Played the living hell out of super dodgeball! The music jammed and there was nothing more satisfying than nailing your opponent with a well placed shot that sent them flying through the screen. Truly a gem indeed!
I mainly recall playing the arcade version… at Hooper’s Crab House in Ocean City, Md! I only found out about the NES version much later, but yah any way you cut it, it’s a terrific game.
The first time I hit a guy so hard he literally flew "around the world" by leaving one side of the screen and appearing on the opposite to land and roll into a crumpled heap was one of the most satisfying moments of my childhood.
loved the Lolo games as a kid....and it's always nice to see Princess Tomato being referenced/mentioned, always been one of my personal favorite NES games and I'm happy I found a copy years ago ( though I lack an NES console to play it on... ) also worth mentioning that Nintendo put out a GBC remake of Crystalis ( it was made my NST alongside the incredible Bionic Commando: Elite Forces )
I remember seeing the map screen from "Clash At Demonhead" in games magazines in the late 80s and being profoundly intimidated. Great memories of playing Adventures of LoLo with my mum back in the day. Thanks for the trip down memory lane.
I owned several of of these as a kid (Super Dodgeball, multiple Lolo games, Princess Tomato, and Crystalis) and still own digital re-releases of many of them. Plus I played some of the others at a childhood friend's house.
I actually owns the majority of these games on this list. It's really good to see somebody actually put names of games out there like galaxy5000 and Clash at demonhead. Those games were absolutely awesome
“Best known for their work on Earthbound” …I love Earthbound but Kirby exists lmao. Lolo and Lala are indeed pretty much the same as their Kirby counterparts
Having all of these… It’s a solid list. But the best game on the NES that nobody played that is a true Zelda beater is the guardian legend. It combines everything there is to love about Zelda (exploration, item gathering, powering up…) and turns the dungeon crawls into bone fide space shooter sections! Based on the cover art, especially in the US, no one gave this game a second glance! It’s a shame! Other notable games not many have played are: little Sampson, Nemo the dream master, xexyx, low G-man, and Monster Party!
If memory serves, Kirby's Adventure was also developed by HAL Laboratory, the same developers as the Adventure of Lolo series. So, it wouldn't be a surprise that Lololo and Lalala are or related to Lolo and Lala.
yeah, Kirby is Hal's main series they're known for and his original name in early development on Kirby's Dream Land was Popopo to match the Lololo & Lalala naming ( though I'm still not clear on why they added the extra lo & la when they were brought into Kirby...or why they became Fololo & Falala in the Kirby: Right Back At Ya )
I also suggest Kabuki Quantum Fighter. Crazy story with hair-whipping action that’s reminiscent of Batman and Ninja Gaiden (though not nearly as difficult as the latter in particular).
Crystalis is excellent, but it suffered the same localization issues as Castlevania II. A guide is definitely needed for one particular section because the translation was pretty bad.
@Mud Kip yeah it's usable. Very good condition. I'll likely get an everdrive, as I do have one for my gbc, but I wanna get as many as I can just to have. I do need a crt though so I can play duck hunt
There are two on this list I actually played back in the 80s. Lolo and Dodgeball. I'd heard of some of the other ones though but never got to play them. I wouldn't call Christalis a hidden gem though. It was pretty popular.
I played Clash at Demonhead as a kid on a bootleg Japanese language cartridge. Never finished it cause I couldn't figure out what to do and the moonspeak was of no help!
Some people don't seem to understand how niche and obscure earthbound really is. It's brought up often on gaming channels, but it was never actually popular.
The easiest way to tell when somebody doesn't know much about video games, they refer to the video game crash because they read about it on wikipedia. When in reality, it wasn't a crash at all. It was simply overproduction of one game that ended up being terrible, which resulted in tens of thousands of extra cartridges, unsold that rolled into propaganda of this so called crash. Whereas in reality, there was literally nothing that hinted that there was a crash going on
Aww man! Disappointing for a UK-based channel to start a list like this with a game we can't get! I was straight on eBay looking for Clash At Demonhead only to be disappointed. In fact, only three of these games are available to us in Europe! I know on TH-cam we're mostly playing to an American audience and I can forgive Americans for forgetting sometimes that there are other countries but I would have really liked to have been told up front that of the top ten NES hidden gems I can only get three of them. Otherwise, cool video and thanks for some nice emulation recommendations!
"Clash At Demonhead" ............. it looks like lots of that got repurposed into "Rambo" for the NES. I thought it was another "Doki-Doki Panic/Mario 2" situation for a moment.
