25. Blaster Master
Featuring an excellent mash-up of gameplay styles and a delightfully bonkers premise, Blaster Master is a NES classic through and through. In Blaster Master, you play as Jason, a young boy on a quest to rescue his frog Fred after he is mutated by radiation, turned into a giant monster, and flees into a huge subterranean world. Sunsoft’s game splits its time between on-foot sections and vehicle segments in which Jason takes command of a large armored tank called S.O.P.H.I.A. In practice, the two gameplay styles compliment each other well, as you feel incredibly vulnerable when playing as Jason, but then are totally empowered when you get to jump back into your tank.
From top to bottom, Blaster Master features praise-worthy design, as it sports clean graphics, catchy music, and inspired level design. Unfortunately, the original version doesn’t feature save points, forcing players to either finish the game in one sitting or leave their console on, but Nintendo could easily add save functionality for a re-release.
http://www.neshq.com/games/b/blastermaster/ Source: neshq.com
24. Castlevania III: Dracula’s Curse
Sure, Castlevania is present and accounted for on the NES Classic, as the first two games are part of the console’s 30 game library, but this makes it all the more puzzling that the third (and arguably best) game in the trilogy wasn’t included. Castlevania III: Dracula’s Curse builds on the core design of the first two games while also tightening up the gameplay, improving the graphics, and introducing a few new tricks of its own, including branching story paths, which helped make this one of the most replayable games on the Nintendo Entertainment System. In fact, these branching paths can bring you into contact with different playable characters, but because of the nature of the design, it’s possible that players may not have even meet some of them. As one of the best NES games of all time, it’s frankly absurd that Castlevania III is not on the NES Classic.
Fun Fact: Castlevania III is the first game in the series to introduce Alucard, the protagonist of the very best Castlevania game, Symphony of the Night.
http://ca.ign.com/games/castlevania-iii-draculas-curse/nes-6706 Source: IGN