GAMES THAT SHOULD GET IN
Galaga
Galaga is another evolution of the Space Invaders formula, but don’t make the mistake of assuming it bears more than a cursory resemblance to its progenitor. You’re still on the bottom of the screen, moving horizontally and firing slowly, but the enemies don’t descend with implacable, slow inevitability. Instead, they dive bomb in waves and then roll away with dazzling agility, firing at you or simply trying to crash into you. Enemies could capture your ships and you could then recapture them and double or even triple your firepower while at the same being time ingeniously balanced by increasing your size, thus making you an easier target. It wasn’t just Galaga‘s gameplay that was engaging but also its color and sound effects. No one had ever looked at or heard a game like it before, and it captured the attention of a generation so completely that it continues to be culturally relevant today for its enthralling mechanics and presentation. This was the game mentioned by Robert Downey Jr.’s Tony Stark in 2012’s The Avengers when he was exposing a S.H.I.E.L.D. agent on the helicarrier for wasting time blasting at aliens rather than doing his job, an accusation that was verified when we got a last glimpse at this faceless government minion as he quickly changed his screen to hide his professional shame. That we all understood what Downey Jr. was referencing is a testament to the game’s importance in pop culture.
Missile Command
Post-apocalyptic stories and scenarios continue to captivate society no matter how many generations pass. Whether it be Romero’s zombie films, Cameron’s Terminator movies, The Walking Dead, Mad Max or even video games such as Bethesda’s legendary Fallout series, we’re drawn to the genre precisely because of our fear of losing all that we have built since the dawn of mankind. Missile Command was a dark mirror of the apprehension and dread we all feel about ‘the end times,’ and this is what it’s come to: you are the last missile defense operator in the world and your job is to shoot down incoming nuclear bombs before they wipe out the six remaining cities in all of civilization. The bombs become harder to hit as you play along, they scatter into multiple warheads, descend with greater speed and come down from the skies like nuclear rain at times, and all you can do is predict their trajectory and intercept them with missiles that explode like flak bursts. The frantic pace and sense of impending dread work against you as you struggle to control your crosshair with a trackball and time your button presses precisely so that you don’t waste all your ammo before the stage is done. It’s a perpetually-losing battle with diminished returns despite your best efforts. You know the doomsday clock is ticking and it can’t be stopped. Still, you have to try. This game not only challenged our reflexes, it engaged our psyches.
Mortal Kombat
I have personally never been a big fan of this series. I’ve never cared for the photorealistic graphics of the earlier titles. The animations weren’t dynamic enough for my tastes and the character selection was pretty dull in my opinion. Even the much-vaunted Mortal Kombat II that so many people loved just didn’t have enough going for it to bring me back. I’ve never held this series, which has had its ups and downs not by my accounting but by the fans themselves, very close to my heart. So, why am I including this on my list of games that should make it in to the hall of fame? Because of its impact on the industry and its marquee status as a fighting game franchise both during the heady days of the overcrowded arcade fight scene and in the time since then when it’s become all but an institution in the industry. When I think about the notoriety this series has earned with its infamous ‘fatalities,’ it’s garnered an impressive degree of staying power among consumers, so much so that one can’t deny its value to the industry beyond its sensationalized mayhem. It still matters, and for reasons all its own that no series has been able to duplicate despite being derivative of Street Fighter II. It, as well its Japanese cousin from Capcom, spawned a number of copycats in its day and, even though Mortal Kombat isn’t quite the same beast it was back in the early nineties, it’s still distinct and has carved its own special identity in the industry that has remains potent despite the many obstacles to legitimacy it’s faced in the past. It’s telling that Mortal Monday is still a thing. Respect.
Dragon’s Lair
Now, here’s something that was completely new at the time. A video game based solely on quick-time events that used vivid and colorful 2D animation from Disney veteran Don Bluth by way of innovative laser disc technology as its method of delivery. It was the story of Dirk the Daring, a brave knight whose sword was as sharp as his wits were dull. Dirk’s taken a few hits over the years for being a little dense, but you can’t deny the guy’s got heart and courage to spare. Besides, how much fun would Dragon’s Lair be if he didn’t unwittingly walk into so many traps and all but intentionally get himself into all kinds of trouble? And just why is he risking life and limb, you ask? It’s all to save Princess Daphne from the clutches of an evil dragon who keeps her cruelly locked away in a crystal ball, the crown jewel of his inestimable treasure hoard. Wildly imaginative for its time because of the presentation and technology, a quarter guzzler if there ever was one and capable of drawing the biggest crowds in the arcade when a player reached the final stage, Dragon’s Lair nevertheless couldn’t hope to sustain itself in the industry back in the early 80s for so many reasons that it could merit its own article. Still, no one had ever seen anything like it in an arcade before, and it has a wholly unique place in the industry because of what, when and, most importantly, how it tried to do it. It was a phenomenon, so much so that it even drew attention on prime time variety shows and was singularly featured on the hit 80s arcade game show Starcade, which normally showcased three to four different video games during its half-hour running time.
Asteroids
This is a game that always had the volume turned up to the maximum setting in every arcade I ever visited, and I think it was to let people know that the establishment DID, in fact, have an Asteroids cabinet. An early example of roguelike gaming, there were no predictable patterns people could easily exploit. Yet another variation on the Space Invaders theme, Asteroids put you in the middle of the screen, and, ostensibly, in the deepest, darkest recesses of outer space, rather than at the bottom and the vastly more reassuring terra firma. The titular space rocks freely floated in all directions, scrolling off one side of the screen and reappearing on the opposite side to come at you with an almost magnetic intensity and stages couldn’t be finished until you destroyed every last bit of them. Shooting them only multiplied the threat in a carefully balanced way in that blasting them caused them to split into smaller, faster fragments that made up for in speed what they lacked in size. To add to the tension, you could move your spaceship with a thruster button, which caused you to drift through the void, which, more often than not, increased the risk of mid-space collision. This video game had pew pew pew in it way before the meme ever existed and if you were in an arcade and DIDN’T hear this ship’s laser along with the players’ furious pounding on the button from across the room, even with 20 to 30 other games all blaring their sound effects in attract mode in between, there was something rotten in Aladdin’s Castle. This game was just as popular on the Atari 2600 home console (like Space Invaders), where it moved massive numbers and was probably just as responsible for Asteroids’ notoriety as the arcade version ever was.
So, there you have it. My five that WILL get in and my five that SHOULD get in. What are yours? Let us know what games you’d put on your will/should list in the comments section below!
