#36: Pac-Man (1987)
Platform: NES
Developer/Publisher: Tengen
In a Nutshell: A pizza-shaped yellow... wait... you're visiting a gaming website and you actually need Pac-Man described to you?

Brian A. says: I'm going to be straight-up with you: My relationship with Pac-Man is kind of pathetic. I'm pretty terrible at it. Nine, 10 levels tops, and it's usually over for me. It's like the game has been dating my inner gamer for nearly two decades now, and I've barely made it past second base, despite my constantly bragging about how great our love life is. Eat pellets, get chased by ghosts, eat bigger pellets, chase ghosts. That's pretty much the entire game, yet the addictive nature of its simplicity has managed to resonate through the competitive gaming community for nearly two decades. And yeah, most of the home versions are marred by questionable ghost A.I. (a facet of Pac-Man that's been endlessly dissected to this day), but Tengen's NES port in particular is still delightfully playable in its own right. It's also the version I've spent the most time with. Maybe one of these days I'll get lucky and make it a little further. I wonder if that NES version has the infamous kill screen...



#35: Berzerk (1982)
Platform: Atari 2600
Developer/Publisher: Atari
In a Nutshell: Humanoid tries to escape an electrified maze by blasting killer robots while running from an evil, indestructible smiley face.

Gerald says: Berzerk was a surprisingly complex and satisfying experience, back in gaming's formative years. You had to navigate the maze without touching the walls, and carefully use your laser to blast the maze's robots, all while dodging their lasers. You could only have one slow-moving projectile on the screen at once, so missing a shot was costly, leaving you relatively defenseless. You also had to think about your approach to any given map very quickly, because you only had a short time to clear the stage before one of the baddest villains in gaming history appeared: Evil Otto. Sure, he's represented by a bouncing smiley face, but Evil Otto is so evil that it's part of his name. Evil Otto is indestructible, so if he appears onscreen, your only hope is to run for the exit as fast as you can. That evil smile of his still terrifies me.

Berzerk was one of my favorite Atari 2600 games, even if it lacked the digitized speech from the popular arcade version. Sure, I didn't get to hear the cool "Intruder alert!" and "Kill the humanoid!" quips, but I got to play the game for hours on end, without having to steal any more rolls of quarters from my mom's laundry fund.