i just used wikpedia and memory
all japanese releases where appropriate because ‘america, lol’
I’m going to take a break from editing the top* in order to talk about 1980. This is one of the best years in play for three reasons: Japan is breaking out of its Space Invaders mold, Atari is pushing serious innovations in the arcade and Williams is coming up close behind, and the Apple II is nourishing a DIY scene of termites chewing away at the boundaries.
Out of this momentous year, I want to bring particular attention to The Prisoner.
It’s one of the first games designed by David Mullich, who Wikipedia is telling me also developed the Heroes of Might and Magic series. Well, before he did that, he made a trio of games that drip with cynicism and paranoia. In Network, you control a TV studio trying to maximize ratings; in Windfall, you are Chief Executive of an oil company trying to win big off the Oil Crisis; and in The Prisoner, you are a Number abandoned in purgatory.
Playing The Prisoner means being under constant coercion to compromise yourself, to give up. You exist in a complete world, unable to tell if it is too different or too similar to our own. There is a church that cannot offer salvation, a movie theater that cannot entertain, and a court that cannot carry out justice.
The Prisoner flourishes in its obscurity. You feel lost, lonely, and confused, just as you should.
Before I sat down to write this post, I thought I would put a game from this year on blast. That game was going to be Mystery House but when I remember the refrigerator art drawings in the game, I just don’t have it in me to say anything mean. You’re okay Mystery House
*please do not get the impression that I’ve been working on this uninterrupted
6 Likes
I have been moving the list onto Airtable in order to fit I want into a navigable space. My goal is to have it looking something like (I mean almost exactly like) Sight & Sound’s interface they made in 2018.
Something their system does that I hope to incorporate is it conveniently communicates which films are directed by women. This can and should be replicated and expanded to include other genders.
P.S. Would people be cool with this moving out of Axe and into KOP?
2 Likes
please do
1981 - Market Saturation and the Articulation of “Sperm Games”
I considered writing about something obscure or underpraised, but I really only want to talk about Eugene Jarvis’ Defender. There’s an old magazine from before the crash that Mr. Jarvis occasionally wrote for and he described “the sperm game,” a game with machismo designed for masochists. He clarifies that women can also be fans of sperm games. I think he can’t help using this gendered term because these games universally involve shooting and, well. You can also find quotes from him where he brags that the Time to Credit for Defender is about 30 seconds. That is, the average player will lose all their lives in 30 seconds. In that time frame, you will experience a dense layer of emotion ranging from panic to relief. It is overwhelming.
What makes this game the best of American arcade design is that the number of threats to the player are matched by the options the player is given. You can teleport away, you can smart bomb the screen. Control has an inertial, fluid range. It’s all in your power to win or lose.
One game I think is overrated from this year is Donkey Kong. I really like looking at the Rube Goldberg contraptions but movement is so stiff as to make me scream in pain. Miyamoto didn’t design for movement until he played Joust. I’m certain of that. Crazy Climber is better anyways.
7 Likes
1982: The year when Activision put rainbows on all their boxes
I’m gonna talk about three games for this year because I like each of them a lot and I don’t hear much chatter about them.
The first is Gravitar. The American tree of arcade games had its best harvest this year with Joust and Robotron 2084 already being mentioned. Gravitar gets less attention which is odd because it has a lot of modern ideas working for it. The level design is wonderful and you’re controlling with the blessed inertia based friction again. I’m particularly in love with the level select option. In order to warp ahead, you have to twist and shank the ship through a spiraled cavern in less than 30 seconds. Later the levels invert gravity, then become invisible. It rules.
I have a bad habit of comparing media to media. I’m going to do it twice because my nature is my nature. Rocky’s Boots is a Zachtronics game from the past. It’s aimed for children mostly but the latter stages are devious. A raccoon dances whenever you find a solution and i don’t think games have topped that reward since.
You have not played Zork III. The novelty of text adventures wore off after toying with the first one and you filed the rest away as curiosities only for the dedicated. You are me ten years ago. Zork III’s puzzles are beautifully designed, intricate mechanisms. They bear the fingerprints of truly alien minds. It is the closest I’ve experienced to a text-based Myst game. The prose is melancholic and weighty. I actually felt…feelings?
Overrated game of this year is…Pitfall. I mean it was probably good at the time and it’s quaint and charming but, like, why play it now? There are literally millions of platformers that exist, many of them more stimulating than this one! (I would never talk like this about Pitfall II or H.E.R.O. Those are dear friends)
5 Likes
Strania the Stella Machina best game of the ps3 360 generation
3 Likes
Back when everyone was going nuts about Zero Ranger I came away thinking “This isn’t nearly as good (or readable) as I remember Strania being but maybe I should play that again to make sure” so thank you Zero Ranger for inspiring me to play more Strania, which is probably the best shooter of the decade.
1 Like
Last night, as I waited to fall asleep, I wondered what modern shooter I should play. I have little knowledge of what’s been going on in the genre for the past twenty years so thank you!
1 Like