1982, Game of the Year

[The_Liquid_Laser]

Official voting has now ended (but people can still vote unofficially if they like).

The 1982 game of the year is Pitfall!
The runner up is Dig Dug.
The master thread for all of these contests can be found here.

What do you believe to be the "Game of the Year" for 1982 and why?  Also, vote on "Game of the Year" for 1982. 

 

Dig Dug (Arcade)
Namco strikes again with this hit maze game where you create your own maze.  Dig Dug sold over 22,000 cabinets by the end of 1982.

 

Donkey Kong Jr (Arcade)
Miyamoto produces his second big hit.  Play as Donkey Kong’s son and defeat the evil villain Mario as you follow him to his nefarious secret hideout.  Donkey Kong Jr has sold over 30,000 cabinets worldwide.  It was also featured in the Saturday Supercade show.

TV Show intro:  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vWBi2wW74QA

 

Joust (Arcade)
Ride around on giant flying birds and defeat other guys on flying birds in this game which most definitely inspired Balloon Fight.  Joust was also the first really popular game to feature 2-player co-op.  Joust has sold over 26,000 cabinets worldwide.

 

Pole Position (Arcade)
Namco produces another hit!  Pole Position was the most successful racing game in the Golden Era of Arcades.  It sold over 22,000 arcade cabinets.  It also had its own 30 minute TV show.

TV Show intro:  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WSZSAq4xIc0

 

Q*Bert (Arcade)
Q*Bert is a weird little guy that jumps around diagonally on an isometric board and has a potty mouth.  Q*Bert has sold over 25,000 cabinets and was featured in Saturday Supercade.

TV Show intro:  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Os-YIVjAQpw

 

Tron (Arcade)
Art imitates art imitates art.  The Disney movie Tron, also released in 1982, is about a game developer that gets trapped inside a computer.  This game was developed by Bally Midway and it actually contains 4 minigames based on events from the movie.  Tron has sold over 10,000 cabinets.

 

Xevious (Arcade)
Namco is on fire as they produce another hit game, this time a shmup.  This game was particularly popular in Japan where it reached sales figures not seen since Space Invaders.  It was also an early port to the Famicom (NES), released in 1984, where it went on to sell 1.5 million copies.

 

Microsoft Flight Simulator 1.0 (IBM PC)
MS Flight Simulator is the first entry in Microsoft’s longest running series.

 

 

Pitfall! (Atari 2600)
In 1979, 4 disgruntled Atari developers decided to head out on their own and form the first independent third party game studio, Activision.  Activision produced many games for the Atari 2600, but their biggest hit was this platformer, Pitfall!  Pitfall went on to sell over 4 million copies making it the best selling game on the Atari 2600 that was not an arcade port.  Pitfall also had a segment on Saturday Supercade even though it wasn’t an arcade game.

TV Show Intro:  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=J_1GLIu9hqQ

 

 

Other (please specify)
If you think another games deserves to be "Game of the Year" other than one of the 9 I listed above, then please vote “Other” and say your game in the comments.  If the "Other" category takes at least 2nd place and no other game gets at least 50% of the vote, then I will do a runoff vote including the most mentioned game(s) from the comments.

The winner of this vote will be decided Sunday, Sept 10 at 11:59 EST.

Last edited by The_Liquid_Laser - on 10 September 2023