Eamon

Who said everything should be handed to you on a plate? You want graphics with your fantasy adventure games? Better start imagining them...

Source // Wikipedia

"That's probably a pretty impressive hand drawn dragon for the time, actually". It's such a strong image to represent Eamon in fact, that this is what 1001 Video Games You Must Play Before Your Die chose to represent the game too. Perhaps a picture of text based gaming above a block of text about text based gaming is too much text. Whatever the case, my only expectation from this game is that there will be a lot of text.

But my first impression was actually one of 'oh, wow, what?', as I discover that Eamon was designed to be built upon by any Tom, Dick and Harry that wanted to create role playing adventures for people to play on their apple ]['s, with a list of hundreds of offerings from the community to pick and choose from.

Not only that, but I find that the platform is still being developed for, and that you can freely download a deluxe edition, which includes all the bells and whistles that decades of fan innovation and interest has brought.

There is, then, no excuse to not dive right in.

Defender

Yet another 'Save the World' situation that you wouldn't want me involved in...

Source // Martoon.org

Like many recent entries on this list (too many, personally), my first experience with Defender was one of utter failure to get running. Thankfully though, YouTube saves the day with an upload from Old Classic Retro Gaming. A solid 42 minutes of gameplay, no less, so that should get me started (insert joke about the state of video game reviews here).

Shoot aliens, save astronauts, it's that simple. But it's not. Of course it's not. Above the screen sits a minimap with a white highlight in its center. That's you, and there are the enemies, and that's the floor... but why are is that highlight in the middle? Why would I need to know what's behind me as much as what's in front of me?

Yes, you can fly right to left as well as left to right in Defender. Alright, we aren't talking Earth-shattering technology here, but some game had to show this thing off, why not a game where you're skimming across the surface of a planet in your spacecraft, firing projectiles made of every colour of the rainbow, illuminating the screen like nothing else you've seen before?

Feels like... Luftrausers vs Asteroids

I have a PS Vita game collection that really needs to be sifted through. Waded through, in fact. Playing them would be nice too, but I've got to see what I've got first.

One of the offerings from PlayStation Plus was Luftrausers by Vlambeer, a shoot 'em up from the skies with a unique look, at least in terms of what I've seen and remembered over the years, but at the time I downloaded it and left it alone. I'd come back to it at some point, I know I would. Why would I get a game and then not play it?

Finally, the time has come to pick it up, and for a good while I couldn't put it down. It's controls are dead simple and its physics - while not thoroughly obvious to me in the heat of battle, in terms of where I'd end up after a given input - have this floaty weight to them that reminded me of something I wish I had the chance to play properly...

Luftrausers feels like Asteroids.

Source // Wikipedia, Hardcore Gamer

Battlezone

A striking example of just how far games have come in 30 years, and just how much more forgiving they are in this modern era.

Battlezone (1980)
Source // Giant Bomb

Battlefield 3 (2011)
Source // YouTube

Battlezone sounds like a great little game. A few years prior, Combat was all that was available, with its top down tank gameplay and all the strategy that came with trying to outthink Player 2. Enter Vector graphics and a change in perspective and you've got Battlezone, a first person tank combat challenge that, once I remembered a certain Battlefield 3 mission, I was eager to play in order to see how far we had come.

Lunar Lander

Fate has ordained that the boys who went to the arcade to play in peace will stay at the arcade to play with the pieces.

Source // Wikipedia

I know I've played this game, somewhere. It might have been under the name Jupiter Lander, but somehow I've played Lunar Lander, I just know I have. I know because I was looking forward to replaying it. Land a lunar module on the lunar surface. Simple. And a demonstration of spacecraft physics to boot. What more could you ask for?

Galaxian

WE ARE THE GALAXIANS
MISSION: REVIEW GALAXIAN

Source // Wikipedia

I've not got a Scooby what Galaxian is, so it's a good job I've been told by a book that I absolutely must play it. Like all media, Galaxian is built upon what has come before it, and it doesn't take a genius to work out that Space Invaders was the game that laid the foundations here. Namco have taken what works and added more to it, in a colourful shooter that shows off the early days of the video game remix culture, if you will.

Asteroids

The probability of successfully navigating an asteroid field is approximately 3,720 to 1. About the same chance as me playing Asteroids in its original form...

Space. As cold and empty as...
Source // Wikipedia

Asteroids is awesome. It's simple to understand, tricky to master and addictive as anything. As with seemingly every Atari game on this list thus far, I've played Asteroids, I know I have, I just don't know where or how. I was looking forward to playing it again, which must mean I had good impressions of it from my distant past. Unless the nostalgia goggles have fused into my eyeballs.