PixlBit

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.

The Atari Video Computer System ruled the home gaming landscape in 1978. This was its year in the sun, undisputed. The arcades exploded with Space Invaders starting the first video game craze, and Superman was a big hit in theaters. My favorite film though was Force 10 From Navarone which showed that Harrison Ford was going to do more than just Star Wars.

1977 was an important year for me: I was 10 years old, Star Wars was in the theaters that summer, the first Electronics Boutique (which became EB Games and then was merged with Gamestop) opened in my Mall at King of Prussia, PA, and the Atari 2600 was out for Christmas. For me it was ground zero for video gaming and science fiction, two of my favorite subjects.

My plan in 2014 was to keep up with the latest releases, buy one new game a month, and play that game as thoroughly as possible. Well, I've finally got overwelmed by the number of games out now that I haven't played. Not only that, my best friend and gaming buddy is out of work, probably for good, and can't keep up with me anymore. This kind of kills my interest in keeping up with the Joneses, so I'm going on a vacation and taking a long nostalgic trip through the years of gaming history - and my collection.

Just for fun I went through the database at allgame.com and wrote down how many of each genre of video game I've played all-time. This is the result.

On Monday this week I picked up some under $5 games to try online co-op on PS3 now that my friend and I both have the system and he has no ID problems there (I also picked up a Dreamcast memory card and a copy of Sega Bass Fishing for him since he misplaced them. They were both under $10 at Jay Street Video Games, my go-to source for all things retro). Here's the result of my efforts.