50 Greatest Nintendo Moments

Official Nintendo Magazine out of the UK put together a fantastic list of Nintendo’s 50 Greatest Moments of all Time! I would have love for this to have been a video series or even something that would broadcast on G4. The mix of nostalgia, accuracy, and plain ol’ great moments was top notch, cheers to ONM for this list.

10. Gusty Garden Theme – Super Mario Galaxy, Wii

When Super Mario Galaxy turned up on the scene Nintendo was still being criticized for its lack of orchestral music in its games. Many gamers were still bitter about the music in Twilight Princess and wanted an improvement. Galaxy fit the bill perfectly. The fully orchestral music was so incredible that gamers unanimously agree it’s one of the best soundtracks ever. Our favourite example? That uplifting, joyful Gusty Garden theme. Blooming marvelous.

9. Come To The Dark Side – Zelda: A Link To The Past, SNES

At first things seem fairly simple: Link has to collect three magic pendants in order to prove that he’s worthy of wielding the Master Sword. When you do this you find out that Zelda’s been taken to Hyrule Castle by the evil Agahnim. By the time you get there, Agahnim’s taken her to the Dark World and it’s here that you realize the game is huge, when it turns out you have to free seven maidens, each in their own dungeon. And so you realize the game is twice as big as you thought – what a moment.

8. Dog Days – Duck Hunt, NES

Ah, Duck Hunt dog, how we loathe thee. Every time you shot down some ducks this little runt would pop out of the grass and steal them. No, nameless dog, those are our ducks. Even worse was when you missed, at which point the dog would emerge from the grass and chuckle away. The smug little…

7. Ha Dou Ken! – Street Fighter II, SNES

Is there any better feeling than the moment when, after days of trying, you finally nailed Ryu’s fireball? No, of course not. Any button-bashing noobs could now be destroyed by simply standing back and chucking fireballs around willy-nilly.

6. In The Swing Wii Sports, Wii

Yes, we know aiming was more about timing than the way you swung the Remote but at the time, for those first few innocent rallies, Wii Sports was revolutionary. Since then everyone’s learned the limitations of the Remote but hindsight is a powerful thing. Back then the possibilities were endless…

5. “You are a super player” – Super Mario World, SNES

Completing all the Star Road levels let you warp to the ‘Special’ area which contained eight super-hard levels, the last of which boasted a bunch of coins spelling out “YOU ARE A SUPER PLAYER”. What a slap on the back! The greatest hidden area in Mario history? You’d better believe it.

4. Starwing Starts – Starwing, SNES

Mode 7 was all well and good, but when Nintendo first revealed details of the Super FX chip, people got really excited. Here was a device that could be built into specific cartridges and allow the SNES to play 3D polygon-based games for the first time. When the first screenshots of Starwing (the first Super FX game) started to emerge, gamers were a little confused because, being honest, it looked weird and blocky. Still, the games mags at the time were saying it was incredible, and so many gamers ran out and bought it.

As soon as they put it in their SNES and turned it on, they saw exactly what all the fuss was about. As the huge enemy spaceship loomed into the top of the screen while a huge dogfight ensued underneath it, all while a dramatic cinematic score played in the background, it was clear that Starwing was going to be one of the greatest games ever made.

3. Outside Peach’s Castle – Super Mario 64, N64

Mario’s jump to 3D completely turned the world of gaming upside-down, to the extent that simply running around and not really doing much was perfectly entertaining on its own. As a result, most people who played the game for the first time were happy enough to spend ages running around the grounds of Peach’s castle.

Climbing the trees, practicing triple-jumps, swimming in the moat under the bridge, trying desperately to run up the hill to the side of the castle to get onto the roof, and all this before Mario had even entered the castle and the game had properly begun.

We had a similar feeling of wonderment the first time we ran through Delfino Plaza in Super Mario Sunshine and the first time we ran round that tiny round planet at the start of Super Mario Galaxy, but those first few joyous minutes of Super Mario 64 will always remain the most ground-breaking.

2. The Temple Of Time – Zelda: Ocarina Of Time, N64

The first major quest in Ocarina Of Time sees young Link collecting three Spiritual Stones from the Kokiri, Goron and Zora races in order to get into the Sacred Realm. After collecting them, Link dashes off to the Temple Of Time and plays the Song Of Time on his Ocarina Of Time. Noticing a theme here? When he does this, a door opens and he comes face-to-face with the legendary Master Sword for the first time. He slowly approaches, grabs the sword with both hands and quickly pulls it out, when Ganondorf suddenly appears and nicks the Triforce. Link then awakens to find that seven years have passed and he’s now an adult, but when he steps outside he finds that in those seven years Hyrule has been wrecked and the castle grounds are swarming with zombie Redeads. Chilling stuff and one of the most effective sequences ever.

1. The Warp Zone – Super Mario Bros., NES

The original Super Mario Bros. was world-shattering in many different ways. As one of the first ever side-scrolling platform games, it brought with it a ridiculous number of innovations and new features that we all take for granted these days. Perhaps the most impressive moment in the game however was in World 1-2 when players found the warp zone for the first time.

Faced with vertically moving platforms while underground, the main idea is to leap past these and go through the pipe in order to get back to the overground area and complete the level. Sneaky gamers thought they would be clever and tried to break the game by riding one of the platforms all the way to the top of the screen and leaping onto the ‘roof’ of the level, scrolling the screen along so they could no longer get into the pipe. That’s when the big surprise happened. The screen kept scrolling and Mario kept running along the top of the screen, until he came to a secret area marked with the words “Welcome To Warp Zone”.

The player hadn’t broken the game, after all. Nintendo had called their bluff, knowing they would be curious enough to see if they could get onto the roof and rewarded this curiosity by letting them skip forward to other worlds.
It was by far the greatest gaming secret at the time and news of the mysterious Warp Zone spread throughout school playgrounds. It was the first gaming moment that got people talking and it inspired countless hidden areas in games to come. Had it not been for the Warp Zone teaching gamers and developers that games don’t have to play by the rules, we could have all missed out on the joy of hunting down in-game secrets.

[ONM]

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