Gaming Through The Decades: 1987

Contra

Contra , known as Gryzor in Europe and Oceania, is a 1987 run and gun action game developed and published by Konami originally released as a coin-operated arcade game on February 20, 1987. A home version was released for the Nintendo Entertainment System in 1988, along with ports for various computer formats, including the MSX2. The home versions were localized in the PAL region as Gryzor on the various computer formats and as Probotector on the NES, released long later. Several Contra sequels were produced following the original game.
In Contra, the player controls one of two armed military commandos named Bill "Mad Dog" Rizer and Lance "Scorpion" Bean, who are sent on a mission to neutralize a terrorist group called the Red Falcon Organization that is planning to take over the Earth. Details of the game's setting varies between supplementary materials: the Japanese versions sets the game in a fictional Galuga archipelago near New Zealand in the futuristic year of 2633,whereas the manual for the American NES version sets the game during the present in an unnamed South American island. The American storyline also changes the identity of "Red Falcon" from being the name of a terrorist organization to the name of an alien entity.

Gaming Through The Decades: 1984

Tetris

Tetris is a puzzle video game originally designed and programmed by Alexey Pajitnov in the Soviet Union. It was released on June 6, 1984, while he was working for the Dorodnicyn Computing Centre of the Academy of Science of the USSR in Moscow, Russian Soviet Federative Socialist Republic. He derived its name from the Greek numerical prefix tetra- (all of the game's pieces, known as Tetrominoes, contain four segments) and tennis, Pajitnov's favorite sport.
The Tetris game is a popular use of tetrominoes, the four element special case of polyominoes. Polyominoes have been used in popular puzzles since at least 1907, and the name was given by the mathematician Solomon W. Golomb in 1953. However, even the enumeration of pentominoes is dated to antiquity.
The game (or one of its many variants) is available for nearly every video game console and computer operating system, as well as on devices such as graphing calculators, mobile phones, portable media players, PDAs, Network music players and even as an Easter egg on non-media products like oscilloscopes.It has even inspired Tetris serving dishes and been played on the sides of various buildings,with the record holder for the world's largest fully functional game of Tetris being an effort by Dutch students in 1995 that lit up 15 floors of the Electrical Engineering department at Delft University of Technology.
While versions of Tetris were sold for a range of 1980s home computer platforms, it was the hugely successful handheld version for the Game Boy launched in 1989 that established the game as one of the most popular ever. Electronic Gaming Monthly's 100th issue had Tetris in first place as "Greatest Game of All Time". In 2007, Tetris came in second place in IGN's "100 Greatest Video Games of All Time" (2007). It has sold more than 70 million copies. In January 2010, it was announced that Tetris has sold more than 100 million copies for cell phones alone since 2005.

Gaming Through The Decades: 1983

Super Mario Brothers

Super Mario Bros  is a 1985 platform video game developed by Nintendo, published for the Nintendo Entertainment System as a sequel to the 1983 game Mario Bros. In Super Mario Bros., the player controls Mario (and in a two-player game, a second player controls Mario's brother Luigi) as he travels through the Mushroom Kingdom in order to rescue Princess Toadstool from the antagonist Bowser.
For over two decades, Super Mario Bros. was the best-selling video game of all time (before being outsold by Nintendo's own Wii Sports in 2009),[7] and has sold more than 40 million copies worldwide. As a launch title, it was largely responsible for the initial success of the Nintendo Entertainment System, as well as ending the two-year slump of console game sales in the United States after the video game crash of 1983. As one of Shigeru Miyamoto and Takashi Tezuka's most influential early successes, it has inspired many clones, sequels, and spin-offs. The game's theme music by Koji Kondo is recognized worldwide, even by those who have not played the game, and has been considered a representation for video game music in general.[8]
The success of Super Mario Bros. has caused it to be ported to almost every one of Nintendo's major gaming consoles. In late 2010, as part of the 25th anniversary of the game's release, Nintendo released special red variants of the Wii and Nintendo DSi XL consoles in differently re-packaged, Mario-themed, and limited edition bundles in all regions.

Gaming Through The Decades: 1982

E.T. The Extra Terrestrial

E.T. the Extra-Terrestrial (also referred to simply as E.T.) is a 1982 adventure video game developed and published by Atari, Inc. for the Atari 2600 video game console. It is based on the film of the same name, and was designed by Howard Scott Warshaw. The objective of the game is to guide the eponymous character through various screens to collect three pieces of an interplanetary telephone that will allow him to contact his home planet.

Warshaw intended the game to be an innovative adaptation of the film, and Atari thought it would achieve high sales figures based on its connection with the film, which was extremely popular throughout the world. Negotiations to secure the rights to make the game ended in late July 1982, giving Warshaw only six weeks to develop the game in time for the 1982 Christmas season. The end result is often cited as one of the worst video games released, and was one of the biggest commercial failures in video gaming history.

E.T. is frequently cited as a contributing factor to Atari's massive financial losses during 1983 and 1984. As a result of overproduction and returns, unsold cartridges were also buried in a New Mexico landfill. The game's commercial failure and resulting effects on Atari are frequently cited as a contributing factor to the video game industry crash of 1983.