Retro Classics

[thores]

A great game is Little Samson for the NES. It's a sidescrolling platformer made by Taito where you play as four radically different characters that you can switch between on the fly during gameplay: A little boy, a dragon, a golem, and a mouse. Each character has an ability unique to themselves: Samson (the little boy) can climb on walls and ceilings, the dragon can fly and release charged shots, the golem is slow but really powerful and can walk on spikes, and the mouse can fit through small spaces that the other party members can't. At the start of the game you play an introductory level for each seperate character, and afterwards the four meet and you can play as all four of them on the same level if you like, switching your main character on the start menu.

Some levels have branching paths that effect which level you'll end up in next. There are silent cutscenes acted out by the character sprites that are kind of neat to watch, aaand... the game is just really fun. It's got a lot of charm, it was WAY ahead of its time, and it's a shame that almost nobody's heard of it. Play this game right now!

[Fryguy64]

Sounds very interesting. I've been checking out some of the big name third parties on the NES, SNES and GB (Konami, Capcom, Namco), but I'd forgotten about Taito. I love a lot of their stuff. I think Arkanoid might have been the first videogame I ever played

[8bitretroshit]

Little Samson's good fun and for some reason whenever I think about that game, I think of Gimmick! (or Mr. Gimmick).
It's an awesome NES platformer by Sunsoft apparently released in both Japan and parts of Europe, but not in USA.

Basically you're a doll and your owner got kidnapped and taken to doll world by jealous dolls so you give chase because you care.

Now what makes this game interesting is the physics system of your attack. You can charge up a star with the B button and throw it, causing the star to bounce forward and killing/damaging everything in it's path. The star reacts to terrain: it bounces off walls, goes slower as it climbs a diagonal tile and speeds up the other way around. I guess I can't explain well with my English 101 skills but basically it's not what you generally see in NES games so it's impressive.
Anyway, other then hurting enemies you can friggen surf on your own star by throwing it into a wall and jumping on it while it bounces back. This allows you to gain more height in jumps and is usually needed to get to the secret rooms. These secret rooms are usually in about the last place you thought they would be and the way you have to get to them are rather creative. You need to find all secret items hidden in the levels to get to the real final stage, otherwise you get a bad ending.

Ohyeah, you can also use items enemies drop, like bombs, by pressing up B.

Wrapping it up before it sounds like a review: This game rules and you need to play this NOW. The game's short, but bloody hard. And even though it's short, you usually don't see most enemies or hazards more then once or twice in the whole game so it's not repetitive.
Link to wiki for more useless knowledge and cute art
Link to youtube for a little bit of gameplay (this guy makes it seem easy. Video contains secret room spoilers!)
Seriously play this shit, I love this game.

[Nester the Lark]

I mentioned Metal Storm for the NES in my list, which is a pretty obscure game. I recommend checking out this review (language warning) of it from the Happy Video Game Nerd.

...Wow! The graphics really are as impressive as I remember! Usually my nostalgia distorts stuff like that.