Gadgetory

the years 1985 in games in a bit of a weird place thanks to the games crash of 1983 arcades are still doing pretty well but home consoles are suffering big time that is at least until near the end of that year when we saw the release of the original Nintendo Entertainment System it was during this time that we got a lot of important game releases that shapes the future of the gaming industry and here are the five that I think are the best starting with gauntlet now the big deal about gauntlet is that it was one of the first games to really push full four player co-op and it did things with comp that no other games did up until that time one of the biggest being the fact that while you were working together with friends you could also accidentally screw each other over if you played any game where you get angry at your friends because they grabbed an item that you needed or they destroyed something the party could use well you can thank gauntlet for being the first game to do that because in gauntlet players could accidentally destroy food which were to cover your health the thing is in gauntlet health was also gained by spending quarters so if someone destroyed food they were literally forcing you to spend more of your own money if you want to stay in the game as long as possible it wasn't the most complex game but it was a ton of fun and revolutionized the way people approach cooperative gaming inspired a lot of future titles including one of its best descendants gauntlet Legends which came out in the late 90s the second up is Space Harrier now 1985 was a really good year for arcade shooters including the likes of commando and Gradius but what made Space Harrier stand out above these two was the big leaps it made in technology especially for graphics this was one of the first games to have sprite scaling which created a pseudo 3d image something that players never saw before then it also was one of the first games to make use of an analog control stick offering a degree of precision that previous designs didn't have this is also one of the most bizarre looking games to come out on arcade thanks to the fact that well first off it came out in the 80s and second off it was inspired by Buck Rogers featuring all kinds of weird sci-fi fantasy stuff like using a jetpack laser gun fighting against aliens robots space ships floating statues shooting lasers out of their mouths dragons and Cyclops mammoths it was fast paced a big leap in technology for both graphics and gameplay and is arguably responsible for the creation of future hit 3d shooters like starfox now of all the games on this list this next game is arguably one of the most influential but at the same time one that has not aged well at all and that's Ultima 4 originally released on the Apple 2 Ultima 4 started taking the series in a new direction that was really a new move for the RPG genre as a whole see up until that point RPGs were all focused on a very simple storyline you're the hero there's evil make bad guy ruining everyone else's fun go into the dungeon kill him and save the day instead Ultima 4 plot focused on the player characters moral development traveling from city to city proving themselves to be compassionate honorable honest so and so forth in other words it was the first game to really give players a sense of consequence to the actions that their character took it's a bit of a headache to try and go back and play now especially if you didn't grow up with RPGs of its style but for its time this was a huge achievement for computer role-playing games and led to a large number of sequels as well as a much more user-friendly port on the NES next up is ghosts and goblins back in the older days of gaming a major source of playtime was just the fact that games had soul-crushing difficulty not actually having that much content but forcing you to deal with the same small amount of over and over and over because you're just dying so often and no game has accomplished this art more than the original ghosts and goblins anyone who thinks that Dark Souls is a hard game needs to go back and play this heartless monstrosity because it will crush you so much more first time it only takes two hits for your characters to die enemies are extremely tenacious and everywhere and what do you think you've beaten the game you actually have to run through all five stages one more time if you want to actually face the final boss despite all of this that would just infuriate brand-new players it was still the right level of challenges that just kept you suck in trying more and more continuing to pump quarters in the machine or buy one of the later console ports and sequels that were released years later now of course you can't talk about 1985 in gaming without mentioning one of the singular most important releases in gaming history the original Super Mario Brothers on the NES this is the game that spearheaded the third generation of consoles and helped to boost side-scrolling platformers as one of the main dominating genres of the gaming industry featuring the now iconic Mario and his Pelt swapped brother Luigi and two-player super mario brothers offered one of the best design games of its time with what was then precise platforming control great level design and a lot of different little secrets for players to an earth that was just satisfying it was this game combined with the Nintendo's later hits that really brought the home console market back to life and began to make arcades a lot more barren until the early 90s not to mention being the first release in what is now one of the longest-running franchises in gaming with a ridiculous number of sequels and spin-offs so there you have my list of some of the best games that came out back in 1985 there were definitely a lot of other great titles that just didn't quite make my list so make sure to let me know down in the comments what some of your favorites were if you liked this video make sure to let me know by hitting that like button in two weeks I'm going to be doing this all over again but for 1986 so make sure to subscribe so you don't miss out on it as always guys thank you so much for watching and I'll see you later