The Hobbit

They're taking the Hobbits to the Commodore-dor-dordor-dore...

Oh boy, a licensed property, so early on?! At least it's not a video game based on a movie at this point, but it is based on the book, or rather sits alongside the events of the book - so much so that it was sold alongside a copy of the Hobbit, which makes The Hobbit some kind of collectors edition waaay before such a concept would dominate the gaming market. And there wasn't a standard edition, it was straight up cross-media promotion, and it was everywhere. Name the home console of the 80s and The Hobbit seems to have been on it, so it must have been good...

Luckily for me, it's available on the Internet Archive. Doesn't come with the book though, but I'll let that slide.

Joust

Thy game is never over!

The word 'joust' conjures just one mental image to me, and it doesn't look anything like Joust. I was ready to done some plate armour and hop onto my trusty steed, before charging towards my opponent with lance in one hand, shield in the other. You know, like a joust... 

But no. That was not the case, and I'm glad it isn't.

Gravitar

Landing with a thump. And an explosion.

Source // Wikipedia

By the sounds of it, Gravitar is yet another space shooter, right? I can't think of any other genre of early 80s video gaming that would settle on Gravitar as a name than a space shooter of some kind, so I do hope it's an interesting one.

It wasn't a surprise to find out that, yes, it was set in space, but I was a little surprised to find out that it plays like a mix of Asteroids and Lunar Lander, which immediately put it into the 'must play' category, for me at least. Whether it actually is a must play depends on whether I've any luck in playing it in its original form...

Ultima I

From darkest dungeon to deepest space!

Source // Wikipedia

I've come across only one game from the Ultima series in my time so far, and that was watching a play-through of Ultima VII on YouTube. I know its an RPG series, set in ye olden times, so I assume that Ultima I is just a stripped down, graphically lacking version of Ultima VII. I mean that sounds fair, right?

Gorf

'Long live', or 'so long'?

Source // Arcade Museum

Reading about Gorf didn't exactly get me hyped. "Another space shooter," I said to myself, "what does it do differently?"

Turns out it has a clearly defined mission structure, which mixes the gameplay up a little, has shots that you can cancel, in effect, so that you aren't waiting for a wild miss to keep on missing before you can fire again, and even outright rips off Galaxian, name and all. So that's bold.

But does the game live up to it all?

Frogger

Hop along, son. You've seen it all before.

Source // Wikipedia

Where oh where was I when I first encountered Frogger? I couldn't tell you, but my memory wants to say that it was a nice family friendly game, so I wouldn't be surprised if I was rather young when I was first squashed by oncoming traffic. Maybe it was available at school. We played Lemmings at school, so we might have played Frogger.

Anyway, bumbling through my memory aside, Frogger is impossible to forget, if only because everything else like it is referred to as 'like Frogger', that game where you hop a frog across a dangerously designed road network before hopping across a congested river. Only then can you feel safe, until another frog spawns (hah, frogspawn, get it?) and the cycle repeats.

It repeats so often that Frogger is everywhere, so once more I've hopped into a few different versions to see what's what (and once more, it still has absolutely nothing to do with my inability to play the original arcade version...).

One more go... Journey

There's a revised and updated edition to the 1001 Video Game book, but seeing as I don't have it I don't know if it includes the painstakingly obvious PS3 title that deserves a place in the 2010s section, Journey.

I'm writing this in 2015 where the closest thing to Journey is the yet to be released No Man's Sky. By 'closest thing', I mean the kind of thing that looks fantastic and you still don't know what the heck it really is, nor will you until you play it. Luckily Journey is already out, and now re-released for the PS4, and it is a must play - if you haven't already.

You see, Journey is, as its name implies, a tale that takes you somewhere. More than that though, it is a personal journey of discovery and wonder and all that jazz. But you can only really go on that journey once...

Ms. Pac-Man

The only hall of fame she'll be inducted in is the alcohol of fame on the wall of shame...

Source // Wikipedia

Back in the day, I thought Ms. Pac-Man was little more than a reskin of Pac-Man. The cynical side of me would be shouting 'Cash grab! Cash grab!' but nowadays, the more learned figure that I hope I am knows how wrong such statements are.

Ms. Pac-Man has a murky past. Perhaps not murky, but not as simple as you might imagine, starting life as another game before being shown to Midway, who were impatiently waiting for an official sequel to Pac-Man from Namco... in the rush to get something out into the public, anything of merit would do. This game would indeed do.

Venture

Dare you roam the domain of the Hallmonsters?

A couple of games come to mind when I was picturing what Venture could be, based on the little I'd read. Of course the name shares all of its letters with Adventure, so there's dungeoning and, well, adventuring to be had. Rogue is perhaps the closer game in terms of gameplay, however. Either way, I've not played it, so I ought not to second guess what it is at all, and should dive right into it.

One more go... Rocket League

Every now and then a game just appears out of nowhere and takes the Internet by storm. Or some of the Internet at least. Some of the bits you personally read. What I'm trying to say is that a fair few people like, and are talking about, Rocket League. Because it is pretty damn good.

The PlayStation Plus monthly game collection can be hit and miss. A selection of 'free' content for a variety of systems. Sometimes it's games you have heard about but didn't grab, sometimes it's games you have heard about and remember paying full price for them at launch, but other times they are completely new to your gaming library.

For me, Rocket League was a complete unknown. Such an unknown in fact, that when I first saw the trailer for that month's game lineup, my reaction to it was "Oh, car football. Looks good. Probably won't bother with it though".

Probably won't bother. What the hell kind of gamer am I, huh?