The 1980s.
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1980
42 events- Systems
Acorn Atom
A home computer with BASIC and an assembler under the same keyboard
- Companies & Studios
Acornsoft
Acorn's own software house, and the first publisher of Elite
- Classic Games
Adventure
A mainframe text game redrawn in 4K for the Atari 2600, with a secret room
- Culture & Community
Arcade Conversion
The coin-op at home, and how close it got
- Magazines
Atari Club Magazin
Atari's West German club magazine, from E.T. to the Tramiel takeover
- Magazines
Australian Personal Computer
A Melbourne monthly made under licence from England, and still going as APC
- Classic Games
Battlezone
Atari's 1980 tank game in wireframe 3D
- Phenomena
BBC Computer Literacy Project
The television series that came with its own computer
- Companies & Studios
Beam Software
The Melbourne studio behind Melbourne House
- Classic Games
Berzerk
Robots that talk, walls that kill, and a smiley face you cannot shoot
- Culture & Community
British game development
From cassettes sold in Boots to Grand Theft Auto
- Companies & Studios
Brøderbund
The Carlston family's software house, from Lode Runner to Myst
- Techniques
BSP Trees
Sorting a level's walls once, so every frame draws them in order
- Companies & Studios
Bug-Byte
The first Liverpool software house, and the one others left
- Systems
Commodore VIC-20
The friendly computer
- Distribution
Digital Distribution
Games without boxes
- Genres
Flight Sim
Aircraft, instruments, and the pleasure of a long manual
- Culture & Community
From BASIC to machine code
How home-computer owners of the 1980s taught themselves to program the processor
- Systems
Game & Watch
Yokoi's calculator games
- Companies & Studios
GCE
General Consumer Electronics, the Santa Monica company that launched the Vectrex
- Techniques
Ghost AI
Pac-Man's four personalities
- Genres
Graphic Adventure
The parser gets a picture, then loses the parser
- Companies & Studios
HAL Laboratory
Kirby's home, and the company Satoru Iwata saved
- Companies & Studios
Hewson Consultants
The publisher that put the developer's name on the box
- Culture & Community
Licensed Games
Films, television and arcade machines sold under a famous name
- Classic Games
Missile Command
Atari's 1980 coin-op of a nuclear attack that cannot be stopped
- Classic Games
Pac-Man
The maze game nobody expected to sell
- Companies & Studios
Quicksilva
From a home-made ZX80 RAM pack to Ant Attack
- Culture & Community
Regional Differences
Same game, different experience
- Classic Games
Rogue
The Unix dungeon game that named a genre
- Genres
Roguelike
Games named after Rogue: a new dungeon every time, and death is final
- Companies & Studios
Sierra On-Line
The adventure game company from the foothills of Yosemite
- Languages
Sinclair BASIC
One key, one keyword
- Systems
Sinclair ZX80
The £99.95 computer that switched off its own screen
- Genres
Single-Screen Platformer
The whole level in view, from Donkey Kong to Bubble Bobble
- Classic Games
Star Raiders
The cartridge that sold Atari computers
- Companies & Studios
Technosoft
The Sasebo company behind Thunder Force and Herzog Zwei
- Companies & Studios
The Learning Company
From a research grant to Reader Rabbit
- Culture & Community
The Liverpool games scene
From a computer shop and two chemistry students to Psygnosis, WipEout and the studios that followed
- Systems
TRS-80 Color Computer
Tandy's 6809 line, from 1980 to 1991
- Genres
Wargame
Hex maps, supply lines, and an unhurried audience
- Culture & CommunityWorld context
John Lennon murdered
The murder of former Beatle John Lennon outside his New York apartment marks the end of an era and sparks global mourning.
1981
33 events- Systems
BBC Micro
Acorn's computer for the BBC's Computer Literacy Project
- Classic Games
Centipede
Atari's trackball bug-shooter
- Magazines
Computer & Video Games
EMAP's games monthly, from the ZX81 to the PlayStation 2
- Magazines
Computer Gaming World
Russell Sipe's American magazine of computer games, 1981 to 2006
- Classic Games
Defender
Five buttons and a planet to save
- Classic Games
Donkey Kong
The game that rescued a warehouse of Radar Scopes
- Magazines
Electronic Games
America's first magazine about video games, and home of the Arcade Awards
- Classic Games
Frogger
Look both ways
- Classic Games
Galaga
The sequel that let the aliens steal your ship
- Companies & Studios
Level 9
The Austin family's adventure factory
- Culture & Community
Magazine Distribution
How computer magazines got from the printer to the reader
- Magazines
MCmicrocomputer
Rome's computing monthly, from the Atari 800 to the digital camera, 1981 to 2001
- Magazines
Micro Sistemas
Brazil's first microcomputer magazine, opening on the death of John Lennon
- Companies & Studios
Nihon Falcom
From a Tachikawa computer shop to Ys and the Trails series
- Culture & Community
PC Gaming
The office computer that became a games machine
- Genres
Platformer
The art of jumping
- Companies & Studios
PSS
Coventry's wargames house
- Classic Games
Scramble
The fuel-hungry flight that scrolled, and the game that went to court
- Systems
Sinclair ZX81
Computing for under £70
- Companies & Studios
Softdisk
Shreveport's monthly disks, and the games department that became id Software
- Techniques
Sprite Scaling
Pseudo-3D depth
- Culture & Community
Strategy Guides
Secrets for sale
- Companies & Studios
Technos Japan
The Japanese studio behind Renegade, Double Dragon and Kunio-kun, founded by Data East veterans
- Classic Games
Tempest
Atari's first colour vector game
- Culture & Community
The Cambridge games scene
From adventures on a university mainframe and Elite to Frontier, Jagex and Ninja Theory
- Systems
TI-99/4A
TI BASIC, cartridge modules and a separate display memory
- Events
Twin Galaxies
The Iowa arcade that became a scoreboard for the world
- Classic Games
Ultima
Richard Garriott's role-playing series, from Akalabeth to Ultima Online
- Classic Games
Wizardry
The Cornell dungeon crawl that Japan took to heart
- Magazines
Your Computer
Buying a micro, understanding it and supplying its programs
- Tools
ZXAS
Bug-Byte's ZX81 assembler
- TechnologyWorld context
IBM PC launched
IBM's entry into personal computing legitimises the market and establishes the architecture that dominates business computing for decades.
- Culture & CommunityWorld context
MTV begins broadcasting
Music Television launches with 'Video Killed the Radio Star,' creating a new visual medium that transforms pop culture and advertising.
