0020 - Zork I (1980)

0020 - Zork I (1980)

http://www.retrothing.com/2009/06/play-zork-online.html

Played: 13
Played before: No.
Heard of before: No.
Time spent: About an hour
Completed: Got under the house
Mastered (0-100%): 7%

Used platform: Online edition of the game, link is above.


Brief description: Text based adventure game.

Story: 3/10 You progress through a story, sort of. Things happen, you go places. Only, it's not part of a big plot or anything. You just do stuff, in order to get a score.
Gameplay: 2/10 I guess I'm just too young for the textbased games to work for me.
Sound: -/10 No sound.
Graphics: -/10 Text, but a nice DOS-type font.

Epic win: Climbing a tree.
Epic fail: The game. It just failed on me
Moment of strongest impact: None really.

Overall: 10%
I feel like a strong story is needed to make a text based game entertaining. No story was present here, ergo the came was kinda lame. I was, however, to my surprise, not the only one playing the game, as I came across multiple other players in the different rooms. Something supported by the online version of the game. Guess someone did really like this game back in the day.

0019 - Phoenix (1980)

0019 - Phoenix (1980)

The boss in level 5 10 15 ... of Phoenix

Played: 2011-13
Played before: No.
Heard of before: No.
Time spent: A couple of hours.
Completed: First round
Mastered (0-100%): 20%

Used platform: Emulator of the arcade cabinet, as I could not find this anywhere.


Brief description: This is another space shooter, with the player navigating a ship sideways on the bottom of a screen, and enemies appearing on top. This game has 5 different levels, with the 5'th being a boss battle against a giant UFO. Upon defeating the UFO, the levels loop, and you start over at a slightly higher difficulty. The players' ship can shoot, but also has a shield that makes it invulnerable, as well as immobile for a short period of time.

Story: 1/10 No story or explanation is given, you are just put into space, and off you go.
Gameplay: 6/10 While this game has different types of levels, the finish on the individual level is not that impressive. The intuitive precision and enemy formations of Galaga is nowhere to be seen. However, the variety of the levels and the addition of the shield is a plus.
Sound: 5/10 Some music before game start and between level loops. Nothing special. The sound effects are ok. Nothing more.
Graphics: 6/10 Decent looking, but I honestly doubt the boss in level 5 was that impressive even back then.

Epic win: Finishing the level loop twice. Made me feel nice.
Epic fail: Game over in first level. I have a skill level that makes me believe this should never happen to me in almost any game.
Moment of strongest impact: This never really hit me. The birds in level 3 and 4 are what made me panic the most i guess.

Overall: 58%
While this game should be praised for its diversity, the individual parts of it seems somewhat lacking, making the whole package less impressive.

0022 - Centipede (1980)

Played: Few times around 2012
Played before: No
Heard of before: No
Time spent: 1 hour?
Completed: No
Mastered (0-100%): 3%

Used platform: I played this game on a Chrome app for free, but also played it on the original arcade cabinet. However the trackball was a bit defective, ruining the experience a bit for me.

Brief description: You control a snakes head in the bottom a screen full of randomly placed mushrooms. From the top comes a centipede. It moves back and forth, changing direction whenever it hits a mushroom. You must shoot all of it segments to advance to the next screen. If you hit the centipede in the middle of its body, it splits up to two smaller centipedes. If you hit anything moving, and you die. Add random spiders appearing, and you have a 1980's arcade game.

Story: 1/10 makes no sense, and isn't necessary.
Gameplay: 3/10 I realize there is strategic elements to this game, but the fun escapes me.
Sound: 1/10 Really not something I remember as being a plus for the gaming experience.
Graphics: 4/10 Not worth mentioning.

Epic win: Making it to screen 2.
Epic fail: Realizing I don't care.
Moment of strongest impact: No such moment.

Overall: 20%
This is a a classic, but I don't see why. The graphics are dull compared to the likes of Space Invaders and Defender. Gameplaywise, I see nothing spectacular. The garden theme may be less violent on the surface, but underneath that, It's still about shooting stuff. I did not like this one bit. Can't even see why other people may have liked it.

0018 - Pac-Man (1980)

Played: Many times
Played before: Yes
Heard of before: Yes
Time spent: Many hours
Completed: No
Mastered (0-100%): 20%

Used platform: I have played this on many platforms including a clone on my old VIC-20. Most importantly however I have a played this game on an original arcade cabinet.

Brief description: No presentation needed really. Almost everybody have tried controlling the yellow guy with the big mouth. Tried to clear the maze of pills, while avoiding ghosts. This is one of the big stars up on the arcade night sky. More interesting, Pac-Man is one star who have almost disappeared  despite being one of the most recognized animated characters in the world.

