1985, Game of the Year

[The_Liquid_Laser]

VAMatt said:

With the benefit of hindsight, I don't see how anybody could vote for anything other than Super Mario Bros. That's the start of the most significant gaming franchise of all time.

If I were choosing back in 1985, I might have picked Carmen Sandiego, or possibly Paperboy.  I don't think Tetris was a big factor until a few years later. I may have selected Mario even back then. But, at that point, I wouldn't have the influence of nearly 40 years of Mario dominating the gaming scene to influence my thinking.  

I've never met a single person, in RL or online, that has played Super Mario Bros in 1985.  To play it then, you'd either have to be from Japan or live in NYC and be one of the few people who got an NES that first Christmas.  I played SMB the first time in 1986 in an arcade.  It was definitely a fun game, but the graphics seemed outdated.  I really liked the feeling of being powerful from the fireflower and star.  That is not something most arcade games did, because they were trying to take your money.  I finally saw my first NES commercial in 1987 and got SMB in the home shortly thereafter.

The game I was playing a lot in 1985 was Gauntlet.  I suck more money into that than I can count.  I can't really remember playing a 4-player co-op game before that.  Paperboy was a good game too.  I played Carmen Sandiago at a friend's house either in 1985 or 1986, and that was a good game, but I preferred arcade games at the time.  SMB, Tetris, and Ultima 4 are all great games, but they were all games I played after 1985.