stronghold was sort of an AD&D cross between Majesty and Sim City
I remember playing Qix in the arcade. Never played it on a home system (I know you could, I just never did).
I mastered almost every video game I grew up with, Qix included. Except for Gremlins and ET and a few others I disliked playing or could not understand for whatever reason.
I was watching a recent nostalgia video online of someone reviewing and summarizing “Summer Games”. I can’t remember how hard it was to learn to dive, but the guy was terrible at it. I almost always got 10s. I wonder how many medical cases of “gamer’s thumb” that specific game was responsible for. Your thumbs hurt a lot if you played it all afternoon.
SunDog
though it is not so forgotten it does not have a Wikipedia article
Remember Microsoft Decathlon? 
I still have a thicker part on my right thumb that I’m pretty sure is the remains of the callus the Colecovision joystick gave me.
I never did manage to finish that game. I did, however, discover how to use a hex editor to mess around with the Commodore 64’s save file; IIRC, I set all my vehicles’ fuel consumption to zero. One less thing to worry about.
I know I experimented with significantly increasing their top speed. That was a mistake.
You are literally the only other person I’ve ever seen mention Utopia. I played the hell out of it on the Aquarius.
Make that two!
I’ve never played it, but I have heard about only because it sometimes comes up when people talk about Sim City.
The kid across the street has an Intellivision and Utopia was a constant favorite along with Night Stalker* and the two Dungeons & Dragons games. Props to the second one for being (one of?) the first RPGs in a first person perspective.
*Think it was called Night Stalker. Hedge maze? Spider webs? Laser pistol?
I believe that’s the name, yes; I also had that one on the Aquarius.
(Should I keep the discussion to old computer games I liked? Okay, yeah, that’s the ticket. 
For an, ahem, alternative take, there’s always this.)
Below The Root: Sidescrolling adventure game based on a series of 60’s youth sci-fi/fantasy novels. Very simple, almost rudimentary gameplay and objectives, but there was a lot to explore and figure out. Once I figured out exactly what I needed to do to build up the necessary strength spirit to achieve the game’s objective, I actually had some fun speedrunning it. This has the distinction of being perhaps the only computer game I never got any bad vibes from, ever. 
Executive Suite: Menu-based text “life simulation” where you’re an employee of of a powerful tech company attempting to rise through the ranks without getting terminated, resigning, or otherwise leaving the company. Your ultimate goal is to become the new President, or failing that, secure a prosperous retirement as a consolation prize. You can control every starting aspect of your character, even your starting age (which dictates the maximum length of your career). This game was definitely made with a sense of humor throughout, and it really encourages you to try every choice, even (ESPECIALLY) the obviously stupid ones just to see what happens. When you decide to get serious and go for the highest possible net worth (your “score” for the game), the way to achieve it might surprise you (hint: sometimes past failure can lead to future success 
), and the only way to succeed is make every choice, every option, and experience the whole game. In short, this game rocks.
Jumpman: I’d need a spreadsheet to count the hours I poured into this one. Grab the bombs, figure out the specific quirk for the level, repeat. Pretty easy to learn, impossible to master. There was plenty of creativity in the level designs, and every one required a different strategy. Fun times!
Moebius: The Orb of Celestial Harmony: Made during a time when programmers cared more about making a game rich, colorful, and beautiful than turning every fight into a nightmare slog or putting in dozens of cryptic puzzles you needed a research team to figure out. The basic objectives were simple, and while there were some nasty pitfalls, avoiding them required good sense and caution, not years of muscle memory and the luck of the gods. This was one of those games, like Assassin’s Creed 2, that even after completing every objective, I wanted to do it again because the game was just that gratifying. 
Regarding Miner 2049er, I never played it (didn’t have the machine), but be advised that for a lot of games released for the Colecovision and Commodore 64, it’s plays much differently for both. (Guess I should include the Atari one as well, as trash as it is.)
pseudograph - I played The Ancient Art of War. (You got anything to add here, be my guest. 
) The “zoom” feature for battles was pretty cool, but overall I thought the game was too limiting and my own forces were often frustratingly weak. I liked it more for setting up goofy campaigns than anything else.
Everybody remembers that one, but how about Alice in Wonderland? I don’t recall playing, or at least finishing, any of their other games like Treasure Island… Good games, though.
That reminds me around that time… there was a The Fourth Protocol video game. Forgotten or not?
Oof, that was a nasty game on the Commodore 64. Very unforgiving. I played Jumpman and Jumpman Jr., and some of the levels were so deviously designed it was impossible to avoid losing lives on some of them on the first attempt.
In Jumpman Jr. there was a level in which the entire board was hidden, and only revealed as you moved around. Which meant there was no way to avoid walking off a cliff until you got the damn thing memorized. Really evil.
Worst thing was when died at height. Then the Jumpman would tumble all the way down to the bottom and have that song play at the end. Maddening.
I’m sorry…I’m so used to everyone else having an absolutely wonderful time with games I found too insanely hard to get into at all, I get kinda floored whenever the opposite happens. (I played the PCjr version of Jumpman, for the record; never heard of any Jumpman Jr. before TASVideos.) I don’t know what to say, really…I had an obsession with computer games as a kid and I played the game over and over and over until I’d nailed nearly every level down cold. The only one I remember messing me up was Robots III. I had one random level game go so long I actually cracked the 5-digit score (the first digit was replaced by a plus sign). 
It was an action game. You either had it or you didn’t. Kind of like chess, actually.
Some great responses in this thread, BTW. One of my biggest regrets of my childhood was that there were so many system and platforms with so many unique games that I read about but could never experience. I recently watched a few videos of Mail Order Monsters and Autoduel, and yeah, I would’ve dug them.
One more!
Bruce Lee: Run through a series of exotic Far East backdrops, collect lanterns, avoid traps, and battle two highly tenacious foes with a straight punch, a flying kick, and a lie-down. As basic as gameplay gets, but with the then-cutting edge sound and graphics of the PCjr., it absolutely wowed me. It was one of the few computer games of the time that really gave me an “Arcade at home, no quarters necessary!” vibe. Fun, fun, engrossing game.
I came to post this.
@Kimble –
More Apple IIe fun:
Aztec
Taipan!
@DPRK
Decathlon – yes! Played that at the same friend’s house as Archon.
If we’re just talking about great olde games now, I’ll throw Lode Runner into the mix.
Just thought of another one or two: Anyone remember Forbidden Forest? That game was creepy as hell! The sequel, Beyond the Forbidden Forest, was pretty good, too.
I was very good at Forbidden Forest. I even beat the game on Commando Mode.
I can’t remember the last time I heard someone talk about Lode Runner. But it’s been remade several times over the last forty years and according to Wikipedia there’s one in the works right now.
i had the c64 version ,
You know on YouTube yall should look up a guy called “Retro Core” and his Battle of the Ports series they come out almost every Friday or Saturday …he’s a British guy who lives in Japan…
Hell pick a game and play 90 percent or so of every version ever made no matter how crappy they are …
tho just a note … the first 50 or so eps are just subtitled because youtube didn’t exist at the time
He just did his 500th ep last weekend