I need game recs and I need them NOW: 1985-1989 edition

video games
21

Wow, there are some great recommendations here already! I suppose I would just say that if you have a local retro arcade around you, make sure to pay it a visit this week.

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22

Iā€™m also a fan of Winter Games for the C64. One run-through of all the events might take up to an hour.

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23

Thank you all for the thoughtful responses, looking forward to checking these out. May have been misleading in the original post, Iā€™m looking to try games from all genres/platforms so donā€™t feel like you have to cater to shorter experiences! I was trying to convey that Iā€™m not being precious about finishing things but it came out wrong, I will indeed be dabbling in Dragon Quest and Ys. Iā€™ll also try to respond to recs if I have substantial thoughts about them. Thank you all so much again!

24

What a cool resource, thanks for sharing! Have no experience with pc games from this era and really want to try them, emulation was my biggest concern (the mac life is not an easy one) so this is great!

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25

Happy to help. Hope you get to discover a load of classic gems from all kinds of machines out there. Canā€™t wait to hear what you find and enjoy!

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26

Final Fight(1989, arcade)
Rescue: The Embassy Mission(1989, NES)
RoadBlasters(arcade, 1987)
Guerrilla War(arcade, 1987)
The Oregon Trail(1985, PC)

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27

I was thinking about this all weekend, so I have a few more unusual recommendations. I decided to only look at 1985 games because I had a feeling they might get less love than the other end of your request timeline:

-The Goonies (not the Famicom one, the Atari 8-bit computer game by Datasoft, which Iā€™ve always thought captured the movie well)
-The Eidolon (Lucasfilm Games, Atari 8-bit computers)
-Oh Shit! (ByteBusters, MSX)
-Peter Pack Rat (Atari, arcade)
-Thexder (all kinds of platforms, but the one Iā€™m thinking of was for Mac)
-Bounty Bob Strikes Back! (Big Five Software, Atari 8-bit computers)

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28

Lol yeah this one has to jump to the top of the list immediately

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29

Hereā€™s a few I donā€™t think have been mentioned yet that I played during that time frame and have fond memories of.

1985

  • Silent Service

1986

  • Alex Kidd in Miracle World

1987

  • Maniac Mansion

1988

  • F-19 Stealth Fighter

1989

  • SimCity
  • Their Finest Hour: The Battle of Britain

Technically, NetHack was released in 1987 but I did not play it until significantly later, and it received many changes and updates in that time.

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30

I think these are mostly/all repeats of other peopleā€™s suggestions, but:

Psycho World (MSX)
R-Type
Rolling Thunder (Arcade)
Wonder Boy in Monster Land (I prefer the SMS version to arcade)
Wonder Boy III: The Dragonā€™s Trap
Defender of the Crown
Wizball (C64)
Bubble Bobble
Power Strike/Aleste (SMS or MSX)

1 Like