FLOW

It's a game about a microscopic being going about its daily business in a water-like microworld, eating other microscopic organisms or using them to cross to other planes, growing and evolving and becoming more complex as it goes further into the deep, arriving at a black mass where its journey ends. Simple and cute, I know. But the sensation you're left with way surpasses the game's premise, same as with JOURNEY - it's about the trip itself more so than anything else, but unlike Journey where I traversed sandy expanses with ruins left behind long-gone civilization and felt the journey  reflected a uniquely human existence at its core, Flow  finds you in a primordial soup where you're every living being that ever lived rising from and giving itself to the cycles of matter. It's about  womb, water, blood, fear of Microcosm and Macrocosm intertwined. You can't die in this game. Everything's in flow.

ALTER EGO

The oldest bildungsroman in gaming I can think of was a welcome relief from genre's dominant fantasy subject matter during the 80s. ALTER EGO was  made by a psychology professor and sometimes the playing resembles answering an extensive questionnaire about your life and its travails while living a part you're assigned. On the other hand, introspection isn't bad.  You walk through  life replete with choices you make as a male or female (though including other genders would have been great) of many dispositions and a number of moods. You can give truthful answers or not, be benevolent or malevolent, and each answer determines the way your afterlife plays out. Sets of questions are grouped under icons on the screen that cover an area of life -emotional, social, defining moments and rights of passage, intellectual life and the accruement of knowledge etc and there are thousands upon thousands of questions appearing randomly. Your aim is to develop into a functional human being without dying in the process. Deliberately making wrong decisions  will also enable you  to have a differennt kind of fun and see how you can end your life in the game - and again, there are dozens of ways to do it.
The replay value and the fact that Alter Ego was one of the very few games in my c64 collection  with a "save game" option made playing this game a truly unique experienc. It could have done with some music and maybe some funny fx to spice it up, but  nevetheless it's ace.

DRAGON'S LAIR

Before Dragon's Lair a truly cinematic gaming experience could have only taken place in the imagination if the player while they were mentally traversing magical kingdoms inside the confines of textual adventures.The game appeared almost a decade before interactive movies would become a thing  (and would fall from grace soon afterwards) and heralded the genre in the best way possible . I'm not really sure what kind of processing power a laser disc could have provided an arcade cabinet with , but my personal impression at the time was one of sheer awe. In the years when cheap animation reigned supreme on TV (MOTU,Tarzan etc). the emergence of a game that was visually even more appealing than the series was a huge thing. At that time the animated series wasn't being broadcast anywhere in Yugoslavia, so imagine my surprise when I first laid eyes on the game. Who could resist playing out a cartoon, being at the same time entertained and annoyed with a myriad of excellent ways to die. Nowadays people say the game is nothing more than a series of movie sequences you become an able director of after spending a fortune on your trial-and-error learning curve. Memorising steps to  victory wasn't something that was unknown to 80s gaming anyway (one can easily evoke  memories of titles that taunt the player in a number of largely similar  ways). so a credit should be given where it's due , and this game surely deserves the credit and pomp it got.  Whining about coins lost in the local arcade isn't the way to go about writing a  game review.

KUNG FU MASTER

Whether a particular movie served as inspiration for this legendary game or the whole  king fu action movie genre lent its cliches to it, there could be no doubt that Kung Fun Master changed the face of gaming and set some basic standards for side-scrolling beat-em-ups for good.
Lee is a classic kung fu hero who allows the player  to immerse themselves in a genuine kung fu experience as portrayed on big screens of the time. He displays a deliberately limited number of moves (3 kicks, 2 punches and 1 stiff jump) that require restraint, precision and patience and some getting accustomed to the game's rhythm in a player to fully appreciate it. Many contemporary kung fu/karate movie cliches crept in as well -The Caucasian girlfriend of a Caucasian fighter feeling neglected and left out due to his daily routines; a fight scene where many attackers kidnap the girl despite fighter's effort; a mysterious impotent man named after a letter who's  probably a bit too much into muscles and muscular physique and autoeroticism for  someone trying to play the role of an alpha-male; fighting inside a temple with one floor too many where fighters are literally swept off the floor; villains laughing for no reason; energy-draining Holders and little people who know kung fu; fire-breathing dragons released out of cracked spheres and poisonous snakes coming out of pots; butterflies sucking you dry and female kung fu bosses (evil disguised as beauty); enemy jams the fighter has to free himself from that are entertaining on the eyes. Add an excellent backing track,  impressive fx and graphics for a 1984 game to it all and you can easily understand why the experience of playing it in the arcade was truly magical. This  game scores high on playability and replay value with the kids of today that have tried it, and it only goes to show how good the game was.