In 3016 an archeologist found evidence of a strange religion...

[Roxianna]

While exploring an ancient database the scientist found the following references.

• Q*bert
• Frogger
• Crazy Climber
• Dig Dug
• Elevator Action

Please help the guy out. Have you played these kind of games? Do you love them. If so why? what do they have in common?

[Sensational]

I played the Frogger demo on my PS1 once... I didn't really like it. Grew up after these games were popular, it didn't feel "advanced" enough for me as a kid. Only having two different controls that is, horizontal and vertical movement.

[BigDaddyDre]

played them all.
best way to experience them is in an arcade. standing there with sweaty hands trying to roll the machine on a single quarter.
No pause button.
No bio break.
Begging your buddy to get you a soda, but not crowd you.
Feeling the nerves in your legs go numb after your 6th straight hour.
walking outside into sunlight and nearly going blind.
learning to decode someones score from across the room, by filtering out all of the background bleeps and bloops in the 8bit world to tune into your advesaries quickened breathing....

yeah those games are golden along with many many others. Without them, youngsters of the time would have had productive lives in rollerskating. They would have saved their money and the world might be a richer place in terms of art and poetry, but instead, those games sucked the allowances from every red blooded kid on the planet.... thus paying for the advancement of the entire gaming genre to what it is today.

[Hagan]

Ah, early 80's delights. Simple fun and simple gameplay (hard as nails later on though). Don't see anything in common though, other than they have all been periodically remade.

Don't tell me they are remaking them for Xbox Arcade...

[Dvader83]

Originally Posted by Hagan

Don't tell me they are remaking them for Xbox Arcade...

Frogger and Dig Dug have already been remade for XBLA.

[Roxianna]

Originally Posted by BigDaddyDre

played them all.
best way to experience them is in an arcade. standing there with sweaty hands trying to roll the machine on a single quarter.
No pause button.
No bio break.
Begging your buddy to get you a soda, but not crowd you.
Feeling the nerves in your legs go numb after your 6th straight hour.
walking outside into sunlight and nearly going blind.
learning to decode someones score from across the room, by filtering out all of the background bleeps and bloops in the 8bit world to tune into your advesaries quickened breathing....

Wow great story. When we add these games to the gamerDNA database later in the week, I hope you will add this one to your gamerDNA and put this epic tale in as an experience too. Good times!

[Retodon8]

No arcades over here, but I did play games on the Atari at the time.

I played Q*Bert (review video) and Frogger (review video), liked them too, but can't say they were personal favourites.
Especially Frogger got annoying pretty quickly, and I could really get angry at the Atari when I was small.

I didn't play Crazy Climber (video).

I don't think I played Dig Dug (video) until later.
I do remember Dig Dug as a game I later tried on my PC, also years ago, which wouldn't do anything.
Re-starting the exe I noticed something did show on screen for a split second.
Restarting once more I realized the entire game had played before my eyes in that split second; lose all your lifes and you're back at the prompt.

I didn't play Elevator Action either.
Google showed me this video and the start reminded me of Bristles, but it's hardly the same game.

Pac-Man isn't listed, but for me it's a good example of the kind of games of that time.
I personally really didn't like it at the time because of rising stress levels.
When I did eventually manage to eat a ghost, those eyes would just race back to the centre to reform into a ghost again.
ARGH!
I liked games where once you accomplished something, it actually changed something in the game world.
Once you finish level 1, you move on to level 2, which is basically the same, only harder.
If you manage to finish that too, you're onto level 3, and so on, and so forth, ad infinitum.

Considering games this old will be added to the list, I'm sure I'll add some other classics that I did play to my list, or request if necessary.

[mykalgaidin]

God, this brings me back. 3 years old and playing my dad's 2600. Most of the games Roxianna listed, plus classics like Combat and Kaboom! (yes, the exclamation point is needed). And don't get me started on Pac-Man.

I remember one day my little sister (she was maybe 4-5 months old at the time) threw my copy of Pac-Man down the stairs from our attic playroom. First time I ever wanted to visit physical violence upon another human being (at least I remained pure until the age of 4). Good thing I didn't. Wouldn't want to prove Ol' Jacky Boy right.