Balloon Fight

Balloon Fight is Nintendo's answer to Joust, and it is a better game than that description suggests. You float with two balloons strapped to your back, flapping to gain height, and the whole challenge is that you keep moving - a game like this lives or dies on its physics, and these ones are excellent.

Pop both of an enemy's balloons and it falls, but only counts once it has hit the water, so a falling opponent is not finished until it lands. Bump an enemy from above and you bounce, which lets a careful player chain kills off one approach. Lightning arcs across the top of the screen and will kill anyone who climbs too high, which quietly caps how much you can hover. The cartridge's second and third modes are what give it a long life: Balloon Trip is a forced-scrolling stage where you thread a path through balloon-spike fields for score, and Vs. turns the whole thing into a two-player duel. The Famicom conversion was handled by Satoru Iwata, later Nintendo's president, and Balloon Trip was his addition.

• ▸Momentum-based flight with a real cost for every flap
• ▸Enemies only die on landing, so falling opponents are still live
• ▸Lightning ceiling that punishes hovering
• ▸Balloon Trip score attack mode and a two-player Versus mode