RBI Baseball and Icehockey.
River City Ransom is an incredibly underrated game.
Double Dragon 1 and 2
**
Ninja Gaiden 1 ** and 2All the other ones brought up before.
This game is certainly not for everyone, but **Romance of the Three Kingdoms ** (any one of em) is definitely noteworthy. It’s a historical simulation based on the book of the same name written many moons ago by a Chinese guy. If you want specifics, Google! Anyways, you manage your cities and try to take over China. Grand timewaster and I love it.
Here is a website where you can play every NES game ever made (plus quite a few from other systems as well) online, as Java games.
I’m not 100% certain of the legality of this site, but it’s been around for quite some time (more than a year, at least, since I had to hunt back through my online journal to find the URL) so I’m assuming that if anybody official had objections to it, it would have been taken down long ago. Mods, please delete this post if it’s out of line.
It’s a pretty cool site and a nice nostalgia trip.
23 posts and none has mentioned Castlevania, Castlevania II: Simon’s Quest or (the best) Castlevania III: Dracula’s Curse. For shame, people, for shame.
I’m too young to have ever played a NES or even a SNES. Huzzah for the miracle of emulation. You guys must be pretty old school. >_>;
Also,
If I were a female, I’d totally want to have your children. I would even consider paying a mad scientist to make it possible.
Old school to have played NES / SNES, Clockwork and Candy? You must be a real young’n. 
Absolutely. EarthBound 0 (Originally titled “Mother” in Japan) was very deep for a NES game, or so I’ve thought. Decent graphics, quirky humor, and a charming story. (Also, you just gotta love the music!) Definitely true that you’ll have to download the ROM if you want to play this one; though it was actually translated by Nintendo, it was never released outside of Japan, and it’s only through one fellow’s acquisition of the only known prototype cartridge in existence that we are able to play it today.
Elevator Action had it’s moments.
Rad Racer holds some odd, nostalgic appeal for me. It just does.
Micro Machines was an all around solid game. Good graphics, fun and diverse gameplay, good art design.
Maniac Mansion…what can I say? Pretty brains.
And look me in the eye and tell me that Battletoads doesn’t have breathtaking cinematography.
River City Ransom
Mike Tyson’s Punch-Out(!!)
Final Fantasy
Super Mario Bros. 3
Megaman 2
Ninja Gaiden
Contra
Ikari Warriors 1 and 2
Legend of Zelda 1 and 2
1943
Life Force
Double Dragon 1 and 2
Legendary Wings
Rush 'n Attack
Rambo
Top Gun
Dodge Ball
Looner Pool
Spy vs. Spy
Duck Tales
Kirby’s Dreamland
Those are just off the top of my head. Best system ever. Then again, I was easy to please back then so some of those games are crap without the nostalgia value.
Oh snap! I forgot Kirby’s Dreamland. It came out late in the NES’ lifespan, once the Genesis and SNES were already out. But it’s one of the best platform games ever made for the NES!
Ooo…good show, my friend. Good show.
Lolo. Lolo caused me to lose sleep, trying to figure out how to get to the damned exit. It stayed in my subconcious, lurking, which spent it’s time working out solutions to seemingly impossible boards. So much so that once, when my husband and I were rather ahem intimately engaged, the solution to one such puzzle popped into my head completely without warning. I thought that it was the furthest thing from my mind, but my subconcious apparently never let it go and chose that particular time to hand me the answer.
The worst part–besides having to forcefully shove the game from my mind–was having to wait to see if it was the right solution (it was)! 
The ones I second:
Super Mario Bros. 2 & 3
Contra
Dragon Warrior 1-4
Final Fantasy
MegaMan 2
and I’ll add:
*StarTropics
Blades of Steel * (“It’s a pass!”)
Blades of Steel!..ching
It should be mentioned that Blades of Steel might be the only hockey game in which the loser of any fight gets sent to the penalty box as punishment for letting himself get beat up.
I don’t think anyone ever actually finished it, before emulators. I did actually beat it on an emulator, and it took me about 20 hours of gameplay time. Man, that game would have been perfect, if it had included a save/load feature of some sort (or at least passwords).
All of the Mega Man games were great, but especially 2. It was great the way the different powers were useful in different situations, and not just as one-off stunts. The first one suffered a bit from being too linear: In principle, you could complete the stages in any order, but in practice, it was almost impossible unless you went one particular way.
And am I really the first to nominate Dr. Mario? Tetris is, of course, the all-time classic of the genre, but man, Dr. Mario was fun. To this day, I’ve never yet met my match in multiplayer mode.
Kid Icarus
RC Pro Am
Bomberman
But you can’t buy an NES system anymore, so who would this hurt?
Should the owner of the rights to the game decide to rerelease it (such as the Classic NES series on the GBA, or the upcoming Virtual Console on the Wii), then you’re potentially taking away the money they would have gotten if you’d purchased it from them.
Rampage!
YMMV, but as far as I’m concerned; If it’s commercially available (and reasonably accessible; ie, you can walk in a store and buy a version, or get a used one without going through Ebay), then it isn’t okay.
However, If it doesn’t meet those criterion, then go ahead and emulate. The people who made the game won’t get any money for it, nor will marketing people ever see the data on used-copy sales, which are often used to determine which games get a re-release, IIRC.
Like Final Fnatasy 4, for Super NES; the original Japanese version was never re-released in any form. The original US release as FF2 was a hybrid of Japan’s FF4 and FF4-Easy Type, a dumbed-down Japanese version released a year or two later to get kids into the franchise. Every re-release since has been some new kind of hybrid of the two. Emulation is the only way to play the “true” FF4. Plus, there’s a great english translation that even stays true to the actual names (for example, Prince Gilbert was renamed Prince Edward for US releases… wtf?! :rolleyes: )
As to the OP: Legend of Zelda (first only), Any Super Mario Bros., Metroid, Mega Man’s 1-4 (which are available, along with 5-8 and like 4 spin-off games, in a single PS2 game; the Mega Man Anniversary Collection), Crystalis, Star Tropics(first only), Final Fantasy, Dragon Warrior (mostly the first, but all 4 NES entries are good; also see Dragon Quest for emulators, that’s the authentic translation of the Japanese name), Marble Madness, GI Joe (the first one, by Taxxan), Ninja Gaiden (1&2), Castlevania (all 3), Contra, Kid Icarus, Tetris, Dr. Mario, Deja Vu (only if you like PC-style adventure games like King’s Quest, and the Monkey’s Island series), Double Dragon (if you like side-scrolling beat-em ups), Gradius (any, including the 2 spin-offs Life Force and Salamander), Bubble Bobble.
My Top Ten?
1.) Mega Man 2 (“Let’s see;my best time is 1&1/4 hours to beat it…”)
2.) Legend of Zelda (“Geez, I used to have the Lost Woods pattern memorized!”)
3.) -tie- Ninja Gaiden 1 & 2
4.) Final Fantasy (“can I beat the game witha party of 4 Thieves?”)
5.) Bubble Bobble (especially if you can play with a second person! 2P-Simultaneous) (“Baron Von Blubba; the face of the enemy!”)
6.) Dragon Warrior (“Where is the end of this dungeon? Oh shit the torch went out!”)
7.) Life Force (“Damn you Floating Easter Island Heads!”)
8.) Star Tropics (“Man, now I have to get turned into a girl to sneak into Shecola? Stupid Chapter 3…”)
9.) GI Joe (Fear my fully-upgraded firepower Snake Eyes and Rock & Roll!)
10.) Super Mario Bros. 3 (“Screw the 3rd Whistle trick, I’m gonna teach those Koopaling brats a lesson!”)