Patient Gamers

Prince of Persia, 1989.

This game pioneered rotoscope animation and directly influenced the Tomb raider series in many ways:

• Crumbling slabs that you fall through
• spikes that kill you if you fall on them, but you can walk through them
• Clanging jaws that will chop you in half
• the re-cycling of multi-tier map design, when one big room with many levels becomes a central atrium to which you return many times, just sometimes higher or lower than you were before. Also a very clever use of limited memory resources.
• A random doppleganger encounter that hurts you when you hurt it.
• block-based jump physics with standing, running, and vertical jumping
• hanging from ledges as a mechanic
• little known fact about prince of Persia but if you holster your sword and hold X and T while drawing your sword, the player draws a pair of uzis instead

The gold box RPG series: Pool of Radiance, Curse of the Azure Bonds, Secret of the Silver Blades, and Pools of Darkness.

These are set in the Forgotten Realms, and using the old AD&D ruleset. They’re very old school and may not be to your liking, but they are classics for a reason. Combat is very tactical, and the story interesting.

Snatcher (1988). Cyberpunk text-heavy adventure by Hideo Kojima. The MSX version was fan-translated and the Mega CD/Sega CD version received an official English localization a few years after the PC88 and MSX versions came out.

Mega Man 2

Super Mario Bros. 3

A lot of pre-1990 games are pretty clunky, so you kinda have to see them either as someone from the era would or try to appreciate them for what they are today. That being said, a lot of them are still fun with this in mind.

The Gauntlet series is probably my favorite early game. It's better played with 2-4 people, but can be played alone. It's essentially a dungeon crawler, but the levels and enemies are interesting and fun to navigate.

Some other good ones are Dig Dug (pacman but more fun and underground), Galaga or Galaxian (arcade space shooters), Adventure for the Atari 2600 (first rpg and first easter egg in video game history), Rampage (be a giant monster and destroy buildings), 1943 (airplane shmup (shoot em up) with cool powerups and pixel art) and toobin (also a shmup where you're on an inertube and navigate perilous waters. Sounds boring but it has really cool level progression and game mechanics later in the game).

I've seen someone else mention these, but I have to recommend then as well:

Maniac Mansion (1987). It's the first SCUMM (Script Creation Utility for Maniac Mansion) engine game that all its successors use (Indy 3 & 4, Monkey Island, Sam and Max Hit The Road, etc). Really hard game play from what I can remember, and it has a sequel too, Day of the Tentacle (1993), which is absolutely hilarious.

Laser Squad (1988) was among my favourites growing up, they are the precursor to UFO/XCOM (the original from 1993).

Elite (1984), a technological marvel for its time. It's still playable today, and if you liked any of the other space exploration / trader / miner games (E:D, Star Citizen, X4, Freelancer, etc) you will love this.

King's Bounty (1990). I could have sworn this was from earlier. No matter. It's the precursor to Heroes of Might and Magic. Has less balancing than its successors and can get really whacky.

Spy vs Spy (1984). Really fun split screen couch pvp. You set traps in a house with doors everywhere in various places that you hope your opponent will forget about while also hunting the other one and beating each other in a brawl. It can get hilariously complex. But needs another player as there's no AI from what I can recall.

Creatures (1990). It's a platformer where you control a cute bear trying to rescue other cute bears from evil potatoes and mushrooms and birds. And that's where the cuteness ends. Every platformer level finishes in a so called torture level where the cute beat to be rescued undergoes some crazy mutilation by chainsaw, sharks, acid. Has a sequel, Creatures II (1992) and a spin-off (kinda), Mayhem in Monsterland (1993).

Summer Camp (1990). Another platformer, story driven with fun mini games. Has a sequel, Winter Camp (1992).

Anyone remember the BBS "turn based" games?

I don't even remember the names, but you would login every day to play your turn. Resource allocation based.

There was a drag car racing one and a space one that I remember.

Mike Tyson's Punch-Out!! is one of the greatest games ever. It's a boxing game that relies heavily on reflex and rhythm, and it plays so smoothly you'll be surprised it's an NES game.

Mega Man 2 is a classic. Most people claim this or Mega Man 3 (1990) as their favorite. Just some great action platforming, if you like to jump and shoot.

Speaking of jumping and shooting, Contra is another insanely fluid game. I really think its gameplay holds up well compared to even SNES-era games, and its vibrant, high-contrast colors are seared into my brain.

Most great NES games are some type of platformer, honestly. Castlevania is no exception. With a gothic horror aesthetic and a killer soundtrack, it's honestly one of my favorites to just kick back and play with a drink.

I would also recommend the original Super Mario Bros., if you really haven't played it. It's pretty good for an early outing.

