Strachey's List - 1980

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.

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Adventure

One of the most important games in gaming history, Adventure has the player control an avatar to bring a chalice to the castle, traversing an open environment filled with monsters. The player could get eaten or stopped by dragons or a bat that can move stolen items. The creator, Warren Robinett, had dealt with issues making the game due to the Atari 2600’s limitations and issues with Atari corporate. Atari was against giving credit to its developers and programmers, so Robinett put what some consider the first video game easter egg - his name. Players could find his name in a secret room. This alone made the game’s status legendary and was a major plot point in book and film Ready Player One. The game was an early inspiration for many future fantasy and action adventure games. It went on to be one of Atari’s million plus unit sellers.

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Battlezone

With wire frame vector graphics, drive around a tank using the arcade cabinet’s two joysticks to traverse and take down obstacles. The game was a commercial success and received some awards from early gaming magazines. The 3D first-person vector styled graphics has helped to have some call it one of the first virtual reality games. The tank combat game earned a legacy as one of the premier early titles in the industry, and helped influence many future games.

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Crazy Balloon

The player controls a box, which has a balloon tied around it and swings back and forth as you traverse a spike filled maze. It was another pick and up play score focused title that obviously was built with taking as much quarters from players as it could. The game was one 1980’s successful arcade machines and has been packaged in later arcade compilations. With the industry moving on from these type of games later in the decade, this one came out just in time to take advantage of the popularity of the genre before it waned.

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Crazy Climber

This popular game has you climb up a massive skyscraper as enemies, monsters, and obstacles try to stop you. Why are they trying to stop you? Well, there’s no official story given as to why, but it’s an addicting title that became massively popular. This would also be the first of a new genre that would become known as “climbing games” and influence Donkey Kong. The game became one of the more financially successful arcade titles in 1980. It provided a great gameplay loop with challenge, but fun, and led the way for the new ideas coming into the industry for the the 1980s decade.

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Missile Command

The player has to defend six cities from destruction as ballistic missiles come down. It’s an easy and basic idea, but one that proved to be addicting and one of the year’s popular titles. It became a hit based on its colorful graphics and challenging gameplay. Later on, the game got many clones and remakes in the future.

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Mystery House

Mystery House is one of the first horror games released. It’s not exactly scary, being more of an adventure title. You traverse a mysterious house looking for treasure. Suddenly, dead people begin to appear and you must look for the murderer. The game is played with typing commands rather than moving the player. You’ll uncover secrets as you traverse the room. This is a pretty unique idea for a game at the time and I can see why it became popular. It’s also notable that it was created by Roberta Williams, making it one of the first titles with female involvement in the Strachey’s List series.

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Nintendo Game & Watch: Ball

Nintendo launched their Game & Watch handheld systems out to the market in 1980. The systems used similar LCD type technology that calculators used, offering many different games. The first one was called Ball, and introduced the concept, as well as the character Mr. Game and Watch. This simple juggling game became that match that would get the most infamous video game company to go from a toy company to revolutionizing the industry.

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Pac-Man

The game that became the first massive pop culture phenomenon and began to slowly but surely make video games more mainstream, Pac-Man stormed the market and became one of the most successful games of all time. The concept is simple, avoid ghosts that are chasing you in a maze structure, collecting as many dots as possible and even getting the chance to eat the ghosts back. The character of Pac-Man became the first really popular video game character and led to merchandising, cartoons, and a song.

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Rogue

Becoming popular with college students at the time, Rogue is a dungeon crawler that has players traverse enemy filled dungeons looking for weapons and treasure. As an adventurer you had to get to the bottom most level of the dungeon to retrieve an amulet. It was played with an overhead view rather than the text-based games most adventure titles of the time used. The game provided a template for the procedural generated concept and established the roguelike genre.

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Zork I

Zork I is actually more of a remake of a 1977 game that was more of a beta at the same time. This version was more of the true full release and became pretty popular with a cult following. It’s another text-based adventure game, but which received constant updates and re-releases. The game has the ability to turn into a multiplayer title, making it one of the first massively multiplayer adventure games. There would be more versions and sequels released in the future.

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