_Remember kids!_ The "famous" Video Game Crash of 1983 was a local American thing. Japan never had it, Europe never had it either. So the whole "NES saving video games" is just not true.
Actually tomatoes are still pretty toxic. The LD50 rating is around 9 lbs. Why someone would eat 9lbs in a sitting i dont know, but compared to most food 9lbs is pretty toxic.
Why can't we get more games like THESE on the Switch onilne virtual console instead of...the incredibly weird selection of decidedly LESS gem-like game on-offer?
2:41: Didn't JonTron play 'Nightshade' and declare it one of the more tedious. unfun games ever? Because of how convoluted the whole interface was, being a Point-and-Click style game that was very finicky and particular about _how_ you proceed, meaning you could get stuck trying to pick up a crowbar or figure out what to do with a painting, forcing many players to ragequit?
@@Gatorade69 You're going to insult me for voicing what other people were saying? That's not fair. So I might not have seen _EVERY_ other reviewer's opinion. So I might not have had the ability to play this game for myself (given it's age, who WOULD?! I was born maybe a few years after it, being just 30 years old) to see for myself. But what I do know is that by watching JonTron play the game, that it wouldn't be for _EVERYBODY_ . So don't get snobby and look down on me for not agreeing with everyone else who adore this game! P.S., couldn't you yourself be accused of not forming your own opinion by watching this video and just agreeing with _them_ that Nightshade is the 'Best Videogame Ever?' That seems a tad hypocritical! 🤨
@@Gatorade69 I was trying to fathom how you seemed to think that I was sounding 'Dismissive.' That wasn't the case; it was a blank statement, a mere *Q U E S T I O N* ! There was no hint of aggression in it, and the fact that you saw something that wasn't even there only added to my frustration. The verbal equivalent of people on the street taking one look at my face and saying, "Stop making that face!" when to my knowledge, I'm not even CONSCIOUSLY *MAKING* A FACE! My face is just a bland emotionless thing, how could someone see me making 'Faces' when I'm not even paying attention to them?! Didn't you notice the question marks at the end of my comment? They weren't exclamation points; I wasn't shouting it from the rooftops like some damned fanatic. I was just asking, "Didn't JonTron play this game and say how tedious it is to try and make it work or do what you want, because the cursor isn't implemented well?" What made it sound 'Dismissive' at ALL? What part of it, really, made you assume that I was trying to start something? From MY perspective, it was YOU who were trying to start something by interpreting my mere comment as something far worse than what it actually was! It was just a question, and not even a serious, intentional one! Also, I didn't say _you_ said it was the best game ever; _they_ did. Triple Jump. The channel. And when you said that I was just parroting (who do I look like, Jacque?) back what JonTron said about the game, I was trying to call you out for siding with Triple Jump, using that as an example of 'the Pot Calling the Kettle Black' Hypocrisy.
There was the Video Game Crash of 1983 in America, a more accurate term would be "revitalizing the games industry in North America." Europe and Asia weren't as effected, but considering how large the market was, something needed to be done to jumpstart it, otherwise companies were closing themselves off to an entire market. The NES was that solution.
Come on guys! You managed to go just 15 seconds this time before mentioning this mythical 'video game (industry) crash' of 1983. Being a person who was an adult in 1983, let me assure anyone under 40 years of age that this event never happened. At least not below corporate levels. So.. A few game industry rich people made a bit less money for a few years, yes. Did it impact on video game sales? Not whatsoever. DEFINITELY not in the UK. I genuinely have no idea why you feel the need to keep mentioning it. It had no effect on the industry or indeed the people buying the games to play. Short or long term. Love the channel though. And will always watch interesting video game related stuff like this.
...it was a US thing mostly. It mostly didn't happen in the UK in particular because in the UK a lot more people were already playing games on computer than on console anyway, so it didn't really affect console sales since they... weren't actually doing the best in the UK to begin with. Worldwide, a mostly-unrelated crash also hit arcade games specifically in the same year, worldwide, though iirc arcades weren't that super popular in the UK to begin with. It *absolutely* existed, it wasn't that it never happened. It just didn't happen where you live. Or, really, where most people live. The US is large, but it's not nearly the entire world population. But it *is* a pretty big market, to a point where long-term the crash is probably a big part of what killed Atari since that's where a lot of their business was. To a point the company called Atari now is literally an unrelated company that just bought the name and the rights to some of the IPs since, yeah they kind of bankrupted that hard.
