# Best Game of 1984? **URL:** \ **Category:** The Game Room\ **Created:** [December 4, 2008, 2:13pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/best-game-of-1984/475669 "2008-12-04T14:13:34Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 10\ **Page:** 2
**Author:** ![Just\_Some\_Guy](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/j/ad7895/32.png) [@Just\_Some\_Guy](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Just_Some_Guy)\ **Post date:** [December 9, 2008, 12:39am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/best-game-of-1984/475669/21 "2008-12-09T00:39:11Z")
> [@FoieGrasIsEvil](#): > > Zork? Defender? PacMan? Frogger? 1. 1. 1. 1. (The only one of those I had to look up was Defender because I couldn’t remember if it was '80 or '81…) ---
**Author:** ![TommyTutone](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/t/c4cdca/32.png) [@TommyTutone](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/TommyTutone)\ **Post date:** [December 9, 2008, 1:10pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/best-game-of-1984/475669/22 "2008-12-09T13:10:53Z")
1985 will be a no-brainer - Ultima IV. 1983, also no-brainer - M.U.L.E. 1984, looking at the list, while the aforementioned choices were outstanding, and depending on the day, I would tend to agree with them, I’m going to pick something a little different with Thayer’s Quest. Not many people played it, and I certainly did not spend enough time with it, but it was an arcade laser disc game (like Dragon’s Lair) that was controlled by a keyboard. Each key on the keyboard, in addition to typing a letter, was pressed by the user when the picture on it matched an artifact shown on the game. Finding the artifacts would enable their use later in the adventure. In addition, before you started your game, you would enter your name, the game would speak your name, and it would save your state so that you could return another day and continue from where you left off. As I recall, a prize was offered to whoever could beat it. ---
**Author:** ![FoieGrasIsEvil](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/foiegrasisevil/32/16638_2.png) [@FoieGrasIsEvil](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/FoieGrasIsEvil)\ **Post date:** [December 9, 2008, 2:49pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/best-game-of-1984/475669/23 "2008-12-09T14:49:17Z")
> [@Just\_Some\_Guy](#): > > 1. > 1. > 1. > 1. > > (The only one of those I had to look up was Defender because I couldn’t remember if it was '80 or '81…) Sorry…all were WAG’s and games that I recall playing in 1984. ---
**Author:** ![tagos](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/t/bbe5ce/32.png) [@tagos](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/tagos)\ **Post date:** [December 9, 2008, 5:15pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/best-game-of-1984/475669/24 "2008-12-09T17:15:36Z")
> [@Palooka](#): > > Elite was released in 1984. It has everything going for it: deep gameplay in a massive universe, revolutionary graphics, invented a new genre, a book for a manual. Yep. Game Over. The Lords of Midnight runs it close though. ---
**Author:** ![Sparky812](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/eb9ed0/32.png) [@Sparky812](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Sparky812)\ **Post date:** [December 9, 2008, 6:07pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/best-game-of-1984/475669/25 "2008-12-09T18:07:37Z")
King’s quest! God, I still remember trying over and over to spell “Nikstlitslepmur” which was Rumpelstiltskin backwards! (Of course I googled it this time!) I loved Gauntlet, Raid on Bungeling Bay, Beyond Castle Wolfenstein, and Elite. ---
**Author:** ![Anonymous\_Coward](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/94ad74/32.png) [@Anonymous\_Coward](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Anonymous_Coward)\ **Post date:** [December 9, 2008, 6:39pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/best-game-of-1984/475669/26 "2008-12-09T18:39:07Z")
It’s hard to choose between **Rat Cage Mask Frenzy** and **Doublethink!**. ---
**Author:** ![robardin](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/r/43a26b/32.png) [@robardin](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/robardin)\ **Post date:** [December 9, 2008, 6:57pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/best-game-of-1984/475669/27 "2008-12-09T18:57:37Z")
> [@Just\_Some\_Guy](#): > > …what was the best video/computer game of 1984? … > Just to throw out a few options for people to consider: Karateka, Pitfall II, King’s Quest, Seven Cities of Gold, and Archon. … The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy. Aggh, so many weeks, months, maybe even years of my youth spent on Archon, 7CoG and HHGttG in particular! Karateka too. My first thought was “Mail Order Monsters” but that came out in 1985. Similarly, “Ultima III” came out in 1983. And hey, “Archon” didn’t come out in 1984 either: it was from 1983. 1984 saw the release of “Archon II”, which while interesting, was not as pure somehow in game play as the first. So it seems my vote will go to “Seven Cities of Gold”. I still think of that intro as one of the great game intros, and I can still replay the music in my head too. I completely explored both North and South America, in both ethical modes (crush the natives/befriend the natives), and did the same for a number of random generation worlds (which took all night to run). ---
**Author:** ![Derleth](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/b9e5f3/32.png) [@Derleth](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Derleth)\ **Post date:** [December 9, 2008, 7:35pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/best-game-of-1984/475669/28 "2008-12-09T19:35:20Z")
> [@Ximenean](#): > > I think the whole idea of golden ages, collapses and revivals is nonsense. Except there was a very real crash in 1983/1984 (depending on how you count) that killed Atari and left the way open for Nintendo to break into the American market. It defines a turning point both in the technology (the 2600 to the NES) and the content of games: Nintendo enforced very strict censorship via the [Seal Of Quality](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nintendo_Seal_of_Quality) and the lockout chip, resulting in an ‘age ghetto’ for video games until well into the 1990s due to Nintendo’s near-stranglehold on the console market until the Playstation broke the de facto monopoly. > **[Video game crash of 1983](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/North_American_video_game_crash_of_1983)** > > The video game crash of 1983 (often referred to as the Atari shock in Japan) was a large-scale recession in the video game industry that occurred from 1983 to 1985 in the United States. The crash was attributed to several factors, including market saturation in the number of video game consoles and available games, many of which were of poor quality. Waning interest in console games in favor of personal computers also played a role. Home video game revenue peaked at around $3.2 billion in 1983 ---
**Author:** ![Munch](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/munch/32/5281_2.png) [@Munch](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Munch)\ **Post date:** [December 10, 2008, 12:11am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/best-game-of-1984/475669/29 "2008-12-10T00:11:59Z")
> [@Just\_Some\_Guy](#): > > You won’t hear me say a bad thing about the game Balderdash… except for the fact that it was published in 1971. > > Unless you meant Boulderdash in which case it was a fine action game that time has simply passed by. Really? In a failed attempt to make a funny, I just did a (very) cursory search for a board game chronology. What came up must have been erroneous. Where’d you get your list from? ---
**Author:** ![Just\_Some\_Guy](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/j/ad7895/32.png) [@Just\_Some\_Guy](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Just_Some_Guy)\ **Post date:** [December 10, 2008, 12:52am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/best-game-of-1984/475669/30 "2008-12-10T00:52:34Z")
> [@Munch](#): > > Really? In a failed attempt to make a funny, I just did a (very) cursory search for a board game chronology. What came up must have been erroneous. Where’d you get your list from? For Balderdash I had to confirm it with BGG; it just seemed off for me. I’ve been confirming dates from [mobygames.com](http://mobygames.com) when necessary. [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/best-game-of-1984/475669.md?page=1)