What is the most technically impressive game on the NES.

[Frozone212]

Cannot be based on nintendo characters (Mario, Zelda, Kirby etc)

 

third party, arcade or obscure allowed.

 

Bonus if it's a homebrew

[electricmastro]

 

[DragonGrafx-16]

2 minutes ago, electricmastro said:

 

Great shooter with some of the best music on the NES.

[Tanooki]

That's a good vote, Castlevania III is an obvious one given the memory mapper it uses, but even stepping back to the MMC3 line of chips SMB3 and Kirby are no slouches either.  And despite being unique to it Punchout on the MMC2 was unseen stuff at the time that really pushed things.

 

Going to Japan though it gets insane with what Konami, Sunsoft, and Namco really shoveled along with random other one offs(like Recca.)  That VRC4 chip for Gradius II and Salamander is crazy, parodius too and twinbee 3.  The VRC6 that went into Castlevania 3 shamed the US one bad, and not localized even more powerful ones ran Lagrange Point and Metal Slader Glory(this one even had FM music.)  Sunsoft you can look to Batman Return of the Joker and Gimmick to see what I'm talking about, and Namco with Splatterhouse and Final Lap.

 

Homebrew though/post era retail look at Jim Power, Leisure Suit Larry 1's remake, and those really set a solid bar.

Edited April 30, 2022 by Tanooki

[DragonGrafx-16]

Twinbee 3 is great... it was the first shmup on NES/Famicom that I ever beat. 

21 minutes ago, Tanooki said:

That's a good vote, Castlevania III is an obvious one given the memory mapper it uses, but even stepping back to the MMC3 line of chips SMB3 and Kirby are no slouches either.  And despite being unique to it Punchout on the MMC2 was unseen stuff at the time that really pushed things.

 

Going to Japan though it gets insane with what Konami, Sunsoft, and Namco really shoveled along with random other one offs(like Recca.)  That VRC4 chip for Gradius II and Salamander is crazy, parodius too and twinbee 3.  The VRC6 that went into Castlevania 3 shamed the US one bad, and not localized even more powerful ones ran Lagrange Point and Metal Slader Glory(this one even had FM music.)  Sunsoft you can look to Batman Return of the Joker and Gimmick to see what I'm talking about, and Namco with Splatterhouse and Final Lap.

 

Homebrew though/post era retail look at Jim Power, Leisure Suit Larry 1's remake, and those really set a solid bar.

 

[0078265317]

Fantastic adventures of dizzy or binary land

[TheDevil'sCompass]

Recca - Bullet Hell Shooter

 

[DragonGrafx-16]

Recca is not bullet hell... it's a quite normal amount of bullets for an early 90s shmup. 

[Punisher5.0]

First game that comes to mind is Return of the Joker

[electricmastro]

Tetra Star: The Fighter:

 

[Tanooki]

Tetra Star is very impressive, I've considered picking that one up because it's not just the eye candy it's a good game.

 

@DragonGrafx-16 You're right, both things, Twinbee 3 is utterly magic and yeah Recca is no bullet hell, standard 90s fare.  I'd love to own it but the price is comedically awful.

 

Speaking of eye candy if we went into more famicom I screwed up I have a cart I didn't mention, feel bad because you could easily confuse it for a PCEngine game or Genesis it's that insane visually.

 

Crisis Force and I cut this right where it gets interesting, earlier anime people, very very fast moving ground on it too.... but then this...

 

 

[Razzie.P]

Duck Hunt

 

Even modern equipment can't quite do those simple lil' gun games properly.

[Dochartaigh]

I thought Little Sampson was done really well - the sprite animations (on the main character) were amazing to me.

 

 

 

Metal Storm also feels like it could have been at home on SNES or Genesis (ok, or at least a polished TG16/PCE game).

 

 

 

[Frozone212]

Was tetra star ever released state side or is it a famicom original?

[electricmastro]

15 minutes ago, Frozone212 said:

Was tetra star ever released state side or is it a famicom original?

 

Unfortunately, just on Famicom:

 

 

[dudeguy]

Any of the "3D" games always impressed me. Rad Racer has some great scaling with the background. 3D WorldRunner looked cool, too.

[+jgkspsx]

5 hours ago, electricmastro said:

 

Unfortunately, just on Famicom:

 

 

Holy guacamole! What is up with the sound, though? Half of the gameplay music (the bass) sounds amazing and half of the music (the treble) sounds like I picked up the phone with the modem connected… Flight of the Bumblebee was almost unrecognizable. Emulation problems or does it really sound like that?

 

Super Spy Hunter looks amazing. Never heard of it before.

 

Here is my nomination even if Crisis Force and Tetra Star clearly take the biscuit:

 

Very little flicker either.

[electricmastro]

13 minutes ago, jgkspsx said:

Holy guacamole! What is up with the sound, though? Half of the gameplay music (the bass) sounds amazing and half of the music (the treble) sounds like I picked up the phone with the modem connected… Flight of the Bumblebee was almost unrecognizable. Emulation problems or does it really sound like that?

 

Super Spy Hunter looks amazing. Never heard of it before.

Not sure what Home Data/Taito did, but something similar to Castlevania 3 on Famicom I suspect.

 

As for Super Spy Hunter, even if it didn't necessarily start off as a Spy Hunter game, it's arguably the best game in the series.

[Tanooki]

Pleases me some of these choices I've had for years, decades with the US ones like Super Spy Hunter, Nemo, etc.

[electricmastro]

The wireframing and space exploration in Elite:

 

 

Edited May 2, 2022 by electricmastro

[Frozone212]

Played Crisis force. Amazing. I envy japanese gamers, they get all the best versions.

[GameGirl420]

Not much into sports games,but love the graphics of Track n Field 2 and Blades of Steel for NESl! The voice effects in the latter especially.

 

Duck Tales also rules!!! lol

 

 

[DavidD]

On 4/30/2022 at 4:56 PM, Tanooki said:

And despite being unique to it Punchout on the MMC2 was unseen stuff at the time that really pushed things.

 

I know the OP question excluded Punch-Out!!, and I'm not saying that Punch-Out!! is the most technically advanced game, but now I'm struggling to think of another NES game with similarly sized enemies and background art.

 

What other NES games move such a large character whilst keeping background imagery?  I think the Mega Man dragon bot appears on a solid black screen, but I can't remember.

[BrianC]

On 4/30/2022 at 7:56 PM, Tanooki said:

That's a good vote, Castlevania III is an obvious one given the memory mapper it uses, but even stepping back to the MMC3 line of chips SMB3 and Kirby are no slouches either.  And despite being unique to it Punchout on the MMC2 was unseen stuff at the time that really pushed things.

 

Going to Japan though it gets insane with what Konami, Sunsoft, and Namco really shoveled along with random other one offs(like Recca.)  That VRC4 chip for Gradius II and Salamander is crazy, parodius too and twinbee 3.  The VRC6 that went into Castlevania 3 shamed the US one bad, and not localized even more powerful ones ran Lagrange Point and Metal Slader Glory(this one even had FM music.)  Sunsoft you can look to Batman Return of the Joker and Gimmick to see what I'm talking about, and Namco with Splatterhouse and Final Lap.

 

Homebrew though/post era retail look at Jim Power, Leisure Suit Larry 1's remake, and those really set a solid bar.

 

Metal Slader Glory actually used the same chip as Castlevania 3 US, MMC5, but some JP only games using it used expansion sound. I don't feel that VRC6 shamed MMC5 bad, since it's still one of the more powerful mappers on NES and has expansion sound capabilities that were never used in US games. VRC6 and its expansion sound are incredible, though. 

 

Cosmic Epsilon uses a similar engine to Tetrastar the Fighter (both designed by Home Data) and also looks impressive. 

Edited May 13, 2022 by BrianC

[Tanooki]

Yeah I got them backwards Lagrange Point was the VRC7 with FM audio added.  The MMC5 on its own merits is fantastic, but compared to the VRC6 it's just more shallow, but mostly when I was thinking shamed, it was basically wasted.  As you said, nothing really tapped it, CV3 did the least, and the KOEIs that did a bit more no one bothered with the expanded audio which is a crime.  I should go read the tech notes from the release, curious if Sim City does as it does use some features of the chip.