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Jan 12, 2024 · From the sheer ingenuity of The Legend of Zelda to the unbridled scope of Elite, our pick of the 50 best games of the '80s reflect just how unbelievable the era was for the industry.
- Edge Staff
- Maniac Mansion
- Jet Set Willy
- Track & Field
- Impossible Mission
- Kung-Fu Master
- Ultima IV: Quest of The Avatar
- Outrun
- SimCity
- Robotron 2084
- Gauntlet
The 1980s were crammed with wonderful adventure games – The Hobbit, King’s Quest, Leather Goddesses of Phobos – but the first point-and-click title to be designed by comic genius Ron Gilbert using the SCUMM scripting language is the classic that busted out of the genre ghetto. Filled with great jokes and B-movie cliches, the game made brilliant use...
Among the formative home computer platformers of the 80s – the likes of Lode Runner, Chuckie Egg and Pitfall – Jet Set Willy stands out for its surreal sense of humour and genuinely disturbing atmosphere. Like that other 8-bit pioneer Jeff Minter, Matthew Smith created his own idiosyncratic dream worlds with distinct rules and twisted logic, and as...
Konami’s foundational athletics game was best known for bringing actual physical exertion to the arcade sporting experience, via the legendary button-bashing interface. Featuring six events, all requiring speed and timing, Track & Field allowed up to four players to compete against each other, inspiring the excellent sequel Hyper Sports as well as ...
“Another visitor … Stay a while. Stay FOREVER.” These crisply sampled words launched every adventure into Professor Elvin Atombender’s beguiling and ever-changing lair, perfectly setting the scene for this seminal adventure platformer. Players took on the role of a secret agent attempting to track down password pieces and foil the professor’s terri...
With its crunching sound effects, giant character sprites and range of martial arts attacks, Irem’s scrolling brawler set the tone for later fighting games and beat-’em-ups such as Yie Ar Kung Fu, Final Fight and Double Dragon. Heavily inspired by the Bruce Lee movie Game of Death, Kung Fu Master brought the thrills and conventions of Hong Kong act...
It was tough selecting a representative role-playing adventure from a decade that also saw Bard’s Tale, Dungeon Master, Lords of Midnight and Knight Lore – all of which were on the long list for the top 15. However, with its groundbreaking emphasis on personal morality, Richard Garriott’s Ultima IV brought something new to the fantasy genre, with p...
Blue skies, cool synthpop, the hottest car imaginable – Outrun practically bled 80s culture. Designed by Sega’s resident genius Yu Suzuki after a motoring tour of Europe, the game is fundamentally not a racer; it’s about the joy of driving, and its multistage layout and scenic complexity inspired arcade game design for the next decade.
Will Wright’s urban design simulation took its authentic approach from dozens of textbooks (especially Urban Dynamics by Jay W Forrester), bringing economics, architecture, culture and law enforcement into its complex town-building engine – and it was a revelation. With its non-didactic design, which encouraged experimentation and self-expression, ...
I knew I needed to include a properly leftfield shooter in the list, and that I should probably choose between Zaxxon, Tempest or Berserk. So I went for Robotron. This multidirectional classic from Defender design team Eugene Jarvis and Larry DeMar, pits players against invading robots and provides two joysticks: one to shoot and one to move. It wa...
Four characters and a giant, multi-level dungeon filled with monsters, food and treasure: this was all Ed Logg needed to construct the most hectic and exciting multi-player action game of the decade. Utilising the staple elements of the role-playing genre while removing all the boring talking bits, Gauntlet ushered in the dungeon crawler genre, eve...
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- Keith Stuart
- Super Mario Bros. 3 (1988, NES): The third installment in the Super Mario series brought more depth and variety to the platforming genre.
- The Legend of Zelda (1986, NES): This game set the standard for open-world adventure games with its vast world and non-linear gameplay.
- Tetris (1984, Multiple platforms): This puzzle game became a worldwide phenomenon due to its simple, yet addictive gameplay.
- Donkey Kong (1981, Arcade): One of the earliest platform games, introducing the world to Mario (then known as Jumpman) for the first time.
- Tetris (1985) This game might ‘just’ be a puzzle game, but we cannot overstate how important of an impact Tetris had on the gaming industry as a whole.
- Super Mario Bros (1985) Super Mario Bros. is, without doubt, the most important platformer ever released – even more than Bubsy. The game pioneered a number of features that in today’s gaming world are taken for granted, such as smooth sidescrolling.
- SimCity (1989) The original SimCity was released at the very end of the decade, effectively inventing a genre all on its own. In particular, SimCity promised a game that could, in theory, go on forever, with the city becoming more and more optimised.
- Elite (1984) If you’re a videogame connoisseur, you’re more likely to associate spacefaring and wire-frame models with StarFox – but it was Elite that did it first.
1. Grand Theft Auto III (2001) 2. The Sims (2000) 3. World of Warcraft (2004) 4. Half-Life 2 (2004) 5. Resident Evil 4 (2005) 6. Halo: Combat Evolved (2001) 7. Call of Duty 4: Modern Warfare (2007) 8. Deus Ex (2000) 9. Super Mario Galaxy (2007) 10. Shadow of the Colossus (2005) 11. Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas (2004) 12.
Sep 4, 2021 · Gaming. Game Lists. 10 Definitive Games Of The 1980s, Ranked. By Zach Gass. Published Sep 4, 2021. From pipe-exploring plumbers to mazes full of cherries and ghosts, the era gave birth to some of the most influential games.
Apr 1, 2024 · Our list celebrates these legendary 80s arcade games and more, each offering a unique escape into worlds of imagination and challenge. Get ready to relive the joystick joys and button-mashing victories that defined a decade.
