Joust (1982)

In an episode of Robot Chicken, one of the skits features a scene from Joust, where the player stumbles into the cave-like arena as computer controlled enemies fly about randomly. After a few moments the player says aloud, "What the f*** is going on here?" Joust is a bizarre little game in which the player sits atop on an ostrich that can fly. Your goal is to clear the screen by steering your own bird-like steed on top of the enemy players, goring them with your lance, and collect the eggs they leave behind before they hatch.

Er, huh?

Phoenix (1980)

Anther year, another variation on Space Invaders. At first blush, Phoenix is no different from Taito's classic shooter and Galaga. However, one unique game mechanic separates this title from the others. While most games gave you no choice but to lose a life when hit by a falling alien, Phoenix allowed you to activate a shield that would give you a brief moment of invincibility. Talk about a game changer! No more having to concede defeat so easily!

Gorf (1981)

Gorf is an interesting little game because it makes no attempt to persuade players that it is anything but an homage to famous arcade games. Broken up into five separate levels, the game begins with a level taken right out of Space Invaders as a grounded ship must defeat a wave of aliens before they have a chance to breach your shields. In another level, your ship floats in space while shooting down alien ships, a scene that very much resembles Galaxian.

Missile Command (1980)

Missile Command offers up a simple premise: atomic bombs are falling from the sky and it's your job to use defense weaponry to protect your cities from getting blasted away by nuclear fire. To make things interesting, your three defense stations only have a limited number of ammunition, so you've got to plan on how to make the most use of your countermeasures that explode into large colorful clouds, decimating anything within their radius. Like Defender, Missile Command requires planning and timing. Anything less makes this game incredibly frustrating and over quickly.

Defender (1980)

Defender! I ended up playing this game a bit out of order, tackling its sequel (Stargate) earlier on the list. The funny thing is, both games look exactly alike that it is difficult to differentiate the two. Both games feature the same style of play: one button operates your ship's thrusters while the other two will switch your craft's direction (left or right). The goal of the game, if you can suss it out, is to prevent aliens from coming down and whisking humans away.

Asteroids (1979)

Asteroids isn't much to look at, but it is incredibly fun to play. The version many people are familiar with is the arcade version where a small, white vector triangle stood alone in destroying scores of asteroids that, when shot, broke into smaller, deadlier pieces. The version I played was much different. The Atari 5600 eschews the vector graphics in favor of something a bit more colorful.

Lunar Lander (1979)

I can't think of any game from the 1970s that was harder than Lunar Lander. Although a pioneer in gaming for its use of physics, it was very difficult for those without patience and a steady hand. The goal of the game was to guide a lunar module as it floats towards the rocky surface of the moon. Ideally, you'll want to land your ship on various flat surfaces marked by score modifiers. Lunar Lander is less of a game and more of a simulator, as you had to manage fuel consumption and take your craft's speed into consideration.

Frogger (1981)

Another arcade classic, Konami's mega hit had an allure to it because the game seemed really easy. There are no aliens swooping down from the top of the screen, no villainous creatures looking for their next meal. Instead, your frog must brave the elements and while the game looked simple enough, it relied on the player's tendency to try and rush through the round because moving too quickly without any forethought led to repeated mistakes.

Adventure (1979)

Here's a bit of fun trivia: Adventure is the first video game to contain an Easter Egg. See, back in the day, video game publishers didn't want to attribute games to their authors and as such, many programmers didn't get the recognition they deserved. Because of this, Warren Robinett, Adventure's designer, hid the credits of the game in a secret room. Adventure was an adaptation of the text adventure game Colossal Cave Adventure with (basic) visuals replacing the text.

Ms. Pac-Man (1981)

While Ms. Pac-Man isn't new to me, I was surprised to discover that it was not developed by Namco. I mean, it looks like Pac-Man and sounds like Pac-Man, but instead of Namco creating the sequel to their wildly successful arcade game, Ms. Pac-Man was the result of a few individuals hacking the original game code in order to create more mazes and other enhancements. Midway, the American distributor for Pac-Man, saw an opportunity here and purchased the game (then called Crazy Otto), slapped on lipstick and a bow and the rest, as they say, was history.

