Intermission: 1983/1984

Above is an MDS map of the games I played for the 1983 phase of Data Driven Gamer. To keep it readable, some connections have been removed (e.g. Donkey Kong's sphere of influence is wider than the graph suggests), and Jumpman and its complicated web of predecessors have been excised entirely.

It's been over 400 days since July 2020 when I started this phase with Ms. Pac-Man on the Atari 2600, and I can officially say that the blog will never catch up to the modern era now that it takes more than a year to retrospectively cover one. I suppose on one hand I'll skip more games as I start to reach eras that I'm more familiar with, but on the other hand, the games are already getting longer. 1983 took me nearly twice as long as 1982 despite having covering about the same number of games.

Reviewing the Ivory Deck, 1983 had more good games than ever - 16 compared to 11 from 1982. However, the number of great games declined; only M.U.L.E. and Alley Cat got harpoons.

I remarked last year that the biggest trend of 1982, as far as my whales were concerned, was the rise of third party console games. Arcade games, though still significantly represented, were losing ground. In 1983, arcade games continue to cede ground as it becomes clear that their golden age is over. Only 14 of my 45 whales had arcade origins, down from 19 out of 44 in 1982. Of the 16 games that I rated "good," only 5 were arcade games.

Commercially, it was third party console games that picked up the slack, continuing the trend of the previous year - a trend that wouldn't last another. Video game revenues of 1983 were in the billions of dollars. Atari 2600 alone went from having 116 releases in 1982 to 209 releases in 1983, and the Intellivision and ColecoVision's libraries had even more dramatic expansions in terms of percentage increase. Even the underperforming Atari 5200 went from 10 releases to 31.

My whale coverage does not reflect this trend at all; we went from five third party games by Activision, Imagic, and Parker Brothers, to only five, four by Activision. First party whales shrank even more; Atari, once an indomitable force in both the arcade and home console scenes, produced just a single whale on their own flagship platform in 1983 - Ms. Pac-Man. At least it was good this time.

I made a chart tallying whales of 1982 and 1983 on a platform type basis, further broken out by region of origin.

Platform type	1982 count	1983 count
Arcade	19 total 15 Japan 4 NA	14 total 9 Japan 5 NA
Computer	15 total 12 NA 1 Japan 1 UK 1 AU	24 total 17 NA 3 Japan 3 UK 1 AU
Console	10 NA	7 total 6 NA 1 Japan

 

The big trend we see in 1983, with regards to whales, is a higher volume of computer games. This increase isn't driven by adventure games or RPGs, but by platform games, of all things. 1982 only had Miner 2049er, a decently designed but overly unforgiving Donkey Kong-style platformer. 1983 had seven computer-based platformers, and it seems impossible to imagine that Miner 2049er wasn't an influence on the majority of them.

I also made a chart of computer game whales, broken down by genre.

Genre	1982 count	1983 count
Adventure	5 total 4 NA 1 AU	6 total 5 NA 1 Japan
Arcade	5 total 4 NA 1 UK	6 total 4 NA 2 Japan
Platformer	1 NA	7 total 4 NA 3 UK
RPG	2 NA	3 NA
Strategy	2 total 1 NA 1 Japan	2 total 1 NA 1 AU

 

Here, "arcade" is a catch-all term for action games that aren't platformers, and "strategy" is a general miscellaneous category encompassing 1982's Strip Poker and Sokoban for lack of better options. I counted Archon as an arcade game and M.U.L.E. as a strategy game, even though both have elements of both action and strategy.

 

Arcades in decline

For the first time, arcade games were not the biggest category of the year. What's more is that few of the arcade games I played felt cutting-edge; only Star Wars and Spy Hunter really felt like they were pushing technology in ways that hadn't been done in years past.

Five of the 14 arcade games scored "good" ratings, which is a pretty good ratio. Among them were the aforementioned Star Wars, Jr. Pac-Man, Gyruss, Mr. Do!'s Castle, and Mario Bros. Curiously, no two of these have the same developer!

Elevator Action was the best of the rest with an "above average" rating, innovative and deeper than it looks, but not a  lot, and didn't have enough excitement, longevity, or wow factor to "elevate" it to a good rating.