1982
71 events- Hardware
6510: The C64's Processor
A 6502 with a memory switch built in
- Magazines
Acorn User
Acorn's official magazine, from the Atom to RISC OS
- Companies & Studios
Addictive Games
Football Manager's publisher, from a Milton Keynes post box to Prism Leisure
- Companies & Studios
Argonaut Software
From Starglider to the Super FX chip
- Systems
Atari 5200
Computer-family graphics with an analogue console controller
- Culture & Community
Bad Ports
When conversions fail
- Companies & Studios
CentreSoft
The Midlands distributor that paid for U.S. Gold
- Classic Games
Choplifter
Dan Gorlin's 1982 Apple II rescue game, scored in lives saved
- Hardware
CIA 6526
The Commodore 64's two input/output and timer chips
- Magazines
Club Commodore
A Barcelona distributor's bulletin for VIC-20 and CBM owners
- Systems
ColecoVision
Coleco's 1982 console, which came with Donkey Kong and could play Atari cartridges
- Hardware
Commodore 1541
The disk drive with its own computer
- Systems
Commodore 64
The 8-bit every kid could afford
- Books
Commodore 64 Programmer's Reference Guide
Commodore's own map of the machine
- Magazines
Commodore Computer Club
Milan's Commodore monthly, from a C64 preview in 1982 to Personal Computer Club
- Companies & Studios
Compile
The Hiroshima shoot-'em-up house that made Puyo Puyo
- Books
Computer Battlegames
Thirteen type-in games for seven micros in one Usborne paperback
- Companies & Studios
CRL Group
The East London publisher that took its games to the film censors
- Hardware
D-pad
Nintendo's cross-shaped control
- People
Derek Yu born
The designer of Spelunky, and the keeper of TIGSource
- Companies & Studios
Design Design
Crystal Computing renamed: the Manchester programmers who built their own development computers
- Classic Games
Dig Dug
A maze you dig yourself
- Systems
Dragon 32
The toy company's 6809 computer
- Companies & Studios
Dragon Data
The Welsh maker of the Dragon 32 and 64
- Classic Games
E.T. the Extra-Terrestrial
Atari's five-week film licence for Christmas 1982
- Groups
Eagle Soft Incorporated
The C64 cracking group with the eagle intro
- Companies & Studios
Electronic Arts
The software company that called its programmers artists
- Classic Games
Football Manager (1982)
A game about running the club, sold by mail order from Milton Keynes
- Technologies
Full Motion Video
Live action in games
- Companies & Studios
Gilsoft
The Welsh Wizards of Adventure
- Systems
Grundy NewBrain
A compact computer with more than one way to use a screen
- Companies & Studios
Imagine Software
The Liverpool publisher whose collapse the BBC filmed
- Hardware
Inside the VIC-II
The graphics chip that defined the Commodore 64
- Classic Games
Joust
Knights on ostriches, and no fire button
- Systems
Jupiter Ace
The home computer that shipped with Forth instead of BASIC
- Companies & Studios
Llamasoft
Jeff Minter's label, run from the family home in Tadley
- Companies & Studios
LucasArts
Lucasfilm's games company, and the house that SCUMM built
- Companies & Studios
Martech
A chemistry teacher's software house, and its famous names
- Companies & Studios
MicroProse
Flight simulations, Sid Meier's games, and a British arm in Tetbury
- Classic Games
Microsoft Flight Simulator
The sky above your desk
- Companies & Studios
Mikro-Gen
Wally Week's publisher, and the Spectrum add-on that sank it
- Classic Games
Moon Patrol
Irem's lunar buggy and its layered hills
- Companies & Studios
Ocean Software
The Manchester publisher that set out to plan its hits
- Classic Games
Pac-Man (Atari 2600)
The arcade's biggest hit, squeezed into 4K
- Magazines
PAGE 6
An Atari user group's magazine that took over its professional rival
- Techniques
Parallax Scrolling
Depth through motion
- Classic Games
Pitfall!
A 255-screen jungle in a 4K Atari cartridge
- Classic Games
Pole Position
Namco's Grand Prix at Fuji
- Classic Games
Q*bert
Hopping on a pyramid, swearing in symbols
- Genres
Rail Shooters
The game drives, you shoot
- Classic Games
Robotron: 2084
One stick to move, one to shoot
- Classic Games
Rocky's Boots
Logic gates you could pick up and wire together
- Companies & Studios
Seibu Kaihatsu
The Tokyo arcade house behind Raiden
- Distribution
Shareware
Try before you buy
- Hardware
SID: The Sound of the C64
Three voices, endless personality
- Magazines
Sinclair Programs
A magazine that was mostly listings
- Magazines
Sinclair User
The independent magazine for the independent user
- Systems
Sinclair ZX Spectrum
Rubber-keyed colour, on a budget
- Culture & Community
Soviet Computing
Home computers from magazine diagrams
- Companies & Studios
Superior Software
The Leeds publisher of Repton, Exile and, from 1986, Acornsoft's games
- Companies & Studios
System 3
Mark Cale's London publisher of Death Star Interceptor, International Karate and The Last Ninja
- Culture & Community
The C64 Across Borders
One machine, many markets: how the Commodore 64 reached buyers from Oslo to San Luis
- Classic Games
The Hobbit
The adventure whose characters had lives of their own
- Phenomena
The Rise of the Bedroom Coder
The young programmers who sold games from home, and what the period press said about them
- Hardware
The ULA
One Ferranti gate array: display, keyboard, sound and tape
- Companies & Studios
Ultimate Play the Game
The Stamper brothers' Spectrum label, before they became Rare
- Culture & Community
Universal vs Nintendo
Two gorillas in a New York court
- Systems
Vectrex
The console that brought its own screen
- Companies & Studios
Vortex Software
Costa Panayi's 3D games, from Manchester
- Classic Games
Zaxxon
Sega's 1982 space fortress, seen from above one corner
- Magazines
ZX Computing
Argus's Sinclair magazine, from Tim Hartnell's quarterly to ZX Computing Monthly
1983
68 events- Genres
4X Strategy
Explore, expand, exploit, exterminate
- Systems
Acorn Electron
BBC BASIC in a smaller hardware budget
- Companies & Studios
Alligata Software
The Sheffield publisher of Blagger, Loco and Who Dares Wins II
- Classic Games
Ant Attack
Sandy White's walled city of Antescher, drawn in Soft Solid 3D
- Hardware
APU: The NES Audio Processing Unit
Five sound channels on the CPU chip
- Genres
Arcade Adventure
Exploring with a joystick: the British press's name for Atic Atac, Knight Lore and their descendants
- Genres
Art Games
Games made to say something, not to be won
- Companies & Studios
Atarisoft
Atari’s games for other people’s computers
- Classic Games
Atic Atac
Ultimate's haunted castle, seen from the chandelier
- Classic Games
Attack of the Mutant Camels
Jeff Minter's first big Commodore 64 game, and a name that meant two games
- Companies & Studios
Beau Jolly
Other people's hits, ten to a box
- Languages
Beta BASIC
Spectrum BASIC enhanced
- Companies & Studios
Beyond Software
EMAP's games label: Psytron, Lords of Midnight and Shadowfire
- Classic Games
Bomberman
From a BASIC compiler demo to the party game
- Companies & Studios
Bubble Bus Software
87 High Street, Tonbridge
- People
byuu (Near) born
The accuracy advocate
- Companies & Studios
Cascade Games
Fifty games and a calculator watch
- Culture & Community
Cheat Codes
6031769, up, up, down, down...
