Adventures of Lolo 1–3

No rush, no reflexes — just you, a single screen and a puzzle that looks innocent until you start racking your brain. Adventures of Lolo is pure logic wrapped in a cute coat, and it ranks among the very best the genre offered on the NES.

The series grew out of the Japanese Eggerland line and its premise is elegantly simple: you control the round blue hero Lolo, collect hearts on every screen, dodge enemies, push blocks and cleverly use the environment to reach the exit. Each room is a self-contained puzzle with a single correct solution you must uncover before you make an irreversible move.

The beauty of this series lies in its perfectly measured difficulty curve. You start with trivial tasks, but every new screen introduces fresh elements, combinations and pitfalls. The game never cheats you — everything you need is right in front of you, you just have to figure it out. That moment when the solution to a seemingly impossible room finally clicks is pure joy.

The development at HAL Laboratory involved a young Satoru Iwata, the later legendary president of Nintendo. Thanks in part to his contribution, the series has that distinctive blend of friendliness, cleverness and precise design that HAL's other titles would later become famous for.

The trio of games offers dozens upon dozens of well-thought-out puzzles and together they form a little puzzle textbook. It is ideal entertainment for calm evenings when you want to put your head to work, not your fingers.

Why play: For brilliantly designed, gradually escalating puzzles in an adorable package — some of the best logic games of the entire NES era.