Nintendo VS Fans: What's your favorite game?

larrylemming

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I'm just starting to get into collecting Vs. System boards and chipsets. Curious to know what people's favorites are.

I haven't played a lot of Vs. System games, but I have a certain fondness for Balloon Fight on the NES. I've been slowly collecting parts to build a Vs. Balloon Fight for myself, and I'm finally almost there... all I need now is the EPROMs to complete the board. :)
 
Balloon Fight is definitely a must have. Still, I prefer Wrecking Crew by the slightest of margins. That's probably my absolute favorite out of the bunch.

Close runners up are Dr. Mario, Gradius, and Star Luster.
 
I am working on getting a star luster together. I love Duck Hunt + bonus round.

Actually I love several of the games. I am working on getting a board together for Wrecking Crew and possibly Balloon Fight, but I don't want to sacrifice my Excitebike :)

If I had to pick one out of my collection that is my absolute favourite right now it would be probably Castlevania with Dr. Mario on the coattails (still getting used to Vs. controls on that one compared to the old nintendo pad)
 
I was hooked on VS. Excitebike in the arcade before anyone had ever even heard of the NES. I didn't realize that I was playing a console game, because prior to the NES becoming widely available in '86, the ColecoVision had the best graphics of any console I'd ever seen, and Excitebike was well ahead of anything I'd seen on a Coleco.

The first time I played Excitebike on the NES in '86 (which was also the first time I'd seen and played an NES), I was shocked. I still didn't realize that Excitebike was a console game all along that ended up in an arcade machine, because that wasn't the natural order of things; that was unheard of. I thought that finally a console had come along that was powerful enough to have perfect ports of arcade games at home. So based on my thinking that Excitebike on the NES was an example of a perfect arcade-to-console port, I was imagining how awesome it would be if games like Karate Champ, Double Dragon, and Punch-Out came out for the NES. As I soon found out, the NES wasn't nearly as powerful as I first thought.

In any event, I would like to have a VS. Excitebike machine. The one I played as a kid was in a Donkey Kong or Popeye cabinet, though I didn't know that at the time.
 
In any event, I would like to have a VS. Excitebike machine. The one I played as a kid was in a Donkey Kong or Popeye cabinet, though I didn't know that at the time.

Is there a difference between dedicated and converted Unisystem cabinets? I thought the only difference was the paint color.
 
the dedicated Vs. cabinet is shaped more like the single monitor playchoice or r-type

All three are the same cabinet.

Is there a difference between dedicated and converted Unisystem cabinets? I thought the only difference was the paint color.

The overall shape is different, plus the VS./PC-10/R-Type cabinet has the newer style over/under coin doors (Asahi Seiko Model ADD, same as on Punch-Out and Mario Bros. cabinets), and doesn't have a speaker grill cut into the front of the control panel (the speaker is up in the marquee area).
 
The ones that stand out for me are Super Mario Bros., Duck Hunt, and Excitebike. I played all of those on location back in the day. I owned a Vs. Excitebike for a short time before I converted it back to DK. I should have kept it as its was and held onto it. Its also one of my favorite NES games (though I am not into motorcycles or racing). Though, there is nothing like playing it in a Vs. cab. I am also a big fan of Dr. Mario.
 
My favorites are

1) Super Mario
2) Balloon Fight
3) Excite Bike
4) Wrecking Crew
5) Ice Climber
 
The ones I played back in the day were Vs. Super Mario and Vs. Goonies. I got an NES really early on and couldn't justify dropping quarters into an upright for the same game I could play at home. I pretty quickly figured out Super Mario was way harder in the upright and I knew Goonies wasn't available for the NES.
 
Balloon Fight is definitely a must have. Still, I prefer Wrecking Crew by the slightest of margins. That's probably my absolute favorite out of the bunch.

Close runners up are Dr. Mario, Gradius, and Star Luster.

Great Linup there. Kinda Curious though as to what are the real differences between say a VS "Balloon Fight" and a PC10 balloon fight ? I know the PC10 versions are strait up NES ports, but I've only seen a VS Super Mario Bros in person and it didn't look any different to me. Does the VS versions have better graphics, or more levels ?
 
I can't really speak about the details of Vs. Balloon Fight, but one nice thing is both people can play on a Red Tent with Balloon Fight on two separate monitors in the same game which is nice.

As far as the rest of the games, they are generally harder on the Red Tent versions. Play through SMB and get to 1-4 and you will notice a huge difference with 1-4 on PC-10 or NES.

Most of the other games also have a little bit more difficulty as well as some "Bonus Stages" that weren't in the NES versions. I don't know the differences for Dr. Mario yet though. Is there a difference in Dr. Mario?
 
I can't really speak about the details of Vs. Balloon Fight, but one nice thing is both people can play on a Red Tent with Balloon Fight on two separate monitors in the same game which is nice.

As far as the rest of the games, they are generally harder on the Red Tent versions. Play through SMB and get to 1-4 and you will notice a huge difference with 1-4 on PC-10 or NES.

Most of the other games also have a little bit more difficulty as well as some "Bonus Stages" that weren't in the NES versions. I don't know the differences for Dr. Mario yet though. Is there a difference in Dr. Mario?

You can't pause the game for one thing and the difficulty/speed is ramped up in the Vs. version. My wife was a pro at the NES/PC-10 version, but really hated the vs. version as she couldn't do as well.
 
Great Linup there. Kinda Curious though as to what are the real differences between say a VS "Balloon Fight" and a PC10 balloon fight ? I know the PC10 versions are strait up NES ports, but I've only seen a VS Super Mario Bros in person and it didn't look any different to me. Does the VS versions have better graphics, or more levels ?

Most of the differences are difficulty between the VS games and PC (NES) games. Some differences are more noticable than others. For example, VS Excitebike is MUCH different than the PC Excitebike- graphics, game options, etc. are all different.
 
You can't pause the game for one thing and the difficulty/speed is ramped up in the Vs. version. My wife was a pro at the NES/PC-10 version, but really hated the vs. version as she couldn't do as well.

I noticed the difficulty was up there. I used to be able to clear to about level 23 on high speed without much difficulty and I picked up the Vs. Dr. and couldn't even clear half of lvl 20 on high. I figured I was just worse at the joystick controls combined with being rusty :D
 
Hmm this is a hard one.

1. Ninja Jajamaru-kun (don't know why but I loved playing this on a bootleg 110 in 1 cart growing up on NES. Still enjoy it to this day!)
2. SMB - Definitaly harder than the NES version.
3. Balloon Fight - awesome to play pace to face!
4. Dr Mario
5. Tetris
 
Vs. Balloon Fight is really different than the NES version. The levels are far more vertical and they scroll up and down.

Vs. Wrecking crew is also totally unique on the VS. It's pretty much a different game. One player is on one side of the wall, the other on the other side.

Vs. Super Mario Bros. is much harder. There are longer jumps, less warps, etc. It's totally harder and different than the NES version. Especially the later levels. Some of the levels were taken from the Lost Levels which was originally only in Japan.
 
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