- Classic Games
Chuckie Egg
Eggs, ladders and birds that look like ostriches
- Magazines
Compute!'s Gazette
Programs you could type, for Commodore owners, from 1983 to 1995
- Magazines
CU Amiga
Commodore User, renamed when the Amiga won
- Systems
Dragon 64
The Dragon with twice the memory
- Companies & Studios
Durell Software
Games and business software from Taunton
- Classic Games
Elevator Action
A spy, a thirty-floor building and a lift he can drive
- Culture & Community
Gaming Accessibility
Making games playable by disabled players
- Events
Golden Joystick Awards
Computer & Video Games' readers' awards, from a Berkeley Square dinner to a global online vote
- Companies & Studios
Graftgold
Steve Turner and Andrew Braybrook's development house, from Hewson to the PlayStation
- Classic Games
Granny's Garden
Mike Matson's classroom adventure, and its witch
- Phenomena
Guild of Software Houses
GOSH: the British games industry's first trade body, from 1983
- Companies & Studios
Incentive Software
From a Reading shop to Freescape and virtual reality
- Companies & Studios
Infogrames
The Lyon publisher that grew from two people and a telephone into the owner of Ocean, Gremlin and the Atari name
- Culture & Community
Institutional Computer Press
In the socialist bloc, a computer magazine needed a parent institution, and the parent shaped the magazine
- Companies & Studios
Interplay Entertainment
Brian Fargo's company, from The Bard's Tale to Fallout
- Classic Games
Jetpac
Ultimate's debut, and the first Golden Joystick Game of the Year
- Classic Games
Lode Runner
150 screens of gold, guards and holes, and a way to make more
- Books
Machine Code for Beginners
Usborne's 48-page guide to the Z80 and the 6502
- Classic Games
Manic Miner
Twenty caverns, In the Hall of the Mountain King, and a teenage programmer
- Classic Games
Mario Bros.
Before the Super
- Books
Mastering Machine Code on Your ZX Spectrum
Toni Baker's machine-code course, from Interface Publications
- Magazines
Mikroszámítógép Magazin
Hungary's home-computer monthly, published by the John von Neumann Computer Science Society
- Companies & Studios
Mindscape
From textbook publisher's software arm to Pearson's games division
- Companies & Studios
Mirrorsoft
The Daily Mirror's software house, from Mr Men to Tetris
- Communities
Modding
Players who rebuilt the games they bought
- Systems
MSX
One standard, dozens of manufacturers
- Companies & Studios
Newsfield Publications
The Ludlow publisher of CRASH, ZZAP!64 and Amtix!
- Systems
Nintendo Entertainment System
The Famicom, and the grey box it became
- Companies & Studios
Origin Systems
We create worlds
- Magazines
Personal Computer Games
VNU's multi-format games monthly, and the training ground for ZZAP!64, Amstrad Action and ACE
- Magazines
Pixel
Greece's listings magazine, launched on the evidence of a reader survey
- Classic Games
Planetfall
Infocom's comic science fiction, and Floyd the robot
- Culture & Community
POKE culture
How magazine readers found, swapped and printed the numbers that changed commercial games
- Hardware
PPU: The NES Picture Processor
Tiles, sprites and scrolling, built by Ricoh
- Phenomena
Sega vs Nintendo
Eighteen years of rivalry, and how it looked from Japan, America and Europe
- Languages
Simons' BASIC
114 commands from a sixteen-year-old
- Hardware
Sinclair Microdrive
Named files on a tiny loop of tape
- Companies & Studios
Software Projects
The Liverpool publisher Matthew Smith took Manic Miner to
- Classic Games
Spy Hunter
Bally Midway's gadget car on an endless road
- Phenomena
The 1983 Video Game Crash
How North America's console boom collapsed, and what Atari buried in the desert
- Books
The Complete Spectrum ROM Disassembly
Sinclair's 16K, printed and annotated line by line
- Magazines
The Micro User
Database Publications' independent BBC Micro monthly
- Tools
The Quill
Adventure writing for people who could not program
- Classic Games
Thunder Force
Technosoft's shoot-'em-up series, from the Sharp X1 to the Mega Drive
- Communities
Total Conversions
New games built inside old ones
- Classic Games
Track & Field
Konami's button-pounding athletics, made for the 1984 Olympics
- Companies & Studios
Virgin Games
From a windowless office on Portobello Road to Aladdin and Command & Conquer
- Phenomena
When the Record Companies Sold Software
The music business's move into British games publishing
- Classic Games
Xevious
Namco's shooter with a world underneath it
- Hardware
ZX Interface 2
Two joysticks and a game ready at switch-on
1984
78 events- Classic Games
1942
Capcom's Pacific air war, and the game that made its name
- Companies & Studios
Accolade
The sports and simulation publisher that went to court with Sega and won
- Genres
Action RPG
Role-playing games fought in real time
- Tools
AGI Engine
Sierra's Adventure Game Interpreter
- Systems
Amstrad CPC
All-in-one colour computing
- Companies & Studios
Atari Games
The arcade half of Atari, and Tengen's fight with Nintendo
- Companies & Studios
Atlantis Software
The video distributor's £1.99 games, card games included
- Classic Games
Balloon Fight
Joust with balloons
- Communities
BBS Door Games
Multiplayer games played one caller at a time
- Genres
Beat 'em Up
Walk right, punch everyone: from Kung-Fu Master's temple to Streets of Rage
- Magazines
Big K
Games to buy, programs to type and a comic drawn on a Mac
- Culture & Community
Boing Ball
The Amiga's bouncing demo and unofficial emblem
- Classic Games
Bomb Jack
Tehkan's caped bomb collector
- Classic Games
Boulder Dash
Dig, collect, survive
- Distribution
Budget Games
Pocket-money software, from £1.99
- Companies & Studios
Chunsoft
Dragon Quest's developer, then Mystery Dungeon and the sound novel
- Systems
Commodore 16 and Plus/4
Commodore's TED machines, and their second life on budget tape
- Systems
Commodore SX-64
A C64, colour screen and disk drive in a carrying case
