What is a canon? It’s an outdated concept from a time when we had to rely on scribes and a supply of vellum to record information. It’s what we choose to preserve.
Let’s make that choice together as a game. We’ll narrow our canon to just 12 games from 1986 that we are choosing to remember.
There are two rules.
You can only suggest one game per post. You have to wait until someone else makes a suggestion before you can make a new one.
You can only suggest a game if you have played it less than a month ago. (This used to read less than a week)
Dark Castle
Trinity
Batman
Bubble Bobble
Castlevania
Dragon Quest
Killed Until Dead
The Legend of Zelda
Metroid
Mighty Bomb Jack
OutRun
Rebelstar
Relics
Salamander
Spindizzy
Victory Road
Zanac
votes
Bubble Bobble - daphaknee
Dark Castle - captainlove, MintyJuffowup
The Legend of Zelda - LaurelSoup
OutRun - razorbeamz
Trinity - jsnlv, extrabastardformula
Mighty Bomb jack - extrabastardformula
Metroid - wourme
Killed Until Dead - MintyJuffowup
Castlevania - geist
Salamander - rasterradio
Batman - HOBO
Spindizzy - MintyJuffowup
Zanac - meauxdal
Rebelstar - MintyJuffowup
Victory Road - wourme
Relics - MintyJuffowup
I was playing that Gradius arcade collection the other day and I could have played salamander 1 (1986) but instead I played Gradius II and III and salamander 2.
I want to explain the reasoning behind the two rules. Rule 1 is there because I don’t need us to sprint to twelve. 1986 ended a long time ago. Canon building doesn’t end once we mention 12. It continues as long as people are interested. You can spend a post repeating someone’s recommendation and that will further solidify its place in our collective memories.
I imagine this thread will have two natural phases. The first is where we try to come up with unique recommendations. Maybe we go for a well-known classic. Maybe we discover something new.
The second is more viral. We encourage one another to experience or reexperience works. Because of rule 2, we all have to approach them with our current wisdom. We can’t rely on our memories.This is a real opportunity to notice something new.
Think of this thread like a conversation between us and the past.
okay i did this so i could say what my only answer is going to be because few games in general are more important to me than this game
its bubble bobble
bubble bobble!!! friendship game!! lying about items game “i was SURE the donut killed all the enemies when you collected it”! fast paced constantly changing scenery! slow trickle of newness all the way through the game!!! sick movement tech!!!
everyone agrees on the worst level!
i just played ten levels in a browser with the shittiest sound and i am definitely going back for more but in a better format. bubble bobble!! its the only game from 1986
To add to the conversation I think Dark Castle is probably the only game that resonates with me strongly (and thus is easily memorable) from this year. Zelda 1 sprung to mind as well but I find Dark Castle more interesting and they share the same pleasure of feeling like the possibility space of the game is secretly very large. I think Dark Castle pushes this further by also being horribly difficult. Even when we knew what to do, executing the plan felt like we were doing something we weren’t meant to do. Our character is so weak in a way the game has a lot of fun with at the expense of the player. It is perhaps spiritually appropriate that it shares its birth year with From Software. It also holds up aesthetically in a way I think other stuff from this year doesn’t for me. Not much looks quite like it and it’s not a style that gets emulated much.
I always thought the vocal bark when climbing was the guy saying ‘wink for me’ over and over
Having recently climbed deep into the “Where did Super Mario Bros come from” hole, I see Dark Castle as the apex of the evolutionary dead end of single screen platformers. Starting from the basis that Lode Runner is the correct way to make a platformer, they expanded that design out to its most maximalist level and attempted to graft storytelling onto it. It works as well as it can, but you can’t take it any further.
Infocom’s “Trinity” came out in 1986. Interactive fiction was already on the decline in the face of arcade and home console growth, but Brian Moriarty wrote what would one day be his highest-rated game on the IFDB. It might seem to be a portal fantasy like the isekai stories of the modern day, but Trinity’s surreal and mythological setting leans heavily into the metaphorical, portraying a psychogeographic exploration of the consequences of the invention of the atom bomb. It’s one hell of a game—and while my phone can play the online interpreter in landscape orientation, interacting with the sundial causes interpreter errors, due (I suspect) to a pop-up quote that my phone’s browser cannot handle.
My first exposure to Metroid was when my neighbor traded his bike for a Nintendo and a few games. Looking back, it’s kind of sad that he made that trade because a bike is a much better thing for a kid to have than a video game console.
I’d sleep over and we’d stay up very late playing games on a big CRT that sat right on the floor.
That particular friend is one I’d love to reconnect with but when he wrote me a letter after he moved away I didn’t have the foresight to keep the envelope and then a few years later I moved away myself.
