PixlBit

I had a pretty reasonable pool of games I wanted to play from 1987. Arcade games: Contra, Street Fighter (begining of the fighting game scene?), Double Dragon, 1943, R-Type, Sky Shark and Xenophobe; NES: Mega Man, Legend of Zelda, Ikari Warriors, Rygar, Arkanoid, Kid Icarus, Wizards and Warriors, R.B.I. Baseball, Metroid and Castlevania (what a year for NES!); Nothing for Sega Master System's debut; and PC games: Leisure Suit Larry, Dungeon Master, Head Over Heels, and Maniac Mansion. I decided to go with Ikari Warriors, but when that went too fast, I added Sky Shark.

I went through a bunch of lists for this year and came up with some titles to consider for my visit to nostalgia land. For NES it was: Commando, Ghosts n' Goblins, and Gradius. Sega Master System it was: Alex Kidd, Space Harrier, and Alien Syndrome. Arcade it was: Return of Ishtar, Arkanoid, Bubble Bobble, Out Run, Rygar, Gauntlet II, Darius, Ikari Warriors, Jackal, Joust 2 and Victory Road (the sequel to Ikari Warriors). PC/Mac it was: Star Flight, Wizard's Crown, Space Quest, Might & Magic Book 1, and Dark Castle.

1985 and home console video gaming makes a huge comback with the release of Nintendo's NES. Disguised as a VCR (that's a videocassette recorder for those who don't know) and coupled with a toy robot so nobody would call it a video game machine, the NES reignited home console gaming. Super Mario Bros. was the big hit that year, but I'd played that and had a copy of Mach Rider waiting for my attention, so I went with that. But before I started, I watched a bunch of video of other games that came out that year like arcade game Tiger-Heli, and PC games: Tau Ceti, Oregon Trail, Ultima IV and The Bard's Tale. 

1984: consoles pretty much dead with the crash of '83; the arcades still pretty good with titles like: 1942, Punch-Out, Marble Madness and Space Ace; PC doing well with King's Quest, Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy, and Beyond Castle Wolfenstein.  I looked at a lot of video of these games and more from this year and decided on replaying 1942 within Capcom Arcade Cabinet on XBLA and within Capcom Classics Collection Reloaded on PSP. 

I watched a lot of videos on some games from 1983: arcade games Mario Bros, Spy Hunter, Crossbow, Star Wars The Arcade Game; PC games Ultima III (check out The Spoony One's review of it. It's fun.), and Troll's Tale; console games Quest for Quintana Roo on ColecoVision, Pitfall II on Atari 2600, and Advanced Dungeons & Dragons: Treasure of Tarmin for Intellivision.

1982 was a very good year for video games. Just to name some I liked, there were: Donkey Kong Jr., Xevious, Joust, and Front Line in arcades, Ultima II and Wizardry II on PC; Barmstorming and Frogs & Flies on Atari 2600; B-17 Bomber, Advanced Dungeons & Dragons, and Shark! Shark! on Intellivision; and Venture on the new ColecoVision.

 I was going to stop after Floor 1, but it was so much fun, I kept going to see how far I could get with Team Predator. My friend Mark got interested in Wizardry too and fired up his Yobo NES console and played a Star Trek themed team. He grabbed several super powerful Blade Cuisinarts and over a million in gold from his previous teams to fuel his play. I was playing pure and didn't use anything from old teams.

Wizardry: Proving Grounds of the Mad Overlord came out for PC in 1981, the same year the first video gaming magazine started, Electronic Games. Donkey Kong was out in the arcades and my favorite Atari 2600 game came out, Stampede. But enough history, let's get to playing Wizardry.                          

1980 was the true dawn of the arcades. In addition to the four previously mentioned: Space Invaders, Asteroids, Galaxian, and Lunar Lander, we now add Pac-Man, Missile Command, Tempest, Battlezone, Berzerk, Defender and Centipede. These 11 games, plus maybe Rally-X for a neat dozen, make the core of the arcade experience in the 80's to me. More excellent games would come, especially the Nintendo ones, but these 12 are how I remember the arcades at the beginning. The games that started it all.

1979 still saw the Atari 2600 unchallenged but Mattel was test marketing the Intellivision which was soon to give it a run for its money. I played Adventure and Superman that year on the 2600. The arcades saw the releases of Asteroids, Galaxian and Lunar Lander, three pieces of an only partially complete killer arcade along with Space Invaders. On PC Richard Garriott made role-playing game Akalabeth, but you probably had to be in California to know of it (I believe there is a version for phones right now I'd like to try). And Star Trek: The Motion Picture was released in a year full of great films, however, this is the only one I can reliably remember having seen in the theater. The rest I would see via VHS rentals soon after.