(The only one of those I had to look up was Defender because I couldn’t remember if it was '80 or '81…)
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.
Sorry…all were WAG’s and games that I recall playing in 1984.
Yep. Game Over. The Lords of Midnight runs it close though.
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.
It’s hard to choose between Rat Cage Mask Frenzy and Doublethink!.
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).
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 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.
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 when necessary.