One of the first games to be developed for the Nintendo Entertainment System, Antarctic Adeventure was released in 1985 in Japan. As far as I know, it was never released in the United States. It was a racing game where the player raced against the clock. The player controlled a cute penguin who skidded around the Antarctic coastline, made a trip to the South Pole, and then returned to his starting point. Along the way, he had to jump over holes, some of which contained Walruses.
Considering the very early release date of this game, it was rather impressive in some areas. The sprites were fairly large, and the turning, advancing perspective was well handled. The music and cute little dance that the penguin did was fun too. And although the course was the same everytime, it could not be mastered merely by learning the pattern.
If you have a Nintendo Emulator and 20 kilobytes of harddrive space, this is a good game to pick up.
holliman corrected me on one point: Penguin Adventure DID make it to the states, but only for Colecovision in 1984. And it was a really tiny release because the market bottomed out.