On a side note, in my time researching old arcade games I came across one of the first overtly political titles - 1985's ごんべえのあいむそ〜り〜, known as I'm Sorry. It's a complete shitpost, it feels so out of place in the time period. The title itself is a pun, English word sorry is phonetically the same as sōrī, the Japanese word for Prime Minister. The title can be understood as "I'm Sorry" or "I'm the Prime Minister." It's inspired by the bribery scandals of then-PM Kakuei Tanaka. You run around avoiding celebrities like Carl Lewis and Madonna while stealing Japan's gold. "Are games art" material right here.

The games in your pictures and spoiler are just old games you like more and less, near equally "of their era" where their quality order is very subjective. 1985 or older games don't hold up well against later bests after 1986 at all. Later Bombermans transcended that era, but 1985 or older Bomberman was rough. The real answers are Tetris, which stood the test of time and still sells crazy, and Super Mario Bros (October 1985, North America), and that's the thread.

>>1068231 >reddit spacing with the reddit opinion I have no idea how you can compare very straightforward games like Galaga and Bomberman with annoyingly cryptic shit like Legend of Druaga. Gonna say it, Super Mario Bros is immensely fucking overrated and plays awkwardly today with its weird momentum. Didn't include it for a reason.

>>1068235 >Trash opinions with tryhard contrarianism Discarded. NES Bomberman's a boring piece of shit, cumbersome and brainless, but brainless is your cup of tea if you fail harder games then blame them as "annoyingly cryptic." Standing around, thumb in ass, waiting for a bomb to blow is "straightforward," yes, but so's watching paint dry. Galaga's been embarrassed by 500 better shmups since, only popular because shooters were new and still garbage. No one gives a shit about Galaga besides arcade boomers who miss the arcade scene more than Galaga itself, which means it doesn't still hold up really well. Same with Bomberman. >>1068231 gave you Tetris, I'll also give you Pac-Man, otherwise your taste is dogshit.

King's Quest I (1984) still holds up, but only if you enjoy those types of games, though I will admit I only played the 1990 remake, which as far as I can tell was mostly a graphic uplift, the game remaining the same. On the other hand, I did play the original version of King's Quest II (1985), but for some reason I just couldn't get into III, even though I had completed the previous two games. Then there is Zork and the dozens of copies that appeared between 1977 and 1985, but I couldn't get into those games.

>>1068231 >The real answers are Tetris, which stood the test of time and still sells crazy, and Super Mario Bros (October 1985, North America), and that's the thread. Super Mario Bros. was the best game with the most influence and greatest legacy, so Super Mario Bros. is the best answer. The real reason he didn't include it is because he thought it came out later. My favorite thing about Super Mario Bros. is the momentum. It's why I prefer Super Mario 64, where Mario has weight, to Super Mario Sunshine, Galaxy, or Odyssey, where Mario feels weightless. The riskless commitment to wrong decisions dumbs modern Mario down. Sonic the Hedgehog games are my favorites because of his momentum, making me learn levels and feel pro. Here's a cool Super Mario Bros. animation Anon posted in October showing tricks more impressive with momentum.

<I want to talk about other fun games from the 80s >No, you have to talk about Tetris and Mario Brilliant insight anons. I assume it's because they're the only ones you know? I'm fond of Star Force. It's an early shoot 'em up and kind of primitive by later bullet hell standards, but it has interesting ideas and it plays really well for 84. Its use of map tiles as a kind of procgen in lieu of predetermined levels was innovative, and the enemy patters are surprisingly complex. My biggest issue is its lack of a real ending, Star Force follows in the style of Xevious by looping infinitely. You're technically finished when you beat Area Omega because it enters an endless state after that. At least beating Area Omega gets something of an ending screen, even if it's only a commercial for the sequel. >>1068242 Graphic adventure games? Interesting pick, I don't think many of them "hold up" all that well. Not even because of the style of gameplay, but how obtuse they can get. Ron Gilbert wrote a famous essay in the Journal of Computer Game Design titled "Why Adventure Games Suck" where he lays out the exact same criticisms people have with those games today, and that was written in 1989. It's a good read if you're unfamiliar. https://archive.is/G1Pqo

>>1068243 >The riskless commitment to wrong decisions dumbs modern Mario down. Games dumbed down as an average gamer in 2025 is dumber than in 1985. He'll jump a dumb trajectory, fuck the landing, plonk his dumb ass in a fat pit, then fault physics, not his own dumbass self. Games are now tutorials with no consequences and training wheels that never come off to appease nu-audiences of brown and black brutes who can't take mistakes with grace.

>>1068243 In Sunshine's defense that game gives you a literal hover pack to traverse the level and everything but the secret zones are built around the knowledge that you have said hover pack.

>>1068223 Robotron 2084 The original twin stick shooter Still holds up even to it's successors in Smash TV and Geometry Wars Gauntlet The first simultaneous 4 player arcade game Each character has a unique strength and weakness that make certain enemies easier or more difficult to dispatch.

Thexder is an early run-and-gun with the special gimmick that your robot can turn into a plain and fly around. It was rereleased on the PS3 and PSP with it's remake, Thexder Neo. Burgertime is a bit of a strange game as the goal is to climb and traverse the ladders and platforms to build giant burgers while fighting off giant condiments. It isn't that hard to find as it's one of the more common Data East games that's been ported and rereleased over the years. Lock 'n' Chase is one of these Pac-Man "but with a twist" games as the maze has doors that open and close, and it really keeps on you on your toes as opposed to Pac-Man just being the same level over and over. And much better than the "official" sequels of Ms. Pac-Man, Super Pac-Man, and Pac & Pal. If you want to play it, your options are Data East Arcade Classics on the Wii or the PS3/PSP Mini release.

>>1068248 >Interesting pick I have a soft spot for those types of games, and while King's Quest I wouldn't be on my top 10 best P&C adventure games, I think it's somewhere in the middle if we were to rank all P&C adventure games. The only "archaic" things about it are the scoring system, a holdover from the arcade era, and the "type in your command" interface, instead of the SCUMM and Icon Bar. Personally my favorite P&C games are the first four games in the Hero's Quest saga, as they had a wonderful blend of classic point & click and RPG mechanics, with the added "use your skill to train it" mentality that Elder Scrolls is known for, and that it allowed most puzzles to have 2-3 different solutions, depending on your build. >that link I don't want to derail this thread into talking about P&C adventure games, so I will just say this, there are things I agree with, like people wanting to work in Hollywood but are stuck making games, or the idea of having a hint system. I Have No Mouth And I Must Scream had an in-game hint system, but it penalized you for using it and it was easy to just savescum. Personally I like to use https://www.uhs-hints.com/ when playing these types of games, as it provides hints, as opposed to just a simple walk through on gamefaq. On the other hand I don't think there is that much of a problem that a "Game Over" will take the player out of his immersion Back in the day, normalfags didn't have a problem with "immersion" when they got a Game Over and had to insert another quarter in the machine, nor today when the normalfag plays Elden Ring and dies a hundred times to a boss. >where he lays out the exact same criticisms people have with those games today I don't think the majority of younger gamers have actually played a Point and Click Adventure Game in the style of 90s Lucasarts of Sierra. At most they might have played more modern interpretations, like Detroit Become Human in the west, and Famicom Detective Club from the east, but those have other problems than "insert cheese to activate magic device". I think, if they were to complain about those games, they would simply parrot what they heard, instead of actually experieincing it for themselves, and thinking that all 90s P&C adventure games, were complete bullshit where you would die if you took the left door instead of the right door. Now, there are valid complaints, the thing is I actually played some of them.

sage for double post >>1068391 >Hero's Quest I can't believe I used the very old name, for Quest for Glory. I think I was simply thinking of all the Quest* games that Sierra had, King's Quest, Space Quest and Police Quest.

>>1068242 >Zork I remember this because IIRC, you can play it in Black Ops 1 as an easter egg. You had to free youself from the chair in the main menu, reach the computer and type "zork" or something.

A lot of the old stuff is still good in my opinion. At least when it comes to their original arcade versions. Ms. Pac-man, Qix, Dig dug, Mario bros. (Not super), Donkey kong, Galaxian, Asteroids, Tempest, Q*bert. I could go on and on. They're simple fun, and addicting. Take note that what was causing the videogame crash was not the arcades themselves but the home consoles.

>>1068231 >>1068243 >The real answers are Tetris, which stood the test of time and still sells crazy, and Super Mario Bros (October 1985, North America), and that's the thread. >Super Mario Bros. was the best game with the most influence and greatest legacy, so Super Mario Bros. is the best answer. Obviously, "1985 or older" games are dogshit next to SMB, but the leagues are so different the discussion's just boring. SMB released at the end of "1985 or older," rocked the gaming world, and saved the whole industry. Why "who would win" a UFC heavyweight champion fighting a midget? Garbage like Qix or Tempest or Q*bert isn't even in the competition. OP should've made this "1984 or older" instead.

It is very interesting to look at these early games and see how they evolved. There is a nearly direct line of influence from Pong to Contra. >Pong Two players bounce a ball back and forth. >Breakout One player bounces a ball against a wall, with a goal of eliminating blocks from the wall. >Space Invaders Instead of a bouncing ball, you now shoot bullets. Instead of a wall of stationary blocks, it's a wall of moving blocks (here drawn as aliens). The creator of Space Invaders directly said he was building off of the basic idea of Breakout. >Galaxian, Galaga (then many more sequels to Galaga) Namco's answer to Space Invaders. Same thing but the aliens actually move semi-independently now, making them more than just a wall, and more like actual enemies to deal with. >Scramble Turn Galaga sideways. Now you have to deal with things on the ground. >Gradius Essentially a sequel to Scramble but with a cool upgrade system. Also you can look at top down shooters, which basically took Galaga but instead of turning it sideways had you walk, letting you control your own movement a bit more. So things like Front Line, then Commando, then Ikari Warriors. Then Contra basically just took those games and turned them sideways. But to me, Contra feels more like Gradius on foot than than Commando turned sideways. Maybe That's just me, though. It's also interesting to see how different lineages arrived at similar places. Like Jump Bug might predate Super Mario Bros., but obviously Super Mario Bros. descends from Mario Bros., which descends from Donkey Kong, which descends from Pac-Man. Yes, it uses Radar Scope machines, but that game doesn't play similarly. It's essentially an evolution of maze games. And oh yeah, Space Panic goes between Donkey Kong and Pac-Man, but I forgot because nobody talks about that game. But Space Panic is more clearly an evolution of maze games, and then Donkey Kong added jumping to it. And Space Panic also clearly inspired Lode Runner, which led to many more games after it. Anyway, Gradius is pretty cool. Maybe my favorite Pre-Super Mario Bros. game. Even though I suck at shoot-em-ups.

Get the Bizhawk emulator (if you want to play Atari 2600 emulation). 1. Dragonfire 2. Frostbite 3. Fishing Derby 4. Space Invaders 5. Frogger (there are 2 frogger games) 6. Stampede 7. Entombed 8. Berzerk 9. Adventure 10. Asteroids. 11. Centipede 12. HERO Atari 2600 Roms: https://www.atarimania.com/rom_collection_archive_atari_2600_roms.html Bizhawk emulator (I prefer Bizhawk over Stella) https://tasvideos.org/Bizhawk

Why did this thread trigger Mario autists so hard? I'm surprised I haven't seen anybody bring up Blockade yet, all the way from 1976. It was the first "Snake" game, though it wasn't wildly called that until the late 90s. >>1069184 I agree on most of these except Asteroids and surprisingly, Donkey Kong. Asteroids is just a bit too simple and Donkey Kong just really feels like an early arcade game. Dig Dug, however, felt like something that could have come from the Flash game era.

>no one has brought up Joust yet Shamfur.

>>1069274 >Anyway, Gradius is pretty cool. Maybe my favorite Pre-Super Mario Bros. game. Even though I suck at shoot-em-ups. Gradius is pretty cool and does hold up really well compared to more constrained shooters, like Space Invaders and Galaga, that show their age and aren't worth playing except as "this was popular with old normalfags starved for choices" history. While it's no Super Mario Bros., it's a good answer, because Gradius is actually still good today, and the best shooter of that time.

>>1069274 Anon you should make more posts like this with other games. I find this stuff extremely interesting.

>>1069190 <SMB released at the end of "1985 or older," rocked the gaming world, and saved the whole industry. You have to be older than 18 to post here.

>>1069321 Okay. >Pac-Man>Space Panic>Donkey Kong>Mario Bros.>Super Mario Bros. (series) >Wonder Boy Sega's answer to Super Mario Bros.. The big difference is that you have to keep moving because your energy is always draining. But even though Sega owned the Wonder Boy name, they didn't own the game itself. So the actual devs ported the game to Nintendo, changed a couple of sprites, and called it Adventure Island. Also they ported this game and its sequels to more systems under other names as well. And its sequels added adventure and RPG elements, making them very different. >Alex Kidd Sega trying to keep attempting a simple Mario clone after Wonder Boy became an adventure/RPG thing for some reason. >Sonic the Hedgehog Alex Kidd sucked but Sega just kept trying, and this attempt finally worked. Kind of using the Wonder Boy idea of "gotta keep moving," and utilizing it to promote the fact that the Genesis had a faster processor than the Super Nintendo, Sonic was marketed as being fast Mario. I think in practice this is not really what makes the game different, but it's what people remember. >Crash Bandicoot Take Sonic and put the camera behind him instead of beside him. Early in development, it was even called "Sonic's Ass Game," because you're basically just looking at the crazy and cool cartoon's protagonist's ass the whole game. Also his main attack is to spin, but this time in place instead of forward. Notably, Sonic 3D Blast gave Sonic the same attack two months after Crash came out, but it was situational in that game. Now, some people might want me to point to Donkey Kong Country, as it shares its jungle locales with Crash, but while I'm sure that's an influence, I think the jungles and such are more influenced by the TV series Taz-Mania, because Crash is a straight ripoff of the Tazmanian Devil. He even lives in islands off the coast of Australia. In fact, Taz-Mania on Super Nintendo has the camera behind Taz as he runs down paths and spins enemies in his way. If that game didn't suck so hard, and if Crash's developers didn't openly cite Sonic as the influence, then I'd maybe chalk it up to that game. Also, various enemies from the Crash series look quite similar to characters from Taz-Mania (like a lot of the native enemies in Crash 1 look like the character Francis, but there are other examples too. Just look at a list of Crash enemies/bosses and watch the intro for Taz-Mania). However, the main villain, Dr. Neo Cortex, is based on the villain from the Superman short cartoon, The Mad Scientist. Look at him. He's exactly the same but without the giant head. That character even has a big pet bird that looks quite close to a bird you find at the top of Cortex's tower, right before the final boss (if you skip the final boss and instead get the good ending). If you watch the scrapped 2D animated intro for the original Crash game, which Sony had them replace with a (very different and much simpler) 3D intro to show off the graphics more, the influence from Taz-Mania is even more obvious. But if I want to give Taz-Mania on SNES credit for Crash, then I should point out that that game kind of just took Road Rash but pretended it wasn't a racing game. And Road Rash was just adding combat to earlier racing games, like Hang-On. There were many "3D" racing games between Hang-On and Road Rash, but Hang-On is the first I know of that had you riding a motorcycle, like Road Rash. But Hang-On really isn't mechanically different from Pole Position before it. But actually if you want to go back before Pole Position, there was the Happy Days tie-in "Fonz," from 1976, which had you riding a motorcycle as the controller, like Hang-On, and was also by Sega. Also, Sega advertised the game as having "true perspective," as it attempted something like 3D, even if it kind of sucked at it, even compared to Pole Position. But for 1976 it was pretty damn impressive. So it probably makes sense to say that Fonz was a direct predecessor to Hang-On, even if it was also heavily influenced by Pole Position. So in short, The Fonz is the direct predecessor to Crash Bandicoot.

>>1069322 It saved the industry in America, which is the market that matters the most. Arcades were doing okay, but let's not pretend the C64 would have just filled the NES's niche. C64 games suck balls. And I love Sega, but their systems at the time sucked too. Eventually they got the Master System out, but how would that have gone without Super Mario Bros.? Are you gonna try to pretend side scrollers would have evolved the same way just because Jump Bug existed? Would the industry be the same without side scrollers? Would video games be the same if games were either the quick bursts of the arcade or the autistic nerd outlets of computers at the time? The NES provided a middle ground that proved very successful. Of course in Japan it came out way earlier, so that helped over there. And Super Mario Bros. was meant to be the ultimate Famicom game. But would the NES have done as well in America without Super Mario Bros.? Would they have been as won over by all the much simpler black box games? I'm not so sure. Super Mario Bros. did change everything.

>>1069412 >Influence chain where Pac-Man influenced Space Panic influenced Donkey Kong influenced Mario Bros. influenced Super Mario Bros. I understand the obvious influence chain from Donkey Kong to Mario Bros. to Super Mario Bros., but think Pac-Man influencing Space Panic influencing Donkey Kong is a stretch. >>1069190 >>1069416 True, Nintendo and Super Mario Bros basically singlehandedly revived the gaming business in North America. Super Mario Bros sold 40 million physical copies then and 58 million by now, still the 8th best seller ever. It made Nintendo known, people got Nintendo for Super Mario Bros, and by 1987 Nintendo had reinvigorated a crashed market and exposed a wide audience to console games.

>>1069420 >I understand the obvious influence chain from Donkey Kong to Mario Bros. to Super Mario Bros., but think Pac-Man influencing Space Panic influencing Donkey Kong is a stretch. Donkey Kong is basically Space Panic with jumping instead of digging, and more complex levels. Space Panic is essentially Pac-Man but the perspective is from the side instead of top down, but actually that doesn't even make a difference except for in your head, because in-practice Space Panic only lets you move on pre-defined paths, very much like Pac-Man, only instead of using walls to box you in, gravity means you can only move on the ground and on ladders (so vertical paths). But actually yes, I made a mistake of forgetting the order in which maze games came out. Pac-Man wasn't the first maze game. The more obvious precursor to Space Panic is Heiankyo Alien, which is a top down maze game where you dig holes to trap aliens. The only real gameplay difference is that in Space Panic the hole isn't directly in front of you, it's in front and one space down. And there are maze games before that, too, but I never played them and never hear anyone talk about them. But I'm sure they were influential to Heiankyo Alien.

>>1069190 I'm gonna devil's advocate your post, "Qix or Tempest or Q-Bert" is a biased choice of remarkably shitty games that don't hold up well. It strawmans the Mario competitors, there aren't many but they exist.

>>1069454 I was having a shitty day and your pic made me laugh, thanks anon.

>>1069454 I overlooked it before, but those three games are all awesome. Especially Qix. Very fun and addictive.

And the most famous laser disc games, Dragon's lair 1-2 and Space Ace

One to stand up well? >The Tower of Druaga It's awesome and a huge hit in Japan that kept getting ports to Windows, PS1, GCN, PSP, Wii, 3DS, X360, and Switch. >First Bomberman >First Zelda It's a meld of these, holding up worse than the first Zelda but better than the first Bomberman as an action-packed thinking man's game. Enemies attack at once and are hard to outsmart, their AI and appearance rate means you must understand maze configurations to consistently beat them. It spawned the Babylonian Castle Saga: >The Return of Ishtar >The Quest of Ki >The Blue Crystal Rod It also spawned 7 additional side stories released until The Labyrinth of Druaga in 2001.

>>1069498 >Atari was a fucking retarded company Nobody argued against this. I don't think anyone ever would. >Nintendo didn't "save" the industry, they just taken advantage of a market desperate for content and only really had "one other company" at the time (Intellivision) to turn to. There is the whole thing where stores didn't even want to stock vidya anymore, and Nintendo packaged the ROB with the console so they could act like it was a robot toy with a computer to run it, rather than a video game system with a robot accessory. It's also important to remember that it was a bit of a slow rollout. It started in '85, but took until '86 to really get going. >Not to mention other under-handed tactics like Nintendo's licensing policies that prevented third-parties from releasing games on other platforms. Also true, but that's after they blew up and achieved market dominance. >I'd argue that of the three vidya markets (Japan, America, and Europe), America is actually the most toxic of the three. Irrelevant to discussion of if it matters. I never said it was good or bad. I said it matters. Japan also matters, of course, but the US is a bigger market, and we're on an English speaking website. Europe doesn't fucking matter and never did. >Japan and American are both equally important markets to develop and distribute video games in if you want a health video game environment. Sure. I'll agree. If anything I'd go further and say Japan makes the better games overall, but what we're talking about is selling. But I suppose you have a point that you should want to have a market that covers both the big population numbers as well as the country that makes most of the good games, so that that country is involved with the same industry/market that the big population is. >Side-scrolling was an already common thing at the time, as you had everything from Gradius to Pac-Land. I suppose. The Pac-Land point is pretty legitimate, but Super Mario Bros. is a lot more complex and hooked a lot more people. They're the same genre, but I think Super Mario's depth added a lot more to the home experience, and that really helped change what games were. There is a pretty big difference in style between arcade games and home games. Pac-Land is an arcade game. Super Mario has all sorts of secrets and depth that I think put it pretty far ahead of Pac-Land in terms of being something that keeps your attention for long periods of time, and many separate play sessions, even if Pac-Land has better graphics. After Super Mario Bros., a lot more games become like this. You can see the huge change between the almost exclusively arcade-style games before SMB and the much more in-depth and complex games after SMB. And of course SMB isn't the most complex ever, but for the time it is. And I'm also not trying to say it's the first game that really works better at home than at the arcade, but it was a much bigger hit than previous games that tried it. Perhaps because it was a more accessible genre than things like adventure games, which were already focusing on the home experience. >Probably if they had developed, released, and heavily marketed another video game alongside it that was just as simple and fun to play. Well good luck doing that, especially in the industry as it was at the time. If the only games you ever saw were the ones that existed pre-SMB, coming up with even the idea, let alone the implementation, of a game that would be as successful at what it did, would be tough. It's hard to even discuss because the game did change the landscape so significantly. Sure, it's easy to say "I could improve upon Pac-Land," but would you really have, if you were making games back in 1985? It's hard to say. Maybe you would have, but maybe you wouldn't have seen how things like Pac-Land could evolve into a whole different style of play more suited for home play than arcade play.

>>1069525 >So they didn't "Save" the industry, they just restricted it. No, their blowing up helped to save the industry. Then after saving it, they restricted it. Or at least attempted. It only worked for a couple of years, and that might partially be because Sega just failed at making very good first party games, among other things. Once Sega started making good first party games, Nintendo got some good competition. Nintendo also wouldn't have gotten far without their own first party games largely being excellent. <I never said it was good or bad. I said it matters. >Yes, you did. You're argument is: <America, which is the market that matters the most Do you read what you quote? Your quote is literally just saying it matters (most), not anything about "good or bad." >If that was the case, then why did Nintendo "backport" SMB back into the arcade with their VS System? Because arcades were still big and SMB was a massive game that could get some extra money that way. But it's not like Vs. Super Mario Bros. was the biggest hit in the world, either. And actually it is different from regular SMB, edited to suit arcades better. >sim and god games on Intellivision Interesting. I must admit I'm not aware of these games. Somehow I get the feeling that they weren't among the top selling games of their time, if I were to go and look up the sales numbers. You say they were some of the biggest on the Intellivision, and again I haven't looked up the numbers, but this is really just hitting home to me how much better the Atari sold than the Intellivision. >RPG/computer games Sold practically nothing compared to the NES. Yes, it's an influential niche, but RPGs wouldn't even become a popular genre in the west for a very long time after the period we are discussing. Even though the roots are western, it was extremely niche, and only the nerdiest turbonerds were even aware of it. It's hardly comparable to the impact of the NES and Super Mario Bros. >RPG influence in Japan True, but that's kind of a whole other branch of development that wouldn't become terribly influential in the west until long after. Would that influence have ever found its way over here if home games didn't come back and get bigger than ever, largely due to Super Mario Bros.? >That's exactly what happened. Miyamoto just looked at Mario Bros. and literally said "We're making that except with a bigger environment and characters". That was it. Yeah, that's my point. That's the time it happened. Would it have happened if not for this time? Hard to say. But at a certain point this becomes like saying Hitler wasn't an important figure because someone else probably would have come along and done similar things if he didn't. Like okay, maybe the conditions were right for someone to come along and do that stuff, but he's the one who did it. Once the argument becomes "someone else would have made a game similar to Super Mario Bros., because the conditions were there," it essentially becomes a moot point. Okay, so the medium/industry was begging for this? Well this was the game that did it. >In fact, SMB ws just building upon his earlier work with other "athletic games" like Kung Fu Master and Excitebike. Those games suck balls. While we could certainly argue that they influenced other genres in their own ways, they were not as influential on the medium as a whole as Super Mario Bros.. I could believe a good argument that Kung Fu really helped to lead into the beat-em-up and fighting game genres, but that was years later, and no game in those genres is as influential as Super Mario Bros., or came at as important a time as Super Mario Bros.. Yeah, Street Fighter 2 is really great and influential and everything, and I could buy an argument that it wouldn't exist without Kung Fu, and thus give Kung Fu credit for it, but it's still not even close to the influence of Super Mario Bros..

>>1069525 >In fact, SMB ws just building upon his earlier work with other "athletic games" like Kung Fu Master and Excitebike. The game it would have been pulling from more than anything was Pac-Land, arguably the first "modern" platformer, if you don't want to count Pitfall II which is closer to what some PC platformers would become. There were complex platformers before it like Congo Bongo and the aforementioned Pitfall II, but they played differently to what would be the 80s platformer formula. Before Pac-Land, side-scrolling platformers were generally like Jump Bug or Mappy. Pac-Land was of course itself pulling from some of these games, art does not exist in a vacuum. If I'm not mistaken, Jump Bug was actually the first ever side-scrolling platformer, so you could argue they all ultimately come from that. Reading these kinds of arguments are frustrating, because they often feature people who don't actually know much about gaming history but will very confidently talk about it. I think that's why so much of this thread has gravitated to titles like Q*Bert, Donkey Kong and Super Mario Bros; because they're among the few 80s games these people have any real experience with.

>>1069540 I wonder how influential Jump Bug was. It's possible to happen upon an idea that would later be successful, but not be the thing that led to its success. It's possible that someone else could come to the same conclusion through a different route, then take it further. Did the people who made Pac-Land even know about Jump Bug? Maybe, but not necessarily. Like there were many proto-fighting games before Street Fighter, but not all were influences upon Street Fighter, let alone Street Fighter II.

Going back to the thread's topic, but this thread has honestly been a bit of a shitshow, I'd like to present Zaxxon. The first thing most people note about Zaxxon is how it does not in any way look like a game developed in 1981 (released Jan '82). If you're familiar with the either the history of shoot 'em ups or early 80s games, you'll probably know this. It has a couple of firsts; it was first isometric game, it was the first game to have a TV spot, it was the first shooter to have three dimensional movement (Battlezone had 3D graphics, but played two dimensionally). While many early 80s shoot 'em ups were iterating on Space Invaders, and by the mid-80s they'd be following in Xevious's footsteps, Zaxxon went in a completely different direction and had a couple of its own clones. The graphics alone make it visually hold up strangely well for the era. If you haven't tried it, I'd describe it like an extremely early Star Fox. It was a monster hit in the era and was ported to over a dozen platforms, but has become oddly forgotten. It's a really neat and impressive game for the time, check it out.

I forgot the commercial! Sega spent a lot of money on this, over half a million dollars when adjusted for inflation. They hired Paramount to produce it and went for state-of-the-art 3D FX. The game was a technological showcase and they wanted the commercial to reflect that. You can also see a little of Sega's "raditude" that would become ubiquitous in their Genesis marketing.

One of my obscure favorites is Plaque Attack for the Atari 2600. You play as a toothpaste tube shooting at junk food like space invaders, but your main goal is to defend teeth like cities in Missile Command, and one additional twist is that you're defending the teeth above and below. (Though all the enemies attack one side at a time.) Another one like that doesn't get mentioned often is Food Fight. It's the kind of shooter that would later be revolutionized with two-stick controls. The notable twist is that you have to grab your ammo from around the battlfield.

>>1069508 I'm into 1980s games and bet I played them way more than this thread. I lost count, but over 1000. Super Mario Bros isn't the best 1980s game, but before 1986, it is. The closest are far apart, which I say with a confidence that comes from knowing much about gaming history before 1986. It was simply better than everything before, which wasn't bad like some argue, just worse than Super Mario Bros. But off Super Mario Bros., though, I like Donkey Kong. Donkey Kong was fantastic. I played until kill screen, which Kosmic just found isn't a true kill screen. Donkey Kong Jr is good too, but 3 wasn't as good, and Donkey Kong Jr Math sucked. Shigeru Miyamoto has admitted that his original idea for Donkey Kong was to create a Popeye video game, though technical limitations did not allow for the needed graphic detail. Popeye did release for arcade in 1982, which is like Donkey Kong, and good too.

>>1068223 >Old games (1985 or older) >ctrl f Space Harrier >0 results Niggers, all of you.

>>1069314 My nigger.