- Distribution
Cover tapes
Cassettes stuck to the front of British computer magazines
- Magazines
CRASH
The Spectrum games monthly from Ludlow
- Communities
Demo Scene
Art from hardware limits
- Companies & Studios
Denton Designs
The Liverpool team that walked out of Imagine's collapse
- Culture & Community
Disk Magazines
Commercial and user-group magazines published on disk
- Companies & Studios
Domark
Two advertising men, a £25,000 treasure hunt, and a decade of licences
- Classic Games
Doomdark's Revenge
The sequel to The Lords of Midnight: 6,000 locations and 128 characters
- Companies & Studios
Dragon Data goes into liquidation
The Welsh maker of the Dragon 32 and 64
- Classic Games
Duck Hunt
Three shots, and the dog is watching
- Classic Games
Elite
The galaxy in your bedroom
- Companies & Studios
Elite Systems
The Walsall family firm that brought Commando home
- Classic Games
Excitebike
Motocross with an engine that overheats, and a track you can build
- Design
Falling Block
Puzzle game foundation
- Tools
Filmation Engine
Isometric illusion
- Companies & Studios
Firebird
British Telecom's games label, from £2.50 tapes to Elite
- Systems
Galaksija
The Yugoslav computer readers built themselves
- Companies & Studios
Gargoyle Games
Two business programmers in Dudley, and a run of Spectrum games that reviewed in the 90s
- Companies & Studios
GCE ends
General Consumer Electronics, the Santa Monica company that launched the Vectrex
- Companies & Studios
Gremlin Graphics
The Sheffield software house above a computer shop, from Monty Mole to Actua Soccer
- Classic Games
Hypersports
Konami's arcade sequel to Track & Field, and Imagine's comeback
- Companies & Studios
Imagine Software goes into liquidation
The Liverpool publisher whose collapse the BBC filmed
- Classic Games
Impossible Mission
Stay a while... stay forever!
- Magazines
Input
The complete computing course
- Classic Games
Jet Set Willy
Matthew Smith's mansion epic, bugs and all
- Classic Games
Karateka
Jordan Mechner's first game, animated from Super 8 film
- Classic Games
King's Quest
The adventure IBM paid for, and Tandy rescued
- Classic Games
Knight Lore
Ultimate's first Filmation game, and the start of the Spectrum's isometric adventures
- Classic Games
Kung-Fu Master
Irem's 1984 walk through a temple of fighters
- Classic Games
Lords of Midnight
32,000 views, 48 kilobytes
- Companies & Studios
Magnetic Scrolls
The London adventure house that took on Infocom
- Books
Mapping the Commodore 64
A book organised by the machine's addresses
- Classic Games
Marble Madness
Atari Games' trackball race down an Escher landscape
- Companies & Studios
Mastertronic
The £1.99 budget label that sold games wherever people shopped
- Classic Games
Match Day
The Spectrum's answer to International Soccer, and the sequel that went to number one
- Companies & Studios
Milton Bradley is acquired
The board game company that sold a cartridge handheld and a vector console
- Companies & Studios
Naughty Dog
From Apple II skiing games to Crash Bandicoot and The Last of Us
- Hardware
NES Zapper
The light gun that brought Duck Hunt home
- Companies & Studios
Novagen Software
Paul Woakes, Bruce Jordan and the city of Targ
- Companies & Studios
Odin Computer Graphics
The Liverpool team behind Nodes of Yesod and Robin of the Wood
- Companies & Studios
Palace Software
From a Soho video shop to Barbarian
- Magazines
PAPERsoft
An Italian weekly of type-in programs, most of them translated from American and British magazines
- Companies & Studios
Probe Software
The Croydon conversion house behind Out Run, Savage and Mortal Kombat
- Companies & Studios
Psygnosis
From Imagine's ashes to the PlayStation launch
- Classic Games
Punch-Out!!
Learning to read the boxer in front of you
- Companies & Studios
Quicksilva is acquired
From a home-made ZX80 RAM pack to Ant Attack
- Magazines
Računari
The Belgrade magazine that published a computer you could build
- Companies & Studios
Rainbow Arts
The German label behind Giana Sisters, Katakis and Turrican
- Companies & Studios
Realtime Games Software
Three Leeds graduates and their 3D Spectrum games
- Classic Games
Robot Odyssey
Wiring robots' brains to escape Robotropolis
- Classic Games
Sabre Wulf
Ultimate's jungle maze, and the £9.95 price that shocked the Spectrum market
- Systems
Sinclair QL
A 68008 and a multitasking operating system for £399, shipped with part of its ROM hanging out of the back
- Classic Games
Spy vs Spy
Two players, one embassy, a screen split in half
- Classic Games
Summer Games
Epyx's unofficial Olympics, and the start of the Games series
- Classic Games
Tetris
From a Moscow computer centre to the Game Boy
- Companies & Studios
The Edge
Fairlight, Bobby Bearing and Garfield, from a two-room office in Covent Garden
- Companies & Studios
Toaplan
Ten years of shoot-'em-ups from a Tokyo studio
- Companies & Studios
U.S. Gold
The Birmingham publisher that sold American and arcade games to British players
- Magazines
Your Commodore
Argus's type-in monthly, later YC
- Magazines
Your Spectrum
The technical Spectrum monthly that became Your Sinclair
- TechnologyWorld context
Apple Macintosh launched
Apple's Macintosh introduces the graphical user interface to mass audiences, heralded by the iconic '1984' Super Bowl advertisement.
1985
68 events- Groups
1001 Crew
The Dutch group that put sprites in the side borders
- Hardware
Agnus: The Amiga's DMA Controller
The chip that fetches memory for everything else
- Companies & Studios
Alternative Software
Pontefract's budget label, still trading
- Culture & Community
Amiga Art Style
Painted pixels from 32 colours
- Magazines
AmigaWorld
A new magazine for a computer with several possible futures
- Magazines
Amstrad Action
Future Publishing's first magazine, for the Amstrad CPC
- Magazines
Amstrad Semanal
Hobby Press's weekly for Spain's Amstrad boom, 1985–1987
- Magazines
Amtix!
