My Top 5 Most Hated NES Games

A lot of old geezers love to drone on about the "golden age" of the 8-bit era, and how they just don't make games like that anymore. To them I say, "Shut it old man!"

For those of us that really remember what it was like, good games were very much a rarity. For every Megaman 2 or River City Ransom there were about 10 broken, boring, impossible or unplayable turds that weren't even worth the time you'd spend blowing into them. Here are the five I hated most from my youth.

Disclaimer: Battletoads will not appear on this list because in spite of everything it did to me, I still love it. It made me the sour, broken husk of a man I am today.

#5. Mario 2

I am gonna come out swinging here. Not that Mario 2 was a bad game, but at the time I was really confused as to why it was nothing like the other Mario games. You can't kill guys by jumping on their heads? What is this dinosaur shooting eggs? Why am I pulling turnips and shit out of the ground? Of course I had no idea that it wasn't even originally a Mario game. But it was so different that it really put me off and I regarded it with so much disdain that it always sat at the very back of my collection.

#4. Metal Gear

This one will probably make more sense to people. Metal Gear may have been good on the MSX, but I think we can all agree that it was horse shit on the NES. "I feel asleep." The fuck does that mean? "The truck have started to move!" As a kid this really confused me, as did pretty much everything about this game. Why the fuck are enemies re-appearing when I come back through an area? What the hell do the cigarettes do?! Even Game Genie wasn't enough to make this piece of crap fun.

#3. Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles

Two words. Dam level. I don't think I need to say any more. If you know what I'm talking about, you're probably in the fetal position right now. I'm sorry. We can all take a bit of solace in the fact that TMNT 2 on the NES was actually pretty good.

#2. Silver Surfer

Sometimes you just know when a game is impossible. This was one such game. If you get hit once, you die. If you touch anything, you die. If you eat a burrito, you die. If a bee farts in your general direction, you die die DIE!! I think this was the second hardest game I owned, after Battletoads. Even if you actually made it to the end of a level, the mini boss would show up and fuck you with a rake. At the time my older brother was akin to a video game playing god, but even he only managed to beat a couple stages.

#1. Action 52

Clearly the winner here. Instead of one shitty game, you get 52! All for the exorbitant amount of $199. We got this at a yard sale for a quarter, and even then I felt ripped off. That quarter could have bought something infinitely more entertaining, like those little sticky hands in the gumball machine. The ones that were hilarious until they got covered with lint and hair and didn't work any more. Or those little styrofoam planes with the plastic propeller that you could throw once and they would immediately snap when they hit something. Or maybe even a Fundip or some garbage pail candy. What was I talking about again?