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3:NINTENDO ENTERTAINMENT SYSTEM
Manliness Quotient: 9.0
In many ways, the NES did more to define what modern video games are today than the Atari 2600. Games like Super Mario Bros, Metroid, The Legend of Zelda, and Kid Icarus were a huge leap forward in complexity and game design. Is that manly? Not necessarily, or at least not in my book. What is very manly about the NES was it’s Stalin-esque dominance of a newly thriving industry that had looked to be dead just a few years earlier. Commercial success is manly. But the manliness of the NES is not limited to its industry dominance… because it also features a vast catalog of old-school, violent, politically incorrect, and insanely difficult games.

There is an almost endless list of NES games that made me to spike my controller in fits of manly rage as a young child. Games like Mike Tyson’s Punch Out, Ninja Gaiden, Contra, Kid Icarus, Metroid, Battletoads, Ghosts n’ Goblins, Gradius, Double Dragon, Solar Jetman, and MegaMan are only a good start to the list of NES games that were not only brilliant in their design, but extraordinarily difficult. People who cut their teeth on games like these are a different kind of gamer than those young whippersnappers who are used to having their soft, blister-free hands held through modern games. Do I sound like an old geezer at the age of 30? I am perfectly fine with that! You sissies can have your handholding and endless continues. I’m perfectly happy getting my face smashed in 40 times in a row by Super Machoman, because I know the payoff will be that much greater when I finally do put him on his ass. If a man’s pursuit of challenge, and level of achievement is a measure of his manliness… as I believe it is… then the game library of the NES is manly indeed.

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