Newsfield's Amstrad CPC magazine
- Systems
Atari ST
Sixteen-bit music machine
- Magazines
Bajtek
Poland's computer monthly, from state youth supplement to staff cooperative
- Hardware
Blitter: The Amiga's Graphics Accelerator
The chip inside Agnus that moves, combines, fills and draws
- Companies & Studios
Bug-Byte goes into liquidation
The first Liverpool software house, and the one others left
- Hardware
CD-ROM
Hundreds of megabytes, delivered slowly
- Classic Games
Commando
One man, a machine gun and a pocketful of grenades
- Systems
Commodore 128
Three operating modes, with different machines behind them
- Systems
Commodore Amiga
A 68000 with a team of custom chips
- Hardware
Copper: The Amiga's Display Coprocessor
Three instructions, timed to the video beam
- Software
Deluxe Paint
The pixel artist's brush
- Hardware
Denise: The Amiga's Display Chip
Bitplanes, sprites and the colour of every pixel
- Magazines
Drean Commodore
Argentina's magazine for the Commodores built in San Luis
- Classic Games
Dun Darach
Cuchulainn in a city of shops, banks and pickpockets
- Companies & Studios
Electric Dreams Software
Activision's British label
- Classic Games
Fairlight
An isometric castle where every object has a weight
- Companies & Studios
Future Publishing
The Somerset company behind Amstrad Action, Amiga Format and Edge
- Classic Games
Gauntlet
Four players, one dungeon, never enough food
- Classic Games
Ghosts 'n Goblins
Two hits, and the knight is bones
- Classic Games
Gradius
Konami's shoot-'em-up with a menu of weapons
- Tools
Graphic Adventure Creator
Incentive's adventure writer, with the pictures built in
- Classic Games
Hang-On
Sega's 1985 motorbike racer, played by leaning a full-size bike
- Techniques
Hard restart
Working around the SID's ADSR delay bug
- Culture & Community
Hint Lines
Help by the minute
- Classic Games
Ice Climber
Thirty-two mountains, one hammer
- Classic Games
International Karate
System 3's answer to Exploding Fist, rewritten from scratch for the C64 by Archer Maclean, and the defendant's game in a US copyright case
- Companies & Studios
Mastertronic Added Dimension
Mastertronic's £2.99 label, home of Magic Knight
- Classic Games
Monty on the Run
Monty Mole's prison break, and Rob Hubbard's best-known tune
- Hardware
Multiface
Romantic Robot's red button for the Spectrum and the Amstrad CPC
- Companies & Studios
NewTek
The Topeka company that turned the Amiga into a television studio
- Phenomena
Nintendo Seal of Quality
The gold seal on every licensed box
- Techniques
Opening the borders
Drawing outside the frame the VIC-II reserves
- Classic Games
Paperboy
Atari Games' paper round, steered with a pair of handlebars
- Classic Games
Paradroid
Take over the robots, one circuit board at a time
- Hardware
Paula: The Amiga's Voice
Four channels of sampled sound, plus the disk, the serial port and the interrupts
- Design
Point and Click
Mouse-driven adventure
- Hardware
R.O.B.
The Robotic Operating Buddy
- Genres
Racing Simulation
From Revs to iRacing: driving games that model the car
- Companies & Studios
Rainbird
British Telecom's full-price label
- Companies & Studios
Rare
The Stamper brothers' second company, built for the Nintendo
- Groups
Razor 1911
The Norwegian crew that cracked games from the Commodore 64 to the PC, and was still making demos forty years on
- Groups
Red Sector Inc
The Megademo, the Demomaker and TRSI
- Culture & Community
Region Locking
Why an imported game would not start
- Classic Games
Repton
Tim Tyler's diamond-digging puzzle game, and the series that grew from it
- Systems
Sega Master System
Sega's 8-bit console, a distant second to Nintendo in America and a success in Europe and Brazil
- Classic Games
Shadowfire
An adventure played entirely with icons
- Classic Games
Space Harrier
Into the Fantasy Zone
- Culture & Community
Spectrum Clones
Copies of the ZX Spectrum, licensed and not, from São Paulo to Leningrad
- Classic Games
Spellbound
Magic Knight's £2.99 arcade adventure, played through windows
- Magazines
ST Magazine
The French Atari ST monthly that the press regulator would not count as a magazine
- Classic Games
Super Mario Bros.
A whole world in 40 kilobytes
- Hardware
The Amiga Custom Chipset
Agnus, Denise and Paula, and the chips that followed
- Communities
The Chiptune Scene
Music for the sound chip, from game soundtracks to Game Boys on stage
- Classic Games
TwinBee
Konami's cartoon shooter with bells for power-ups
- Classic Games
Way of the Exploding Fist
Beam Software's karate game, a number one on the Commodore 64 and C&VG's Game of the Year for 1985
- Companies & Studios
Westwood Studios
The Las Vegas studio behind Eye of the Beholder, Dune II and Command & Conquer
- Classic Games
Winter Games
Epyx's Games series goes to the snow
- Tools
Worldmaker and Grax
The system behind Fairlight's castle
- Classic Games
Wrecking Crew
Mario with a hammer, no jump and a building to knock down
- Magazines
ZZAP!64
Newsfield's Commodore 64 games monthly
- Culture & CommunityWorld context
Live Aid concerts
Simultaneous concerts in London and Philadelphia raise over £100 million for Ethiopian famine relief, watched by 1.9 billion people.
