Yesteryear GOTY Discussion [1985 Edition]

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Specifically NES Wrecking Crew? Or its predecessor Vs. Wrecking Crew?

There is never a bad excuse for me to chill for Famidaily, so if you want to dive in the Famicom Boom of 1985, here is the full playlist for the year in Family Computer software.

Anyway, if Criterion asked me, my vote would go to The Super Mario Bros. Game. But since Insert Credit is asking instead, I have to rep my boy and vote in Xanadu, first released on the PC-8801.

Now, I didn’t play the game in 1985, obviously. I discovered Xanadu via the Falcom Classics collection on the SegaSaturn in 1998, and I must admit I am specifically enamored with the remake of the game (called Saturn Mode) available in this version. The edges were smoothed just enough to maintain the oldschool charm of the original game, but tons of little quality of life improvements made it possible to enjoy the experience without banging my head too much against the walls of game design obsolescence.

The original is very rough by modern standards, but its influence and place on Japanese game design is obvious in the context of 1985, just after Druaga, Hydlide and Ultima III but before Zelda, Dragon Quest and Ys. It’s also, more importantly, the game that built Falcom as we know it! There is no Ys, no Sorcerian and no Sora no Kiseki without Xanadu. As a consequence, possibly no Koshiro Yūzo in video games and definitely no Quintet.

Here is a great overview of the original version that I have probably shared on Insert Credit already two or three times.

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When I think of video games in 1985, there is one thing that comes to mind

(Serious response soon, but it’ll probably just be Super Mario Bros. Despite everything)

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Brb gotta play A Mind Forever Voyaging so I can vote for it

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@Bbtone If I remember correctly, it’s the game that had the biggest direct influence on Sam Barlow of Immortality and Her Story’s fame.

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Would win if we voted for best game TITLE of the year. Or ever.

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I’ve gone back and forth on this, but this morning I’ll pick Hang-On. It was the coolest game in the arcade, even before I was big enough to ride it. It is a game that can be ported (including in Shenmue) but will never quite feel like riding a machine while facing a screen.

I also thought about another racing game, one that trades graphics for scale (The Great American Cross-Country Road Race). But this is one where graphics and the total experience win.

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I’m waking up to some great choices!!!

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Well thanks to the video posted by @Death_Strandicoot I don’t think I can in good conscience stay with Tetris 1985. The game itself is still good, but I know that if I sat down and played that version of it I wouldn’t last very long.

I’m switching my vote to Bomberman, which I know I could still sit down and play for a lengthy session and have a great time.

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The 1985 one, really!? The one before multiplayer was added to the series? The Common Era of Bomberman begins with the reboot of the series, Bomberman for the PC Engine (1990).

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Fucking hell. Should I opt out of this because I’m too stupid

I did think this was the 1990 one. I’m 0/2

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Worth noting that all undecided votes will go towards Ninja Princess by default

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Whole heartedly agree with this

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this does look awesome and I’ve never played it but I’m willing to cut my losses and give this to you.

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Ninja Princess surprise sweep!!! She’s taking home the gold!!!

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Going forward I will be requiring bribes for my vote but as a feminist I am ok with this

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Some choice arcade games this year, but I’m gonna have to go for City Connection.

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The sidescrolling driving game where you play as a girl (Clarice) meticulously sight-seeing every last tile of famous locations around the world. However, while doing so, the cops are after her, presumably for breaking traffic rules like jumping with the car. God forbid girls do anything!

City Connection is not only goofy and imaginative, but also a ton of fun. I get lost playing this for long stretches, it’s very satisfying once you start to get the controls down. Also, what an aesthetic beast. Just look at that Hiroshi Nagai city pop flyer! Perfection.

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Runner-ups:
The Fairyland Story - Tricky proto-Bubble Bobble platformer, lacks multiplayer, you play as a little witch, adorable!
Teddy Boy Blues - Psychedelic platform shooting game in recursive toyland, you gotta shoot enemies and collect their remains before they resurrect, honestly one of the best arcade games ever made, although I always play the Mega Drive modem port so going with the original didn’t feel right.

Special shout-out to Baraduke for doing the ending girl reveal before Metroid and Dragon Buster for basically inventing Monster World before we even had Wonder Boy.

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Ok.

Fine.

I’ll continue to be the basic bitch among all the hipsters.

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Shigeru Miyamoto’s Super Mario Bros. isn’t just the best game of 1985. On the day of its release, it was the best game ever made.

It has so much going on.

Mario himself controls amazingly. He has momentum, skids to a stop, jumps further when he’s running and jumps higher when you hold the A button longer. He feels weighty and good in a way video games just didn’t feel in 1985.

The world is full of imagination and joy. I know we take a lot of this for granted now, but mushrooms that make you grow? Question mark blocks? Traveling through pipes? A huge flagpole at the end of a stage? Jumping on turtles and then kicking their shells? Flowers that let you shoot fireballs? Stars that turn you invincible? Weird turtle guys that jump around and throw hammers? Bullets with faces? I mean, there’s so much creativity on display here, and it was all NEW in 1985.

The game had 8 worlds, each with 4 levels. That’s 32 stages. Now they’re not all 100% unique, but it’s still pretty unheard of for the era.

Koji Kondo’s iconic score is cheerful and catchy, even if I don’t like the Koopa castle theme.

It has Princess Toadstool’s first appearance, rockin those finger guns.

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Secrets are everywhere. I’m not sure what secrets were like in games before SMB, but after SMB, they were like this.

The hidden ? blocks and secret pipe/vine paths make the world feel alive and unknowable. Players go out of bounds and the game rewards them with a warp zone that lets them cheat and skip some levels. This felt enormous. Was SMB the first game to intentionally reward players for going out of bounds? I don’t know, but it was certainly my first experience.

You can get infinite lives by bopping on a koopa shell on stairs, you can get fireworks by timing your flagpole jump.

There is a remixed harder version you can unlock by beating the game! You can secretly use continues by holding the A button on the start screen after losing all your lives.

This is the most complete package a game had ever been. There’s just no peer among its contemporaries.

It’s Super.

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This one’s a tough one for me. I don’t have a ton of experience with this era in general (I’m a 1984 baby), which narrows my potential vote down to one of the following, if I stick to things I’ve played long enough to have some sort of opinion on:

  • Gauntlet
  • Gradius
  • Ghosts 'n Goblins
  • The Bard’s Tale
  • Super Mario Bros.
  • The Oregon Trail

As much as the CRPG nerd in me wants to give it to something like The Bard’s Tale or Ultima IV, they feel more like footnotes than landmark entries for the year. Super Mario Bros. feels a little too obvious even if it is quite demonstrably good, and the others are neat (I had a lot of fun with Gauntlet in particular, but it didn’t exactly stick with me). Instead, I’m going to give my vote to The Oregon Trail, particularly for what I see as its broader impact

That game was pretty common to come across in schools, which means a lot of people will have played it who might otherwise not played many video games as children, and even kids who had an NES or Atari at home might not have gotten much other experience with PC games. On a personal level, the game’s probably at least partially responsible for my adolescent love of simulation games like those from Maxis and my love of RPGs with narrative branching and the like, too

It’s probably also part of why I lean more toward TTRPG systems that have a hint of simulation in their design, too, now that I think about it

But anyway, that’s my vote!

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dang that flyer is so good

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our four year old saw the city connection poster on my phone and immediately said “is that a game? I want to play that game!” xD

I couldn’t say no to that, so we just played a few rounds of the arcade archives version together <3

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