Introduction Double Dragon began as a 1987 arcade beat ’em up developed by Technos Japan and distributed by Taito, a spiritual successor to Technos’s earlier Nekketsu Kōha Kunio-kun that added two-player co-op and the ability to pick up and use a disarmed enemy’s own weapon, quickly becoming one of the genre’s foundational hits. Technos ported…
Introduction Ninja Gaiden was developed and published by Tecmo for the NES, directed by Hideo Yoshizawa with art by Masato Kato, released in Japan in December 1988 and in North America the following March. It ran in parallel with an unrelated arcade beat ’em up of the same name built by a different team, sharing…
Introduction Kirby’s Adventure was developed by HAL Laboratory and published by Nintendo for the NES in 1993, directed and designed once again by Masahiro Sakurai with lead programming by Hiroaki Suga and production input from Satoru Iwata, Shigeru Miyamoto, and Takao Shimizu. Sakurai had originally been asked simply to port the Game Boy original, Kirby’s…
Introduction Punch-Out!! was developed by Nintendo R&D3 under director Genyo Takeda, with character designs from Shigeru Miyamoto and production by Minoru Arakawa, adapting Nintendo’s arcade boxing series for the NES. Nintendo first released a Mike Tyson-free gold cartridge in Japan in September 1987, initially given out as a tournament prize, before the more famous Western…
Introduction The Legend of Zelda was developed by Nintendo R&D4, directed and produced by Shigeru Miyamoto with Takashi Tezuka as story writer, and built alongside Super Mario Bros as a launch title for the Family Computer Disk System, released in Japan in February 1986 before reaching the NES on cartridge in North America and Europe…
Introduction Super Mario Bros. 3 was developed by Nintendo EAD under director Shigeru Miyamoto and lead designer Takashi Tezuka, with development beginning right after 1986’s Super Mario Bros.: The Lost Levels and running roughly two and a half years before its Japanese release in October 1988; North America had to wait until February 1990. Miyamoto…
Introduction Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles was developed by Konami and published in North America under its Ultra Games imprint, a label Konami founded in 1988 specifically to get around Nintendo’s limits on how many titles a single publisher could release per year. The game reached the Famicom in Japan in May 1989 and the NES…
Introduction Pac-Man’s NES history is unusually tangled for such a simple game. Namco’s original 1980 arcade maze-chase design was ported to the NES more than once: Tengen, then an Atari Games subsidiary, released a licensed version in October 1988 and later an unlicensed version after a falling-out with Nintendo over cartridge lockout chips and licensing…
Introduction Tetris was originally designed and programmed in June 1984 by Soviet software engineer Alexey Pajitnov, and its Western publishing rights became the subject of a famously tangled licensing battle in the years that followed, with Andromeda Software, Mirrorsoft, Atari Games subsidiary Tengen, and Nintendo all fighting over who actually held the console rights. Tengen…
Introduction Mega Man was developed and published by Capcom, released for the Famicom in Japan in December 1987 by a small six-person team working under a project supervisor who reportedly pushed for perfection in every detail despite the tight crew size. Fresh Capcom hire Keiji Inafune, credited on the game as ‘Inafuking,’ designed and illustrated…
Introduction Contra started out as a coin-operated arcade game from Konami released in February 1987, before the studio built its own home conversion for the NES that arrived in Japan and North America in early 1988, alongside a separate set of European computer ports handled by other studios under region-specific names. Set against a near-future…
Introduction Castlevania was developed and published by Konami, first released on the Famicom Disk System in Japan in September 1986 before reaching the NES on cartridge the following year, alongside a same-premise MSX2 sibling title called Vampire Killer that shipped with different level design around the same time. Character designer Akihiko Nagata built the game…