When it's the 80 time a game showed up on a hidden gem list it's no longer a hidden gem seriously all these have been talk about multiple times it's like the person who wrote this wasn't trying and super dodgeball never was a hidden gem
![[Arcade] Art of Fighting 2(1994) John Crawley GamePlay(2025-01-05)](http://i.ytimg.com/vi/utN9nYEDIZM/mqdefault.jpg)
Played the living hell out of super dodgeball! The music jammed and there was nothing more satisfying than nailing your opponent with a well placed shot that sent them flying through the screen. Truly a gem indeed!
I remember renting it at the local video store. I must've been about 6 or so
I mainly recall playing the arcade version… at Hooper’s Crab House in Ocean City, Md! I only found out about the NES version much later, but yah any way you cut it, it’s a terrific game.
I couldn't put up with the flickering.
The first time I hit a guy so hard he literally flew "around the world" by leaving one side of the screen and appearing on the opposite to land and roll into a crumpled heap was one of the most satisfying moments of my childhood.
loved the Lolo games as a kid....and it's always nice to see Princess Tomato being referenced/mentioned, always been one of my personal favorite NES games and I'm happy I found a copy years ago ( though I lack an NES console to play it on... )
also worth mentioning that Nintendo put out a GBC remake of Crystalis ( it was made my NST alongside the incredible Bionic Commando: Elite Forces )
Clash at Demonhead is one of me all time favs. When I heard the band name in Scott pilgrim, I lost my mind and none of my friends got the reference.
I'm happy to see Magic of Scheherazade on here. I was introduced to it by Chrontendo.
There's a catgirl in it, so it needs some attention ;3
I remember seeing the map screen from "Clash At Demonhead" in games magazines in the late 80s and being profoundly intimidated. Great memories of playing Adventures of LoLo with my mum back in the day. Thanks for the trip down memory lane.
How is nobody talking about Solomons Key for the NES?
This game was fantastic!
Clash at Demonhead and The Krion Conquest were games I always pulled out for my friends.
I owned several of of these as a kid (Super Dodgeball, multiple Lolo games, Princess Tomato, and Crystalis) and still own digital re-releases of many of them. Plus I played some of the others at a childhood friend's house.
I actually owns the majority of these games on this list. It's really good to see somebody actually put names of games out there like galaxy5000 and Clash at demonhead. Those games were absolutely awesome
“Best known for their work on Earthbound”
…I love Earthbound but Kirby exists lmao. Lolo and Lala are indeed pretty much the same as their Kirby counterparts
nobody thinks of earthbound when they think of HAL... they're the kirby guys! (or the smash 64 and melee guys)
Having all of these… It’s a solid list. But the best game on the NES that nobody played that is a true Zelda beater is the guardian legend. It combines everything there is to love about Zelda (exploration, item gathering, powering up…) and turns the dungeon crawls into bone fide space shooter sections! Based on the cover art, especially in the US, no one gave this game a second glance! It’s a shame! Other notable games not many have played are: little Sampson, Nemo the dream master, xexyx, low G-man, and Monster Party!
I only need 80 more games to own the entire library :3 Almost there!
@@swordbladez was it released in the U.K.?😅
@@gracekim1998 Yes. By Nintendo itself in 1990 according to wiki
If memory serves, Kirby's Adventure was also developed by HAL Laboratory, the same developers as the Adventure of Lolo series. So, it wouldn't be a surprise that Lololo and Lalala are or related to Lolo and Lala.
yeah, Kirby is Hal's main series they're known for and his original name in early development on Kirby's Dream Land was Popopo to match the Lololo & Lalala naming ( though I'm still not clear on why they added the extra lo & la when they were brought into Kirby...or why they became Fololo & Falala in the Kirby: Right Back At Ya )
Scheherazade was amazing! Played so much of that game.
Micro Machines. One of the best NES games ever that few know about.
It's a really good game, I had a cart as a kid.
I remember renting Clash at Demonhead at the age of 7… I instantly fell in love! My absolute favorite NES game and top 5 games of all time easy!
I also suggest Kabuki Quantum Fighter. Crazy story with hair-whipping action that’s reminiscent of Batman and Ninja Gaiden (though not nearly as difficult as the latter in particular).
NES was first game console I've ever seen!
Would have added The Guardian Legend to the list
Not really hidden anymore.
It has reached Cult Classic status
@@tb3411guardian legend is wayyy more obscure than lolo and wario's woods
Crystalis is excellent, but it suffered the same localization issues as Castlevania II. A guide is definitely needed for one particular section because the translation was pretty bad.
