Taito‘s Arkanoid was released into arcades in 1986 and did for bat and ball games (often referred to as Breakout clones) what Mario did for platform games. That is: revitalise them with new ideas and features.
Tag Archives: Japanese
Lasso, Arcade
Lasso is an obscure arcade game, developed and manufactured by SNK Corporation in 1982. In it you play a rancher/cowboy trying to round-up his cattle with a rope.
Mario Tennis: Power Tour, Game Boy Advance
This 2005 tennis game is one of my favourite sports games of all time.
Mario Tennis: Power Tour was developed by Camelot for Nintendo and is known as Mario Power Tennis in Europe and Australia, but I’m sticking to the original title.
Pengo, Arcade
Sega‘s Pengo is an arcade classic from 1982 and is a block-pushing maze game starring a cute penguin called – you guessed it – Pengo.
Amidar, Arcade
Konami‘s 1981 arcade classic, Amidar, is a maze game with a difference.
Frogger, Arcade
Konami‘s Frogger was released into video game arcades in 1981 and was an instant hit with gamers.
The basic premise of Frogger is to guide a hopping frog over a road and a river, to reach a safe haven on the other side.
Space Panic, Arcade
Universal‘s 1980 arcade platformer, Space Panic, may not look like much by today’s standards, but it is a hugely influential video game.
Pac-Man, Arcade
Known as “Puck Man” in its native Japan, and renamed as “Pac-Man” in the West*, this 1980 video game is one of the most iconic brands ever created in the history of the human race. And I’m not being funny here – Pac-Man is actually seen by historians as exactly that: instantly recognisable to most people and indelibly fixed in our consciousness.
SimCity, Super Nintendo
The 1991 Super Nintendo version of Will Wright‘s classic SimCity was developed by Nintendo themselves, so is somewhat different to previous versions. It’s actually one of the best versions of SimCity around.
Rolling Thunder 3, Megadrive/Genesis
Rolling Thunder 3 is a Sega Megadrive/Genesis exclusive. It was developed by Now Production and published by Namco in 1993. It did not appear in arcades, like its predecessors did.