Mega Man. Its my favorite franchise and thats where it started. Awesome game. Shout-out to Mike Tysons Punch-Out!! Also one of my favorite games of all time.

What a time to be a gamer! Double Dragon, Contra, Shinobi, Final Fantasy, Super Mario 2 (even if it wasn't the same), Mike Tyson, Zelda 2, Metal Gear, Phantasy Star, and Megan Man were all great games and very important games to help shape future games. Saying all that I have to pick Maniac Mansion. I remember playing it with my neighbor, we both had a copy and we would get together and play it all day, than we when we weren't together we would play it at home and race to see who could solve all of the puzzles first and beat the game. For a game I can beat in around an hour these days, we put weeks into the games trying to beat it the first time. After we beat it the first time, we had more adventures figuring out how to beat it with other characters as well to get different endings which was also a huge deal at that time.

Yeah, this is it. I remember the animated DSI logo and the main menu, car choice with the very low poly 3D models and naturally the actual race. Kinda forgot about the characters you race. I had a lot of fun with it. Great game.

I looked at the options and voted for FF but was then reminded of Phantasy Star when I looked the comments! So I formally change my vote to that (if I can XD)

Although, I do wonder about the integrity of this year's results... it seems a lot of people are saying Phantasy Star and Mega Man in the comments, so either one of those may well have one if they were included as named options rather than just being caught under "other"

Punch-Out!! and it's not even close. It's the only one of these games that still holds up great by today's standards.

I keep getting thrown off by these lists of nominees because they go by original release date, and these games were released in a time where the North American release was often a year or more after the Japanese release. Like, we didn't even get Final Fantasy until 1990. Doki Doki Panic was a 1987 release in Japan, but SMB2 wasn't released in NA until 1988.

Anyway, my pick is obviously Mega Man, with Mike Tyson's Punch-Out being a very, very close second.

Well, obviously ;), I can see few titles that are less deserving than Pirates in main poll, especially since there are games like Punch Out that were already in one of previous polls.

I loved and played Last Ninja so much on both C64 and later on Amiga - not sure it is poll material though, very few people even heard of it, given it was and remained "home computers" exclusive.

Anyway, such a good year - there were lot of good adventure games, good RPGs and arcades had Operation Wolf, with that Uzi controller (I think it was) attached to cabinet for gameplay.

Shinobi for me, never played these others. 

Really enjoyed Double Dragon as a kid, so it gets my vote. Unfortunately I never played any of the others.

It was one of the first to have a differentiated AI for the diffeent opponent - though it's not always clear what makes it tick: