20 Best-Selling NES Games That Helped Define Nintendo

The Nintendo Entertainment System did more than introduce millions of players to Mario, Zelda, Metroid, and other now-classic franchises. After launching in North America in 1985, the NES helped bring home consoles back into American living rooms following the video game crash of 1983 and turned Nintendo into one of the most important names in gaming.

A major reason for that success was the system’s game library. The NES had platformers, action games, sports titles, puzzle games, shooters, and adventures that kept players coming back for years. Its best-selling games show what people were actually buying and playing during the console’s peak, but they also reveal how many of Nintendo’s biggest ideas started on this one machine.

Cheat CC looked at 20 of the best-selling games on the original Nintendo Entertainment System and why they mattered. Some became the foundation for franchises that still dominate today, while others remain tied to a specific moment in gaming history. Together, these titles show how the NES helped shape the future of home gaming.

• Release Date — January 26, 1987
• Developer — Chunsoft
• Publisher — Enix
• Genre — JRPG
• Total Sales — 2.55 million units

Chunsoft and Enix's Dragon Quest is commonly understood as being the progenitor of the JRPG, and the second Dragon Quest game would deliver more of what players loved about the first while also innovating on the formula. Dragon Quest II introduces an entire party of adventurers instead of a lone hero, and its world is substantially larger than that of its predecessor. It would take 4 years for the title to receive a Western localization as Dragon Warrior II, and by that point, it was already a major success in its native Japan.

• Release Date — June 3, 1986
• Developer — Nintendo R&D 4
• Publisher — Nintendo
• Genre — Platformer
• Total Sales — 2.65 million units

The runaway popularity of Super Mario Bros. would inspire Nintendo to quickly produce a sequel that remained largely the same as its predecessor, with Super Mario Bros. 2 arriving just a year later. As it turns out, though, Super Mario Bros. 2 was so notoriously hard that Nintendo worried Western players might be turned off by its challenge, resulting in both North America and Europe getting a completely different version of the game (which also happens to be another of the NES' best-selling titles). The original Super Mario Bros. 2 remained a Japan-exclusive title until its inclusion in the SNES' Super Mario All-Stars, and it still managed to sell almost 3 million units.

• Release Date — August 15, 1987
• Developer — Nintendo R&D 1, Intelligent Systems
• Publisher — Nintendo
• Genre — Action Platformer
• Total Sales — 2.73 million units

Nintendo's Metroid is one of several titles on the NES to single-handedly create its own genre, taking the basic framework of an action-platformer and transforming it into a vast, nonlinear game that was more ambitious and immersive than anything else like it at the time. Despite the tendency for players to get lost in its labyrinthine corridors, Metroid would end up being a major hit, selling nearly 3 million units and quickly spawning an even better sequel for the soon-to-arrive Game Boy.

• Release Date — September 18, 1987
• Developer — Nintendo R&D 3
• Publisher — Nintendo
• Genre — Sports, Fighting
• Total Sales — 3 million units

Whether referring to the original (and later) Punch-Out!! or its Mike Tyson's Punch-Out!! re-release, Nintendo's puzzle-fighting series was one of the NES' most iconic titles. Part boxing game and part pattern-recognition puzzle game, Punch-Out!! was practically a must-have for any NES owner, and its re-release featuring the likeness of superstar heavyweight boxing champ Mike Tyson tapped into the athlete's grip over the late 1980s cultural zeitgeist.

• Release Date — September 1987
• Developer — Human Entertainment
• Publisher — Bandai, Nintendo
• Genre — Sports
• Total Sales — 3.08 million units

Originally released as Stadium Events before being re-branded as World Class Track Meet, Human Entertainment's track and field mini game collection was the definitive title for the NES' Power Pad peripheral, which was one of several iconic add-ons for the NES built around a specific gaming experience. Interestingly, the rebranding of the title from Stadium Events to World Class Track Meet has made original Stadium Events cartridges one of the rarest and most valuable Nintendo collectibles, and that's with the title selling more than 3 million units in its production run.

