Choosing the game of the year from 1981 - 2023 and beyond...

M76

M76

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I'm going on a journey to choose a game of the year for each year going back all the way to 1981. The task seems simple at first, but it is harder than you think. There were many years when there were multiple great games and choosing between them is a near impossibility. And worse there were years when the best games (that I've played) weren't that great either, so giving them any recognition while other better games get overlooked just feels wrong.

Why 1981? Because I started gaming on a Commodore 64, and that was introduced in early 1982, so the oldest games I know are from this period.

Obviously my exposure to games is not all-encompassing, I can't choose games I have not played. Case in point, I never had access to any Nintendo game systems, so I don't know any of their games, as such this will be the first and last time Nintendo is mentioned by me in this thread. So if your favorite game gets overlooked, feel free to share it and why is it your GOTY for that particular year. In fact discussion is welcome and encouraged. Just please try to stay on timeline, i.e. don't start talking about GOTY 2000, when we are still at 1985.

Similarly to the review thread, this post will serve as an index.

So without further ado, I present to you my GOTY 1981:

Wizard of Wor / 1981

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wizard_of_wor_07.png


The original WOW (pun intended) was a coop / pvp shooter that gave me and my friends countless hours of fun, and might actually be the first ever videogame that I have played (I'm not certain about that, but among the very first).
As the player you shoot monsters in a maze, and as time progresses the monsters get faster and faster. On latter levels they already start as fast, get invisibility and are able to shoot back. The ultimate goal of the game is to kill the wizard (who we always thought was a witch as we had zero English language skill) The wizard appears randomly after clearing levels and it can teleport and moves relatively fast while also shooting bolts of lighting (pretty sure he was inspired by Emperor Palpatine).

PS: Yes I'm aware that the C64 port of this game was released in 1983, but it's originally from 1981, give a man some wiggle room, please.

1982 - LeMans
1984 - Space Taxi
 
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Index​

1984: Ghostbusters (Activision - Commodore 64)
1985: The Oregon Trail (MECC - Apple IIe)
1986: World Grand Prix (Sega - Sega Master System)
1987: The Legend of Zelda (Nintendo R&D4 - Nintendo Entertainment System)
1988: Castlevania II: Simon's Quest (Konami - Nintendo Entertainment System)
1989: Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles (Konami - Arcade/Motorola 68000)
1990: Final Fantasy (Square - Nintendo Entertainment System)
1991: Battletoads (Rare - Nintendo Entertainment System)
1992: Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles III: The Manhattan Project (Konami - Nintendo Entertainment System)
1993: DOOM (id Software - MS-DOS)
1994: Super Metroid (Nintendo R&D1 & Intelligent Systems - Super Nintendo Entertainment System)
1995: Tekken 2 (Namco - Arcade/Namco System 11)
1996: Resident Evil (Capcom - Sony PlayStation)
1997: Castlevania: Symphony of the Night (Konami Computer Entertainment Tokyo - Sony PlayStation)
1998: Grand Prix Legends (Papyrus Design Group - Windows 95/98)
1999: Legacy of Kain: Soul Reaver (Crystal Dynamics - Sony PlayStation)


Interesting thought experiment. I was born in 1983, so my gaming experience really starts in 1987 with the Apple IIe and Sega Master System, but I have played games released for those systems in 1985 and 1986.

The Oregon Trail (MECC - Apple IIe) / 1985​

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Everybody should know The Oregon Trail, but for the young ones who don't: You start a cross-country journey from Missouri to Oregon as the party leader. During the journey you are responsible for procuring supplies and hunting along the trail, stopping at landmarks along the way to do so. In between landmarks, randomized events can happen based on either your preparation, the RNG gods, or both. The screenshot above showing one of your party members coming down with dysentery was a very common event and is now a meme legend. Yes, I know the game was originally a text-based adventure released in 1971, but this graphical remake for the Apple IIe was made by a different person and has key differences in how the game plays out.

Going to school in the '80s meant being in the middle of Apple's big push into education with the educational games developed by MECC, and my first elementary school being newly built meant it got a lot of shiny new Apple IIe systems with the library of MECC games to go with them. The green monitor was how I played it and remember it most. It was my first exposure to video games and it grew from there. My family would later get a NES in 1988, but Super Mario Bros. did not have the same impact on me as The Oregon Trail. While I found the simple and fast platforming of SMB fun, I enjoyed the depth of strategy that went into The Oregon Trail much more. I also have found memories of competing with my classmates to see how far we could get.
 
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M76 said:
I'm going on a journey to choose a game of the year for each year going back all the way to 1981. The task seems simple at first, but it is harder than you think. There were many years when there were multiple great games and choosing between them is a near impossibility. And worse there were years when the best games (that I've played) weren't that great either, so giving them any recognition while other better games get overlooked just feels wrong.

Why 1981? Because I started gaming on a Commodore 64, and that was introduced in early 1982, so the oldest games I know are from this period.

Obviously my exposure to games is not all-encompassing, I can't choose games I have not played. Case in point, I never had access to any Nintendo game systems, so I don't know any of their games, as such this will be the first and last time Nintendo is mentioned by me in this thread. So if your favorite game gets overlooked, feel free to share it and why is it your GOTY for that particular year. In fact discussion is welcome and encouraged. Just please try to stay on timeline, i.e. don't start talking about GOTY 2000, when we are still at 1985.

Similarly to the review thread, this post will serve as an index.

So without further ado, I present to you my GOTY 1981:

Wizard of Wor / 1981

View attachment 655207

View attachment 655208

The original WOW (pun intended) was a coop / pvp shooter that gave me and my friends countless hours of fun, and might actually be the first ever videogame that I have played (I'm not certain about that, but among the very first).
As the player you shoot monsters in a maze, and as time progresses the monsters get faster and faster. On latter levels they already start as fast, get invisibility and are able to shoot back. The ultimate goal of the game is to kill the wizard (who we always thought was a witch as we had zero English language skill) The wizard appears randomly after clearing levels and it can teleport and moves relatively fast while also shooting bolts of lighting (pretty sure he was inspired by Emperor Palpatine).

PS: Yes I'm aware that the C64 port of this game was released in 1983, but it's originally from 1981, give a man some wiggle room, please.
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One of Childhood friends was obsessed with Wizard of War the Atari version cool game the Wizard popping up is the coolest part.


GOTY 1997 Ultima Online first MMORPG that was still 2D sprites 3D version sucked but you can use both clients even today. I lost my job at a Bakery for flipping off a girl glad I did that place was hot. So I went to Best Buy picked up UO on a whim because my brother's friend was obsessed with Ultima back in the early 90s or late 80s on the Tandy 2000.




View: https://youtube.com/shorts/pnTNtplZ_CM?si=3D16_wA0snfzTdi8


View: https://youtube.com/shorts/Khpgyd8jEXg?si=uiNOG1GuTGDkq4VR


View: https://youtube.com/shorts/g6mfqfcN5QM?si=tpJIU_gbwpdcFiGE
 
For 1981, Ultima and other could be interesting pick, but Donkey Kong....

Still really playable today, one of the biggest ever, launched Mario, participated to Nintendo launch into video game a big way, defined what would be one of the biggest genre ever, platform... and I imagine the 1981 game a played the most, but I am not sure it mean much, was not born yet, could be defender on a vic-20.... do not remember the 80s enough, in the I remember what was going on, it is Donkey Kong.
 
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LukeTbk said:
For 1981, Ultima and other could be interesting pick, but Donkey Kong....

Still really playable today, one of the biggest ever, launched Mario, participated to Nintendo launch into video game a big way, defined what would be one of the biggest genre ever, platform... and I imagine the 1981 game a played the most, but I am not sure it mean much, was not born yet, could be defender on a vic-20....
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I loved Defender on the 2600.
 
CAD4466HK said:
Asteroids
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In that era particularly game will have 4-5-6-7 different years when they launched on different system and could make things a bit fuzzy.

We could go either way, but Asteroid is probably the 1979 game of the year, already, would we have started back then, Pacman is the 1980 one.
 
LukeTbk said:
In that era particularly game will have 4-5-6-7 different years when they launched on different system and could make things a bit fuzzy.

We could go either way, but Asteroid is probably the 1979 game of the year, already, would we have started back then, Pacman is the 1980 one.
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Came out on the 2600 in 1981. 1979 was for the arcades.
 
CAD4466HK said:
Came out on the 2600 in 1981. 1979 was for the arcades.
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Yes exactly what I meant for the, game will have 4-5-6-7 different years when they launched on different system, Asteroid launched in 1992 for the gameboy for example, using the year the game launched for the game of the year title will be the usual way to go with it, maybe outside they launched on a very niche system and the game was relatively unknown until the year it launch onthe popular one.

Asteroid was a top 3 game on earth in 1979 and 1980, making it a bit strange to call it 1981 game of the year.
 
LukeTbk said:
In that era particularly game will have 4-5-6-7 different years when they launched on different system and could make things a bit fuzzy.
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Technically it should be the original launch, but I'm certainly not going to hold anyone accountable for getting it wrong.

Unlike those two guys back there, who immediately ignored the one thing I asked :D
 
who the heck remembers what exact games they played during a particular year 43 years ago? o_O
 
M76 said:
Technically it should be the original launch, but I'm certainly not going to hold anyone accountable for getting it wrong.

Unlike those two guys back there, who immediately ignored the one thing I asked :D
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My rule is remakes are okay, remasters are not. Multiple platforms depends because especially back in the '80s and '90s the "same" game can be vastly different from one platform to another.
polonyc2 said:
who the heck remembers what exact games they played during a particular year 43 years ago? o_O
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If you remember them then they're game of the year material.
 
polonyc2 said:
who the heck remembers what exact games they played during a particular year 43 years ago? o_O
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You don't have to remember when you played them just that you played them and it was exceptional. You can look up when it came out.
 

World Grand Prix (Sega - Sega Master System) / 1986​

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One of the first games we got with the Sega Master System, the game has the player racing against the clock to finish time trials on tracks inspired by real world circuits in a fashion similar to Hang-On. You got points depending on how well you did that you could use to upgrade your car in various ways. Here you can see the track map looks like Zandvoort. The game also featured a course creator that included many different curve shapes allowing you to create your own tapes to your heart's desire, and was what I spent the most time doing as a kid. As primitive as it was, it introduced me to Formula 1 racing, which I began to watch religiously.
 
My first game i remember playing was on atari 2600 game was called commando after seeing a movie called commando.
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Long list that includes honorable mentions for me:

1986: Gunship (C64)
1987: The Last Ninja (C64), Test Drive (C64, honorable mention)
1988: Grand Prix Circuit (C64), The Last Ninja 2 (C64, honorable mention), Bard's Tale 3 (C64, honorable mention)
1989: Test Drive 2 (C64)
1990: Wing Commander (PC)
1991: Super Baseball Simulator 1.000 (Super NES), Wing Commander 2 (PC, honorable mention)
1992: Wolfenstein 3D (PC)
1993: Wing Commander: Privateer (PC), X-Wing (PC, honorable mention)
1994: Doom 2 (PC), Elder Scrolls: Arena (PC, honorable mention), One Must Fall: 2097 (PC, honorable mention), Colonization (PC, honorable mention), Marathon (Mac, honorable mention)
1995: Ultimate Doom (PC), Hexen (PC, honorable mention)
1996: Duke Nukem 3D (PC)
1997: Quake 2 (PC), Hexen 2 (PC, honorable mention), X-Wing vs. TIE Fighter (1997, PC, honorable mention), Shadow Warrior (PC, honorable mention), Blood (PC, honorable mention), Goldeneye (N64, honorable mention)
1998: StarCraft (PC)
1999: Need for Speed: High Stakes (PC), Quake 2 (N64, honorable mention), Super Smash Bros. (N64, honorable mention)
2000: WWF No Mercy (N64), Perfect Dark (N64, honorable mention)
2001: Return to Castle Wolfenstein (PC), Super Smash Bros. Melee (Gamecube, honorable mention), Super Monkey Ball (Gamecube, honorable mention)
2002: Super Monkey Ball 2 (Gamecube), Burnout 2: Point of Impact (Gamecube, honorable mention)
2003: Wolfenstein: Enemy Territory (PC)
2004: Doom 3 (PC), WWE Day of Reckoning (Gamecube, honorable mention)
2005: Quake 4 (PC), WWE Day of Reckoning 2 (Gamecube, honorable mention)
2006: Prey (PC)

Can't really think of much else offhand.
 
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1986 for me would be Starflght by Binary Systems.
I spent way too many hours playing and finally beating the game, all on 5-1/4" dual floppy drives on the original IBM PC. The gameplay was unique at the time, being sandbox-like, and the ending floored me when I finally realized what was going on which made it one of the most memorable games I've ever played.

From the Wikipedia article:
Starflight is a space exploration, combat, and trading role-playing video game created by Binary Systems and published by Electronic Arts in 1986. Originally developed for IBM PC compatibles, it was later ported to the Amiga, Atari ST, Macintosh, and Commodore 64. A fully revamped version of the game was released for the Sega Genesis in 1991.
Set in the year 4620, the game puts players in the role of a starship captain sent to explore the galaxy. There is no set path, allowing players to switch freely between mining, ship-to-ship combat, and alien diplomacy.[3] The broader plot of the game emerges slowly, as the player discovers that an ancient race of beings is causing stars to flare and destroy all living creatures.
The game has been widely praised by both contemporary and modern critics, and is one of the earliest instances of a sandbox game. It led to the development of a sequel, Starflight 2: Trade Routes of the Cloud Nebula, and influenced the design of numerous other games for decades after its release.
 
Born in 84, hard to pinpoint since games took 1-3 years to release between Japan, EU, and NA.
85 - Excitebike
86 - Ghosts 'n Goblins
87 - Metroid, put so many hours into this game with my padre.
88 - My word a lot of good games came out this year. Probably have to give it to Blaster Master as my favorite. However I played the crap out of R.C. Pro-Am, Double Dragon, Contra, Bubble Bobble, Town & Country Surf Designs: Wood & Water Rage (What a friggin name), and Blades of Steel. Thank god for video game rental places or my broke family wouldn't have been able to afford to let me play these games.
89 - Mega Man 2 hands down. Runners up - Marble Madness, Guerrilla War, TMNT, Bad Dudes
90 - Super Mario Bros 3 obviously. Also - Double Dragon 2 even though I could only ever beat the first few levels, Super C, Snake Rattle 'n' Roll, StarTropics (My first RPG style game perhaps), TMNT 2 was truly fun and groundbreaking imo.
91 - FF2 / FF4

After that there's too many fantastic games released yearly to pick in a timely manner.
 

The Legend of Zelda (Nintendo R&D4 - Nintendo Entertainment System) / 1987​

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1987 saw a lot of good releases in the US, but it ultimately came down to this or Metroid. Thinking back to my experience playing Metroid, it ultimately is dropped from GOTY contender due to how clunky the game feels to play and how obtuse exploration is without a map to guide you. Nintendo also failed to follow its own guidelines on how to draw sprites, resulting in a constant issue with flickering and framerate. The Legend of Zelda had none of these issues. I also did not play Metroid until I was an adult, while I played Zelda closer to release as a child on that glorious golden cartridge.

Zelda starts out by putting the character on the southern edge of an open world map with nothing in their inventory and no guide on how to proceed save for a tantalizing cave just above you (yes, I know the manual gives you hints on how to start). Traveling into this cave reveals a helpful NPC who introduces you to your first weapon in the game, a wooden sword. Finding and exploring dungeons reveals a numbered system suggesting the player on how to progress through them, but the player is free to complete them in any order they so choose. Some are blocked off by items you need to find first. Completing the game unlocks a new harder mode that switches up enemy and item placement, and even changes the layout of dungeons so you can experience the game in a new way.

The Legend of Zelda certainly wasn't the first action adventure game to give the player such freedom, but I believe it to be the first to perfect the formula for other games in the genre going forward.


I have to add a game that I originally believed to be a 1987 release in the US, but abiding by my own rules I have to add it for 1984 since there were no major changes for the Sega Master System version released in '87 aside from better graphics.

Ghostbusters (Activision - Commodore 64) / 1984​

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As said above, I played the Sega Master System version of this game, so my experience is based on that version. This game holds a lot of fond memories for me because I played it a lot with my sister and mother as a child, handing off the controller when any of the team died. As many games released in the era, it had simple yet fun mechanics that gave it a lot of replayability. You start off from nothing as the team in the movie does with nothing but a little cash that you need to use to acquire all your ghost busting supplies, including a vehicle, before being placed in an overhead city map to respond to calls. As you catch more and more ghosts, you earn money to buy better supplies and make your ghost hunting more efficient.

The game is an early example of a "roguelite" game in that you only have your team of 4, and if any of them die it's permanent. Once your entire team dies you are given a password that allows you to start the game over again with all the supplies and money you had at that point. So the more you play the game, the easier it gets. That lulls you into a false sense of security when you reach the point of the PK meter summoning the Stay Puft Marshmallow Man, at which point you must travel to Dana's apartment building to defeat Gozer. At that point you must climb to the roof, navigating each of your remaining team members up each floor individually. Along the way you will be faced with more and more combinations of ghosts to block your progression, including introducing unkillable ones that make it especially tricky. All the money and quality of supplies you have built up to this point don't really matter. Once you reach Gozer you only have as many chances to defeat her as your surviving team, but if they all die the passcode starts you at the bottom of the building again instead of needing to start over.

I've played the NES version ported by Bits Laboratory and released in the US in 1988, and it's just not the same. There are some differences in gameplay and the graphics are somehow worse than the SMS version. It just doesn't feel as good to play.
 
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Lemans - 1982

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Lemans is one of the original games released with the C64, published by Commodore.
It is a very simple top down driving game, where the goal is to overtake as many cars and as fast as possible without crashing.
The game gets gradually harder with traffic getting more and more dense, while the game also throws additional difficulty multipliers at you like night or icy road, median, etc.
You are also on a timer, and if the time runs out it is game over.

The game is quite addictive despite its simplicity and it has very good sound effects esp. for 1982.

If not for the multi-player fun it would beat wizard of wor outright, but it is still a worthy GOTY.
 
CAD4466HK said:
For 1982 Yars' Revenge without a doubt for me.
I remember my stepdad and I fighting over who would play next.


View: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qrHUJrhZMJI
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That's funny.
I guess The Tube can't be trusted. I remember getting it for Christmas that year.
Plus all the sites I've looked up say the same thing.

https://atari.fandom.com/wiki/List_of_Atari_2600_games

https://atarionline.org/atari-2600/yars-revenge

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Atari_2600_games

https://www.polygon.com/2015/3/9/81...a-journey-back-to-a-lost-world-of-video-games

Even the manual says 1982

https://www.gamesdatabase.org/Media...ual/formated/Yars-_Revenge_-_1981_-_Atari.pdf
 
Back in the day games often got updated versions during their run, to fix bugs (so much for the myth that games used to be bug free) so maybe the early releases were indeed 1981 and later ones were 1982.
 
1983 - ?????

