Well, video games were extremely expensive back then, so I was never just randomly "gifted" anything.
The few games I did have on contemporary consoles were all picked by myself, and I think generally I lucked out, or actually knew what I was picking. Super Mario Bros. 1 was the game that made me immediately wish for an NES in the first place, and my mom managed to secure one with the game included at a queue-up sale at a local supermarket.
Of course you can't really go wrong with that. The first Super Mario remains a solid classic to this day.
My other picks on NES were generally poorly informed but surprisingly fortunate - Tiny Toon Adventures based entirely on the appeal of the license and pretty graphics. I was not familiar with the name "Konami" at the time, and I think it actually being a really good game was entirely luck on my part.
Shadowgate and Lemmings were other picks. Lemmings was a famous game, so I knew exactly what I was getting into. In hindsight I'm not a big fan of the game, but you can't really call it shitty. Shadowgate looked cool, and I loved it at the time. I don't think it's a good game at all, but a lot of people still regard it as a classic today. My bigger mistake was picking the Swedish language version thinking I'd be able to understand any of it lol.
My final contemporary NES game, and more interesting pick was Solstice, famous today mostly for its amazing soundtrack.
This was picked up from a bargain bin of really cheap NES games. I actually picked The Guardian Legend first, based entirely on the cool box art (
European version, not the shitty US one). From the back of the box it looked like an awesome top-down action adventure game akin to Zelda. I was surprised when I got home and it was actually a shoot'em up and I was too shitty at shooters at the time to make any headway into the game at all. In what I realise now was a really regrettable decision, we went back to the store and were actually able to return the game since the box was completely intact.
I picked Solstice instead, from the same bargain bin. This game appealed a lot more to me, but eventually I couldn't figure out how to make progress, and I didn't manage to clear it originally, leaving it just lying around for years.
Eventually I found a set of cheat codes for infinite lives and refilled magic potions, and picked the game back up. Managed to map out the whole game, and after spending a while with it again, I actually ended up liking it a lot. Of the games I had it's probably the one most commonly recognized as a "shitty game". But I'm here today to tell you that Solstice actually rocks. You just have to delve into it and give it the time it deserves.
By the time SNES rolled around, I knew what I was doing, read magazines to keep up with the news, and if I was curious about other games I'd just rent them instead. So my entire library there was qualiy
