Adventure games for NES?
 

Hello everybody, this is my first post but I've been following the forum for quite a lot.

I'm looking for some adventure games to play on my old NES. Can you give some suggestions? Do they exist?

Thanks!

Maniac Mansion and Deja Vu come to mind.

Here are some more:
http://www.mobygames.com/browse/games/nes/adventure/

Hey there,
so would you suggest playing Deja Vu? (played Maniac Mansion on Amiga already)

King's Quest 5 came out for NES. You can find it on eBay.

I enjoyed Deja Vu, but I played it on the Mac, I don't know how different the NES version is. You can check out AG's review of the GameBoy Color version here.

All the Icom adventures for the NES, Deja Vu, Shadowgate and Uninvited, were interesting (they were ports of earlier games originally released on Apple platforms and are rudimentary transitional games trying to put a graphical interface on a text adventure.

You have Princess Tomato in Salad Kingdom, which is a Japanese knockoff of the Icom adventures.

Nightshade is a pretty good and overlooked adventure.

Murder on the Missippi is a pretty good Japanese adventure with a branching storyline that had 4 endings, that I don't think was ever translated.

Then you have adventures that were a bit of jumping action but had an emphasis on environmental puzzles, Solstice and Star Tropics (the latter is one of my favorite NES games).

You also have Sweet Home, which was a kind of adventure-RPG hybrid.

I didn't include mediocre ports of popular PC adventures like Maniac Mansion and King's Quest V (I think it was).

There's Tombs and Treasure. The American NES version was handled by Infocom, but the game was originally developed by Nihon Falcom. There's some pseudo rpg elements, but it's mostly adventure. Can't say I know too much about the game unfortunately.
iirc Murder on the Mississippi was originally devloped by Activision for the Commodore(?). One of the few western adventures to be ported to the Japanese NES (aka Famicom), but not get an English NES release (such as Law of the West)

And I wouldn't really call Princess Tomato in the Salad Kingdom a 'knock-off'. The game is unique (i.e. absolutely bonkers) with its concept and story, plus it's a remake of a 1984 pc game.

Thanks a lot everybody! Nice suggestions, I'm going to check them soon.

ps. Trickless> nice site you got there

Princess Tomato rules, I put hours into that game as a kid.

Japan dominated the system, so most of them are Japanese-style (think Ace Attorney or Cing's games). Famicom Fairytales series (New Island Of Oni, especially, as it's probably in my top 15 ever), Famicom Detective Club, and Ripple Island are the best that aren't based on comics, movies, or television. Nightshade's not to be missed, either, since it's quite unique. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nightsh...991_video_game) There's also a really funny one on which the one in Retro Game Challenge 2 is based.

These look interesting as well. Won't miss Nightshade for sure.

Shadowgate! It was my very first adventure game...before I even knew what adventure games were.

<--- Btw, it's what my avatar is from.

I've read about it, isn't it an incredibly frustrating game? Can I save my progress often?

Frustrating, yes. Save progress? Sadly, no. It's very unforgiving, and easy to die. I'd recommend trying to play it on an emulator with save states to avoid hair-pulling.

As a kid I found the music and atmosphere to be very unsettling, even though by today's standards it's very tame. There just weren't many games like it back then.

Okay so after almost a year, and after finishing the incredibly long and incredibly hard Megami Tensei: Digital Devil Story (it's a jRPG for NES), I've finally played one of your suggestions: Shadowgate. I enjoyed it and even suggest those who didn't play it to give it a try. It IS frustrating, but the NES version brings you back to the last area you visited whenever you die. A challenging, yet quite atmospheric (and short) adventure.

Now for the next one from your suggestions. I think I'm gonna try Deja Vu or Nightshade.

Thanks again!

"Who Framed Roger Rabbit?" was kind of frustrating but made for a very unique adventuring experience.

I'm not sure. I liked the roger rabbit games for SNES, so I'd recommend those. If you like retro stuff maybe check out some movie star planet games which are casual online games, and some are adventure based too. "Escape from the planet of robot" is a good one for instance, but its more platformer.

YES I second that one. Great choice. Nihom Falcom made good games.

Played Uninvited. Pretty short, but I liked it more than Shadowgate probably because there is no time limit for doing your stuff (no torchlight system or anything... unless you take the ruby). No unwinnable state that I'm aware of. I recommend it! A couple of days of fun, light adventure gaming.

http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-RVAugxhdSz...1%255D_007.png

Straight from your suggestions, played Princess Tomato in the Salad Kingdom. I kind of enjoyed it, also appreciated the light rpg elements in it (3 maze sequences and "finger wars" especially). A pleasantly awkward game if you ask me. Thanks again for the suggestions!

http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-VTNwpnXmlB...1%255D_010.png

Not quite a point'n'click game, but a nice rpg/adventure hybrid that might appeal to some, I've recently completed Dream Master for NES (FC actually):

http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-eti6Llps6I...J%2529_032.png

Never got a proper English release, but a patch has been released recently by aishsha,here. You are a Dream Master, a magician who's able to enter people's dreams and save them from oblivion. You've been tasked with saving a young princess' soul, kidnapped by the evil Black Master. So you basically enter her dreams and investigate them, there is a total of 7 dreams so the game is fairly short (and quite easy), and each dream represents a different world each with its own boss (a vampire, a Lamia, etc.). Yes you'll have to fight monsters in a turn-based fashion, but it's totally accessible even for those who don't like the genre, and grinding is not necessary at all. There are quite a few puzzle/adventure elements in the game, so that's why I'm recommending it here. Some are inventory based, some others are more of the lock combination / object hunting type. Also, the illustrations are beautiful (for the time/system). I suggest giving it a try, if not for a different experience (you can also try playing in Japanese and have a look at the graphics and music, it's quite intuitive anyway, but you'll miss the nice story).

For those interested, a full review of the game will appear soon on Hardcoregaming101.net.

Oh, forgot to say that the level screens are usually not clearly visible, being engulfed in a magical haze, so you'll have to walk over the tiles to uncover them. Hitting a wall will result in (very minimal) HP drain, and you can also recognize monsters by listening to the sound they make, revealing their position within 2-3 tiles from you. There is no really way to avoid the walls, but you can avoid pits (they make a blowing sound when you stand next to them), and you can assume a fair amount of symmetry in most rooms so you can imagine the walls location to a certain degree.