• Top 10 Video Games From the 80’s

  

  Written by Zeromage 16 Comments
  Last Updated:: October 25, 2008

  Oh the 80’s. Bad haircuts, moderately entertaining family sitcoms, and the first glimpses of the technology boom. What else were the 80’s known for? How about the emergence of the home video game platform that entertained an entire generation of people with great games? All that blowing on cartridges could do nothing to stop the 80’s gamer from getting a game going. It took some great games for people to lose all their oxygen trying to get them to work. In this list, we will go through these excellent games that defined the 80’s and led to the emergence of the video game market as one of the most powerful in the entertainment industry. Without these, games, who knows how video games would’ve developed.

  10. Burger Time

  Are you kidding? What the F is this? At first (and second, and third, and…) glance this looks like a recycled Donkey Kong background. Why is Mario white? Is he a chef? What the hell? Am I being chased by a fried egg and some pickles? What kind of power up is this? It looks like a giant Pepper Shaker! It seems I’ve stumbled upon the dumbest game ever. Then it hits you, you run over the top of a sesame seed bun and it falls onto a tomato, which falls onto some lettuce, which falls onto the bottom of the bun, which then falls onto the bottom of the screen. The pickle twins charge straight towards you and the egg is behind you…you hit all of the buttons in desperation and a spray of pepper freezes the pickles in their place. You run right through them and continue your sandwich construction. By level 4 you realize you have a limited amount of pepper and should conserve it wisely. You spend the next 6 hours in front of the TV playing an interactive fast food commercial, and the surgeon general wonders why the kids are morbidly obese. Man we love this game, and that’s coming from a staff with a vegetarian on it.

  9. Bubble Bobble

  Let’s recap. You are a dinosaur trapped in a box. You hop on bubbles. You blow bubbles. There are enemies inside the box. You can only defeat your enemies by blowing a bubble at them, trapping them in it, and popping said bubble by jumping on it. What happens when all of the enemies are gone? You fall into another similar box filled with enemies. Worst…Game…Ever. F it, it took me an hour to figure this out, I’ll play another level. Forty levels later, with the second controller in your friends hand, your two little dinosaurs are frantically hopping around the screen on bubbles, powering up on turbo bubble icons, and only pausing the game to get more mountain dew and stop laughing. For a while you think that there is no end to the game, the level’s pile up like some sick joke. You’re sure any level now you’ll drop back into level one and never play the game again. Then you drop into a two tiered level with a giant enemy that takes up most of the screen. No more laughing, lives are vanishing, player two has left the game, in a moment of bubble blowing fury colors flash in an epileptic nightmare, as you realize what has happened four fists raise into the air. High on excitement and Mountain Dew, you run into the yard to burn off the energy. One of the Best…Games…Ever.

  8. Donkey Kong

  When you first played this game in the early eighties, staring at the screen littered with ladder type structures, you found yourself wondering if the person who designed this arena had ever heard of a tool called the level. You then realize that this area is totally out of whack because of the huge ape that has decided to climb up top and jump around a bit. Taunting you with what appears to be an easy question of “how high can you get?” Donkey Kong seems like a piece of cake. It’s in this game that you are first introduced to Jump Man, who’s a little rough around the digital edges. He moves at a rate slower than year old molasses and his jumps also leave much to be desired. Later in his life, this character gets an upgrade to the much loved Mario, who is much more agile. As for Donkey Kong, your only goal is to reach the girl at the top of each level, while avoiding falling barrels and flames. The barrels follow random routes, sometimes falling down a ladder, and sometimes just continuing onto the end of the screen. The randomness of the barrel’s path adds to the frustration and poor visual quality of this game. Overall this was a great game for its time, and most importantly it introduced us all to Mario.