Scramble (1981)

Scramble is frustrating. At first glance, it looks very much like a side scrolling shoot 'em up in the vein of R-Type but in reality, the game is structured in such a way that constant death will always be there to greet you unless you follow the its rules. The game presents you with a varying landscape occupied by all sorts of defenses you'll have to weave past or shoot in order to survive. The goal isn't to blow everything up on the screen, but merely get through five stages in order to reach the real target, the enemy's base. Along the way, you'll have to destroy fuel depots in order to replenish your supply.

Qix (1981)

This is a game I've never heard before, but the idea behind Qix is pretty easy to understand and a whole lot of fun to play. The goal is to fill up the screen by drawing a series of lines to create shapes while avoiding small spark-like entities that will hunt you down. The greater danger, however, is the swirling energy field that moves about randomly across the screen. If it strikes one of your lines while you're in the process of filling the screen, you lose a life.

Combat (1977)

As I mentioned a few posts back, my memories of the Atari are pretty hazy. Apart from Pitfall and  Breakout, I don't ever recall playing many games on the console. As such, I've never heard of the game Combat even though it was bundled with the machine. Combat is one of the earliest multiplayer games after Pong which allowed two players to battle it out as tanks or planes in a number of different screens.

Donkey Kong (1980)

One of Shigeru Miyamoto's greatest creations, Donkey Kong is the game that help propel Nintendo to the company it is today. It introduced players to a spry Italian plumber with a penchant for rescuing the damsel in distress and served as a plot device for the documentary A Fistful of Quarters. As accessible as the game appears, advancement requires patience, skill and memorization. This is a game I've always struggled with and I'm ashamed to say that during my session, I couldn't get past the first level!

Centipede (1980)

When I was growing up, one of the restaurants my parent's would take my brother and I was this dinky little steakhouse/lounge that had a cocktail Centipede machine that I would beg to play every single visit. The funny thing is, no matter how many times I played the game I never really understood what, exactly, was going on. All I knew was that it was fun to spin the trackball and shoot the fast moving centipede while dodging spiders and clearing out mushrooms.

Galaxian (1979)

It feels a little weird playing Galaxian after Galaga. While it does let me see the roots of Galaga, it showed me that the 1981 sequel was much better than the original.  That said, it's an important game because it one-upped Taito's Space Invaders. While Space Invaders offered the player a monochrome alien invasion that followed a simple pattern, Galaxian introduced a full color game and wild, suicidal alien creatures.

The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy (1984)

One of my favorite novels is Douglas Adams' classic, The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy. The book has a long and storied history, as it has been adapted into nearly every single media format known to man. Apart from the radio program, one of the more famous incarnations of the story was the text adventure game created by Infocom in 1984. Douglas Adams teamed up with Steve Meretzky to adapt the story into a video game which was notorious for being both difficult and illogical. If you've experienced the game before, you'll know that its pretty difficult to get past the very first location in the game without the house getting knocked down. Even with my knowledge and near memorization of the story, I found the game really hard to get through.

Space Invaders (1978)

What can be said about Space Invaders? Developed for the arcade by Taito, the game grew to such popularity that, according to the 1,001 Games To Play book, Japan's Ministry of Finance had to mint more 100-yen coins because people kept feeding them into the slots. As you'll see in the video (warning: no sound) after the break, Space Invaders is deviously simple and absolutely terrifying!

Commando (1985)

Although I played this at the Camelot arcade, I was already familiar with Capcom's Commando because I played it constantly on the Commodore 64. While most vertical scrolling shooters put you in the cockpit of a bomber or space age fighter, Commando would keep your feet planted on the ground as you waged a one man, Rambo-style assault on an enemy facility in some unnamed country.

Dig Dug (1982)

Another Namco classic, Dig Dug is an interesting game because the goal isn't so much to run away from enemies but to hunt and kill them by, alarmingly, filling the creatures up with air until they explode. Because there is no maze to get through, Dig Dug allows you to create your own routes and set up traps so that rocks would fall into the tunnels you're digging and crush the monsters. To ensure that you didn't have all the advantages, if you took too long to encounter an enemy, they would burrow out of their tunnels and hunt you down.

Pac-Man (1980)

Like Pong, Pac-Man is a game that doesn't need an introduction. Developed by Namco in 1980, Pac-Man's humble origins came about when designer Toru Iwatani took a slice of pizza and noticed the shape of the remaining pie. Overnight, Pac-Man became a sensation and started the trend of companies building themselves up around a central mascot. This would later happen with Nintendo, Sega and Microsoft, but Pac-Man continues to be gaming's most popular character.