Oh and, as a rule, NES games are hard. Arcades made you pay quarters for lives, and since games were $50+ they wanted you to get your money's worth in restarts. You would do well to learn the Konami code.

Playing Wizardry is king of a right of passage. You most likely won't enjoy playing it, but it is worth experiencing in my opinion.

Star Flight. Really a must-play, and get the run speed down low so you have some suffering on the long trips. Then you get really excited to find a wormhole.

Recommendations I haven't seen here listed (so I avoided NES almost entirely):

• (NES,Master System,PC) Pipe Dream:, which is quite fun if you like puzzles.

• The Colonel's Bequest: A Laura Bow Mystery. It is one of the most beloved adventure games from this era and probably one of the best detective games ever made. Obviously it suffers a bit from an outdated UI but I find the EGA graphics ingenious and charming, doing more with less.

• (Amiga,DOS, Atari ST)Defender of the Crown: If as a kid you liked the middle ages, then this would be what you would think of: fighting jousts, siegeing castles with catapults, raid castles and rescuing Saxon maidens. It is a difficult game though.

• (Everywhere)Maniac Mansion: I think no one mentioned it, but either way it is a fantastic adventure worth your time, not all ports are equal though.

• (FM Towns,TurboGrafx,Atari ST, Amiga, DOS)Loom: A unique graphic adventure where you use music to create magic and solve riddles. Recommended FM Towns for the music, though some ports have voice dialogs which are also great.

• (Master System,Arcade)Fantasy Zone II: I didn't see a Master System until I was older, but it has few gems worth mentioning, like this wacky shoot-'em-up that has a lot to offer.

• (Amiga, Genesis remake)Speedball 2:Brutal Deluxe: A bit cheating as it was released in 1990, but both a fantastic sports game and probably one of the few multiplayer games here.

• (Amiga,DOS)North and South: A civil war strategy game with comic style elements, a very streamlined strategy, and some arcade mini-games.

• (Genesis)Herzog Zwei: Mix of real-time strategy and shot-'em-up in a well cared package, good graphics, decent sound and challenging enough to keep you playing for a while.

• (PC, Genesis remake)688 Attack Sub: If you're into simulators and like those tense submarine warfare movies, this is a decent choice. The Genesis remake is newer (post 89) but it is mostly the same with a coat of paint.

• (Amiga)Captain Blood: A weird euro game where you are traveling to multiple alien worlds trying to find your clones to suck out their lifeforce and having to learn alien languages to do so. Very Giger-esque. You can blow-up planets.

• (Master System)Phantasy Star: I got it out of curiosity and while it is rough like the earlier Final Fantasy games, has a nice story and a fun customization approach. In addition if you like this one, check out Phantasy Star II for Genesis (1989).

• (Everywhere?)Marble Madness:A game made to torture you with a marble going through a maze full of traps, but it's so simple to pick and play that it's hard to say no. (Not all ports are equally fun)

• (PC,Atari ST, some consoles?) Gauntlet 2: Unpretentious maze combat with nice multiplayer capabilities. Find keys, kill monsters, get gold.

• (Atari ST, Amiga, PC)Millenium 2.2: Strategy game about being a Moon colony in a universe where Earth got asteroid treatment and Mars is full of assholes. Incredible UI (for its time and complexity) and excellent music in the ST version.

• (Computers and 8-bit consoles)Treasure Island Dizzy: Charming graphics, fun puzzles, so-so platforming, you're an egg.

##Maybe category:

• (Genesis)Sword of Vermillion: It's a very contentious game as it was praised a lot for not being turn-based, but the arcadey mechanics now seem a bit bland. It's a decent RPG from that era, and the early 16-bit graphics are a welcome addition.

• (Maybe everywhere?)The Bard's Tale III: It won't blow your mind because it was a very loved precursor of the western RPG and has both a nice format and consistent pace. That said, the Bard's Tale series has always been known to be very hard.

• (Master System)Alex Kidd in Miracle World: It's like Super Mario but with larger, well detailed sprites and fun mechanics, maybe some of the best to offer by this console before the 90s.

• (Amiga)International Karate+: It is a very very simplistic fighting game that's easy to pick up but hard to master. There's better though in the 90s.

• (Amiga)Laser Squad: Great game at the time, spoiled only by the existence of XCOM 5 years later and the fact that the there are very few missions. The UI is rough.

Bubble Bobble

Leisure Suit Larry 1-4

Secret of Monkey Island (released in 1990 actually, but close enough)

Barbarian (1987)

Batman (1989)

Space Quest and King's Quest, at least some of each series but I don't remember which ones.

Just a few I remember from my old Amiga.

Get the emulator BbebEm: http://www.mkw.me.uk/beebem/

Developed for Windows, but ported to a bunch of other systems and OSes.

