R-Type [1987]

The first big question that, for me, looms over R-Type [1987] (and many arcade titles of its ilk) is a stupid, but fundamental one: why is there so much dang video game inside this video game? https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=48TyDnakXZE Dead Can Dance - Dawn Of The Iconoclasts [1987] R-Type is way longer than it seems to "need" …

Ys [1987/1989]

You may or may not have picked up on this if you're a regular reader, but I'm not good at playing video games. I'm kinda bad at them, with limited exception. Most titles, I muddle through with nothing more than bloody-minded persistence to try over and over again. I don't ever know first-hand what high-level …

NetHack [1987-2023]

NetHack [1987-2023] is a "Forever Game." I use that phrase a lot in casual conversation, and now is the time to pin it down and define it for future reference, even though it will mean repeating myself a bit. Theoretically, one can play basically any game forever: people can and do play Super Mario Bros …

The Warden Game [1987]

Content warnings: Rape, violence, terrorism. This game does not fit on this blog. There's a grand overarching historical scaffolding this blog relies on, a problematic grand narrative of tradition where ideas lead to ideas. This blog is in short about examining The Canon, for as uneasy as I am with that idea, with even other …

The Fool’s Errand [1987]

As wont as I am to call everything some kind of "adventure game", citing the enormous and cross-genre influence of Colossal Cave Adventure [1975/77], this is pointedly trying NOT to be an adventure game, for all its resemblance. You can tell, because it has an adventure game inside of itself, which exists to parody adventure …

Slowdown

It's been a bit of a wild year here at Arcade Idea, what with the rewind and the general collapse of punctuality as of late. You might have noticed the Maniac Mansion post was extremely late. Well, as I mentioned, I have a new job. It was a deep fear of mine that when I …

Maniac Mansion [1987]

The following post is presented in the fabulous and rare FIRST-DRAFT-O-VISION. Normally I would either delete the irrelevant and pointless crossed out portions or rearrange and rethink them so they did amount to a point. Not this time, though! This time I gave up just to get something out. My high school English teacher said …

Leisure Suit Larry [1987]

You ever been to Las Vegas? I don't gamble — too cowardly — but I got a grandma who lives in Vegas. Strange place, you know. Probably my least favorite place in the United States. Most of it is a normal mid-sized American desert city, just with abnormally wide roads, I mean even by American …

Nakayama Miho no Tokimeki High School [1987]

Nakayama Miho no Tokimeki High School [1987] is not one for the ages. It was made in either 3 months or start from finish in 2 weeks flat, depending on which interview you believe, immediately after Hironobu Sakaguchi finished work on Final Fantasy [1987], and right before Yoshio Sakamoto, creator of Metroid [1986], moved on …

1986 playlist

Kinda sorry this came out so long! This is what happens when I have like, more than half a year to build a playlist... If anyone's interested I can make a condensed version, just say the word. 1986 Emil Beauliu - That Velvet TouchSKIP THIS TRACK, AND THE NEXT, AND THE LAST, IF YOU DON'T …

Takeshi’s Challenge [1986]

Sincere apologies for skipping around so much in 2022! I’ll get back to the rewind sometime but, honestly, I was getting burnt out something fierce due probably to the lack of variety and it was clear I was in no position to enjoy nor understand Reach For The Stars [1983]. That’s not good for anyone, …

Utopia [1981]

Utopia [1981] often gets cited as the first RTS, or as the first God Game. The Wargaming Scribe has completely and comprehensively dismantled the case for it as the first RTS in just the past few weeks, so I'll take it on it as the first God Game. In short... The Sumerian Game [1964-1967] and …

The Twilight Zone’s Opening Volley (Patreon Bonus)

I just watched the first 8 episodes of The Twilight Zone and I got inspired by them, so I thought I'd write about them to get them out of my system to see if reading my thoughts on them and potentially thoughts about the other random media works I happen to experience in the future …

Eastern Front 1941 [1981]

(Content warning: Nazis. White supremacy, genocide, anti-semitism.) The first Game Developers Conference was held in 1988 in founder Chris Crawford's house. This is funny, if you know a little bit about both. GDC is about as inside-baseball as it gets and is I believe now owned by a marketing company and the cheapest tickets are …

Starting A Patreon

I've decided to start a Patreon for this blog if you would like to financially support me.

Computer Bismarck [1980]

My dad and my grandpa love a movie called Sink The Bismarck [1960] and every few years they watch it together. Everybody else in my family hates this movie. That includes me. I think it's terrible in a really unique way, though. Sink The Bismarck takes extraordinary pains to drain its character interactions of any …

Citizen Kane [1941]

Citizen Kane [1941] is not the Citizen Kane of movies. When people talk about "the Citizen Kane of video games" — and flabbergastingly, that hoary old much-mocked phrase still gets hauled out in all sincerity on a fairly regular basis — what they mean is something that legitimizes video games as an artform. At least, …

Cathode Ray Tube Amusement Device [1947]

Apologies for the shuffled chronology here, but it is a war game and I was inspired. When Philo T. Farnsworth first demonstrated his all-electronic CRT television to anyone outside of the laboratory where it was invented, he said "here's something the bankers can understand" and turned it on to produce an image of a dollar …

Empire [1977/1984]

I played 4 versions of Walter Bright's Empire [1977/1983/1983/1984/1987/2004] for this article, more than for any other game on the blog, so I'm going to give a quick tour of versions again. All of these save the 1987 and VAX/VMS versions can be downloaded from Walter Bright at http://www.classicempire.com/download.html. The original FORTRAN PDP-10 version from …

Hamurabi [1968/1973]

(Content warning: Plague.) The Sumerian Game [1964-1967]/Hamurabi [1968/1973] [sic], as that dating indicates, has a particularly convoluted and amorphous release history that I'm going to have to spend the first few paragraphs here just walking through. There were more or less three variations by different authors, although I could expand that all the way into …

HUTSPIEL [1955]

It's important to remark that though I'm starting here, HUTSPIEL [1955] (one of those video games that only survives as documentation) is not even the first computerized wargame. Earlier attempts more closely resembled the classic "umpire" model of wargaming, ala Reisswitz's Kriegspiel [1824], where you give your instructions and communications to the umpire who is …

POLL: Backtrack for strategy/god games?

Part of the conceit of this blog is that I'm moving forwards through games history, but that means I'll leave a year behind and then realize I should have covered this-or-that game. The most significant hole is that I haven't covered strategy or god games, for reasons ranging from forgetfulness to not being able to …

Protected: Dragon Warrior [1986]

There is no excerpt because this is a protected post.

Dragon Quest [1986]

Let's start in the middle, when most of the plot, such at is, revolves around some guy named Erdrick. Erdrick is presumably dead, but he casts a long shadow. The player character is, they are told in Edrick's Cave, a descendant of Erdrick. A couple random townsfolk comment that they do not actually believe that …

The Legend Of Zelda [1986]

In a way, I could have started my project right here, except I wouldn't have known what I was looking at. The Legend Of Zelda [1986] is a consolidation of almost all dominant gaming paradigms from 1980-1984, all into one place, all right up against one another, sometimes simultaneously. It's a near-brilliant work of synthesis …