The Best 50 Games of The 1980's @ NextGen

magerette

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Sunday seems to bring out these obscure newsbits, and this one is heavy on the nostalgia factor. NextGen takes a look at the ancestors of modern video games, including MS Pac-Man, the original Final Fantasy, Metroid, The Legend of Zelda, Ultima IV and others:
Some of these games are fun to play, even today, and some of them have been vastly surpassed in the intervening years by smoother, better-looking games that took what was there and improved. That's what games designers do. Our criteria here is not 'how do these games stack up against the games we make and play today'. Our criteria is 'which games of the 1980s do we owe the greatest debt to because they innovated so much at the time, and because they represent all that is best about original game design'.
Here's their thumbnail of Dungeon Master, from 1987:
Wizardry and The Bard’s Tale may have been the first to successfully twin Dungeons & Dragons-inspired adventuring with 3D visuals, but it was Dungeon Master that finally brought the genre firmly into the mainstream. Dodgy genre staples like orcs, magical armor and hit points are all present and correct, but with its mouse driven interface and revolutionary use of real-time exploration and combat, Dungeon Master proved accessible enough to become the most popular game ever released on the Atari ST, and a heavy influence on Eye Of The Beholder, Might & Magic, and the highly revered Ultima Underworld.
More information.
 
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I'd bet on "Retro" being the next big fashion within the next 2 or 3 years.

I already know two "retro magazines" about gaming.
 
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Could be... retro is the big fashion on everything else.
 
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I remember a friend of mine had Avalon & Dragontorc they were only released in the UK? Not sure about Lunar Jetman, the Soccer game, and Scrabble but there are some classics on the list.
 
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Rather odd to find such an article on a website called Nextgen. :rolleyes:

I played a few of those games. Zelda was one of the first games I had on the NES, and Super Mario Bros 3 is, even today, my favorite Mario game. Final Fantasy is even more special to me, as it's the game that got me addicted to RPG.

I also remember getting the NES version of Ultima 4; I was looking for a complex and challenging game and this one seems to be what I wanted. However, I returned it to the store a few days later, not because I didn't enjoyed it but because I was influenced by my friends who didn't (I was just a kid back then and I often let myself be influenced by others like that). I ended up with Metroid instead. As for U4, I eventually played it, and all the others Ultimas except the two Worlds of Ultimas and the MMOs, after getting into the series with Ultima 7.
 
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Geez ... some of my old Apple ][+ faves:
- Lode Runner
- ... not there, but I loved Karateka
- Boulder Dash
... so cool to get nostaliac ;)
 
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I'm too lazy to read through the whole list, but Temple of Aphsai by Epyx was pretty good at the time. I also have fond memories of Sir Galahad and the Holy Grail on the Atari 800.
 
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That has got to be the worst top list that I've seen yet. No Wizardry, no Bard's Tale, no Eastern Front, etc. FAR too action/arcade game oriented with a bunch of games that may as well have been duplicates of each other!

And a few that they list for obscure European systems, e.g. that moon buggy game, I'd've sworn that there was a moon buggy arcade game pre-dating it which appeared on everything from Atari to Coleco.

The comment about EA's publishing power is hilarious, as EA was tiny in the year which the phrase appears and the game in question was published (1983). EA at that time was still selling themselves as a collection of small time artists and actually all kinds of decent, different, and interesting games, entirely unlike today's EA.

Geez, now that I mentioned EA, I forgot, Archon didn't evenmake the list! WTF?!
 
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Archon is on the list @ #34.

I could never get into Paradroid either.
 
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