Then go to the BBC Micro Games Archive. [edit because I forgot the link] https://bbcmicro.co.uk/index.php?atoz=C

There are a tonne of games to download, but I’m going to recommend 2, both of which are still incredibly fun to this day.

The first is Citadel, which is a puzzle platformer. Would probably be called a Metroidvania today, as the formula is exploring a labyrinth of screens to find keys, objects, and solve puzzles, but it was actually released a year before either Metroid or Castlevania.

The second is Chuckie Egg. This is a much more straight-forward “one screen is one level” platformer where you have to dodge enemies and collect objects before a timer runs out. Where this stands out from the pack is the physics. Your character is really bouncy when jumping against walls and platforms, which allows you to fling yourself around the stage in a way that’s really fun.

And, if you’ve never played it, I recommend last year’s UFO50 on Steam. The concept is that some game designers found a forgotten 80s console from forgotten studio UFO Games along with 50 cartridges and ported them over. So what you get for £15 is 50 8-bit games, all of which have some modern ideas but which could conceivably have been released in the 80s. It’s incredible value for money, and there’s even a kind of meta-narrative as you watch the studio’s games get more sophisticated over time (for example, the first release doesn’t have any background music) and characters return. And, of course, there’s a huge variety of styles and genres.

It’s not made before the 90s, but if you’re after that feel rather than necessarily specifically games which were actually made then, then UFO 50 is very much worth your money and time. You’ll honestly marvel at how ridiculously underpriced it is.

As a last note, if you are at all interested in archaeology, then Elite Dangerous is basically a modern port of the original BBC Micro game. If you’ve played the former and boot up the latter, you might be surprised how little has actually changed and how much they stretched computing technology to fit that entire game into 8 bits and 16Mb of RAM.

But it really all you’re after is strictly just games made before the 90s which still play well, then try Citadel and Chuckie Egg. The emulator & ROMs are all free.

Blaster Master

Intellivision: Minotaur - Treasure of Tarmin in 1982

Bonk's Adventure for PC Engine/Turbo Grafx 16 was the game that sold that console. It's brightly colored, has fun graphics and large sprites, and easy to pick up. It's pretty easy, and not very long, but it's quite fun. Also since the controllers on that console had a built-in switch to enable turbo on the buttons, the game is built with that in mind. The sequels were released after 1990, but are also quite fun and each add something to the previous games.

Zork (1980), and Nethack (1987) are fun adventures.

Really hot take here: Super Mario Bros (you didn't mention it in your list).

For a game from the '80s on the limited hardware available at the time, they really put a lot of work into the mechanics of the platforming. It's an incredibly responsive game compared to its contemporaries.

• Hero’s Quest: So You Want to Be a Hero
• ~~Quest for Glory II~~
• Duke Nukem
• Adventure
• Sim City
• Lode Runner
• The Oregon Trail
• Boulder Dash
• Where in the World is Carmen Sandiego?

Qbert, Space Fury, Looping

Mother/"EarthBound Beginnings" definitively has the late 80s/early 90s RPG smell with its grindiness and rocky difficulty curve, but is still pretty damn good if that's not a dealbreaker. The official translation came out in 2014, but is reasonably accurate.

Gradius and especially Gradius 2 are classic shmups for a reason, but the much bigger hitboxes take some real adjusting if you're used to modern bullet hell ones.

Mike Tyson's Punch-Out!! (1987)

I think Mega Man 2 (1988, NES) is marvelous, and still holds up. If you're interested in arcade emulation (eg Mame), NewZealand Story is fantastic (also 1988). Good graphics for the time, great music, and cute character design.

Faxanadu

The Revenge of Shinobi (Sega Genesis)

For games that "hold up" look at arcade games. So install mame and go nuts. Or buy one of those cheap "3000in1" arcade joystick systems which plug into your tv. Arcade games really are better played with the arcade "ball stick" and buttons.

Then if you insist on PC, anything by Sid Meier, and then all the quest games by Sierra.

M.U.L.E. (1983) still holds up, though I'd appreciate some QOL improvements. It's a multiplayer game where you develop your production and then sell your commodities at auction to the other players (or what the bank will pay as minimum). The theme song is a banger.

Sid Meyer's Covert Action is a fun espionage game. Break-ins, wiretapping, following clues, etc. Released in 1990, so on the line.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Midnight_Magic_(Atari_2600)

• Atari Paperboy (there were various ports but the arcade version is the best one IMO). It's fun, unique with no real successor (more are like Frogger).
• Ghosts n Goblins, the 1985 original (there are modern instalments but I think the original is just as fun, just hard af for a filthy casual like me).

• Sid Meier's Pirates!
• Centipede
• OutRun
• Spy Hunter