This is lucky, I just received an nes from my grandpa in always and was looking to collect some obscure games
@Mud Kip yeah it's usable. Very good condition. I'll likely get an everdrive, as I do have one for my gbc, but I wanna get as many as I can just to have. I do need a crt though so I can play duck hunt
There are two on this list I actually played back in the 80s. Lolo and Dodgeball. I'd heard of some of the other ones though but never got to play them. I wouldn't call Christalis a hidden gem though. It was pretty popular.
I played Clash at Demonhead as a kid on a bootleg Japanese language cartridge. Never finished it cause I couldn't figure out what to do and the moonspeak was of no help!
HAL laboratory best known for Earthbound?? Not Kirby or smash bros?
Some people don't seem to understand how niche and obscure earthbound really is. It's brought up often on gaming channels, but it was never actually popular.
No mention of Mr. Gimmick?
I loved playing Princess Tomato and actually beat it back in the day. Good times.
Great selection of games, definitely hidden gems
It was also before my time so I’m learning all new stuff here🤷♀️
Laaaads.. Ye missed Boulder Dash!!
Ah The NES Great Times In The 1980s I Also Enjoyed My Master System and Turbo Grafx During These Times
Should have got Metal Jesus in for this one 😂
The Salad Kingdom sounds a bit nuts.
Please do a "top 10 new nes games" covering the recent wave of nu-retro gaming.
I need to play Nightshade again it was a lot of fun but didn't have a save option
The 1980's The Decade Of TMNT Growing Pains and Touchstone Pictures movies also good Ol' Nintendo
How is giving us Kirk Cameron a good thing
@@jsmith3946 I Was Going To Say Alf Which I should've chosen Instead
NightShade always just makes me think of JonTron in Slow-mo singing "She's a Lady"
The easiest way to tell when somebody doesn't know much about video games, they refer to the video game crash because they read about it on wikipedia.
When in reality, it wasn't a crash at all. It was simply overproduction of one game that ended up being terrible, which resulted in tens of thousands of extra cartridges, unsold that rolled into propaganda of this so called crash. Whereas in reality, there was literally nothing that hinted that there was a crash going on
Nightshade and Gun-Nac are great games.
Aww man! Disappointing for a UK-based channel to start a list like this with a game we can't get! I was straight on eBay looking for Clash At Demonhead only to be disappointed. In fact, only three of these games are available to us in Europe! I know on TH-cam we're mostly playing to an American audience and I can forgive Americans for forgetting sometimes that there are other countries but I would have really liked to have been told up front that of the top ten NES hidden gems I can only get three of them. Otherwise, cool video and thanks for some nice emulation recommendations!
Oh man what about rad gravity or even gargoyles quest
Not enough people played Mario Bros the arcade game.
Kickle cubicle should definitely be on this list
LoLo is a hidden gem? Fantastic game nonetheless!
Nightshade can't do that
I aiiiiiiiiiiin't having that shit
Super Mario Bros. 2 is a Hidden Gem in the NES Era.
Those might be puffins rather than penguins in dodgeball. Puffins are from Iceland.
I played cys it was amazing
"Clash At Demonhead" ............. it looks like lots of that got repurposed into "Rambo" for the NES. I thought it was another "Doki-Doki Panic/Mario 2" situation for a moment.
0:48 is that Fookin guru larry!?
Time Travelling Lewis Capaldi
_Remember kids!_ The "famous" Video Game Crash of 1983 was a local American thing. Japan never had it, Europe never had it either. So the whole "NES saving video games" is just not true.
It wasn't true in America either. The so called video game crash wasn't even a term anybody used until two decades later
It's simply propaganda
Tomato leaves are toxic, enjoy this fact and use it responsibly
Yes, but tomatoes are delicious.
I played clash of demonhead but never knew the title! 🥲 thank you for reminding a part of my childhood again!
Crystalis, Adventures of Lola and Super Dodgeball were massively popular games, not exactly hidden gems.
Exactly
Some of these games just aren't "hidden gems". Some of them were very popular.
Actually tomatoes are still pretty toxic. The LD50 rating is around 9 lbs. Why someone would eat 9lbs in a sitting i dont know, but compared to most food 9lbs is pretty toxic.
HAH! I own every single one of these games!
o comeback hehe sdds
Why can't we get more games like THESE on the Switch onilne virtual console instead of...the incredibly weird selection of decidedly LESS gem-like game on-offer?
2:41: Didn't JonTron play 'Nightshade' and declare it one of the more tedious. unfun games ever? Because of how convoluted the whole interface was, being a Point-and-Click style game that was very finicky and particular about _how_ you proceed, meaning you could get stuck trying to pick up a crowbar or figure out what to do with a painting, forcing many players to ragequit?