Congo Bongo, Mappy, Crystal Castles, and Tapper were forgettable experiences, and Spy Hunter's annoyances canceled out much of the goodwill that its slick presentation generated. "Average" ratings were had by all.

Two games got below average ratings - the controls-busting Track & Field, and the slow, strange 10-Yard Fight. But the only flat-out bad rating was had by Donkey Kong 3, a surprise bomb from Shigeru Miyamoto himself, an ill-conceived attempt to make Donkey Kong into a static vertical shooter that just feels awkward and unfair.

Consoles undercounted

Of the 20 best selling games of 1983, 19 are console games. This list has very little overlap with the console games I did play, which consists of only seven games, not counting the early Nintendo arcade ports or Portopia Serial Murder Case.

We started with Ms. Pac-Man on the Atari 2600; one of the rare coin op conversions that makes whale status as a port, and it was good, in stark contrast to the infamously terrible Pac-Man port from the year before. On the Intellivision, Beamrider grew on me with replays, getting my recommendation as well.

Keystone Kops and Famicom Baseball just ranked average, eliciting no strong feelings from me at all.

B.C.'s Quest for Tires, the other best-selling game that I actually played, ranked below average, offering minutes worth of gameplay and frustrating mechanics to pad things out. The Activision Decathlon got the sole "bad" ranking, but made for an interesting comparison to Track & Field.

Adventures Multinational

Infocom was once again the dominant force in this year's list of adventure games, but was joined by Portopia Serial Murder Case, a discretionary whale of some significance to Japanese video game history. I had to play the 1985 Famicom port rather than the PC-6001 original, as only that version had been translated.

Infocom maintained its track record of quality. Suspended and Planetfall were the best, with "good" ratings, attaining them in different ways - Suspended being the most unusual of Infocom's games, structured as a big mechanical puzzle, and Planetfall being more of a ludonarrative experience. The Witness, Enchanter, and Infidel got above average rankings, each one worthwhile, but not quite enough to get my universal recommendation.

Portopia, though, fell flat with a below average ranking, being very short and linear, with far too many instances where you must exhaustively revisit locations to find the arbitrary trigger action needed to move the plot forward.

Computer action games

Though they were rarely the best sellers, it seems like home computers were the place to get rich and original gameplay experiences. Interestingly, no one computer dominated this list.

Oil's Well and Digger were my favorite games in this category, even though neither one was all that original, the former being a souped-up take on Anteater, the former a competent derivative of Mr. Do! made on the platform least suited for it.

Archon well-embodied Electronic Arts' commitment to making deeper games than what you'd typically see at the arcades with a blend of arcade action and chess-like strategy, but the strategy element is thinner than it ought to be and keeps me from putting it in the "good" tier.

One-on-One likewise imbues sports games with depth and realism, but I didn't find it much fun to play. Antarctic Adventure looks nice but lacks lasting value. Both got "average" ratings.

Thunder Force, another Japan-only discretionary whale, was just plain bad, and it's not surprising that Thunder Force compilations tend to disregard it.

Computer platformers

As I mentioned, this was the defining trend of 1983. Three of these games were ZX Spectrum titles, two were on Atari, and the other two multiplatform but primarily for the Apple II.

Alley Cat was my clear favorite in this category, earning a harpoon, but Lode Runner was also good  despite being much longer than it should have been. And Ultimate's Jetpac was a solid arcade-style platformer, certainly the best of its British peers.

Jumpman, out of all the games this year, bore the closest resemblance to 1982's Miner 2049er, and had tons of creativity and variety, but bugs, cheap deaths, and cheap deaths from bugs kept it away from a "good" rating.

Manic Miner and Chuckie Egg, the two other British platformers, both suffered from unwieldy controls and overall felt lacking compared to contemporaries.

Lastly was Hard Hat Mack, the worst of them, with bad controls and only three levels, none of them interesting to play.

I have to note there that most of these platformers offered an experience you couldn't get in arcades. Alley Cat, Jumpman, and Manic Miner were driven by stage variety and set pieces. Lode Runner by puzzle-heavy gameplay and a level editor to boot. Jetpac by a theme of constructing a rocket ship rather than simply blasting enemies.

