Found the following pics on a website where the blogger’s mother knitted some sweaters based on arcade games of the 80s.

I’m not sure if I’d wear them today, but they are a great time warp back to the decade that mattered

Missile command was a very simple (as far as graphics go) yet very addictive arcade game released in 1980 by Atari. The aim of the game was to defend your six cities against a never ending barrage of missiles, and with your three anti-battery stations, you had to stop them.

To do so you had a trak ball to move your cross hair, and three buttons to shoot from your three respective anti-battery stations. From memory, it was one of the first arcade games that used the trak ball. If not, it was certainly the only game where it was the main control that was heavily relied on to play the game. From my youth, I remember slamming the ball at an angle, as hard as I could, to get my cross hair from one side to the other as quick as possible.

The game is split up into levels, with each one getting harder as more and more missiles being sent down the screen – faster and faster too.

The game ends when all your six cities have been destroyed. An amusing part of the game was the flashing, huge block lettered ‘game over’ message displayed on the screen. Typical retro stuff.

If you would like to play it online, go to the Atari site and have a go.

A very popular arcade game of the 80s was Galaga. It was the sequel to Galaxian and was released in 1981 by Namco.

I’d call Galaxian a typical space invaders clone but taken to the next level where the aliens have much more movement when flying around.

Galaga goes one step further. The aliens fly in more daring flight patterns but are in no way random. Regular players know where to sit so the aliens can be shot when they initially appear.

A cool, new feature in Galaga is where a “boss Galaga” attempts to capture the player’s fighter using a tractor beam – if successful, the fighter joins the formation and must be freed by the player (using another ship and costing him/her a life), enabling him/her to control two ships simultaneously. That doubles the firepower but if you miss in capturing it, there goes (in effect) two lives.

Play it here:

Galaga

Qix was released in 1981 by Taito. The aim of the game was to claim a majority (75%) of the playing field with your little marker. You could draw fast or slow (thus gaining more points) lines to claim your land.

Trying to stop you was the Qix, a randomly moving object (and quite adavnced for it’s time) and two sparx that would travel along the same lines the you would move your marker on. The Qix could only touch you while you were drawing a line, and once you started you could not stop otherwise the fuse would get you.

The were many strategies used in claiming your land/trapping the Qix and required much planning ahead of time in trying the avoid the Qix and sparx.

Play it online here ….

Frogger was a very addictive arcade game released in 1981 by Konami. Simple in Gameplay, but hard to master.

The object of the game is to direct frogs to their homes one by one. To do this, each frog must avoid cars while crossing a busy road and navigate a river full of hazards including crocodiles and disappearing lillies.

Play it here ……

Back in the 80′s I loved arcade machines – in fact I still do. I used to own a couple of pinball machines but the latest machine I bought was Championship Sprint.

It is a 2 player standup car racing game by Atari. Simple in design but very addictive – especially when you don’t have to pay for each game!

Bascially, race around the track and win. During the race you will see wrenches. Run over them, and after you have three you can buy performance or handling upgrades for your car. As I said very addictive.

The specs, by todays standards, are very lame ….

Hardware Info
T11 cpu @ 10 Mhz
M6502 cpu @ 1.78979 Mhz — NB: Same CPU as a C64!
YM-2151 audio @ 3.57958 Mhz
Pokey audio @ 1.78979 Mhz
Pokey audio @ 1.78979 Mhz

As it does take up a lot of room, I recently decided to sell it on Ebay. I wasn’t sure how much to sell it for but I did want to get rid of it ASAP. So I threw it on to ‘buy it now’ for $200. It actually sold in 4 minutes! Couldn’t ask for anything better than that.