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.
__________________
My name is Ozymandias, King of Kings;
Look on my Works, ye Mighty, and despair!
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For me, a lot of the nostalgia in games is in the feelings they invoke when I think of them.
For arcade there are several:
1) Asteroids. So innovative, with vector graphics and the Jaws dun-dun dun-dun in the background.
2) Gauntlet. Real multiplayer adventure game with the haunting voice over.
3) Space Fury. Lesser known game that was in Beddington Mall in the 80s inside the Sears. Had the alien taunting you. I can still hear him say "So, a creature for my amusement. Prepare for battle!"
Console: I only ever owned the Atari 2600 growing up, but Yar's Revenge and Pitfall are two of my favorites.
PC:
1) Zork was the first PC game I played, and has made me partial to the adventure genre ever since.
2) Wizardry was the first D&D style game I played, so it made a lasting impression. Because of this game, the first Latin I learned was "Contra Dextra Avenue" and was fortunate my French/computer teacher was able to translate it for me.
3) Ultima series. I started at Akalabeth, but was in heaven with Ultima IV. Incidentally, was the first game I hacked by using a binary editor, finding where my attributes were kept, and giving me max everything.
4) Karateka. Smooth karate animation, with a satisfying payoff if you rescued the princess at the end. Also found out the princess would kill you with a kick if approached her in attach position.
4) Karateka. Smooth karate animation, with a satisfying payoff if you rescued the princess at the end. Also found out the princess would kill you with a kick if approached her in attach position.
Loved that game. Wished the NES got a console port like Japan did.
Also remember screaming at getting killed by the princess the first time I was about to finish the game.
(which was released right at the turn of the decade for NES in the US, but had already been out for two years for the famicom).
Honestly, though, the 80's was sort of a slow warm-up. As soon as the calendar turned over to 1990 though, everything went utterly bonkers. The 1990s really made video games a thing.
__________________ "The great promise of the Internet was that more information would automatically yield better decisions. The great disappointment is that more information actually yields more possibilities to confirm what you already believed anyway." - Brian Eno
Hah... You have basically the entire SNES, Genesis and PSX lineups, a ton of arcade classics, the N64 (which apparently some people thought was actually a good console) and then there's the entire world that is PC gaming when PC gaming was really a thing. That post is going to be... long. You'd probably have to split it up by platform and even then, there are like 50 PC games that it would be a travesty not to include.
__________________ "The great promise of the Internet was that more information would automatically yield better decisions. The great disappointment is that more information actually yields more possibilities to confirm what you already believed anyway." - Brian Eno
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Not sure how you'd count Super Mario Bros. 3 -- it came out 1988 in Japan and like a month into 1990 in North America. But it's part of that 'era' of console gaming for sure, and is probably the best game. If not, Zelda and Super Mario Bros. should definitely go 1-2 just for innovation and impact alone.
Hah... You have basically the entire SNES, Genesis and PSX lineups, a ton of arcade classics, the N64 (which apparently some people thought was actually a good console) and then there's the entire world that is PC gaming when PC gaming was really a thing. That post is going to be... long. You'd probably have to split it up by platform and even then, there are like 50 PC games that it would be a travesty not to include.
Yeah, that thought has kind of occured to me.
there are so many games that I didn't include in the 80's.
Remember this game, its still one of the better hockey games ever made
And then a year later they came out with Hockey League Simulator which really expanded the game
__________________
My name is Ozymandias, King of Kings;
Look on my Works, ye Mighty, and despair!
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How could I forget the original Castle Wolfenstein. This was the first game we ever owned on our Apple IIe. Nothing creepier than walking through rooms of dead bodies, hearing only the click of your footsteps, when suddenly SS burst in with a loud "Halt!".
How could I forget the original Castle Wolfenstein. This was the first PC game we ever owned. Nothing creepier than walking through rooms of dead bodies, hearing only the click of your footsteps, when suddenly SS burst in with a loud "Halt!".
I loved that you could rob the normal nazi's and steal their uniforms. But the SS guys would see right through your disguise.
The environmental sounds were really creepy.
__________________
My name is Ozymandias, King of Kings;
1) Zork was the first PC game I played, and has made me partial to the adventure genre ever since.
Those Infocom games were hard - gamers these days have no idea how spoiled they are with hints, walkthroughs and games that hold your hand. My first was Cutthroat Island, it seemed no matter what choices you made you'd die a horrible death. Plus you had to figure out exactly what to type.
I loved the old Sierra games like Space Quest and Leisure Suit Larry, and the LucasFilm games. The Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade was awesome. I had a few of the other LucasFilm ones like Loom, and Maniac Mansion.
The original Simcity was fantastic.
Shareware was also good with some of the Apogee offerings.
My other favorite was Lemmings. My friend has this in the Amiga. Probably the only legitimate reason to have an Amiga, but anyway...
We had a Coleco when we were younger, some fun games like Pepper II, Burger Time, QBert, Donkey Kong Jr. There was also a sweet one with tanks that was 2-player cooperative. Can’t think of the name though.
For PC, Police Quest, Kings Quest and Space Quest were the games of choice for me. I was a huge Sierra fan.
Also Quest for Glory, Commander Keen, Wolfenstein and The Incredible Machine were amazing PC games.
Yeah the Sierra games were fun. You’d always get shot in Police Quest if you forgot to put your gun in storage, and in Leisure Suit Larry you’d get some STD for not using a condom.
Police quest was great, because the manual was the copyright protection. It had all the crime codes and procedures, and you couldn't get very far in the game without them.
It had this incredible level of detail right down to going to the range to adjust your pistols sights. If you didn't do that every day, the first time you went to use your gun you pretty much died because you couldn't hit anything.
I think it was the first game, I was sent to a crime scene and I didn't use the kit in the trunk and contaminated the crime scene, the next thing I know I'm in the Chiefs office and he's yelling at me. So it was a rough day, so I typed in "Draw gun" then "Shoot Chief" and the game ended right there.
But I felt better.
__________________
My name is Ozymandias, King of Kings;
Those Infocom games were hard - gamers these days have no idea how spoiled they are with hints, walkthroughs and games that hold your hand. My first was Cutthroat Island, it seemed no matter what choices you made you'd die a horrible death. Plus you had to figure out exactly what to type.
No kidding. There was an Infocom phone number you could call to get hints. It cost money - maybe $2 a call? I got permission from my mom, and called once for a hint. After hearing it, I thought "Of course!", and instantly regretted wasting the money. That said, I had been stuck for about a week. My friend and I wrestled our way through Zork I, II, and III, and it was very rewarding.
I tried to get my kids into Zork, and told them they couldn't look up anything. They gave up when they got stuck for an hour on a puzzle. I think it's harder for them to wrestle with a problem when they know the answer is a quick google search away. But also, I think their attention spans are far shorter than mine at their age. Kids today!
New List - top games of the 80's