CRPGs

Before the advent of realtime 3D graphics, there were basically three styles of RPGs that worked, and anything that veered too far away suffered for it. For lack of better terms, you had Ultima-style RPGs, Wizardry-style RPGs, and Roguelikes.

We had exactly three CRPG whales this year (one discretionary), one for each of these categories.

None attained "good," but Ultima III was the best of them as well as the most forward-thinking. The overworld/town/dungeon structure is a tried and true formula, but Ultima III is really the point where it feels like an established formula, and the vast majority of RPGs can trace their ancestry back here.

Wizardry III, on the other hand, stubbornly refuses to advance its subgenre, content to just be another Wizardry dungeon pack. In spite of that, it's probably the best RPG of the year in terms of gameplay, and just goes to show how ahead of its time the original Wizardry was. A mixture of great scenario design and horrible grinding earned it an "average" rating.

Last there's Moria, the token Roguelike and discretionary whale. It was fun up to a point, but the amount of farming you have to do in order to get anywhere past that point is just unreal. The worst of the three CRPGs, but notable for influencing Angband, which is considered to be one of the major Roguelike branches.

Strategy

Two computer games fall into the broad "strategy" category, and both of them are good.

Reach for the Stars, by SSI alumnus Roger Keating, absolutely blows away all of the wargames I played leading up to it and anticipates 4x classics like Civilization and especially Master of Orion, which is damned impressive given that it would take until basically the 90's for the genre to really develop further.

M.U.L.E., the best known game of Danielle Bunten Berry (also an SSI alumnus), successfully packaged a game of commodity trading into a fast-paced joystick-based party game. It was a harpoon winner and gets my pick for Game of the Year.

Moving forward into 1984, some trends and introductions to look out for are:

• The video game crash hits North America hard, and the trend of declining console games will approach its lowest ebb in history. The Atari 2600, though nominally supported as late as 1992, sees its last game of note, and its competitors just fizzle out entirely. American arcade developers struggle to stay relevant, with only Atari having any real output to show for it, though their efforts do, at least, seem suitably "next-gen."
• Meanwhile, Nintendo's Family Computer makes waves in its native land, setting the stage for a history-changing invasion in the years to follow.
• We'll finally see some bona fide Commodore 64 games, by Epyx, one of the first developers to really drive the system, and some others.
  
• LucasFilm Games debuts, and their first title isn't based on a movie license or an adventure game.
• Datasoft is due for a retrospective as their first major hit comes out.
• Famous British video game designer Mike Singleton produces one of the best-known games on the quintessentially British ZX Spectrum.
• Also hailing from the UK, one of the most important and influential space sims has its initial release.
  
• Roberta Williams releases her most important game of all time, which ironically owes its existence to one of the biggest hardware flops of all time.
• Future Sierra employee Al Lowe gets a retrospective analysis.
  
• Multiple RPG-inspired Japanese games will pave the way for The Legend of Zelda.
• What will eventually become one of the most famous games of all time is created but languishes in obscurity for a while.
• Microprose gets a retrospective of its combat flight sims released to date.
• Capcom debuts and makes its mark as a major player in the arcade industry, challenging Konami's established presence.
• Children's software companies The Learning Company and Spinnaker Software get retrospectives, having both produced notable games in 1984.

 

Moving forward, I am also raising the requirements for whale status, as frankly the 25-vote rule is starting to feel a bit too inclusive. From now on, any game with fewer than 30 votes may be excluded if playing it doesn't appeal. The 1984 games excluded include Frogger II, Golf, Tournament Tennis, and Flicky. I'm also going to skip Pitfall II: Lost Caverns and Marble Madness, as I've already played them to completion and a replay just doesn't seem interesting. On the flipside, there will be more discretionary whales than ever.

1984 could just be the biggest phase of Data Driven Gamer yet, a trend that I don't see stopping any time soon.

"D" and I have moved, but we still have a lot of work to do before we're truly settled in, and unpacking is just the beginning of our tasks. Expect a slower than typical post schedule for at least a few weeks.