The 9 Best Classic Nintendo Arcade Games

Nintendo is basically synonymous with quality gaming. Originally a toy manufacturer, the Japanese company made the switch into video games easy. Nowadays the company’s known for their excellent design and emphasis on fun. But their tentpole franchise, Super Mario, and many of their esteemed staff got their start in the arcade.

Before Nintendo turned their talents to consoles, they first went to the arcades. In fact, some of their earliest arcade work released a mere year after Pong. They’ve had plenty of tries and hits in the arcade scene, with tons of classic games. While not all of them became franchises, a lot of them are blueprints of the company’s future successes.

SCREENRANT VIDEO OF THE DAY

Sheriff

The old west has long been a theme in video games. For whatever reason, many early Nintendo offerings in the Arcade had this theme. This includes Sheriff, one of the company’s first electronic games.

Known as one of the first stick shooter games, the game follows an unnamed protagonist, who is surrounded on all sides by roving outlaws, and can fire in eight directions to get them. While the game wasn’t especially technically impressive for the time, Nintendo loves to reference it. The Sheriff himself is featured quite prominently as an assist character in Super Smash Bros. Ultimate.

F-Zero AX

F-Zero AX was one of the final entries in the racing franchise before its long hiatus. It was co-developed by SEGA, who also worked on the Gamecube entry. As such, it features similar gameplay to SEGA’s great arcade racers, where a time limit is placed on the driver. However, a time limit doesn’t mean much to the blistering speeds of F-Zero.

The game featured multiple playable racers from the series. But the biggest feature was the cabinet itself. It would turn and spin as players drove in the game. That really helped achieve the zero gravity racing promise of the series.

Mario Bros.

Nowadays, Luigi is the quintessential player two in video games. But he’s completely absent from the Donkey Kong saga, instead making his debut alongside Mario’s famous plumber profession. In Mario Bros., the two brothers must rid a sewer of the pests assailing it. The game is a bit of an oddball nowadays, but it introduced plenty of the series’ most enduring tropes.

The game doesn’t let you jump on enemies, but it does introduce turtles and fireballs as enemies. It also introduces the POW Block, which would be an iconic tool for the brothers. But most important, it introduced the two-player mode. This would be a mainstay for the series in every platformer installment.

Popeye

It’s a popular fun fact that Nintendo’s Donkey Kong originally began as a Popeye game, but was changed when the license couldn’t be secured. However, Nintendo actually got to work on a Popeye game after the success of Donkey Kong in arcades. The game features bright and cheerful graphics, with the main objective being to catch objects thrown by Olive Oyl while avoiding enemies.

The game’s got extremely accurate graphics that really capture the look of the characters. Another great feature of the game is that it has multiple level themes, such as pirate ships. However, it’s a hard game to access now due to some players not being able to port it in some Western countries (unlike Nintendo’s other Arcade games).

Arm Wrestling

Arm Wrestling shares a development team with the Punch-Out!! arcade games. In fact, it even shares a universe, with Bald Bull from the boxing series being an opponent.

The game had a two-directional joystick and one button that the player must mash while holding the stick against the opponent’s pull. It also features several opponents, with even wilder gimmicks than Punch-Out!! (which included a robot and a Frankenstein-like monster). It’s not as deep as Punch-Out!!, but is more visually impressive.

Wild Gunman

Wild Gunman is known by most audiences for two things. One is being referenced by the Duck Hunt Dog in Super Smash Bros., and the other being its role in an iconic scene from Back to the Future 2. Ironically, there was never any Wild Gunman cabinet of that type, as it was invented for the movie. But incredibly, this simple reaction game is Nintendo’s earliest gaming franchise.

The gameplay is quite simple, being a reaction game that involves the player shooting the Gunman as soon as they draw. The gameplay was easy to recreate in toys (which was the first two installments of the series), but then came the arcade release, which was actually a gigantic machine that played full video. This makes Wild Gunman arcade one of the first FMV games a decade before its NES release.

Mario Kart GP DX

The Mario Kart Arcade GP series of racing arcade cabinets were co-developed by Bandai-Namco. That’s the reason why some of their characters, like Pac-Man and Don-Chan, appear as playable racers. The games also had a few maps based on Bamco addition, which was a welcome change of pace from the usual Mario Circuits.

Three games in the series were made, but many would agree that the best one is Mario Kart Arcade GP DX. The game featured a large roster that was built up over the previous installments and a fusion kart mode, which allowed players to cooperate with or compete against each other at different cabinets. It’s just a shame that Nintendo hasn’t referenced this game or any other arcade kart in the main series since.

Donkey Kong Junior

Donkey Kong Junior was the original controversial video game sequel. It flipped the script pretty heavily from the first game, making Donkey Kong the ‘damsel’ and Mario the villain. But it’s this focus on the Kong characters that eventually gave rise to the Donkey Kong Country series (and those DK games are full of great characters and stellar level design).

But even here, at the genesis, the gameplay is unique. Much like the previous game, the player is meant to climb a structure. But as the titular child ape, they’re given much easier vertical movement that allows for some trickier maneuvers. While Donkey Kong Junior himself wouldn’t see the prominence of his fellow co-stars, he created a precedent for vertical platforming action.

Donkey Kong

Donkey Kong is undoubtedly Nintendo’s best arcade game. It’s the only game to inspire an entire documentary about it’s records being broken, after all. The simple gameplay of climbing up a structure while avoiding and sometimes crushing barrels is quite fun. It also introduced the world to Mario, Donkey Kong, and Pauline, who are timeless archetypal characters.

So much can trace it’s origins back to the 1981 classic. Platformers have their roots here, power-ups appear, and the game even had cutscenes. It kickstarted the career of designer Shigeru Miyamoto, who has become one of the most prominent designers in the world. It’s incredible that a game can be so important, so influential, and still appealing mechanically today.

The Skywalker Saga Shouldn’t Be The Last LEGO Star Wars Game

About The Author

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *