It's almost July and I'm going to focus on the 80s in gaming for a month. Here's what I'm interested in for 1980.
Game & Watch: For some reason, I don't remember Game & Watch at all when I was a teenager in the 80s. So, by dint of it's unfamiliarity, I'll check it out, maybe not buying original devices, but playing collections I've seen in the Nintendo Switch store and ones I may have already for Game Boy or GBC. I know I have one somewhere in my collection.
A while ago I played one of the collections and liked it a lot more than I expected to.
Activision for Atari 2600: 1980 saw the first release of games from Activision. I've come to really admire that company's style with regards the 2600. I think they absolutely nailed the look and gameplay design for the 2600. I have the Activision Anthology collection for PS2 and will use that to relive these games. I have an original cart for Stampede, though, and I hope to get another 2600 sometime to play it in the authentic way.
Intellivsion: Mattel's home console was released in NA this year. My neighbor at the time got one and us kids used to go over there all the time to play mostly sports games. However, my favorite was Sea Battle. It's a two-player action/strategy game. Each side deployes a navy into a sea full of islands and tries to capture the other side's base. Battles occur when ships approach each other, at which time the screen zooms in and you fight in real time until someone wins. I wouldn't mind trying some other games as well on the Intellivision Lives! collection I have for the PS2. My PS2 is going to get a lot of use next month.
Car Wars: Steve Jackson games was founded in 1980 and they released Car Wars, a pen and paper game that takes place in a distopian future where you have to survive through car battles. You design your cars with the latest weaponry and go to battle, recording damage and making repairs. I played this in college some years later with my roommate and it was a lot of fun. I think the original game box is rare and expensive, but I'll look into it. I'd like to have it for memory's sake.
World of GreyHawk Fantasy Setting for Advanced Dungeons and Dragons: I was playing DnD in the 80s. I had all the main books for the ADnD system. I might have even had modules set in the GreyHawk world. I know I had several of modules even while I was creating my own adventures and fantasy world. It would be neat to check this out again and see what it was all about. I may just read up on it, but maybe they did some novels based on it I could read.
That's 1980 and plenty for the first week at least. It'll be fun researching stuff for the other years very soon.
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