Geekery

Top 10: Forgotten games of the past

Posted on 26. Jan, 2010 by Jake.

Graphics and screen res may have come along way, but the games below, while primitive by today’s standards, were just as much fun to play. Below is a personal list of some of the games that defined my childhood, and maybe yours too (if not, you are probably pretty old or pretty young)… Nostalgia FTW!!!

1. 1942
What 80s and early 90s corner café worth its salt did not have a copy of this arcade game, which sees a ‘Super Ace’ fighter plane from World War 2 mowing down enemy planes and doing loop-the-loops? The one near my house did, I’ll tell you that much, and my step-father and I must have wasted thousands of rands worth of coins in our attempts to clock the last level (he did, in the end. I didn’t). In a huge triumph of money-making skills over sentimentality, despite the fact that the game was manufactured by the Japanese, the goal was to destroy the Japanese air fleet in World War 2.

2. Arkanoid
Perhaps the most addictive game I have ever played, 1986’s Arkanoid was based on Breakout, one of the original Atari games of the 70s. The concept was simple, the player controlling a little horizontal line somewhere between a space ship and a paddle, which bounces a ball towards various bricks, causing them to disappear. If the paddle/ship missed the ball, it would disappear into the abyss below, the player losing a life. Once all the bricks, some of which release power-up capsules that give your paddle/ship special powers, have disappeared, one would progress to the next level. I will never forget the game’s opening monologue, badly translated from Japanese, “THE TIME AND ERA OF THIS STORY IS UNKNOWN. AFTER THE MOTHERSHIP “ARKANOID” WAS DESTROYED, A SPACECRAFT “VAUS” SCRAMBLED AWAY FROM IT. BUT ONLY TO BE TRAPPED IN SPACE WARPED BY SOMEONE……..” Confirming its legendary status, various updates of the game have been released, and Arkanoid Plus recently became available on WiiWare.

3. Civilisation
While it may seem a bit silly now, this historical strategic simulation game was the first of its time – and a host of today’s best strategic games, including Rise of Nations, Age of Empires, Rome Total War, arguably even World of Warcraft, would not exist without it. A single-player turn-based game, it involved building an empire after choosing a civilization to represent, each one led by an historical figure – Stalin representing the Russians, Gandhi the Indians, Shaka Zulu the Africans, etc. It was this feature that led to much unintentional humour in the game – the civilization you chose to play with did not change the action of the game, leading to some strange and wonderful turns of events such as “Shaka Zulu has just invented space travel” and “Gandhi and his troops have launched an attack against you”.

4. Shinobi
Possibly the most legendary platform game of all, this 1987 release was from back in the days when the arcade was the only place to enjoy such technologically advanced gaming. In it, one gets to be a ninja, trying to stop a criminal organization. The game had five levels, each one with it’s own colourful ‘boss baddy’, including Black Turtle and Lobster. On the way, one needed to rescue hostages and fight countless hoardes of rogue ninjas, using an unlimited supply of throwing stars (as well as ninja magic and bullets if one knew how to find them). What made it so good at the time was its difficulty level – it was far harder than most other games (meaning that many parents ended up near-bankrupt after their kid’s trip to the arcade), and also boasted an outrageous level of violence compared to its peers. The game lives on, as one of the games in many of the arcade emulators you get nowadays, and it is available on the Wii’s Virtual Console.

5. Leisure Suit Larry in the Land of the Lounge Lizards
One of many similar Quest games of the mid Eighties, Leisure Suit Larry stands out in my mind as watching my older brother play it provided me with some formative sex education – proof that even before the internet, PCs were warping young minds. Sure, I knew about the whole ‘a man lies on top of a woman to make babies’ thing, but Larry depicted a more sordid world, and sex with prostitutes, condoms and cruising singles bars were all brand new concepts to my tender young mind. For those of you who never played it, it was about a 40 year old loser trying to get laid. One of the best parts was when he got killed – he would be taken to a factory and reassembled. I still have vivid memories of that.

6. Donkey Kong
This game is literally as old as I am (and that’s old), having first been released in 1981. A rudimentary platform-ish game, which sees Mario dodge barrels thrown by the mighty gorilla Kong (the Donkey reference, while there are various theories, remains a mystery), is what led to Nintendo’s huge success, and broke it in the American market for the first time. It’s also the first game ever to have a narrative, and it has even inspired it’s own saying ‘Its on like…” you know the rest. And, it’s the first time we meet a character called Mario, who, as we all know, went on to achieve greater fame and fortune than his giant simian nemesis. The game lives on in Seth Gordon’s 2007 documentary King of Kong, which is better than any film about this obscure and ancient game has any right to be. If you haven’t seen it, I advise that you do.

7. Duke Nukem
Mention the name o’ Nukem and every little whippersnapper in the room will pipe up about how much they love the game. The problem is, they’re talking about the more recent 3D shoot-em up. The original – a side-scrolling platform game released in 1991, totally pwed for its time, with faster gameplay than any of its predecessors, as well as the ability to blow up scenery, which back then was a novelty. Hilariously, the original game was set in the ‘future’ – 1997.

8. California games
Boy did I play the hell out of this game in my youth. As a land-locked Gautenger, there was something beautiful about the opportunity to escape to the sunny beaches of California, where one could play a range of different games simulating seaside sports including surfing, skating, biking and jet-skying. One does, however, have to wonder who gave the go-ahead to include ‘footbag’, which is basically hackey sack, a testament to the peril of hiring hippies to help develop games.

9. Wolfenstein 3D
Before Quake and Doom there was Wolfenstein. It is the first person shooter upon which every subsequent one was modeled. Itself an update of a primitive 80s game called Castle Wolfenstein, the game had a World War II theme, the decision to make the hero a US ally and the villains Nazi Germans presumably a ploy to allow one to mow down hoards of enemy soldiers without guilt. In the process of playing, one aquires different guns (the gattling being the one that stands out in my mind the most), kills a heroic number of soldiers and eventually even gets the chance to face a nasty, half-Adolf Hitler, half-robot creature in the finale. Eventually, Doom would blow Wolfenstein out the water, particularly because it introduced the concept of networking. But, for a while, Wolfenstein was the greatest game of all time.

10. Jones in the fast lane
Ok, I acknowledge that you are probably scratching your head over this one. I seem to be the only person in the world ever to play it, but it left an indelible impression on me as a kid. Somewhere between a board game and The Sims, it entailed playing against an opponent as the character Jones, who basically just lives life. The idea was to accumulate as much, happiness, wealth, education and status, in an attempt to out-do your opponent, in the process working, shopping, going to college, basically living a pretty mundane existence. As I type this, I realise that the concept itself explains why the game was not a commercial success. But surely someone other than me remembers it. Anyone?

It occurs to me that these are the games that I happened to play growing up, and that anyone else’s list would be completely different. If there is one that stands out for you please comment below, I’d love to re-live some of the games I left out. And if you want to read someone else’s version (including era-defining games I left out, such as Pong and Bubble Bobble), click here.

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