Curated playlist
Game Boy games
- Star Wars: The Empire Strikes Back (1992 video game)To beat the 1992 NES Empire Strikes Back game, you must rescue Han Solo and defeat Darth Vader.
- Final Fantasy Legend IIA smashed goddess statue scatters 77 magical stones across linked worlds in Final Fantasy Legend II.
- Star Wars (1991 video game)In the 1991 Star Wars NES game, Darth Vader appears only on the Game Over screen. Han and Leia get one life each.
- Final Fantasy Legend IIIFinal Fantasy Legend III began in Japan as SaGa 3, planned as the last game in its series.
- Mortal Kombat (1992 video game)Mortal Kombat, the 1992 arcade fighting game from Midway, spent six months of its development without a name. Co-creator Ed Boon later said that nobody could come up with a name "nobody didn't hate." The rejected candidates included…
- The Legend of Zelda: Link's AwakeningThe Legend of Zelda: Link's Awakening reached players in 1993 as the first Zelda adventure ever made for a handheld console. Nintendo developed and published it for the Game Boy, a machine with a monochrome screen that could go anywhere…
- Pokémon Red, Blue, and YellowPokémon Red, Blue, and Yellow began as a pitch that Nintendo's own staff could not make sense of. In 1990, the game developer Satoshi Tajiri described his concept to them, and the response was skepticism. They judged his ideas too…
- Pac-ManPac-Man was first called Puck Man, until executives feared vandals would change the P to an F.
- Street Fighter IIStreet Fighter II's combos began as a bug that the team chose to keep. It appeared in the car-smashing bonus stage.
- Space InvadersSpace Invaders sped up as aliens vanished by accident, and its designer kept the quirk.
- The Final Fantasy LegendThe Final Fantasy Legend's last boss can die to one chainsaw hit. A Game Boy weapon with instant death does it.