Today I found a youtube video that came out recently that talked about NES games that pushed the systems limits, and there were a couple on it I had never heard of.  So I thought it would be a good topic for discussion.

There was an old thread, but it was so old I decided to leave it buried.  The last post was in 2012.





Uchuu Keibitai SDF looks really interesting and is one I've never heard of.  The NES can still surprise me.

Seen this talked about a few times on here actually. probably just not searching the exact word match

Lots of games there I hadn't heard of before. Not sure I'd call some of them pushing the system's limits given what some other popular games achieved, but some of the others are definitely treats for the eyes.

I like it a lot. Not the easiest game to get ahold of, though.

 

The large format Famicom carts are my favorite! Was this game a custom mapper or another reason for the larger PCB? I know usually it's Nintendo, Koei, and a few other instances in the bigger casing.  

In the case of Uchuu Keibitai SDF, it was the MMC5.

http://bootgod.dyndns.org:7777/pr...

Metal Slader Glory is similar.

One game that no one will ever mention, that impressed me, was Greg Norman Golf Power. The game redraws a 3D picture of the golf course after every shot, which is way beyond what every other NES game was doing, and closer to what StarFox and Doom are doing (even if very slowly, and not animated).

Not a great game, though.

Z Gundam Hot Scramble is one that comes to mind

Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles II: The Arcade Game always impressed the shit out of me.

Zanac is pretty impressive with their AI, and the fact that it can have a ton of sprites on the screen with almost no slowdown. I think I only encountered slight slowdown in the last level when the AI threw everything and the kitchen sink at me. Other than that, it's really cool what they pulled off, especially for a game released in 1987.

When I was a kid I thought Battletoads must have had extra hardware in the cart to be able to do all the cool stuff it could do, I was surprised to learn later on how simple the mapper Rare used really was. I think Batman Return of the Joker is probably an obvious one for most of us, but I'll mention it here anyway.