The 8-bit and 16-bit years, all of them

Video games are rad.

Every NES, Famicom and Super Nintendo game in one place: the facts, the best-of lists, and a pick for tonight.

3,291games

18years

9lists

0paid reviews

Tonight

One game, picked for your mood

No scrolling. Pick a mood and a console.

Lists

The best of 8 and 16 bits

RPGs, the hardest games, two-player nights, Japan-only gems.

Database

Every game, searchable

By name, publisher, platform, year and genre.

Start here

The 25 best NES games

See the list →

Browse

Pick a console

All games →

709 games

NES

The grey box that saved home games, 1985 onward.

1,056 games

Famicom

The red-and-white original, Japan, 1983 onward.

200 games

Famicom Disk System

Rewritable disks, Japan only, 1986 onward.

779 games

SNES

Mode 7, great RPGs and the 16-bit war.

1,440 games

Super Famicom

Japan’s SNES, and everything that never left it.

Curated

Lists worth a weekend

All lists →

13 games

D&D on the NES and SNES

The official Advanced Dungeons & Dragons games, and the console RPGs that grew out of the tabletop. Roll for initiative on a controller.

25 games

The 25 best SNES games

The 16-bit years at their best: Mode 7, big RPGs, and the platformers everyone owned.

14 games

The best SNES RPGs

The golden age of the Japanese RPG, all on one console. Clear a month.

11 games

The hardest NES games

The ones that taught a generation patience. Every one is fair once you know it. Getting to know it is the hard part.

12 games

The best two-player games

Pass the second controller. NES and SNES games that are better with someone on the couch.

10 games

Japan-only gems

Famicom and Super Famicom games that never left Japan. Most have fan translations.

The human desk

Why we play

All essays →

Flow

The zone: why good games make time disappear

Why an hour of Tetris feels like ten minutes: Csikszentmihalyi's flow, challenge matched to skill, and old games as machines built to make it happen.

Failure

One must imagine Mario happy

Why we fail at games on purpose and keep going: Juul's paradox of failure, Suits on unnecessary obstacles, and Camus's Sisyphus, happy at the boulder.

Dopamine

Wanting, not liking: what dopamine really does when you play

Dopamine isn't the pleasure chemical. It's anticipation and surprise. Schultz, Berridge and Robinson on wanting versus liking, via a question block.

Rules

The magic circle: the world that rules make

Why a game feels like a world of its own: Huizinga's magic circle, Caillois's four kinds of play, Suits and Goffman, from the power switch to the pause.

Together

The second controller

Why playing side by side matters: Goffman on shared engrossment, Durkheim's collective effervescence and our need for relatedness, from couch to arcade.

Identity

Who you are when you play

Avatars, names and ideal selves: Gee's projective identity, the Proteus effect, the ideal self at play, Winnicott and Turkle, from Zelda's save file on.

Retro reads