SEAMAN

With my senior year of high school came the NATO bombing and a somewhat late fad for those pocket-sized pet sim clones every girl had attached to their wallet chain. Absolutely convinced  that no pet sim could ever be put to good use I came to one of my rich friend's Belgrade apartments two or three months afterwards and realised that Sega proved me wrong. Rearing a fish-like creature through its philogeny/ontogeny until a fully formed surly young man-fish starts conversing with you and making you feel like a failed father was confusing and wonderful at the same time. For a pre 00s game to have controls that primarily consist of talking into a special microphone, a life-like facial expressiveness of the main character, the impression you're left with that your character gains experience and wisdom as you talk to him on a number of serious and ludicrous topics (don't know what algorithms they used , but they did a great job here), and being able to hear some Leonard Nimoy on top of it all was a huge breakthrough for a simple game. And I still often think about the underlying themes or viewpoints the author might have wanted to express- why the fish, why the face, whether it has to do with Christianity, conformity, Creationism vs Evolutionism, a failed deiurge  or if it's just about the absurdity of family life and the distorted view that different generations might have of one another.

I wish other titles followed suit and explored  it more, maybe even develop a genre in its own right. This way we're left with AI assistants who are simly boring, and tell on you.

PAPERBOY

They don't make them like they used to. Ok, not true, but still - 80s and 90s are replete with oddities that made your usual genre of preference a unique gaming experience. Paperboy does exactly what it says on the tin, and not only will it cater to those Generation Xers who knew exactly what it meant to flip a burger or deliver newspapers to "learn to appreciate the value of money" and afford a new 8bit or 16bit gaming system, but it will also appeal to Millenials, and not just to those Millenials who  search for gaming document of days gone by.

The premise is simple- a paperboy has to deliver his round and throw papers to as many houses of subscribers without being bit by dogs, or hit by a myriad of moving objects, cars, carts, raving neigbours, breakdancers, toys  etc. With some time needed to get acquainted with controls and the scrolling, it plays well and you slowly grow to like evading death traps while trying to keep Daily Sun's readers happy. Even if you do get fired , you get fired to an awesome soundtrack playing in the back.

One can easily of a counterpart from the 90s it inspired. Less death and less guns , though.

And, uhm, don't play the Commodore 64 version , it's really bad.

ELITE

Elite needs no introduction. It was the title that introduced the space-sim genre and cemented it in the minds of eager players worldwide. Like many other classics from the 80s, it was a college project that ran on pure imagination , limited only by the hardware limitations of the day.This space-faring , space-trading marvel that also introduced an open-world concept outside a text-adventure  was a bit too much for a 6-year old with a poor command of English trying to make sense of what he saw on the screen playing it on his C64. 14 years and two sequels later, I revisited the original Elite game  and realised how incredibly important it was. Ships travelling at sublight speeds, alien pirates, space trading, following or disregarding missions altogether, finding trade runs in various star systems and trading -just so many things that were introduced in a single pioneering game.Granted that the layouts do get repetitive, with just a tiny bit of imagination you can explore an open world that takes up less than 400kb. This is a feat in itself, and not even a poor plot or some clunkiness in controlling you spaceship can take away from what the game represents. Oh, did I mention it's really addictive?