Swashbuckler for Apple II.
Pitfall might seem simplistic by modern standards, but becomes a lot more impressive when you realize that the entire game fit in 4 kilobytes. That’s an awfully varied and detailed map to fit into that tight a space, and that’s before you even include the game code. Of course, it was all pseudorandom, but what does that matter?
Because video games were new and user interfaces weren’t even a word. Eugene Jarvis wanted to create a game that was difficult and he realized that, given the limitations of the hardware and software, an easy way to increase the difficulty was to increase the number of buttons.
In Robotron:2084, he went the other way and created a very simple control, with as much processing power as possible spent on throwing as many moving enemies at you as computationally possible.
And then there was Joust, which I don’t know if it had depth, but was endlessly replayable and, like Wizard of Wor, you could play single, competitively, or cooperatively.
Moon Lander, of course. Was there any way to actually play a long time at this one? Seemed to me that even if you were Neil Armstrong and landed your ship with the least amount of used fuel possible, you still would have, at most, 3 rounds. (Whatever fuel you ended one round with, you started another round with, plus a bonus. The bonus, however, was never enough to compensate you (well, ME) for the fuel expended the previous go-around.)
(Please note this is a 30 year-old memory here…)
I spent many happy hours making more own levels for that one.
Loderunner and Aztec were my favourite games until Ultima III game along.
Rogue and roguelikes, while not arcade games, are infinitely playable. Everything about them is different every time you play.
The same year that Lode Runner was released saw my first “toolbox” game come to light: Pinball Construction Set.
… Though we’re wandering from the arcades to the personal computer realm, but still within that early-80s timeline…
Bolding mine. You sure about Pac Man?
I think is was called Lunar Lander
I know it wasn’t correct, and yes, you are right.
Love it!
There were some pornograhic versions of Qix, where removing the rectangles would reveal a nekkid la-a-a-a-ady.
I’ve heard.
“That never gets old”
I obtained a shareware version of that for my PC back in the 90s. It was Asian in origin, based on the pictures revealed.
**Wizardry **offered the first first-person perspective that I remember in a game.
Then there were ways to take advantage of (or be screwed by) the 8-bit limitations of the arcade games. In **Galaga **you could leave one of the bugs alive at the end of the round, have him make 255+ shots, whereupon he stops shooting. Once he had stopped, kill him and the rest of the bugs won’t shoot for the rest of the game. **Robotron **had issues like this as well.
I recall thoroughly enjoying Zaxxon because each level scrolled across the screen at an angle instead of just left to right. It made some of the flying maneuvers pretty difficult to learn.
Similarly, there was the end of Centipede. On level 1, you had a single 12-segment centipede to fight. On level 2, you had a total of two: One detached head, and a connected 11-segment 'pede. And so on until you got to level 12, where you didn’t have any connected segments at all, just 12 separate heads. And what happened if you beat that level, too? Well, of course, it tried to start level 13, spawning heads out one at a time until it ran out of segments before it ran out of heads, and promptly crashed.
I was… pretty good… at Centipede and don’t remember this happening to me.
Well, I only managed it once, so it’s possible that it was a completely unrelated glitch that crashed it, but that sure seems like a logical place for a glitch to occur. And I almost certainly played a slightly different version than you (I had a very obscure model of Atari console), which might also make a difference.
What happened to the 'pede segments on yours when you got to level 13 and beyond?
God, I don’t remember, but the high score on this machine is in the millions.