Hard to explain request, see thread

Koopa64

This request is hard to explain, but I'll try. I'm trying to find some good NES games that really push the system's capabilities, in regards of video, sound and gameplay. Especially extremely good ports from more advanced systems. I particularly like Bonk's Adventure. It has this interesting allure to it, even though it's clearly better on TG16. Are there any other games like Bonk's Adventure in regards to graphics? This request can include imports and unreleased material, especially the latter. 

SamSpade

Joe and Mac is pretty well done. Same goes with Batman: Revenge of the Joker, I would say that's one of the best looking nes games around. In terms of pushing the limits of the console, I'd say Recca is the fastest, smoothest shmup on the system, way ahead of everything else. Gun Nac runs really fast too.I'm just going to throw these in there too, Shatterhand and Sweet Home. Sweet Home may not be a really pretty game, but the music was so awesome and the game has this Final Fantasy meets Resident Evil vibe that was way ahead of it's time and unlike anything else on the nes.

vern77777

Does Zelda 1 qualify? I noticed it slows down sometimes when there's a ton of enemies on the screen.

Mog

Mr Gimmick is a good one.

Blue Gollumer

I would say Gun-Nac pushes the system to it's limit. There are tons of sprites on the screen but no slow down. It's actually really similar to Blazin' Lazers in a lot of ways. It feels like it could be on the TG16 were it not for the occasional flicker.



When you bring up graphics I tend to lean towards games that have really polished design as well. I'm thinking Little Samson, Mr. Gimmick, the Mega Man games, Mario 2 and 3, Metal Storm and Kirby's Adventure. They're all pretty and they're all pretty in the same way.



This is a pretty good write up:

http://www.racketboy.com/retro/nintendo/nes/2007/12/best-nes-graphics-sound.html

Mr.Nintendo

i always thought the camerica's had good grafix, specially micro machines, and bee 52.

removed04092017

SMB3. Although if you knew more about how the NES worked, you'd not think that and still may not because of the scrolling glitches on the side, but gameplay wise it's hard to beat. Especially the destructibility. Just not of the magnitude in many NES games.

KingYoshi

I was blown away by the graphics in Little Samson. Its probably the best looking NES game I have ever played. I literally jumped up and down like 20x's with Samson the first time I played it. His 360 jump is just sooo smooth.

EvilEyeball

Zodas revenge looks really snazy

Berserker

http://www.racketboy.com/retro/nintendo/nes/2007/12/best-nes-graphics-sound.html

Item90

Crystalis is pretty impressive. Fun gameplay, functional saving, nice visuals, and a few cool tunes. First time I picked it up, I couldn't help the feeling that it was very much like some of the SNES RPG's I've played. It's way beyond what a lot of games did on the NES.

Wyndcrosser

haha, I just wrote down all your answers, to see how great they really are.



Now I just have to find them.



Wynd

mario's left nut

Metalstorm is friggin' awesome! Great turn on platform gameplay.

Secksies

Originally posted by: Mr.Nintendo

i always thought the camerica's had good grafix, specially micro machines, and bee 52.

Yeah, I like them aswel. I was going to say the samething.

acomicbookguyc

Little Samson all the way. Very Colorful sprites and a colorful game in general. The control's are spot on as well. I'd say it's one of the most perfect games on the system. Return of the Joker also had very impressive graphics. Batmans sprite was detailed it could pass for a 16-bit game. 

Mr. Gimmick and Journey to Silius owned on the music front. Journey to Silius had the most complex music. 98% of every NES game used 1 or 2 instruments looped over but this had a full compliment and it had the length too.

shawnphase

yeah, everything these guys have said as well as:



recca

3d worldrunner

solar jetman

batman: rotj

kirby

bio force ape (!)

joy mecha fight

shatterhand



this is a short list, you might have to emulate some of these but i thnk all those titles are worthwhile. and ditto on the music. please enjoy this tuneful rendition of the journey to silius endtheme i did. from the 'now youre playing with powar 8: this is where i usually die' album. this is a staple of how my band closes every set, but this version is a little more...intimate.

http://tempsoundsolutions.bandcamp.com/track/journey-to-silius

acomicbookguyc

Originally posted by: shawnphase

yeah, everything these guys have said as well as:



recca

3d worldrunner

solar jetman

batman: rotj

kirby

bio force ape (!)

joy mecha fight

shatterhand



this is a short list, you might have to emulate some of these but i thnk all those titles are worthwhile. and ditto on the music. please enjoy this tuneful rendition of the journey to silius endtheme i did. from the 'now youre playing with powar 8: this is where i usually die' album. this is a staple of how my band closes every set, but this version is a little more...intimate.

http://tempsoundsolutions.bandcamp.com/track/journey-to...

The song is sweet shawn. 

Austin

Batman has some of the smoothest background animations on the NES. It's definitely impressive, IMO.

shawnphase

thanks man! glad you checked it out! and yeah, rotj is great. even the other one is great, but you'd be hard pressed to find a bad sunsoft game, maybe not including the port of spy hunter, hehe. blaster master should be in this list too because of how in depth it is too i'd think.

removed04092017

I don't know if you'd want to trust racketboy though. The tricks they use for those games aren't even mentioned. They also have some wrong info on there. Very wrong. It says the "NES" game C3: Draculas Curse has extra sound via "Additional sound channels via Konami

cradelit

Surprised no one's mentioned battletoads yet, It does a great job working around the NES's limitations.

removed04092017

Originally posted by: cradelit

Surprised no one's mentioned battletoads yet, It does a great job working around the NES's limitations.

I've never played it, especially not all the way through. What's so special about it?

Edit: Read on racketboy. Seems just like mostly graphics. Meh. Unless the rotation was done on the fly...

cradelit

Well, it uses "parallax effects", panning around the characters, amongst other things, it does a lot of things really well actually

Edit: Just the way the game works in general seems a bit hard to pull of with tile based graphics.

It's also a really fun game so if you haven't tried it you should

removed04092017

I've tried it, but I don't want to go past the first few levels, I've heard all the stories already. And yeah, I'm guessing it just uses lots of CHR-ROM to pull it off, and switch it in when needed. It's a usual thing to do, just eat it and make the ROM bigger.

cradelit

Originally posted by: 3GenGames

I've tried it, but I don't want to go past the first few levels, I've heard all the stories already. And yeah, I'm guessing it just uses lots of CHR-ROM to pull it off, and switch it in when needed. It's a usual thing to do, just eat it and make the ROM bigger.

Yeah, actually I just brought it up and I was totally wrong about the panning, lol not sure what I was thinking. It does do some other fancy "camera" effects though

shawnphase

i was going to mention battletoads, but that game really crammed too many aspects on the player at once. that game seems really cluttered and it isnt a whole lot of fun for even players who can really make their way through it regularly. they did somewhat the same thing with double dragon.

DestructoDisk

Madara is pretty impressive.

Roth

About Battletoads, one of the things that shows how they push the limits, is the snake level. On the NTSC version, they actually had to make the status bar taller in order to squeeze enough time in there to do all the background updates and what-not. They may have done this for another level or two also, but I can't recall right now. I think the original person that I saw point this out was DWEdit.

tekfox212800

Retro USB has Mr Gimmick, which is by far the BEST NES game for what you are looking for.  Pushes the sound and visuals of the nes to its peak.