  7. Blaster Master

  Growing up as a kid in the 1980’s, every action figure you could buy had some sort of vehicle you could purchase separately. This vehicle inevitably had several awesome guns attached to it. My parents never bought me these ultra expensive accessories and I was forced to build them out of some combination of constructs, legos, or sticks. Then came Blaster Master …

  Not only was the game based on one of these impossibly awesome vehicles, but the driver was a kid! Unless you were one of those kids who went out and bought the later-released novel, there was pretty much no back story to this game. There was a kid, some messed up looking frog in a jar, something radioactive and green, and then you were driving this hopping, shooting, all-terrain vehicle. Remember getting out of that car for the first time? When was game play ever that advanced? It was like magic, until you realized that if you were hit with anything, or even tripped and fell, you were a goner.

  There were impossibly bad “end-guys,” as there are in any good game, who (a la mega man) bestowed awesome powers for your truck when defeated. Blast through some aliens and find a tiny doorway, now you’re no longer tiny or side scrolling?! What is this? The best of Mega man, Metroid, and The Legend of Zelda. This game would be ranked higher on the list if there was any discernable plot to go along with the awesomeness of the game play, but we can’t deny it’s still one of the greatest games ever.

  6. Contra

  Up, up, down, down, left, right, left, right, B, A, Start. This is the most recognized code in all gaming history. Much of the time people get it wrong when trying to restate it to others, but for the most part they have the pattern down. Without this code, it was basically impossible to get anywhere in Contra. While extremely difficult with only three lives, you give yourself 30 per level with this code and were in for an amazing Rambo style gaming experience. This is one of the games you think of when you think of Nintendo; A consummate side-scroller with enough extra detail to never make it boring. The weapons are awesome, the boss’s are menacing, and the two player mode is exactly how a two player mode should be. Having your partner take the lower route while you take the higher one in the first level breeds a kind of comradeship not experienced since Wedge and Skywalker. Fighting the boss in the 3rd stage with his (or her?) 2 massive tentacles proves to be no match for 2 skilled players. The whole game is not just side-scrolling. The 3rd water level is more like mountain/jump climbing. The 2nd level is more 3D with your player moving up the screen rather than left to right. While the ending is generic, it may prove to be rewarding enough for players who like to imagine riding away on helicopters with islands blowing up. Great, timeless game…Case Closed…

  5. Pac-Man

  A simple labyrinth type setup, this game will increase your heart rate faster than finding out the brakes on your car just failed. Found in pizza parlours across the nation, this game has no point, other than getting the highest score possible. Starting off easy, you move your bodiless figure througha maze eating little digital pellets. We don’t know if these pellets are food, or fuel, or if they even taste good, but for some unknown reason, every single one must be devoured. If you get tired of eating pellets, you can always go after the exotic fruits that randomly appear near the center of the maze.

  Once you eat all the pellets in a maze you move onto the next level, and the fast-paced furious munching continues. Despite the pointlessness of the game, it is highly addictive. There is a certain thrill in evading ghosts and a merciless retribution found when it comes to eating them. Hours can be spent challenging yourself to attain high scores and greater level achievements. Can you pass though the ghosts around this corner? Can you evade the Blinky and Pinky trap?

  While there is no background story or disernable plot, woven into the game is a complicated philosophy. The four villanious cast members: Inky, Pinky, Blinky and Clyde share a commonality: They are united kinsmen who have placed a jihad on Pac-man. Aside from the ghost’s differences in naming, they maintain a unified front once they emerge from their crypt to chase Pac-man. Together they stand. Clyde, with his uncharacteristic name is held in the same esteem by the other ghosts. Pinky, questionably a female, is given the same voting rights as the rest. Together they stand, divided they fall. The lesson learned is that you should be accepting of differences when you are united with a common goal, even if you’re named Clyde, who made me wet the bed at night as a child. Pac-man: The most basic arcade game out there, revered by the adults that suckled on its tender joystick in their youth, yet all the while teaching us a lesson that can change the world, if we all just learned to accept Clyde.

  4. Metal Gear

  Metal Gear was one of the more memorable games for the NES. Made by Konami and released in 1987, this stealth game would advance the possibilities of what games could cover in their still early age. No longer did fighting and spy games have to be 2D-scrollers moving from level to level with no freedom in your tasks. Metal Gear appealed to gamers much of the same way that Zelda did in giving the player complete freedom to move where he wanted; even if he wanted to get lost in certain areas he couldn’t traverse because he didn’t have the necessary equipment. The sense of largeness of the Metal Gear world would beleaguer the player into a feeling of grandeur. The amount of weapons that Snake could use was consonant with the map and other complexes you had to visit. Even the bosses in certain areas would talk back to you like an old spy thriller from the 50’s. Having to answer your radio transmission proved to be yet another memorable aspect of Metal Gear, as you could take a small break from your meticulous missions to talk to various comrades and captains about the mission as a whole. Some tasks and enemies proved difficult not only because of the hand controller skill required to defeat a shifty boss, but having to procure the appropriate weapons to defeat them like the tank in the courtyard that blocked Snake from moving past it. Other tasks involved escaping a prison cell, showing how elaborate game playing had become since the earliest console games. Game playing became much more cerebral after metal gear, something that needed to happen for those who were more cerebral in the first place.

  3. Metroid

  Metroid for NES is arguably the greatest game ever made. Immediately when one thinks of this game, they think of the theme music at the start screen, and how it perfectly drifts off into an enchanting space melody in 20 seconds time, then they think of pressing start and being placed in the massive labyrinth of Zebus being in full awareness of how massive the journey is that they’re about to embark on. The sense of adventure that sets in the player when they play this game is for the most part always unmatched by every game after. The levels are deep and the sheer amount of items you receive throughout make for an always welcome relief that you are on the right path. It is in this first installment that we meet with the two space pirate leaders in the names of Ridley and Craid, deep within their indigenous layers. It is also in this first installment that we come face to face with the mother brain, who would pop up later in the astonishing “Super Metroid”. It is also the first time you realize that your space warrior protagonist was a women, and if you conquered the game in a short enough time, you could watch her in a bikini at the end of the game, giving different thoughts to nerds who only thought about ice beams and power bombs. This is another game that just needs to be played to be understood. All and everyone who has ever played it knows exactly why it’s perhaps the greatest game ever made…

  2. Zelda (NES)

  Zelda 1 for Nintendo started the remarkable series that included Zelda: Link to the Past”, and “Ocarina of time”. Zelda was the first game to introduce the idea of a more free-flowing gaming experience where you could move wherever you want in a non-sequential manner. The “flat-screen” style was contrary to the side scroller with a defined “way to go”, with defined levels you had to beat in order. You put this together with an elf with swords and arrows and a world map, and you were overcome with a vastness not heard of until this game. There were so many areas to explore and so many different ways to conquer this game. The outside-world/Dungeon rotations proved perfectly satisfiable just when one of them was becoming too over-played. All the dungeons had their own weapons and items that you needed to procure in order to advance further to deeper parts of the world map. Also, Zelda 1 was the first game for any platform system where you could gamble with a vagabond and earn 50 coins or lose 40, where having a “save-state” option in your computer emulator proved valuable. The story line was a classic fantasy story line with a princess who needed to be saved, pieces of a “holy grail” (triforce) that needed to be recovered, and an increasing of sword strength the more you built up your courage (heart system). Zelda 1 introduced the adventure game to the platform system that eventually ran the coin-op industry out of town. Gamers were overcome with the vastness of adventure games over the transient satisfaction of 1 on 1 arcade fighting games.

  1. Mario 1

  What can you say about Super Mario Brothers that hasn’t been said before? This game is the Casablanca of all video games, and will go down in history as a true classic. This was the game that put video games on the map. Granted other games existed before Super Mario brothers, but none stirred the hearts and control pads of the masses quite like this one. After all, who could resist Mario and Luigi? They were more than just a couple of brothers in the plumbing business, they were pretty bad ass renegades who didn’t think twice about stomping mushroom traitors or kicking turtle soldier shell butt clear across mushroom kingdom if it meant saving Princess Toadstool. Speaking of the princess, she was smokin’ even though they hadn’t pixelated cleavage yet. This is a game that had it all, bizarre villains, midgets, hot princesses, and wanton fireball destruction. All in all, the original Super Mario Brothers was a fun game, but it also taught us some important life lessons: much like you can’t go back on a screen, you can’t go back in life. Once you make a choice you are stuck with it. Eat your vegetables and you’ll grow big and strong, always chase stars, no matter where they lead you, if you eat a flower you just end up spitting fire, and with a little manual labour you’ll find gold coins in the most unlikely places. Yes, this game was a true classic that created a whole generation of super gamers and maybe some renegade plumbers too.

16 Comments

1. #1 TheMountain says:
   November 20th, 2009 at 10:03 pm

   Awsome article. Brings back memories. Especially Burger Time. I havent heard that game title in a long long time
2. #2 Hoopster says:
   November 20th, 2009 at 11:26 pm

   Great list.
3. #3 Bunny says:
   November 20th, 2009 at 2:44 am

   Great until mario. Mario has to be one of the worst games of all times. Even the Great Giana Sisters managed to surpass it for fun.

   Am I detecting some latent homosexual urges for plumbers in suspenders?
4. #4 Fahd says:
   November 20th, 2009 at 2:57 pm

   where’s tetris ?

   it should the greatest game of all time

   cuz it never ages, still fun to play today.
5. #5 the REAL zeromage says:
   November 20th, 2009 at 5:51 pm

   I’m back! No state pen can hold me for long!
6. #6 John Trotz says:
   November 20th, 2009 at 11:02 pm

   @ Bunny

   What are you retarded or are you being sarcastic? Cause it’s not even close to one of the worst games of all time. Even if you don’t like the game it can’t even possibly be considered one of the worst games of all time. The controls work(they are not broken or unresponsive), it’s a complete game(there is a beginning and an end), the graphics are good(for the
   time), it’s the best selling game ever, and it created a icon among the gaming world. None of these equal to a any worst game of all time. That “Great Giana Sisters” you spoke about is a complete clone of Mario. 100% copied. It’s a piece of shit for being a so unoriginal it steals all of mario’s level and design. So that game would be the defintion of one of the worst games of all time.
7. #7 James McCloud says:
   November 20th, 2009 at 10:50 pm

   yay bubble bobble and mario 1
   finaly you guys got one right
8. #8 Eddie says:
   November 20th, 2009 at 7:02 pm

   Mega Man?
9. #9 Shadsilvson says:
   November 20th, 2009 at 7:29 pm

   Good list. But Bubble Bobble is a piece of shit. No offence but it really did suck.
10. #10 Trevor says:
    November 20th, 2009 at 3:42 pm

    Glad to see Blaster Master made your list. So many other overlook this gem, since it probably didn’t receive the fan fare as other titles or franchises. Thx.
11. #11 Shadsilvson says:
    November 20th, 2009 at 9:26 pm

    Mega Man 2 is way better than Bubble Bobble
12. #12 Randall Kirby says:
    November 20th, 2009 at 5:57 am

    No, Bubble Bobble is the greatest game ever.
13. #13 Dominic says:
    November 20th, 2009 at 5:34 pm

    Where is Super Mario Bros. 3? It’s still considered one of the greatest games of all time…
14. #14 TTG says:
    November 20th, 2009 at 10:38 am

    “Where is Super Mario Bros. 3? It’s still considered one of the greatest games of all time”

    Didn’t that come out in 1990? I think that’s why it’s not there. Great list, btw. I know that there are some that I would add/remove (and there are some that others would)but the list is certainly well thought out and interesting.
15. #15 avi says:
    November 20th, 2009 at 11:45 am

    good list, but metal gear sucks.