The 20 Greatest Arcade Games Of 1979

[@sverrekvernmo]

Had no idea digital pinball was even a thing this early! Saw them for the first time on the Amiga, lol. Another great vid, thanks!

[@Asterra2]

Lunar Rescue is one of my very earliest memories. During what was almost certainly my first visit to an arcade, I caught a row of at least four of them along the wall. The only thing I fuzzily remembered about the game was the horizontally-moving rocks. That two-second clip of memory turned out to be all I needed to pin the game down as Lunar Rescue (obviously much, much later). And it's like you said: I'm confident I never saw the game ever again after that brief moment.

[@samschan]

I played most of these at the arcade when I was a kid!

[@neilloughran4437]

79/80 were big years for me as there were a couple of cafe spots in my hometown opening up with arcade rooms at the back. Galaxians and Asteroids top the list here for me though I do recall Ozma Wars and its very difficult glitchy gameplay combined with terrible sound... there were also a fair few of the older games like Gun Fight and Sea wolf... and those felt ancient in 1980.

[@Hologhoul]

Great video! Pinball - great physics even right back then. Tailgunner, another impressive 3D job for so far back. Galaxian, a classic. Asteroids, another classic, and true about its wide influences. There's a PC game, Spheres of Chaos which is one of my all time favourite games, a shoot-em-up masterpiece, epic colours, sounds and bizarre power-ups - an amazing game, and one with Asteroids at its core!

[@Issicra]

I thought I had completely dreamed up or misremembered Tail Gunner until the internet era. I was a little kid and only played it once at a restaurant while on a vacation to the middle of nowhere in Virginia somewhere probably early 80s. It was the cockpit version, too. Like any other kid from the time, I was an arcade game fiend and I never once saw the game again. They must have not made that many of them.

[@Great-Documentaries]

1:40: I can't believe you said that about basketball! You might as well say that about every pre-1979 game. I mean you are like a teenager saying The Beatles are nothing special or that Citizen Kane is "boring." If you are going to judge games by the standards of their successors, this will be a very dreadful series to watch indeed. And no, THIS game was NOT featured in Airplane! It was IntelliVision NBA Basketball. And Kareem, while he in the movie, NEVER played it much less in the cockpit! You are clearly NOT a source for accurate info!

[@thelairdslair]

Atari Basketball was absolutely featured in Airplane, although I misremembered it a bit as it was played by air traffic control: kzbin.info/www/bejne/aYKkoHuqZdmsma8 It was the subsequent advert that was shown alongside the film that showed Kareem playing it: kzbin.info/www/bejne/d3XWnZ2PjdaYb68 Actually there are a lot of pre '79 games that I love and still play regularly, you'd know that if you'd watched the previous episodes of course. If you are going to try and correct somebody its probably better if you know your facts first.

[@Discrimination_is_not_a_right]

I can imagine somebody trying out the pinball video game and then thinking "hm. There are actual pinball games over there------------------------>"

[@AirDOGGe]

Oddly enough, some of the best arcade games I've played were made before videogames showed up. That was around the time COMPUTER SPACE showed up which was possibly the first arcade videogame (I think it beat pong).

[@thelairdslair]

I've done an episode on early 70s arcade games if you the playlist

[@dragokills6990]

These are before my time really, although I know a few of them like Asteroids and Galaxian. Most look too simple for my tastes.

[@daveygivens735]

Remember Space Wars? It was a vector game by Cinematronics and I'm fairly sure it preceded Asteroids. It was two player only I think; you had one ship that looked like the "Asteroid" triangle ship and one shaped like an old "Enterprise". You battled each other instead of asteroids and you could actually program features into the game like heavy gravity, bounce-back from the screen edge, etc.

[@thelairdslair]

It was featured in my video on 1977: kzbin.info/www/bejne/a368nougppWZjc0

[@retropalooza]

Look at the foot speed of those basketball players dammmn

[@asa-punkatsouthvinland7145]

INCORRECT! Atari Basketball was played by 2 radar operators in the airport tower not Kareem Abdul-Jabbar; although KAJ was the copilot 8n the airplane & other basketball jokes were made with him.

[@thelairdslair]

Yeah, I got confused, because he was shown playing it in the advertising.

[@asa-punkatsouthvinland7145]

@@thelairdslair good point I forgot about the ad... To quote the Black Knight "Alright we'll call it a draw..." 😂

[@williamhaynes4800]

He never did convince that kid that he was an airline pilot did he?

[@elijahvincent985]

Minor honest error. Besides, the purple basketball player was based off the color of the Los Angeles Lakers, which Kareem Abdul-Jabbar was a player for. :)

[@cheeseparis1]

5:21 (warrior) I never saw this one in France, perhaps because it looks like two guys fighting with Eiffel towers. 7:17 (monaco GP) : I need to travel back in time and play this game more, since there's no accurate emulation! 15:01 (asteroids) I noticed scores in hexadecimal. Emulator glitch ?

[@dreamcaster4754]

I think I've played roughly half of these. I was only 6 when most of them came out so I wasn't exactly hanging around arcades. I'll have to fire them up on MAME to see what I missed out on.

[@victorhernandez8723]

3:44 Apply directly to the forehead.

[@synthonaplinth5980]

Off subject, do you remember a circus game where you had to pop balloons? You were on a seesaw and the character would scream when they hit the ground...

[@thelairdslair]

Circus by Exidy, AKA Clowns by Midway and Circus Atari on the 2600.

[@synthonaplinth5980]

@@thelairdslair Thanks. Found it. Cheers

[@kins749]

Video Pinball wasn't the first pinball video game, or even Atari's first, they released Pin-Pong several years earlier

[@thelairdslair]

Wow! I've never heard of that and I thought I was pretty clued up on Atari - learn something new every day! It's pretty primitive but very interesting, might be one to feature in my upcoming Before 1976 video covering the very earliest arcade games. Thanks for making me aware of it!

[@kins749]

@@thelairdslair Looking forward to that vid, I love the early Bronze Age stuff

[@maestro-zq8gu]

Why does it have to be the best? I just want to see a full list.

[@thelairdslair]

Then stop liking your own comments and just go to the arcade history database, which has all the boring lists you could ever want.

[@williamhaynes4800]

Did you forget Space Wars?

[@thelairdslair]

Nope, it's right there in my 1977 video ;-)