1980's, Game of the Decade

[Jumpin]

alabtrosMyster said:

I think Super Mario Bros. 3 is the answer, however it would not exist without Super Mario Bros.

Pac-Man is hard to beat as well! Too bad it did not make the move to side scroller well. It could have been exactly like Mario (collect the dots instead of coins, the big dots give you power ups).

Personally, I was much more into adventure games, so titles like Metroid, Zelda and Phantasy Star were much more impactful.

I see Super Mario Bros 3 as a bit of a blend of adventure and 2D platforming. Particularly when considering how games were in the 1980s where adventure elements weren’t as pronounced as they became during the 16-bit or the 32/64-bit generations. For me, it was the fact that Super Mario Bros 3 felt like such a huge adventure that really attracted me to the game.

Although, where Metroid and Zelda appealed to me was their open worldness—basically, the freedom of how to progress. At first, building on these games always felt like a trade off against that freedom, and I found it peaked with Link to the Past… until Breath of the Wild blew that theory out of the water.