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| Ummon:
I was thinking about the idea of 'classic' games. I break it down like this: - 'Vintage' come in two categories: the largely mechanical with some images projected games; and Pong up through the Cinematronix games through '79. - 'classic' means completely video displayed, CPU-based, remarkable to infamous. These games to me are: Asteriods Battlezone Centipede Defender Donkey Kong Frogger Galaxian Joust Missile Command Pac-Man Pole Position Robotron Scramble Space Invaders (um, yeah, I guess) Tempest So, fifteen. If I had to pick five, essentially meaning almost anyone in the developed world would know them, they might be: Asteroids Donkey Kong Centipede Galaxian Pac-Man (Pac being at the top. Originally, I had Frogger in there. EGADS, I FORGOT DONKEY KONG. In both lists. Mmm. Fixed, which means Frogger didn't make the top five. And I suppose it could be argued Space Invaders has a spot in there somewhere. I dunno. I don't remember people really talking about Space Invaders after Galaxian came out. It was sorta like, and I thought this too, Galaxian was the proper version, Space Invaders being a proto-version. Whatever.) - secondary 'classics': Asteroids Deluxe Berzerk/Frenzy (maybe) Dig Dug Donkey Kong Jr. Galaga Gorf Gravitar Millipede Ms. Pac-Man Pole Position II Q-bert Stargate - Then you have all the rest of your golden age games (I'm making after '85 the cut-off; in alphabetical order) : Armor Attack Bagman (I guess. I'm not sure I even remember seeing it anywhere.) Black Widow Crazy Climber Burger Time Congo Bongo Cosmic Chasm Crystal Castles Elevator Action Excitebike Gaplus Gunsmoke Gyruss I, Robot Jungle Hunt/King Kangaroo Karate Champ Lunar Lander Mappy Marble Madness Mario Bros. (Not a personal favorite, but it was a pretty big game.) Mr. Do series (Many people might know Mr. Do, but I never heard anyone talking about it when I was a kid. I much more remember just seeing the latter three, and love them.) Pengo Phoenix/Pleiades Pooyan Popeye Punch-out Reactor Sinistar Space Duel Star Trek Tapper Time Pilot Time Pilot '84 Track and Field Tutankham Xevious Zaxxon/Super Zaxxon Zektor - Special Category Star Wars Tron Discs of Tron Laser disc - especially Dragon's Lair - Odd ones: these weren't remarkable, but definitely remembered: Qix Space Panic Turbo (I don't remember seeing it that much, and don't remember anyone really being jazzed about it.) Warlords (I actually mostly saw, and played, this on the Atari 2600.) Wizard of War Cinematronics vector games of the first half of the 80s - remembered.... - Esoteric ones: Major Havoc Quantum I'd like to take a moment to focus on Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom - the game I was playing last night that actually got me to thinking about all this. Indiana Jones is an unusual game. To my knowledge, it was the first serious sort of role-playing game in the arcades. You played a truly human-looking character and you actually went places off the board, the direction totally up to you. (Tutankham was a sort of prescient parody of this, though it only scrolled side to side; Jr. Pac-Man and Mappy did this, but those weren't 'real' places.) As well, it's isometric rendering, I'm betting descended in some way from Marble Madness, set it apart from every other game of the time. (However, Marble Madness only scrolled downward.) I don't think it was copied. |
| studmuff:
I would add Spy Hunter to the golden age games list |
| javeryh:
Blue Print Juno First Food Fight |
| gman314:
I think Mario Bros. is awesome. Too bad so many people think that Super Mario Bros. was the "original" installment. :cheers: |
| Loafmeister:
It's a cool list but as much as I love centipede, there's no way Robotron plays second fiddle to it :). |
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