• Release Date — February 11, 1990
• Developer — Chunsoft
• Publisher — Enix
• Genre — JRPG
• Total Sales — 3.18 million units

The final Dragon Quest game for the NES, Dragon Quest IV would prove to be a major departure from the initial trilogy, telling a brand-new story in a different setting and featuring separate adventures that eventually connected in a final chapter. Like other games in the series, Dragon Quest IV would sell very well in Japan before arriving in the West 2 years later as Dragon Warrior IV, which helped to soften the blow of the title's fairly weaker sales figures in North America (where players had mostly aligned with Final Fantasy instead).

• Release Date — October 18, 1985
• Developer — Nintendo R&D 1, Intelligent Systems
• Publisher — Nintendo
• Genre — Sports
• Total Sales — 3.2 million units

Interestingly enough, many of the best-selling games on the NES would end up being launch titles for the console, with the strength of Nintendo's marketing and word-of-mouth pushing many into picking up both the NES Control Deck and a strong lineup of games that remained classics on the console throughout its lifespan. One of the best sports games in the NES' launch software lineup was Nintendo's Baseball, which is a classic arcade-style take on America's pastime.

• Release Date — October 18, 1985
• Developer — Nintendo R&D 4
• Publisher — Nintendo
• Genre — Beat 'em Up
• Total Sales — 3.5 million units

Another of the NES' launch hits would end up being Nintendo's version of the classic arcade cabinet Kung-Fu Master, taking Data East's legendary beat 'em up and reimagining it as a console title. To its credit, Kung Fu would remain one of the best beat 'em up games on the NES throughout its entire lifespan, and its massive sales success would inspire several other coin-op classics to come to the NES, including Double Dragon.

• Release Date — February 10, 1988
• Developer — Chunsoft
• Publisher — Enix
• Genre — JRPG
• Total Sales — 3.89 million units

The best-selling game in the Dragon Quest series and arguably the best game in the franchise, Dragon Quest III was nothing short of a cultural event when it released, with reports of students skipping school in Japan just to buy a copy. While the title's mainstream cultural appeal didn't translate to the West, it did still enjoy respectable success in North America as Dragon Warrior III, enough for just the Famicom/NES version's lifetime sales to approach 4 million units (a number that, at the time, was unheard of for a role-playing game).

• Release Date — May 12, 1989
• Developer — Konami
• Publisher — Ultra Games
• Genre — Action Platformer
• Total Sales — 4 million units

Just because a game happens to be one of the NES' best-selling titles, that doesn't necessarily mean it has to be good. Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles is a perfectly average action-platformer whose profile was boosted by its use of the incredibly popular Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles license, and it also happens to have one of the most maddeningly hard levels in all of gaming. To add insult to injury, the level in question comes early on in the game, meaning that, out of the millions of players who purchased Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, likely only a fraction ever made it past the infamous Dam stage.

• Release Date — October 18, 1985
• Developer — Nintendo R&D 2, HAL Laboratory
• Publisher — Nintendo
• Genre — Sports
• Total Sales — 4.01 million units

No matter how you feel about playing the actual sport of golf, it's hard to deny that it's a perfect activity to translate into a fun video game, resulting in there being some incredible golf games throughout the years (with Mario Golf's many iterations being highlights). Before Mario Golf, though, Nintendo would produce the appropriately named Golf as a launch title for the NES, and it would be one of the system's many successful sports games. At 4 million units sold, Golf would actually remain the best-selling golf video game until the 5th console generation.

• Release Date — October 18, 1985
• Developer — Nintendo R&D 4
• Publisher — Nintendo
• Genre — Driving/Racing
• Total Sales — 4.16 million units

Most people associate Nintendo luminary Shigeru Miyamoto with Super Mario Bros. and The Legend of Zelda, but he was also responsible for another of the NES' best titles with Excitebike. Like some of the other games on this list, Excitebike was one of the NES' launch titles and a killer app for the console at the time of its release, owing to the popularity of the arcade cabinet by the same name. And to this day, if someone has an old NES lying around, there's a strong chance that Excitebike is one of the cartridges they have in their library.

• Release Date — December 1, 1988
• Developer — Nintendo R&D 4
• Publisher — Nintendo
• Genre — Action RPG
• Total Sales — 4.38 million units

The second wave of high-profile sequels for the NES were marked by a fascinating push toward experimentation: Castlevania II, Zelda II, Super Mario Bros. 2; each of these titles was radically different from the games that had come before, to the point where they were fairly polarizing among the NES' player base. Of course, the strength of the Zelda and Mario names meant that both the sequels would be major successes, even if not quite as successful as their predecessors. For all its noteworthy changes over the near-perfect formula of the original, Zelda II is a fantastic game that's a better action RPG than it is a Legend of Zelda title.

