Continuing the topic of the early Nintendo black box titles and their box art, I wanted to quickly highlight a few more from some of the other series that really caught my attention in the 80s, such as the light gun, programmable and arcade series.

Arcade series games were self-explanatory. These were familiar titles with the exception of Donkey Kong 3, that I had enjoyed in arcades prior to the arrival of […]

Nintendo Power was an enormous resource when it came to helping NES owners determine what games were worth buying, renting, or better off skipping entirely.

However, not everyone was blessed enough to be a Nintendo Power subscriber, and there were very few other ways to determine a game’s potential attributes. The existence of online playthroughs and reviews that showed actual gameplay footage would still be decades away. Today, you can watch games being played, you can hear the music and in-game sound effects, and you can browse dozens of unbiased online reviews. There’s really no excuse for any modern gamer to purchase a game that might completely take them by surprise […]