Stargate (1981)

After celebrating Father's Day with my folks, my girlfriend and I got in the car and made our way to Camelot, a miniature golf course/arcade/pizzeria. It's been a good handful of years since the last time I visited the place, so while I knew they had games, I wasn't sure what I could expect to be there after all this time. I was somewhat dismayed to find that the majority of the arcade floor was taken up by a strange, two lane bowling game surrounded by Dance Dance Revolution, Guitar Hero and ticket games. However, I did manage to strike bronze by finding an Ultrarcade machine.

Galaga (1981)

I realize that I'm jumping ahead a little bit, but I expect that will be the norm when it comes to seeking out these arcade games out in the wild. Last night, my girlfriend and I decided to drive around looking for arcades (totally her idea!) and we stopped by one of the local miniature golf courses to poke our noses around. Amidst the number of Dance Dance Revolution and ticket games, we spotted a perfectly good Galaga machine sitting next to a Ms. Pac-Man cabinet (which was broken, damn!). Developed by Midway in 1981, the game can best be described as an action-oriented Space Invaders. 

Boot Hill (1977)

If video games developed today have taught us anything, it's that imitation is the sincerest form of flattery. Look at all of the X-ville clones out there today that attempt to capitalize on the success of the original. World of Warcraft is a perfect example. Blizzard's MMO went on to make millions of dollars practically overnight and many developers tried to capture lightning in a bottle with their own MMOs only to fail and become free to play. Situations like this aren't new and Boot Hill is a good example of that.

Pong (1972)

Pong is a game that needs no introduction. While it is easy for us to look back and laugh at just how quaint the game was, you can't ignore the impact it had on people who were seeing video games for the first time. It was incredibly easy, as players simply had to put a little English on the ball in order to get the highest score. Sadly, I had to resort to online emulation for this one because I don't have access to an Atari machine. Because Pong is such an important game, finding an online version was a simple task.

Breakout (1976)

Next on the list is Atari's Breakout, a game that should be familiar to a lot of people. Many of my memories of the Atari system are pretty hazy, but I recall watching my uncle play this simplistic game. A variant of Pong, you had to move the paddle left and right in order to break through a multi-layered wall.

The Oregon Trail (1971)

Wow, this game certainly takes me way back. I still remember sitting in the computer lab at Wittmann Elementary School, excited that the class got to take a break from math, history and social studies in order to player computer games. Despite my young age, I was no stranger to computer gaming thanks to my dad letting me watch and play his games on the Commodore 64. The Oregon Trail was the best kind of edutainment: even though the game presented life in the pioneer days in a somewhat heavy handed way, it was still a fun experience to play through. The challenge was to see your crew through the entire trail or watch as they suffer and languish from dysentery (which happened a lot in my case)...

An Introduction

Greetings folks!

LibrarianGMR here. The inspiration for this blog comes from a book I picked up last month called 1,001 Video Games To Play Before You Die, a massive tome of greatest hits compiled by Tony Mott. The book spans the entire history of gaming (up until 2010, at least) and out of all the different games out there, Mott created a core gaming list that everyone should experience in their lifetime. I ran through the online version of the list while waiting for the book to arrive and discovered that I had conquered about 320 games out of 1,001. It wasn't long before I started thinking, "Huh, maybe I should play through the remaining titles?" A daunting task, sure, but one I thought could be fun and give me the opportunity to play the games I missed out on for one reason or another.

What sort of content can you expect to see here? Each post will give a rundown of the game along with how it was acquired. Browsing the list, I immediately recognized a significant roadblock: many of the games, especially those for PC and first generation consoles, are too old and somewhat difficult to find. I will do all that I can to track down the original versions and stay away from ROMs or Java-based emulation unless needed for a last resort. The entries posted on this blog won't offer comprehensive reviews, but instead present thoughts and musings of each title as well as their place in the master list.

So there you have it! 640+ games to play through before I complete the list. Will I succeed? Will I crack under the pressure? Will I have fun? Only time will tell!

Update: When I started this little project, the intention was to simply check off the games listed in Mott's book that I haven't played. The only problem with that is I can't just write about 640+ games for a blog called 1,001 Games Played! With that in mind, I've decided to just go ahead and do all 1,001 titles.

What, exactly, have I gotten myself into?