Story: 4/10 None. You are not even told what and why you are eating.
Gameplay: 8/10 Frantic fast-paced gameplay with powerups ensured the success of this game.
Sound: 8/10 Basic but legendary. Most people will also recognize the theme song, although they might not be able to identify it.
Graphics: 6/10 Decent and in nice colors.

Epic win: Eating all the ghosts.
Epic fail: The fact that i haven't gotten that much better at this game over the years.
Moment of strongest impact: The first time you eat a large dot and realize you can now eat your enemies. The power!

Overall: 75%
This is a a classic, and one of the big ones. Well made and intuitive, it can be mastered, as there is no randomness in the movement of the ghost. Every single event in this game is caused by your actions, and will be the same the next time over. This fact has its charms. However, I feel that there is something missing to this game. I don't see exactly why it became so popular.

0017 - MUD Multi user dungeon (1980)

Played: 2011
Played before: No
Heard of before: Yes
Time spent: 2 hours approx.
Completed: No
Mastered (0-100%): 1%

Used platform: This I played online in my browser. The community seemed dead.

Brief description:  To my understanding this is text based WOW. This says a lot. It must have been hugely popular among those who were able to play it at the time. As I haven't played this with other people I have no idea what it was like. I think there is still a community for textbased multiplayer online rpg's, but I haven't checked them out, as they are probably far from the original game.

Story: -/10 Can't tell
Gameplay: -/10 Can't tell
Sound: -/10 None
Graphics: -/10 Putting on a number would be dumb.

Epic win: Getting on the server.
Epic fail: Realizing noone was out there.
Moment of strongest impact: Walking around in a dead online world.

Overall: 85% 
I give this game 85% for its multiplayer capabilities. This made gaming truly social, by allowing people to form groups, and play with and against eachother. Hats off to the makers.

0016 - Tempest (1980)

Played: 2011
Played before: No
Heard of before: No.
Time spent: 2 hours approx.
Completed: No
Mastered (0-100%): 10%

Used platform: This available for free on Google Chrome as an app. I failed to find an original arcade-machine.

Brief description:  This vector based game puts you in control of a vessel in the bottom of a tube. The tube can have any shape. You move your vessel around the edge of the tube, and try to keep enemies spawning at the far end of the tube from reaching your end. You have a standard shot and a giant blast in your arsenal. When you clear a level, you zoom through the tube, into space, and go to the edge of a new one. Very cool looking effect. Vector graphics continue to impress me even after 32 years. The enemies are nice and varied, and needs to be dealt with in their own fashion.

This is originally controlled by a spinning dial or button. I have no way of emulating these controls, so I guess my experience might be somewhat lacking.

Story: 4/10 No story here. The game just begins. However, defending your tube never seems pointless.
Gameplay: 6/10 Hard but fair. The differing shapes of the tube ensures variety.
Sound: 5/10 Nothing out of the unusual, except maybe for the sweeping sound as you zoom to the next level.
Graphics: 8/10 Vector graphics still look cool.

Epic win: The graphics and all the zooming.
Epic fail: Struggling a bit with the controls.
Moment of strongest impact: Zooming to the next level.

Overall: 75% 
Treading new ground and using a creative control scheme, this game succeeds in what it sets out to do. It looks quite unlike anything you've seen before, but still manages to make immediate sense to the player. An arcade success.

0015 - Rogue (1980)

Played: Summer 2011
Played before: No
Heard of before: Yes, I think so.
Time spent: 2 hours maybe.
Completed: No
Mastered (0-100%): 20%

Used platform: I found this on an online service, emulating the game. It was quite nice and easy to use actually.

Brief description:  This is a very very crude dungeon crawler. It has some of the features of the Diablo games. Randomly generated dungeons. Levels beneath levels of dungeons. Leveling up. Picking up unidentified items. The only thing is: This game has no Deckard Cain, and no way of identifying things without putting them on. It has insane monsters, and you have to eat to stay alive. Your objective is to retrieve a certain amulet of yendor, located on the bottom level.
Story: 5/10 There is a sense of mystery, and adventure. Based on what tiny systems this ran on, I think it was quite advanced for its time.
Gameplay: 7/10 This game is hard. Like in killing you based on random events hard. This might not be fair. But life isn't fair either. The random dungeons adds to the lifetime of the game.
Sound: -/10 Beeps. You know what I mean.
Graphics: 5/10 The game does get a lot out of simple letters and symbols for level-design.

Epic win: Finding the next dungeon.
Epic fail: Finding that the next dungeon contains monsters that kills you almost instantly.
Moment of strongest impact: Feeling a sense of panic, although you're in a dungeon made of ASCII symbols. 

Overall: 50% 
This is a first-mover and deserves the praise it's getting. However, it does lack a lot in terms of story and fairness. It can be very bothering if your death is a result of a diceroll rather than lack of actual skill.