fantasy. The graphics still look beautiful, and the music is excellent. Later bosses felt like magic was the only usable approach which I didn't love, but got through them eventually. Loved revisiting this on the Collection of Mana on the Switch.

Basically all you could ever need, and my introduction to classic Mario as a kid. Super Mario Bros. 3 blew me the hell away, and still does to this day. The other 3 games are fun too of course, although Lost Levels is a little too punishing (hence the delay in releasing it here), and the graphics update to all of them is neat.

Feel like we just absorbed this from a video store clearing out old games, but I still dug it at the time. Racing around courses set up on pool tables and whatnot felt pretty novel

The first Zelda game I played, an incredible achievement and still rarely matched in top-down Zelda. Gets a little too challenging in the last few dungeons (at least for kid me), but the dungeon variety was top notch and the overworld was great to explore. The ending always gets me too. The Switch remake was a lovely graphical update to an already great game.

Before I got into NHL games as a hockey kid this was my go-to sports game. Didn't know any of the players or teams really but I loved hitting slam dunks

Once again as a kid who didn't grow up with Contra this seemed like the coolest shit ever. Run-and-gunning through inventive levels where you're playing someone the size of a bottle cap in a human's world. I liked the mirroring of the levels around the halfway point, felt like a real "there and back again." The "Rave Dance Tune" music from the bonus level also completely rocks

I was happy to finally try this on the Nintendo Switch Online collection. Great classic SNES RPG-ing that I always long for. Has some difficulty spikes that you just have to grind through (as was not uncommon in these early days), and maybe goes on a little too long. But still a very satisfying turn-based RPG

Didn't play this 'til just recently since I just grew up on the Kirby Dreamland games instead, but it's a delight. Much harder than I was expecting, but it is an NES platformer I suppose. Nightmare in Dreamland definitely improves some stuff, but this was still a darn good one

Grew up with Starfox 64, discovered this on emulators years later. Insanely impressive what they were able to do on the SNES here, and the rail shooter gameplay would go on to be significantly improved but the essentials are all here