Prompt's TechBlog

The New York Times has published a list of the top 10 computer games, which four US gaming experts say they wish to preserve for posterity.

They are:

1. Spacewar! (1962)
2. Star Raiders (1979)
3. Zork (1980)
4. Tetris (1985)
5. SimCity (1989)
6. Super Mario Bros. 3 (1990)
7. Civilization I/II (1991)
8. Doom (1993)
9. Warcraft series (beginning 1994)
10. Sensible World of Soccer (1994).

That list probably reflects an understandable US cultural bias (our own British Film Institute has been collecting computer games since the late nineties, anyway).

But it does seem to skip over an entire generation of gaming, between 1980 and 1985. This period was historically significant because people had much more power over their gaming hardware. In the early days, you needed to be an electronics expert to create games. Today, you pretty much need to be working at a large studio endorsed by the hardware manufacturers or need to create convoluted workarounds to program the hardware you've bought without breaking copyright law.

Back back in the early 80s, you had a (sometimes squidgy) keyboard and could buy programs in magazines. A good number of the games people played, they had to type in first, which would be completely unthinkable today. People earned their games through hard labour, and learned a little bit about programming along the way.

The ease with which the machines could be programmed made it a massively productive period. Many commercial successes emerged from hobbyist programming.

Clearly we can't have all these games included in a top 10 list, but if we're going to have Tetris as an ambassador of puzzle games, then I nominate Manic Miner as a representative of the early 80s. It was reportedly written by one man in six weeks (which is probably the average time a game misses its advertised street date by today). It's an early platform game, and it was massively commercially successful. It represents all those games that came from one-man bands and made it big, something that was only possible for a few short years. And it represents everyone else who typed in games, learned to program and hoped to one day create their own big hit.

What games would you add to the list?