I've been struggling to find anything memorable released this year, so I'm throwing in the towel. No point in choosing a game just for the sake of it. I can't for the world think of a memorable 1983 game while there are half a dozen games for 1984.
 
M76 said:
1983 - ?????

I've been struggling to find anything memorable released this year, so I'm throwing in the towel. No point in choosing a game just for the sake of it. I can't for the world think of a memorable 1983 game while there are half a dozen games for 1984.
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Dragon's Lair. Played the [H]ell out of that game.
 
AceGoober said:
Dragon's Lair. Played the [H]ell out of that game.
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Good memories with that one except waiting to play it and that it cost anywhere from 50 cents to a dollar depending on where you were.
Always was a line when it first came out due to it being like a interactive movie and "different".

Me and my buddies usually played Gyruss and Spyhunter. Star Wars if you could find a working one.
 
Comixbooks said:
Yie ar Kung Fu Best fighting game 1985



View: https://youtu.be/4MQqwW1dJSk?si=2BXl6gECjYzmAg-y
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That was such a neat game at the time. It was very much a precursor to modern fighting games like Street Fighter with the different fighting styles/opponents. I dumped a ton of quarters into that one at my local skating rink, lol. I only totally won it a couple times. I don't think it ever got a proper console port in the west. At least not counting those arcade compilations that started rolling out in the late 90's.
 
Domingo said:
That was such a neat game at the time. It was very much a precursor to modern fighting games like Street Fighter with the different fighting styles/opponents. I dumped a ton of quarters into that one at my local skating rink, lol. I only totally won it a couple times. I don't think it ever got a proper console port in the west. At least not counting those arcade compilations that started rolling out in the late 90's.
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Yeah each fugter had a gimmick from Numchucks to Fans their names are even funny.
 
1988 - Wasteland - I loved this game so much on the Commodore 64. 4 floppy disks and all. It had a few fun bugs such as getting 255 skill in Brawling, giving you hundreds of attacks a round.

I loved the skill system, I loved the sense of exploration, I loved the enemy robots. I loved the story, even as campy as it might seem in retrospect. I loved the sense of danger when your medic was trying to get someone stable after a hard fight.
I loved the rank system which had so...many...ranks, most of which were unreachable without resetting the encounters and maps.

I've played it since off a 3.5" floppy (1 instead of 4 lol) and bought the remaster for Steam.

Still in my Top 5 all time.

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Comixbooks said:
Best RPG Kings Quest 1 at my friends house 1987? Green Sleeves
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I experienced such different game than looking videos of them now, 4 shade of green CGA monitor, pc speaker, etc..

This is more the memory of gaming on a PC in the 80s... thjat really not how I remember say test drive or King Quest1

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It was more like this:
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, but all shade of greens.

There something I imagine nice but also an developer nightmare, how vastly different everyone system playing those games were....
 
I expanded this out for a decade but to me this is just a nostalgia fest. Some of these games were innovative, others not so much.
But these brought me the most joy and stuck in my memory the longest:

1980 - Missile Comand - I came close to a million point score and my mom was questioning why I was playing so long.
1981 - Frogger - I was always pretty bad at this game but still enjoyed it.
1982 - River Raid - Another one which got played for many hours on the Atari 2600
1983 - Lode Runner - I think someone gave us a copy of this. I'll blame my Dad for being the pirate.
1984 - Pitfall II - Lost Caverns. The scope of it was ambitious by Atari 2600 standards.
1985 - The Legend of Kage - Delightful memories playing this quarter sucker at the candy store near my middle school.
1986 - Defender of the Crown - Germ Warfare, princesses and all.
1987 - Airborne Ranger - I only got one dude up to Colonel, and he died in action. Pretty good C64 game.
1988 - Wasteland mentioned previously.
1989 - Golden Axe - for early teen memories of heading to the mall arcade. These places almost don't exist any longer.

Game of the Decade for the 1980's - Wasteland.
 
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