English friendly Famicom games and the best way for an American to buy them.

[Lum]

Any suggestions? It isn't easy trying to weave through all the pirates and games readily available on NES. I'd rather not be gouged through impulse buys either of course. I'm OK with a few bootleg carts for great pirate exclusives. As well as titles too costly in genuine form.

Except Famicom pirates have such colossal prevalence I wouldn't know where to begin. Is it a good idea to start off with must-own cheap legit games not released here?

[Parodius Duh]

its quite easy to tell what is a pirate or official.  Just buy whatever games you like, most famicom games are english friendly except for RPGs..........Ebay and other forums are your best bet for obtaining games, although Ebay sucks and stupid assholes inflate the price of games to a ridiculous amount. Sites like Nintendo Age have lists of all American released games, so just check that out. Keep in mind a lot of Famicom stuff that was released in America has been edited in some way or another.

[Lum]

A list of really solid Japan only side scrollers would be nice. That might be hard since all the traditional Mega Man, Castlevania, and Ninja Gaiden games were localized.

[fredJ]

eBay has a good selection of carts if you buy from Japanese sellers. You can often tell from the cart what kind of game it is.

Here is a page to get you started:
http://www.racketboy.com/forum/viewtopic.php?f=2&t=7477

But I would add that there are many interesting simpler games for the Famicom such as Nuts & Milk and Devil World that are good buys. Those games weren't released in America. In any case many of those early action games have English text so you might as well buy them cheap.

[lkermel]

Hi Lum,

I only have a bit more than 50 games on there, but the 'game finder' on my review site can quickly show you the 'japan only' games I have covered so far:

http://www.videogameden.com/gamefinder.htm?fc

Just look at the Japanese flag next to the name (you can mouse over a game's name to see the box art too)

Personally, I think that Crisis Force, Gradius II, Joy Mecha Fight, Cocoron are all excellent Japanese only games.

And about finding them, I use Ebay a lot and yes, some auction prices are grossly inflated. But I'm personally really patient, and you can find really good deals on Ebay if you're patient enough

[Xious]

I've been working on a Must-own/must-play list, and I'm down to sorting out the genres and adding tags. If I get a change to give each a description, it'll end up as a feature on a site somewhere. Once I finish the list-major, and get it sorted out, it'll be an easy way to determine if you want to play (or can play) a given game.

[manuel]

You can also have a look at my sales thread (in my sig). I have quite a few games there. [/end of shameless plug] 

[Lum]

Yeah I need a broader scope. 2D platformers of sharp play control and detailed visuals is too narrow.

Haha well unless there's some team secretly making a homebrew Mega Man X2 or X4 port built on a SMB3 / Power Blade / etc level budget with actual Nintendo dev tools.

[Xious]

Yeah, I hope to have the list finished in a week or two: There are around 400 games on it now. I'm also including some short extra lists, like the NES-exclusive stuff and 'the worst of' plus 'honorary mentions'.

One more thing: Don't forget you can order games and hardware from me. I'm a USA-based dealer, after all.

[Lum]

Edit: Oh. Under construction, nevermind.