[CaptainCrunch]

I know we're not that old. But if you think about it, realistically the video game era started in the late 70's with arcade video games that were incredibly simple. But the whole industry exploded in the early 80's with the early consoles, stand up video games and PC driven video games.

(Man I suddenly feel old). This isn't a simple list either, I think to be fair we need to break up the category a bit.

So tease your hair, pull out your alligator shirts and pop the collars, undo your shoe laces and put your favorite tape in your walkman.

Top Arcade games of the 80's

1) Galaga - I admit that I wasted a ton of money on this top down shooter. You'd literally let out a yell of pleasure when you managed to capture your ship back and you suddenly had two streams of deadly lasers. This game like most games went on forever and got faster to the point where it was unplayable



2) Tron - Really inovative for its time because it had 4 sub games they ranged from great which was light cycle to terrible, which is shoot your way into the mainframes brain. It wasn't a super hard game, again it just got really fast



3) Donkey Kong - One of the original climer games, where you tried to rescue your girl from a raging ape. The only weapon that you got was a hammer that you used to bash barrels and fire balls instead of jumping over them. One of the first real thinking games to hit the arcades



4) PacMan - There were other PacMan games but this was the first, a maze game with the twist that the hunted could become the hunter.



5) Pole Position - One of the first driving games ever made, and you actually got a gear shift, steering wheel and gas pedal, which made you feel like you were actually racing, later on they came out with an awesome sit down version of it.




Console Games

5) Super Mario Bros (Nintendo) - A pretty much originator of the true platform, jumper games. It could be incredibly frustrating at times, and you never really won the game, you just started over.



4) Duck Hunt - You got a laser gun, this was the drive by Nintendo to seperate themselves via peripherals, laser guns, power gloves, it went beyond their simplified controller and made it awesome. Come on admit it a lot of you were diving around your basement shooting ducks like Mel Gibson in Lethal Weapon



3) Legend of Zelda (NES) - A super addictive quest game, and one of the first. You got to wander around a map, power up, explore dungeons. It became the leader of a new class of games.



2) Pitfall (Activision) - Activision was the cool console because it was graphically strong, and pit fall was another quest game combined with side scrolling and platform game. It was also non violent except when you jumped on alligators and avoided scorpions



Computer/PC games

5) SimCity - The first game believe it or not still plays incredibly well. Successful because it was so different. It might not be exciting, but designing your city from water pipes to mass transit is addicting. Once you had your massive metropolis you could unleash every natural disaster possible and then try to save your city.



4) Oregon Trail - Those dirty stinking cheaters trying to disguise a educational tool as a game. But it worked as you tried to get your settlers to their destination without dying in multiple horrible ways.



3) Microsoft Flight Simulator - One of the first mega real games out there as you could pick your plane and fly it across the country, a massive money maker because you could buy expansions with different planes



2) Elite - I was so addicted to this game. It had so many facets to it. You could trade, be a mercenary or a pirate, upgrade your ships (Long range military lasers killed everything) and the galaxy was huge.



1) Starflight 1 and 2 - A little off of the board with this choice, but I loved this game and its sequel. Assemble your ship and your crew, explore the galaxy and fight or land on planets, or trade. Upgrade your ship and try to make friends with other races. I loved this game and it was the spiritual inspiration for games like Master of Orion.