@@Gatorade69 You're going to insult me for voicing what other people were saying?
That's not fair.
So I might not have seen _EVERY_ other reviewer's opinion.
So I might not have had the ability to play this game for myself (given it's age, who WOULD?! I was born maybe a few years after it, being just 30 years old) to see for myself.
But what I do know is that by watching JonTron play the game, that it wouldn't be for _EVERYBODY_ .
So don't get snobby and look down on me for not agreeing with everyone else who adore this game!
P.S., couldn't you yourself be accused of not forming your own opinion by watching this video and just agreeing with _them_ that Nightshade is the 'Best Videogame Ever?'
That seems a tad hypocritical! 🤨
@@Gatorade69 I was trying to fathom how you seemed to think that I was sounding 'Dismissive.'
That wasn't the case; it was a blank statement, a mere *Q U E S T I O N* ! There was no hint of aggression in it, and the fact that you saw something that wasn't even there only added to my frustration.
The verbal equivalent of people on the street taking one look at my face and saying, "Stop making that face!" when to my knowledge, I'm not even CONSCIOUSLY *MAKING* A FACE! My face is just a bland emotionless thing, how could someone see me making 'Faces' when I'm not even paying attention to them?!
Didn't you notice the question marks at the end of my comment?
They weren't exclamation points; I wasn't shouting it from the rooftops like some damned fanatic.
I was just asking, "Didn't JonTron play this game and say how tedious it is to try and make it work or do what you want, because the cursor isn't implemented well?"
What made it sound 'Dismissive' at ALL?
What part of it, really, made you assume that I was trying to start something?
From MY perspective, it was YOU who were trying to start something by interpreting my mere comment as something far worse than what it actually was! It was just a question, and not even a serious, intentional one!
Also, I didn't say _you_ said it was the best game ever; _they_ did.
Triple Jump.
The channel.
And when you said that I was just parroting (who do I look like, Jacque?) back what JonTron said about the game, I was trying to call you out for siding with Triple Jump, using that as an example of 'the Pot Calling the Kettle Black' Hypocrisy.
I did something better than Bayou Billy:
250 days no alcohol
Team Jesus Winning 🥇 🏆
👽
"Revitalizing the games industry"?? 😂😂😂 Erm. the games industry was BOOMING already when the NES was released...
There was the Video Game Crash of 1983 in America, a more accurate term would be "revitalizing the games industry in North America." Europe and Asia weren't as effected, but considering how large the market was, something needed to be done to jumpstart it, otherwise companies were closing themselves off to an entire market. The NES was that solution.
Come on guys! You managed to go just 15 seconds this time before mentioning this mythical 'video game (industry) crash' of 1983.
Being a person who was an adult in 1983, let me assure anyone under 40 years of age that this event never happened. At least not below corporate levels.
So.. A few game industry rich people made a bit less money for a few years, yes. Did it impact on video game sales? Not whatsoever. DEFINITELY not in the UK.
I genuinely have no idea why you feel the need to keep mentioning it. It had no effect on the industry or indeed the people buying the games to play. Short or long term.
Love the channel though. And will always watch interesting video game related stuff like this.
...it was a US thing mostly. It mostly didn't happen in the UK in particular because in the UK a lot more people were already playing games on computer than on console anyway, so it didn't really affect console sales since they... weren't actually doing the best in the UK to begin with. Worldwide, a mostly-unrelated crash also hit arcade games specifically in the same year, worldwide, though iirc arcades weren't that super popular in the UK to begin with.
It *absolutely* existed, it wasn't that it never happened. It just didn't happen where you live. Or, really, where most people live. The US is large, but it's not nearly the entire world population. But it *is* a pretty big market, to a point where long-term the crash is probably a big part of what killed Atari since that's where a lot of their business was. To a point the company called Atari now is literally an unrelated company that just bought the name and the rights to some of the IPs since, yeah they kind of bankrupted that hard.
None of these are hidden gems. They are all well-known titles, and the prices reflect their contemporary demand among collectors.
When it's the 80 time a game showed up on a hidden gem list it's no longer a hidden gem seriously all these have been talk about multiple times it's like the person who wrote this wasn't trying and super dodgeball never was a hidden gem
I hadn't heard of several of them. Your experience is not universal.
Dude, all of your comments on this channel are nothing but negative. Lighten up, your blood pressure will thank you.
Crystalis is def not a "hidden" gem.
You were a fond wish behind your dad's eyes when this was released, chum.
🙀