Patient Gamers

My two favorite arcade games of all time are UN Squadron and Hot Rod

UN Squadron is a side scrolling shooter by Capcom with a solid anime theme. My understanding is it's based on an Anime called Area 88. Quite the quarter eater, but if you like seeing GIANT machines and blasting them with your airplane, give it a go. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/U.N._Squadron

Hot Rod is a top down racing game by Sega. (The name is so generic that it can be hard to find.) The cool 'hook' on this game was that it was meant to be played with four players standing around a tabletop arcade cabinet, so every player was looking down on the screen. It also had the interesting note that the game never ended, it played much like a campaign where you are championing a racing team. Manage your power-ups, because they break down, and are often the wrong one for the next track (with the artificial difficulty that you can only change 1 part per race). At my home arcade, the difficulty was set low enough that I could loop the game until I got tired of standing, which definitely helped make it one of my go-to games.

I should add - the original version of this game plays kind of slow - there's a lot more focus on car control & driving clean lines. But Sega released a mod chip set for it later that doubled the game speed, which turns it into a 'just hang on & don't hit anything' type of racing. Both are fun, but it's like two different games. https://www.arcade-museum.com/Videogame/hot-rod

Metal Gear 1 & 2

MSX versions. Like from the MGS3 HD Collection.

Here are some greatly-known ones, primarily in arcades:

• Galaga. The ultimate refinement of early shmup design - before this there was Gorf, Galaxian and Space Invaders, all of which had good ideas but less happening for long term play. After this the genre took a turn towards scrolling games where more production values could be thrown at you. You can play Galplus or the other direct sequels, but it's more like different takes than improvement.
• Robotron 2084. Same thing as Galaga but for twin stick games which had a bit of ancestry in "characters moving and shooting" games like Berserk before Robotron, but didn't have it put together into the recognizable twin-stick scenario. The entire genre tries to glue more stuff onto the Robotron template, but it already has what is essential.
• Lode Runner, Boulder Dash. These are pioneers in "action puzzles on a grid with characters and level design", a genre of puzzle game which is hard to imagine not having now, and is essentially timeless. These two were directly preceded by "Space Panic" and "The Pit" in arcades, respectively, but it was on the home computers that these games found their refined and playable form.
• Sokoban. Sokoban, like Lode Runner and Boulder Dash, is a character puzzle on a grid, but with no arcade elements. Also timeless, though newer takes on Sokoban all add undo and other conveniences. Also worth mentioning with Sokoban is Pitman, which is like a turn-based Lode Runner. It had a nice visual update on Gameboy as "Catrap". (Early Gameboy releases are a reliable source of old games that people still craved a port of after 1989)
• Outrun. It's a simple arcade racer. Other games like Pole Position or Buggy Boy could substitute. But aesthetically speaking, the game is The One Everyone Remembers, definitely aged in its sprite graphics and FM sound but still a compelling vision of "driving into the sunset with your girlfriend", with no extra gimmicks like its 2000's sequel.
• Zork. A difficulty of exploring the adventure gaming genre is in how quickly it consolidated itself into genre tropes that emphasize niche forms of challenge. Zork, being one of the first entries in adventures, manages to keep it simple enough: there's a fantasy world to explore and puzzles and some random chance elements. The vocabulary is limited but doesn't strive to get in your way.
• Ultima 4. Roleplaying is probably the genre that is hardest to make recommendations for since it's gone through so many fashion trends. I pick this particular one as opposed to any other in the series because it hits a nice balance of conveying a unique roleplaying world and quest style(follow an ethical code to become an Avatar) versus being a simple and playable experience. Ultima never emphasized combat or grind although it has a little bit of that going on, which makes it unique among most 80's RPGs since the easiest way to pad out these games is to add punishing grinds and gotchas. Earlier Ultima entries are just simple(3 in particular still quite playable), later ones become more burdened by worldbuilding(5 is still worth trying if you want a challenging, sometimes confusing quest). The NES version, though not "authentic" to how the original Apple II game looks and feels, is probably the most accessible port of it. All the Ultima games rely on basic conventions of the genre during this period: write down all the dialogue for hints, make maps of each location. The puzzles are loosely structured and can be sequence broken by knowing what keywords to type or where to search.

And some lesser-known ones:

• Bill Williams' Alley Cat and Salmon Run. Two arcade games that engage with the lives of the titular animals. Relatively simple but creative and fun to play every time.
• Xagon. An arcade game for the Atari computers styled after the more popular arcade hit Q-Bert, this game uses hexagons instead of cubes and its sense of graphic design still works perfectly.
• The Return of Heracles. The approach to role playing in this game is really noteworthy since it figures things like a kind of board game - there is a lot of RNG, a lot of puzzle solutions that will get your character killed, forcing a new one to take their place - and you are expected to roll with it. When people say 80's games had teeth this is a good example of it. That might sound bad, but it's the same kind of tangible risk that made battle royale games blow up in the 2010's.
• Journey to the Planets. This is a game played because it is hyper abstract in the ways that only early 80's games were - the scale of objects, the vague representationality, the flashing colors and strange noises that only Ataris could do. The sense of raw experiment shines through this game, and while you'll probably become frustrated and give up very quickly, it's about the look and feel. Zelda came along and made things boring.
• Alternate Reality: The Dungeon. This was a high-minded, overambitious roleplaying project that got to its second game before giving up because of publisher issues. What's special about it? The depth of simulation, mainly. The first game, the City, had weather effects, diseases, alignment, reputation and seasons, but it was a kind of prelude to the Bethesda-style open world in that there were few explicit goals. The Dungeon added in a traditional questline chain, and explored the worldbuilding (a "kidnapped by aliens, forced to participate in a fantasy simulation" premise) in much more depth. If you are going to play one first person dungeon crawler from this period, this is the one I'd go with. It shows its age, but the atmosphere remains striking and unique. One of the first major encounters in the game is your doppleganger, who mirrors your own stats. You can get sick with the "Crystal Death" which makes you stronger but slower until you freeze. If your inventory is full, "The Devourer" will arrive to reclaim memory by consuming your items. The game has big ideas conveyed in a simple way, and the interface only has a few things that take effort to learn: you can get down to the business of grinding, mapmaking, hint collecting and puzzle solving pretty quickly.
• Project Firestart. This is one of those games that occasionally appears on lists of predecessors to modern survival horror. It's a very fully realized, cinematic take on how to do the genre, despite being stuck in side view and requiring disk swapping to move around the sci-fi, alien-infested ship. It was made for the wrong machine, TBH - it would have blown away a lot of people on Amiga or Genesis. The C64 graphics make it a little weaker aesthetically than it could have been. But I wouldn't call it obtuse or unplayable at all.

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.

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).

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).

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.

After searching one that I did play was called "Trade Wars" !

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.

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.

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.

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.

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

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.

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.

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.

• 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?

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.

Blaster Master

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

Faxanadu

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.

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.

The Revenge of Shinobi (Sega Genesis)

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

Intellivision: Minotaur - Treasure of Tarmin in 1982

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.

Zak McKracken and the Alien Mindbenders, LucasArts, 1988. It's a computer game though. It was never on the NES.

Deus Ex (2000) was popular for mashing together tabloid stories to make a story, but Zak did it first. And it was way cornier. You play a tabloid reporter who is sent to Seattle to investigate a two-headed squirrel when he learns of an alien invasion (whose leader is an Elvis impersonator). The game is awesome and IIRC you almost can't lose at it, at least not now. The game came with DRM in the form of codes written in black on maroon and it was hard to read; when the game asked for a code, if you got it wrong, you were sent to jail for copyright theft. The first time they'd let you out, but the second time ended the game. The one on GOG does not ask for codes. They took that out. You can also die in Egypt to the Sphinx. You can run out of air on Mars. You can soft lock the game on Mars (to avoid this, make sure each of the co-eds on Mars takes an extra tram token with her if she rides the tram, the token dispenser at the other end is broken).

Also, Zak can typically be had for about a buck on GOG sales.

Uninvited, ICOM Simulations, 1986. Another computer game, but this was ported to the NES, along with its more popular cousin, Shadowgate (also an 80s game, from 1987). Short if you know how to beat it. I think they both can be ran in like 20-30 minutes? Zak can be speed ran in about an hour and a half if you're good, and if you're lucky in the mazes, but I'm not sure what the records actually are. These games are long in how they took you ages to figure stuff out before the Internet was a thing.

Hack, 1984, high school students. Not to be confused with the .hack PS2 games (the anime they're based on which later became Sword Art Online). No, this was a top-down D&D type game and one of the first roguelikes (Rogue being the original). I never actually played Rogue though. And Hack was later rebranded to NetHack (though, it's not about hacking online) and you can play it on just about anything. Android and iOS ports exist. I don't think it's on consoles though. But it's a free game, anyone can play it right now. There's probably even a way to play it in your browser. For the longest time, I've said a modern port was impossible. Diablo was kind of based around the same idea (delving through randomly generated dungeons) but Diablo didn't do half the shit Hack did. Didn't do a quarter of the things. Noita is a more modern (Windows only IIRC) roguelike, but it's completely different in form. Still pretty varied in what all you can do. You'll be able to beat the main boss and complete the game after playing for a couple weeks and learning the game, but that is not the main goal of the game. I don't think anybody's figured that out yet. People are still figuring stuff out. There are still mysteries yet to be solved. To the best of my knowledge, Noita has not been "beaten" yet. As in... by anyone. Anyone who can prove it, anyway. Maybe the developers have done so. And maybe some idiot savant out there has, but hasn't publicised it yet. Anyway, Hack can be beat — you delve down 35+ levels, retrieve the Amulet of Yendor (that's Rodney backwards, but I don't know who that is if anyone), which only spawns past a certain level — and then escape with it. I think I did it once? Got the Amulet half a dozen times or more (but not a full dozen) and died many times taking it back up.