• Release Date — July 27, 1990
• Developer — Nintendo R&D 1
• Publisher — Nintendo
• Genre — Puzzle
• Total Sales — 4.85 million units

When it comes to puzzle games, falling block and match-3 are arguably the two most popular formats, which Nintendo would combine to create one of the genre's all-time greats: Dr. Mario. Aside from its excellent and unique puzzle gameplay, Dr. Mario has an appropriately infectious soundtrack, and it's the only puzzle game on the NES to even come close to matching the success of Tetris.

• Release Date — August 22, 1987
• Developer — Nintendo R&D 4
• Publisher — Nintendo
• Genre — Action-Adventure
• Total Sales — 6.51 million units

One of the greatest and most important games ever made, The Legend of Zelda would prove to be a major stepping stone not just for the NES but for video games as a whole. Released at a time when most console video games were ports of popular arcade titles, Zelda proved that the NES was capable of an entirely different kind of immersive experience, and players were incredibly receptive to its call to adventure.

• Release Date — September 1988
• Developer — Nintendo R&D 4
• Publisher — Nintendo
• Genre — Platformer
• Total Sales — 7.46 million units

The difficulty of the true Super Mario Bros 2 would inspire Nintendo to take one of its lesser-known Japan-only titles, Doki Doki Panic, and give it a Mario re-skin, resulting in what North American and European players know as Super Mario Bros 2 and Japanese players know as Super Mario Bros 2 International. For all its differences from the original Super Mario Bros., Super Mario Bros. 2 is still a great game that would be a major hit on the NES, helped in large part by the ability to play as not just Mario, but Luigi, Toad, and Princess Peach as well.

• Release Date — November 1989
• Developer — Nintendo R&D 1
• Publisher — Nintendo
• Genre — Puzzle
• Total Sales — 8 million units

Nintendo's version of Tetris actually wouldn't be the first release of the title on NES, with Tengen's arguably superior port arriving before it. Of course, the launch of Tetris on NES and Game Boy under Nintendo's development prompted the company to strike down Tengen's release as an "unofficial" version, resulting in it being lost to obscurity while the Big N's version became a multi-million best-seller. Still, Tetris is a noteworthy title not just for being a best-selling NES game, but also for being one of the most popular versions of Alexey Pajitnov's puzzle game in the ongoing competitive scene.

• Release Date — February 12, 1990
• Developer — Nintendo R&D 4
• Publisher — Nintendo
• Genre — Platformer
• Total Sales — 18 million units

The hype surrounding Super Mario Bros 3 was like nothing else before it, with a major motion picture featuring a major product placement for the title that all but ensured it would become a multi-million seller for Nintendo. But, as it turns out, the hype was more than justified, as there's a strong case for Super Mario Bros. 3 remaining the all-time greatest platformer game, even in the wake of Super Mario World just a year later.

• Release Date — October 18, 1985
• Developer — Nintendo R&D 1, Intelligent Systems
• Publisher — Nintendo
• Genre — Sports, Shooter
• Total Sales — 28.31 million units

The NES Control Deck that millions of players flocked to pick up throughout the 1980s came with an NES console, two controllers, and a Zapper light gun peripheral, the killer app for which was Duck Hunt. While Duck Hunt's gameplay is fairly simplistic and one-note, it's perfectly intuitive for just about anyone of any age to immediately pick up and play, and it's still the best game to make use of the Zapper peripheral. Throw in the fact that Nintendo would eventually combine Duck Hunt and Super Mario Bros on a single cartridge as a pack-in title for NES consoles, and you have a bona fide system-seller.

• Release Date — September 13, 1985
• Developer — Nintendo R&D 4
• Publisher — Nintendo
• Genre — Platformer
• Total Sales — 40.24 million units

The killer app for the NES' North American launch would be none other than Super Mario Bros, with the title going on to define the console and its protagonist becoming the face of Nintendo as a company. Accordingly, Super Mario Bros is both the best-selling game on the NES and one of the best-selling games of all time, moving an impressive 40 million units, in part owed to its place as a system pack-in later on in the console's lifespan.