1986
71 events- Companies & Studios
Acornsoft is absorbed
Acorn's own software house, and the first publisher of Elite
- Hardware
Action Replay
Datel's freezer cartridge
- Classic Games
Adventure Island
Hudson's Famicom remake of Wonder Boy, starring its own fire-button champion
- Classic Games
Alex Kidd
Sega's mascot before Sonic
- Magazines
Amazing Computing
An Amiga magazine that asked its readers to help explain the machine
- Companies & Studios
Americana
U.S. Gold's £2.99 label for old American games
- Culture & Community
Amiga Animation Culture
Cartoons and ray-traced films on floppy disk
- Magazines
Amiga User International
Using the Amiga beyond games
- Classic Games
Arkanoid
Taito's 1986 Breakout, with capsules, aliens and a stone face called Doh
- Systems
Atari 7800
MARIA builds the picture; TIA keeps a familiar role
- Magazines
Atari ST User
Database Publications' Atari ST monthly, from Stockport and Macclesfield
- Companies & Studios
Atlus
Demon negotiators, from the Famicom to Persona 5
- Classic Games
Batman (1986)
Jon Ritman and Bernie Drummond's isometric Batcave, and the engine behind Head Over Heels
- Companies & Studios
Bethesda Softworks
From Gridiron! to The Elder Scrolls
- Companies & Studios
Beyond Software is acquired
EMAP's games label: Psytron, Lords of Midnight and Shadowfire
- Classic Games
Bubble Bobble
Taito's two-player arcade game of bubbles, dinosaurs and secret doors
- Classic Games
Castlevania
Konami's horror-film platformer, from the Famicom Disk System to the NES
- Companies & Studios
Cinemaware
Interactive movies on the Amiga
- Classic Games
Cobra
A Stallone tie-in that CRASH's readers kept playing for a year
- Companies & Studios
Codemasters
The Darling family's £1.99 label, from BMX Simulator and Dizzy to the Game Genie
- Classic Games
Defender of the Crown
Cinemaware's first interactive movie
- Classic Games
Dragon Quest
The Famicom game that taught Japan to play role-playing games
- Hardware
Famicom Disk System
Nintendo's rewritable games, sold at the shop counter
- Magazines
Famitsu
From a games corner in LOGIN to Japan's weekly games magazine
- Classic Games
Fantasy Zone
Sega's pastel shooter with a shop in the sky
- Techniques
FLD
Flexible Line Distance
- Companies & Studios
FromSoftware
From business software to King's Field, Armored Core, Dark Souls and Elden Ring
- Groups
Future Crew
The Finnish group behind Unreal, Second Reality and Scream Tracker
- Culture & Community
Game Ratings
Age labels, country by country
- Groups
Genesis Project
The German-founded C64 crew that came back
- Languages
GFA BASIC
The structured BASIC that ran the Atari ST
- Classic Games
Heavy on the Magick
An animated wizard in a 255-room dungeon, typed in Merphish
- Magazines
Illegal
The cracking scene's photocopied fanzine
- Companies & Studios
Intelligent Systems
Nintendo's Kyoto partner for Fire Emblem, the Wars games and Paper Mario
- Classic Games
Jackal
Rescuing prisoners under fire
- Genres
JRPG
Japanese role-playing games
- Classic Games
Judge Dredd
Several different ways to patrol Mega-City One
- Classic Games
Kid Icarus
Greek myths, eggplants and a lot of falling
- Culture & Community
Konami Code
Gaming's most famous cheat
- Classic Games
Life Force
Salamander's other name, and the two games that grew from it
- Classic Games
Metroid
Alone on Zebes
- Genres
Metroidvania
Explore, find the key, go back
- Classic Games
Out Run
Drive into the sunset
- Companies & Studios
Piranha
Macmillan's games label, 1986–1988
- Companies & Studios
Players
Interceptor's £1.99 label, and the home of Joe Blade
- Hardware
Power Pad
Playing with your feet
- Classic Games
Rampage
Three monsters, one city, no objective but destruction
- Classic Games
Renegade
Technos's street brawler, and the Spectrum version that fitted in 48K
- Classic Games
Rolling Thunder
Namco's secret agent, his doors and his dwindling bullets
- Classic Games
Rygar
Tecmo's warrior with a yo-yo shield, in the arcade and on the NES
- Classic Games
Salamander
Konami's two-player follow-up to Gradius
- Companies & Studios
Sensible Software
Jon Hare and Chris Yates, from Parallax to Cannon Fodder
- Companies & Studios
Software Creations
Manchester’s arcade conversions and Nintendo development tools
- Classic Games
Space Quest
Sierra's science-fiction comedy, starring a janitor
- Companies & Studios
Square
The Tokyo developer that made Final Fantasy
- Classic Games
Starglider
Fast vector 3D and a song from the Atari ST
- Classic Games
Super Robin Hood
The Oliver twins' first Code Masters game
- Companies & Studios
Telecomsoft
British Telecom's games business: Firebird, Rainbird and Silverbird
- Companies & Studios
Thalamus
The software house started by the publisher of CRASH and ZZAP!64
- Companies & Studios
The Designers Republic
The Sheffield studio that gave WipEout its look
- Culture & Community
The Juggler
The ray-traced robot that sold Amigas
- Classic Games
The Legend of Zelda
Nintendo's swords-and-sorcery adventure on disk
- Phenomena
The Tetris Rights Wars
Who owned a game written by a Soviet state employee
- Classic Games
Thrust
Gravity, inertia and a pod on a string
- Groups
Triad
The Swedish C64 crew the British press thought was German
- Companies & Studios
Ubisoft
The Guillemot brothers' publisher, from Zombi to Assassin's Creed
- Classic Games
Uridium
Fifteen dreadnoughts and a scroll you were not meant to notice
- Classic Games
Wonder Boy
Escape's 1986 arcade platform game, where the hero starves if he stops
- Magazines
Your Sinclair
The Spectrum monthly that put the jokes first
- ScienceWorld context
Space Shuttle Challenger disaster
The Space Shuttle Challenger breaks apart 73 seconds after launch, killing all seven crew members and halting the US space programme.
- ScienceWorld context
Chernobyl nuclear disaster
An explosion at the Chernobyl nuclear plant in Soviet Ukraine becomes the worst nuclear accident in history, with global repercussions.
1987
80 events- Companies & Studios
Acclaim Entertainment
From Nintendo's first American licensee to a bankruptcy auction
- Magazines
ACE Magazine
Advanced Computer Entertainment
- Systems
Acorn Archimedes
The first ARM computers
- Companies & Studios
Addictive Games is acquired
Football Manager's publisher, from a Milton Keynes post box to Prism Leisure
- Classic Games
After Burner
Sega's F-14 in a moving cockpit
- Classic Games
Aliens
Two games of the 1986 film, one from each side of the Atlantic
- Companies & Studios
Apogee Software
Give away the first game, sell the rest
- Classic Games
Bionic Commando
The platform game without a jump button
- Companies & Studios
Bullfrog Productions
The Guildford studio behind Populous, Syndicate, Theme Park and Dungeon Keeper
- Classic Games
California Games
Epyx trades the Olympics for the beach
- Companies & Studios
Cloanto
From Amiga software house to keeper of the Amiga's code
- Classic Games
Contra
Konami's run-and-gun, known in Europe as Gryzor and Probotector
- Technologies
Copylock
Rob Northen's disk protection for the Amiga and Atari ST
- Companies & Studios
Cyan
The Miller brothers' studio outside Spokane, makers of Myst and Riven
- Classic Games
Darius
Taito's shoot-'em-up across three screens
- Classic Games
Dizzy
The Oliver twins' egg, from a £1.99 cartoon adventure to a lost NES game
- Classic Games
Double Dragon
Yoshihisa Kishimoto's two-player street brawler, and the home versions that struggled to keep up
- Classic Games
Driller
The first Freescape game, and CRASH's game of 1987
- Classic Games
Dungeon Master
The dungeon that kept moving while you thought
- Companies & Studios
Empire Interactive
Pipe Mania, Campaign and DreamWeb, from Essex to North Finchley
- Classic Games
Enduro Racer
Sega's motocross cabinet, squeezed onto the Spectrum
- Classic Games
Exolon
Raffaele Cecco's colourful shoot-'em-up, and how he beat attribute clash
- Companies & Studios
Factor 5
From Cologne flats to Rogue Squadron
- Groups
Fairlight
The Swedish crew that cracked games from the C64 to the PC, and made demos along the way
- Classic Games
Final Fantasy
Hironobu Sakaguchi's last try at a hit
- Hardware
Flight Stick
A cockpit on the desk
- Tools
Freescape
Solid 3D worlds you could walk round on an 8-bit micro
- Companies & Studios
Grandslam Entertainments
Argus Press Software after its managing director bought it
- Classic Games
Head Over Heels
Two spies, one engine, and a 97% from CRASH
- Groups
Ikari
The English C64 crew voted the best cracking group in history
- Classic Games
International Karate+
Archer Maclean's karate sequel, with three fighters on one screen
- Groups
Kefrens
The Danish group behind Desert Dream, and a name for an effect
- Companies & Studios
Krisalis Software
Rotherham's conversion house, and the publisher it grew into
- Classic Games
Leisure Suit Larry
Sierra's comedy adventure for grown-ups
- Techniques
Linecrunch
Squeezing a character row into one raster line
- Culture & Community
LucasArts Adventures
The SCUMM golden age
- Classic Games
Maniac Mansion
Lucasfilm Games' comedy horror adventure, and the game SCUMM was built for
- Companies & Studios
Maxis
The company founded to publish SimCity, from software toys to The Sims
- Classic Games
Mega Man
The Blue Bomber
- Companies & Studios
Melbourne House is acquired
The Australian publisher that reached Britain as a book house first, and documented three Sinclair ROMs before it sold a hit game
- Companies & Studios
Mikro-Gen is acquired
Wally Week's publisher, and the Spectrum add-on that sank it
- Magazines
Mikroprozessortechnik
East Germany's computing journal, from the five-year plan to the Deutschmark
- Hardware
MMC1
Four registers, one bit at a time
- Technologies
MOD Format
The Amiga tracker module: samples and patterns in one file
- Companies & Studios
Natsume
A developer and a publisher sharing a name
- Classic Games
Nebulus
The tower that turned
- Classic Games
NetHack
The dungeon game that was never finished
- Tools
PAW
The Professional Adventure Writer, and a 97% for a utility
- Systems
PC Engine / TurboGrafx-16
NEC and Hudson's credit-card console
- Classic Games
Phantasy Star
Sega's science-fiction role-playing game, with a heroine and animated 3D dungeons
- Groups
Phenomena
The Swedish group behind Enigma
- Classic Games
Pirates!
Sid Meier's privateer in the Caribbean
- Companies & Studios
PSS is acquired
Coventry's wargames house
- Classic Games
R-Type
Irem's 1987 shoot-'em-up, the Force and the Bydo Empire
- Classic Games
Rainbow Islands
The Story of Bubble Bobble 2
- Software
Sculpt 3D
The Juggler's ray tracer, for sale
- Tools
SCUMM
Script Creation Utility for Maniac Mansion
- Classic Games
Shinobi
Sega's 1987 ninja coin-op
- Tools
Shoot-’Em-Up Construction Kit
Sensible Software put the game’s editors in the box
- Companies & Studios
Silmarils
The French studio behind Ishar, Transarctica and Robinson's Requiem
- Classic Games
Skate or Die
Electronic Arts on a skateboard
- Software
SoundTracker
Karsten Obarski's Amiga music editor, and the hacked versions that spread it
- Classic Games
Street Fighter
Capcom's 1987 fighter with the punch pads
- Companies & Studios
Tectoy
Sega's Brazilian partner, and the reason the Master System never retired
- Companies & Studios
Tengen
Atari Games’ home label, inside and outside Nintendo’s licence
- Companies & Studios
The Bitmap Brothers
Three programmers who sold games like pop records
- Magazines
The Games Machine
Newsfield's multi-format magazine of computer and electronic entertainment
- Culture & Community
The Guildford games cluster
How one studio in a Surrey commuter town seeded Lionhead, Criterion's neighbours, Media Molecule, Hello Games and more
- Classic Games
The Last Ninja
System 3's isometric ninja adventure, six months late and worth it
- Groups
The Silents
A Swedish name with sections across Europe
- Companies & Studios
Tiertex
The Manchester studio that converted U.S. Gold's arcade licences
- Culture & Community
Tracker Music
Music written as scrolling columns of notes, played from samples
- Hardware
VRC2
Konami's own mapper, and the save port it never used
- Techniques
VSP
Variable screen positioning, or DMA delay
- Classic Games
Wings of Fury
A bombing run still needs a safe landing
- Classic Games
Wizball
Sensible Software's shoot-'em-up about putting the colour back into a grey world
- Companies & Studios
Zenobi Software
Text adventures by post from a house in Rochdale
- Companies & Studios
Zeppelin Games
The Newcastle budget house that became a racing studio
- Classic Games
Zynaps
Hewson's 1987 shoot 'em up that scrolled the Spectrum in colour
- EconomicsWorld context
Black Monday stock market crash
Stock markets around the world crash, with the Dow Jones falling 22.6% in a single day—the largest one-day percentage decline in history.
1988
45 events- Techniques
AGSP
Any Given Screen Position
- Companies & Studios
Alligata Software is acquired
The Sheffield publisher of Blagger, Loco and Who Dares Wins II
- Classic Games
Altered Beast
Rise from your grave
- Magazines
Amiga Computing
The Cheshire Amiga monthly that outlasted Commodore
- Classic Games
Bad Dudes
Data East's two-player rescue of 'President Ronnie'
- Classic Games
Blaster Master
A boy, his frog and an armoured tank
- Companies & Studios
BlueSky Software
San Diego developer of Vectorman, Jurassic Park and Sega's American sports games
- Companies & Studios
Cascade Games is renamed
Fifty games and a calculator watch
- Classic Games
Chase H.Q.
