Which 8-bit Nintendo games are worth playing today? This critic is playing all 751 of them to find out

If you’re old enough to have played video games on the Nintendo Entertainment System, you likely remember some of its most popular games: Super Mario Bros., Tetris and Duck Hunt, for example.

But those are just a few out of the hundreds of titles that were released in the 1980s and ’90s —751, to be exact. And Jeff Gerstmann is nearly finished playing and ranking every single one of them, from best to worst.

“I love a big, dumb, overly long challenge,” the longtime games journalist and streamer told As It Happens host Nil Köksal. “I did not think it would take three years, but here we are.”

Every Friday since August 2023, Gerstmann has played a handful of NES games on the livestreaming platform Twitch, then added them to a ranked list. Rather than trying to fully complete every game, he plays one game for roughly half an hour to an hour to get a fair impression before moving on to the next.

He says he got the idea for the project after noticing many videos and articles online about the best or worst games on the system started looking suspiciously similar to one another.

“A lot of these opinions about these games solidified and I got the impression that a lot of people were just parroting other people’s opinions without having played the games,” he said.

“It sent me down this road of like … someone needs to go back and check the work of all of these other folks.”

Which games are the very best?

Gerstmann, who’s based in California, is something of an elder statesman of the video games press. He’s covered games for about 30 years, including at GameSpot and as co-founder of the site Giant Bomb. He currently livestreams his own podcast and gaming streams, supported by fans on the crowdfunding site Patreon.

He says he was about 10 or 11 years old when the NES was released; he first got his hands on it as a Christmas gift in 1986. Now, he’s been playing the games to determine which titles from that era are still worth playing today.

“It’s been interesting re-approaching these games a little bit more critically than you would as a 12-year-old,” he said.

Gerstmann currently has the original Super Mario Bros. at No. 3. He says it’s one of his favourites, though “technologically, it ends up being a little surpassed even in its own time.”

Mega Man 2 sits at the top of the list; it’s the second game made by Capcom featuring the blue robot boy with a cannon on his arm that can absorb the powers of enemy robots he’s defeated.

“Mega Man 2 is everything you wanted Mega Man 1 to be,” Gerstmann said. “The music is incredible, it’s a great looking game, just the art and designs of these robots that you’re fighting [are] really just tremendous.”

Meanwhile, Duck Hunt — one of Köksal’s favourites as a youngster, which also came packed-in with many NES consoles — sits near the middle of the pack at No. 364.

Gerstmann says it’s an example of earlier games that resemble the shorter experiences more common in the arcade, before games like Super Mario Bros. offered hours of gameplay to justify their higher price tags.

“I think it’s a great early game on the platform. But … you can see everything Duck Hunt has to offer in about 10 minutes.”

Which games are ‘bottom of the barrel’? 

The very bottom of the list, meanwhile, is home to some “miserable” and “incredibly poorly made” titles, according to Gerstmann.

“Nintendo tried to keep a firm hand on what games they allowed on their platform. But as the console became super popular, you had companies circumventing that and releasing unlicensed video games that Nintendo had nothing to do with,” he said.

They include a handful of adult-oriented casino games with low-fi images of nude women that he says no one should seek out or spend time playing themselves.

As of this week, only one game remains to be played and ranked, and it’s a doozy: Super Mario Bros. 3, often cited as one of the best, if not the best NES game of all time.

“We’ll see where that one ends up [on the list], and I’m dreading it a little bit because that is the one that will probably cause the most controversy,” he said.

That dread won’t stop Gerstmann from delving further into the trenches of gaming history. After completing his definitive NES ranking list, he plans to do the exact same thing for another classic console.