David Crane‘s Pitfall! is a pioneering old game, from way back in 1982.
You control Pitfall Harry and must find 32 treasures in 20 minutes. You run and jump from screen to screen, swinging on ropes, jumping on crocodile heads, and avoiding quicksand. Not to mention: creatures that will kill you if you touch them.
The Snowman by Quicksilva is based on the Raymond Briggs novel of the same name, but bears about as much relation to it as a penguin does to an albatross…
Sega‘s 1984 arcade hit Bank Panic is a simple reaction game where you play the role of a bank clerk who must answer the various doors in a bank to serve customers, some of whom are genuine and some of whom are bandits.
Konami‘s Antarctic Adventure was first released on the MSX in 1983 in Japan – coming to Europe and North America later, in 1984.
Juno First is a kind of overhead shoot ’em up, but with a three-quarters perspective into the screen.
Adventure – designed and programmed by Warren Robinett and released for the Atari 2600 in 1979 – broke new ground at the time, on a number of different levels.
Atari‘s Food Fight is an interesting arcade game. It was initially developed by a ‘rival’ company, GCC, who were involved in a legal battle with Atari. The legal dispute was settled out of court, leading to an agreement that GCC would produce games for Atari, and Food Fight was one of the games made for that deal. It was released into arcades in March 1983.
Looping is an old arcade game first released in 1982 by Venture Line.
In it you fly a plane across a horizontally-scrolling cityscape, doing loop-the-loops and trying your hardest not to hit the buildings.
Back in 1984 in the UK there was an infamous, historic miner’s strike that lasted for over a year and caused hardship for many communities. Rather than sit and spectate, young Peter Harrap wrote a satirical platform game about a mining mole and published it, with all the profits going to help the struggling, striking miners. That game was Wanted: Monty Mole, and it launched Pete Harrap on his career making video games, and also the Monty Mole ‘franchise’. Although I can’t really call it a franchise because it wasn’t. It was simply a series of games.
Konami‘s 1982 arcade game Tutankham is a weird horizontally-scrolling shooter where you play a gun-toting archaeologist, fighting off snakes, mummies, and other meanies, inside a maze-like Egyptian tomb.
The King of Grabs 