The racing game where you ram the other car
- Companies & Studios
Core Design
The Derby studio that grew out of Gremlin and made Tomb Raider
- Groups
Crest
The German C64 group that kept inventing graphics modes
- Classic Games
Cybernoid
Raffaele Cecco's flip-screen shoot-'em-up for Hewson
- Companies & Studios
Delphine Software
The Paris studio a record label paid for
- Communities
Demo Parties
Where the scene met, competed and voted
- Companies & Studios
DMA Design
From Lemmings to Grand Theft Auto
- Culture & Community
Game Developers Conference
From a designer's living room to the Moscone Center
- Classic Games
Ghouls 'n Ghosts
Arthur returns
- Culture & Community
Import Gaming
Buying Japanese consoles and games before, or instead of, the official release
- Companies & Studios
Impressions
An accountant's hobby that became Sierra's city-building studio
- Companies & Studios
Kixx
U.S. Gold's budget label for old hits
- Classic Games
Laser Squad
Julian Gollop's squad wargame, and the seed of X-COM
- Distribution
Magazine Cover Disks
Software on the newsstand
- Classic Games
Mega Man 2
The Blue Bomber's second outing, and the one that made the series
- Hardware
MMC3
The mapper that counted scanlines
- Classic Games
Ninja Gaiden
Tecmo's two ninja games of 1988, and the NES one that told its story in film-like scenes
- Magazines
Nintendo Power
Nintendo of America's own magazine
- Companies & Studios
Odin Computer Graphics ends
The Liverpool team behind Nodes of Yesod and Robin of the Wood
- Classic Games
Parodius
Konami sends up its own Gradius
- Companies & Studios
Piranha is dissolved
Macmillan's games label, 1986–1988
- Groups
Quartex
One of the Amiga's "big three" cracking groups of 1990, and the makers of Substance
- Classic Games
R.C. Pro-Am
Rare's radio-controlled racer for the NES
- Tools
SCI Engine
Sierra's Creative Interpreter
- Groups
Scoopex
The Austrian-led group behind Mental Hangover
- Systems
Sega Mega Drive / Genesis
Sega's 16-bit console
- Groups
Spaceballs
The Norwegian group behind State of the Art
- Classic Games
Splatterhouse
A masked rescuer in a house of monsters
- Languages
STOS
Atari ST game creation
- Classic Games
Super C
Konami's Contra sequel: Super Contra in the arcades, Probotector II in Europe
- Classic Games
Super Mario Bros. 3
The Mario game America saw in a cinema first
- Companies & Studios
Thalion Software
From The Exceptions to Lionheart and Ambermoon
- Culture & Community
The Dundee games scene
How a Scottish city that built Sinclair's computers went on to make Lemmings and Grand Theft Auto
- Magazines
The Games Machine (Italy)
Newsfield's licensed Italian edition, still published decades after the British original closed
- Magazines
The One
EMAP's 16-bit games monthly, from ST and Amiga to Amiga only
- Classic Games
Wasteland
Desert Rangers after the bomb
- Hardware
YM2612
The Mega Drive's FM voice
1989
46 events- Magazines
Amiga Action
The Amiga games monthly that moved from Chichester to Cheshire
- Magazines
Amiga Format
Future Publishing's Amiga monthly, 1989 to 2000
- Magazines
Amiga Joker
Michael Labiner's Amiga games monthly from Haar, near Munich
- Companies & Studios
Ape Inc.
The Tokyo company behind Mother
- Systems
Atari Lynx
Epyx's colour handheld, sold to Atari and beaten by the Game Boy
- Classic Games
Batman: The Movie
Ocean's game of Tim Burton's film, five sections from Axis Chemicals to the cathedral roof
- Classic Games
Bonk's Adventure
The PC Engine's head-butting caveman
- Groups
Censor Design
The Swedish group behind Wonderland
- Magazines
Club Nintendo
Nintendo's club magazine for European players
- Groups
Crionics
The Danish group behind Hardwired
- Classic Games
DuckTales
Scrooge McDuck on a pogo-stick cane
- Companies & Studios
Electric Dreams Software is absorbed
Activision's British label
- Classic Games
Final Fight
Capcom's 1989 street brawler, first shown to the trade as Street Fighter '89
- Companies & Studios
Firebird is acquired
British Telecom's games label, from £2.50 tapes to Elite
- Techniques
FLI
Flexible Line Interpretation
- Techniques
FPP
Flexible Pixel Position
- Companies & Studios
Game Freak
From a stapled fanzine to Pokémon
- Genres
God Games
Games in which the player rules a world instead of a character
- Classic Games
Golden Axe
Sega's sword-and-sorcery brawler, from the arcade to the Mega Drive
- Classic Games
Hard Drivin'
Atari Games' driving simulator in solid 3D
- Companies & Studios
Infocom is absorbed
The MIT company that sold Zork, and bet on a database
- Distribution
Licenseware
Commercial PD
- Classic Games
Madden NFL
Eleven a side, from an Apple II disk to a yearly ritual
- Companies & Studios
Martech ends
A chemistry teacher's software house, and its famous names
- Systems
Nintendo Game Boy
A cartridge console in a pocket, with a green screen and four AA batteries
- Groups
Paradox
From Amiga cracktros to PlayStation cracks
- Classic Games
Populous
Bullfrog's game about being a god, designed on a Lego model
- Classic Games
Prince of Persia
A prince animated from videotape of the designer's brother
- Classic Games
River City Ransom
Technos's Kunio-kun brawler with shops, stats and an open city, known in Europe as Street Gangs
- Classic Games
Shadow of the Beast
Reflections' parallax showpiece for the Amiga
- Classic Games
SimCity
Will Wright's city simulator, from a helicopter game's level editor to open source
- Techniques
Sprite crunching
Scrambling the VIC-II's sprite counter on one exact cycle
- Techniques
Sprite stretching
Making the VIC-II draw the same sprite row again and again
- Magazines
ST Format
Future Publishing's Atari ST monthly, 1989 to 1996
- Classic Games
Stormlord
Raffaele Cecco's fairy-rescue game, written in public in CRASH
- Classic Games
Strider
Capcom's acrobatic ninja on the CP System
- Classic Games
Stunt Car Racer
The landing matters as much as the jump
- Classic Games
Super Mario Land
Mario's handheld debut
- Companies & Studios
Telecomsoft is acquired
British Telecom's games business: Firebird, Rainbird and Silverbird
- Groups
The Black Lotus
The Swedish group that kept winning on the Amiga
- Phenomena
The Console Wars
Sega against Nintendo, and the fights that followed
- Classic Games
TMNT: The Arcade Game
Four turtles, four joysticks
- Demos
Wonderland
Censor Design's C64 demo series, 1989 to 2023
- Classic Games
Xenon 2: Megablast
The Bitmap Brothers' shoot-'em-up, with Bomb the Bass on the soundtrack
- PoliticsWorld context
Tiananmen Square protests suppressed
Chinese military forces suppress pro-democracy protests in Beijing, with the iconic 'Tank Man' image broadcast worldwide.
- PoliticsWorld context
Berlin Wall falls
East Germany opens the Berlin Wall, symbolically ending the Cold War division of Europe and beginning German reunification.