final fantasy 1

This game has been a huge inspiration for me over the years. I love the simplicity, and I love how jank it is. If you've never played it because it's "outdated", then I'd say give it a try anyways because it's probably better than you think. I've always hated when people call games outdated.

mother 1

Mother 1 is a strange game. On one hand it has the worst balancing of any NES game I've ever seen, and yet I think the atmosphere of the game is the best on the system. Get yourself the fan patch and then play this game, please! As soon as you fix the gameplay (and memorize the map to Duncan's Factory while you're at it lmao) this game is one of the best games you'll ever play.

bionic commando

This is the first ever game to do the "What about a platformer with no jump button?" thing. It's hard to get used to and it can get annoying at-first when you're confused but once you start learning how the grappling hook works and how to get through every level, this can become one of the most replayable games you'll ever play. I, for one, have played the game *dozens* of times, and even made a real bad romhack of it because I got bored of playing the original *and* Japanese version too many times over!