The Famicom Top 100 List, Brought to you by Famitsu

Number 100: Gradius II - Number 1: Dragon Quest III

To commemorate the Famicom's 20th anniversary, Famitsu released a special DVD celebrating the console and its games. The main feature on the disc is a top 100 countdown, listing the most popular Famicom games. The list is a fascinating look into the tastes of the Famicom's original audience and the only one of its kind. Let's break it down today.

The stature of Famitsu Magazine, shortened from its original name, Famicom Tsushin (Family Computer Journal), in Japan cannot be understated. The magazine, first published on June 6, 1986, is the longest continually running publication devoted to video games. In 2023, for the Famicom's 20th anniversary the magazine generated a list of its top 100 games. I have made a table recreating that list with additional information for each game. 

The list includes cartridge games and games from the Famicom Disk System. The magazine released a DVD, "Famitsu Video: 20th Anniversary of the Famicom's Birth" showing almost all these games with about 50 seconds of gameplay footage each. The main feature is about an hour and fifteen minutes long. It also released a Famicom 20th Anniversary Gamemusic DVD around the same time which only has music from Nintendo's own games

It appears that Famitsu took the list from people who wrote into the magazine or conducted a nation wide poll. How many people wrote in and how many games they were asked to put on their lists is an open question. In addition to the ranked 100, there were also 20 unranked games that served as something like "honorable arcade-game mentions". Also on the DVD is a 26-minute "History of the Famicom" including interviews with developers, vintage Famicom commercials, a feature showcasing some of the more unusual Famicom peripherals and a televised game competition TV show from 1986 featuring Star Soldier.

The Famitsu list is heavily skewed in some areas. In terms of genres, RPGs rate the highest overall and the majority of games were released during the Famicom's first five years, 1983-88. This was when the console was at the peak of its popularity and technologically dominant (SG-1000, Super Cassette Vision), the competition was weak (Mark III) or still growing in popularity (PC Engine). 

While there were many publishers of Famicom games, only 20 got on this list. Nintendo and all the earliest third parties are represented, so cartridges made by Bandai, Taito, Konami, Jaleco, Irem, Sunsoft are on this list. Only Akumajou Densetsu supports expansion audio among the cartridge games. Technos, Capcom, Enix, Square, Hudson Soft and Tecmo also have multiple entries.

20th Anniversary DVD Packaging

The Famicom brought the computer RPG to the masses, while original RPGs and ports of Western RPGs existed on Japanese computers, those computers were incredibly expensive, limiting the RPG reach. Dragon Quest gave Enix and Chunsoft a license to print money and everyone else took notice. Square was its most successful competitor but we also see three RPGs from Nintendo on this list and many other games with RPG elements (the Captain Tsubasas, most of the Dragon Ball & DBZ games, Zelda II etc.) Nintendo did try to translate this success to the U.S., localizing both Dragon Quest (as Dragon Warrior) and Final Fantasy but sales were not as strong as it hoped. These efforts did plant seeds and roots that would eventually blossom by the PlayStation era when Japanese RPGs would finally be embraced by the rest of the world.

8-bit RPGs tend not to age well, their stories are thin or cliched, their difficulty is unforgiving and they are all very grindy. Japanese RPGs tend to have aged the best from this time period thanks to their colorful graphics, catchy music, stronger plotting and slightly more forgiving difficulties compared to western RPGs of the same period. This list tracks the evolution of those RPGs as every Dragon Quest and Final Fantasy is a milestone in one way or another.

The Famicom Disk System has arguably 10% of the entries on this list, but there is some weirdness as the Famicom Tantei Club games are counted separately for their part 1 and 2s. You cannot run the part 2s without finishing the part 1s, so I believe that these should be counted together, not separately. The Tantei games and Portopia Renzoku Satsujin Jiken and Hokkaidō Rensa Satsujin: Okhotsk ni Kiyu are text based adventure games with graphics, what Japan calls "visual novels." You might wonder at the popularity of games like these but with computers out of reach for most Japanese, these games sold very well.

Related to the FDS, Super Mario USA was included instead of Yume Kōjō: Doki Doki Panic even though Super Mario USA is a cartridge reimagining of the FDS game. Super Mario USA came out rather late in the Famicom's life, which makes me wonder if it did not receive wide exposure in this form rather than its appearances on the FDS and as included on the Super Famicom's Super Mario Collection (Super Mario All-Stars overseas). The Japanese public could recognize greatness even late in the console's life, as Hoshi no Kirby: Yume no Izumi no Monogatari (Kirby's Adventure) is #12 in this list.

What is also weird is that the Final Fantasy I ∙ II compilation cartridge has its own entry separate from the games which make up the cartridge and received separate releases years earlier. The compilation cartridge contains almost nothing new over the original games, so one wonders whether its inclusion was warranted. At the time it was a good value and the two games have been bundled together almost ever since.

In terms of series, western NES fans will similarly recognize the classics, Super Mario Bros., The Legend of Zelda, Rockman/Mega Man, Akumajou Dracula & Akumajou Densetsu/Castlevania. Other revered series like Ninja Gaiden or any of the Capcom Disney or the Konami TMNT series are not included.

Honorable Mentions: Atlantis no Nazo - Route 16 Turbo

Many series on this list only include the first game in the series. Takahashi Meijin no Bōken Jima (Hudon's Adventure Island) had three Famicom sequels, Contra had Super Contra (Super C), Wizardry and Wagyan Land had two follow ups and so on. Some series are bookended, such as Gradius and Gradius II without Salamander and Akumajou Dracula and Akumajou Densetsu without Dracula II: Noroi no Fuuin. Salamander deserves to be on this list, Dracula II's dodgy gameplay is not improved by  all those disk loads and swaps.

The Famicom and the NES were the first consoles that truly pushed licensed games, for better (Konami, Capcom, Sunsoft) and for worse (LJN, Acclaim, THQ). In Japan the licenses of choice were anime and manga. Every Bandai game on this list is one of them and most of them are not very good. Sweet Home was based on a movie and is highly regarded as an early survival horror game. US licensees tended to look to movies as well as comic books and animated cartoons (the western equivalent of manga and anime). You may say were were fortunately spared all but Kinnikuman: Muscle Tag Match (M.U.S.C.L.E: Tag Team Match) and Dragon Ball: Shenlong no Nazo (Dragon Power) but Bandai had plenty of other kusoge (Dr, Jekyll & Mr. Hyde, Dick Tracy) to inflict on America and Europe.

There are four games on this list which have their origins in western games, Wizardry, Lode Runner, Spelunker and Tetris. Wizardry is the father of computer RPGs, and the Japanese took heavy inspiration from it with both the Dragon Quest and Final Fantasy series. The Wizardry series evolved into its own universe in Japan separate from its U.S. development. Tetris as released by BPS is rather primitive not only by today's standards but also compared to Nintendo's Tetris and Atari's Tetris for the NES.

Sport games reflect Japanese tastes, so we have a fair number of baseball games, soccer games and even a horse racing game. Several of the Kunio games also function as sport games. The Kunio series is very well-represented on this list (7 out of 11 games) but ironically two of the Kunio games which were ported to the US (Nintendo World Cup, Crash 'n the Boys' Street Challenge) are not. 5 of the Kunio games were ported over to the US.

The 20 honorable mentions are, with one exception, either arcade ports or games that would have been right at home in an arcade machine (Challenger, Nuts & Milk, Devil World) or found their way into an arcade cabinet (Baseball, Clu Clu Land.) Atlantis no Nazo was intended as a "Super Mario-killer" and might be a bit lengthy for an arcade game. It was almost localized as Super Pitfall II. Super Mario Bros. made it into the arcades too, twice. These games were all released during the peak Famicom years.

There are seven games which have a rankings card but no gameplay footage. I imagine Famitsu could not get the rights to those games, as some of these games are licensed from movies (Spartan X, The Goonies) or likenesses (Sanma no Meitantei). 

There are many list of Top NES games lists from various sites. While there is no similar US list of the same stature from a printed source, Nintendo Power issued a list of the Top 20 NES games for its 20th anniversary (Issue 321, August 2008). Its rankings include 13 games which are also in Famitsu's list.

Gameplay Capture Sample: Rockman 4, Downtown Nekketsu Monogatari, Final Fantasy II & SMB

The quality of the captured footage on the DVD is good for its time and looks better in motion than in static screenshots. There are instances which show that the video was not properly deinterlaced. Proper 240p deinterlacing was a challenge for a very long time. The proper method did not become widespread until OBS introduced its Retro deinterlacing option in 2017. It is clear that an AV Famicom was used for capturing gameplay footage, the source is composite and not RF, there are almost no jailbars in the captured images and the audio balance with expansion audio is weighted more toward the expansion side like an AV Famicom and later-model Famicoms. Famitsu also had to have access to original cartridges and disks, but as this was a popularity contest, not an objective best game rankings exercise, that would have been quite possible without spending too much money in 2003.

Speaking of popularity, it should come as no surprise that of the 39 Famicom games confirmed to have sold over 1 million copies (cartridge or disk), 26 are on this list. Most of the 1 million plus sellers which are not on the list are mostly early titles that have aged less well (Famicom Mahjong anyone?). As Japan outlawed video game rentals, if you did not have the game nor did any of your friends, the game might as well not have existed as far as you were concerned. Obscure but great games like Gimmick! or Crisis Force just did not have the presence to gain as much of a following and were crowded out by crap like Kinnikuman and Hokuto no Ken.

I imagine that the majority of people who participated in the survey would, in 2003 have been 8-15 years old when the Famicom was in its prime. This would suggest that, 20 years later, the respondents would be in their late 20s through their early forties. If they were not into the emulation scene or were not vintage collectors, I imagine that some difficulties in conducting the poll. Imagine someone being asked in 2005 what their favorite 20 NES games were when they had not played a NES in 12 years. The responses may not reflect an accurate recollection of their favorite games but only those that they could remember. Today if you conducted the same poll I suspect the responses may be quite different as you would now likely have many younger players who grew up after the Famicom's last games were released and may never have played on an original Famicom console.