Adventure Island 4 is one of those NES games that starts off simple—you're just a dude in a loincloth chucking axes at weird fruit monsters—but then it gets weird fast. By the second level, you're riding dinosaurs that spit fire and jumping between floating islands like some kind of prehistoric parkour expert. The controls are tight, which helps because some of those jumps require pixel-perfect timing.

What I love about this one compared to the earlier games is how much variety there is. One minute you're dodging rolling boulders, the next you're underwater avoiding jellyfish, all while collecting those little hidden eggs that give you power-ups. The dinosaur mounts change up the gameplay too—the pterodactyl lets you cheese some sections by flying over obstacles, but good luck landing without faceplanting into spikes.

It's tough as nails in that classic NES way, but the checkpoints are merciful. You'll probably yell at the screen a few times, but in that "one more try" kind of way. The music’s got that upbeat chiptune energy that somehow makes getting wrecked by a giant crab less frustrating.