Strachey's List - 1978
The Most Consequential Games of All-Time
Strachey’s List is my list of the most acclaimed, consequential, and influential titles of all time. There is a max limit of 20 games per year. As always, this is all my opinion and research.
Atari Football
While pretty basic when viewed today, Atari Football was a successful game that established the soon to come dominance of football video games in the United States. For the time, the game provided a way to play football by letting you pick formations to execute your play. It even had multiplayer. The game came at a time when the NFL was starting to threaten baseball’s hold on America. It’s essentially Madden before Madden was a thing.
Avalanche
One of those earlier simple games that actually has impact to the industry long term. In Avalanche, you try to catch falling rocks to get the highest potential score. The game would get a host of copycat clones, and the mechanics are still used to this day in many party games and mini games. Sometimes, even the simplest game can have impact.
Fire Truck
A unique game that encourages you to play with a friend, with each of you controlling the front and/or rear of the truck as you speed across the road and avoid hitting oil slicks, parked cars, and crashing. It also used multi-directional scrolling, one of the first games to do so. Fire Truck was a hit in the arcades thanks to its innovative idea of what today gamers call co-op gameplay. The game also released a version just for single player use called Smokey Joe.
Frogs
At the time of release, Frogs was one of the more beautiful games you could play in the arcades. The game’s background with the lilypads and water popped with color. This was achieve using a mirrored projection that created the illusion the backdrop was part of the game’s core graphics. The concept is to hop around the pads and catch insects to eat for the highest score. Some would argue the game is the first instance of a video game character being able to jump. Like all the successful games of the era, many copycats would come and eventually a more famous frog character and game would surpass it in the memories of gamers, but Frogs deserves credit for pushing graphics and making jumping a core part of many video games.
Gee Bee
Created by the legendary and well respect game developer Toru Iwatani, Gee Bee would put Namco on the map and would provide the launching point for Iwatani to develop the future game Pac-Man. The game was a new way to play a Breakout type of title, copying the aspect of hitting a ball to hit certain blocks to get points. However, the game adds a twist of adding pinball type of elements. The game didn’t take off in North America but had a solid revenue in Japan. It put Namco on the map as a premier Japanese game company and the company put their trust on Iwatani, who became known for thinking outside the box when making his games.
Multi-User Dungeon (MUD)
Text-based adventure games were not done yet in the market. Essex University’s Roy Trubshaw and Richard Bartle developed Multi-User Dungeon from inspiration they got from Colossal Cave Adventure. The game plays similar but picked up popularity on several college campus on their computer networks. It was constantly iterated on and evolved, hence the shorten MUD title and adding a number after based on the version you were playing. While not as revolutionary as a Colossal Cave Adventure, it was still a solid adventure / fantasy title for the decade.
Space Invaders
After a brief disappearance on the list, the most import and iconic game developer of the 1970s is back in Tomohiro Nishikado. This time he would release his masterpiece. Space Invaders is one of the more fun and relatively addicting games released in the arcade golden age. You must stop waves of alien enemies as they come towards you horizontally and you shoot back at them with your lasers. The game became a massive sensation and what today would be called a viral hit. It would become one of the most profitable arcade video games of all-time and is seen as the starting point for the upcoming era in video games where graphics, ideas, and gameplay would begin to push for more than just simple looking titles. There is probably no game more impactful since Pong.