this site. One of the reasons previous home video game systems all ultimately failed was that they couldn't offer a comparable experience to the arcade games customers were used to. Another was that they did not deliver on the implied promises of the games' box art. Nintendo wisely showed people exactly what they were going to get. Take a look at the images here of Donkey Kong for the Atari 2600 and the NES. The NES had a better looking game, and matching box art. This proved to be a winning formula for Nintendo, so much so that the Black Box games are still widely loved and played to this day.

 

Below is a picture of each game in its original form. If you're just starting your collection, completing a set of the 30 black box games is a great thing to do (excluding variants, of course). They're all relatively easy to find and not too expensive, with the exception of Donkey Kong Jr. Math and Stack-Up, neither of which is so rare or costly that they become discouraging. The 17 original launch titles from October 1985 are marked here as well.