CARMAGEDDON

A relatively open world you can explore and demolish while driving in your car, racing against others or disregarding the track was a huge revelation for us back then. Sure , its elements were already present or implied in other racing and non-racing games, but it is the sum of these ideas and the presentation that made CARMAGEDDON a legendary game. It is gory, funny, replete with out-of-this-world characters and pimped vehicles with crazy add-ons that help you score destruction bonuses, Carmaggedon was a bold mainstream venture into the unknown that defied the racing genre and its narrow confines where  racing track was god. Finishing the race meant either clean racing , or destroying cars and property or killing all people in the streets.Sure, its outdated graphics might belittle its importance, but its pioneering  concept inspired hundreds of games in and outside racing genres, most important being the original GTA. Loads of fun , even today
Oh, and featuring Fear Factory's music in the game was the most natural thing to do at that time :) 

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.

BUBBLE BOBBLE

My sisters loved playing this classic, my dad loved it , hell, I even  got my mom to play it once - and she hated video games.What was so enticing about this title? Was it the fact that it was one of the few genuine 2-player experiences from the 80s that did it for this classic? Aside from trapping enemies in a bubble and popping them and jumping platforms, the two B brothers must have offered something je ne sais quoi  to earn the status of a classic. It must have been the head-spinning and the cuteness that did it for all of us.The cute factor and the world that displayed this cuteness worked just as well in the arcade or an amusement park or on my friends NES whenever I would play it - there was always somebody asking to join me in my Baburu Boburu adventures. And yes - the iconic game soundtrack was heaven!

For all that it’s a great game inspired by a merely good one, Bubble Bobble was not, in itself, hugely influential—with the possible exception of the magnificent sequel Rainbow Islands. Between them, perhaps, they simply managed to perfect the formula. RS

NOBY NOBY BOY

This is an experimental game, a game which stretches your character to fantastic proportions, and in which stretches your our understanding of what a game is or could be. Is the absense of  a clear objective , a discernible goal within a game allowed in games? Can we call such games games?

You control a pink four-legged creature called Boy who's in direct communication with the Sun who sends Boy's regards to the Girl. Wierd pop tunes that verge on being annoying to an unaccustomed ear are wonderfully paired with odd controls and camera views and randomly generated sandboxes that inhabit a unique and odd-looking world the Boy lives in. Boy eats  people and objects and stretches and that's pretty much what he does all throughout the game.

The Girl's directly linked to The Boy, and she stretches whenever somebody playing the game stretches.The randomly generated sandboxes unlock planet by planet to all the players as they collectively play a giant single-player game and help Girl reach another planet in the Solar system, unlocking new sandboxes. The author of the game thought it would take years and years to unlock all the planets  and that the interest in the game would wane without gamers ever unlocking all of them, but it only took 2489 days  for the Girl to connect all the planets in the system and get back to Earth . That's how engaging this game was/is to those who played it.

Is this a game about love and finding your significant other? Is it about loneliness and our voracious appetites? Is it about evil in this world , as some might suggest? The critics view the game as a non-game, as an experiment in form  and to some degree I can relate to that. But shouldn't each new  game challenge us and not be just another eye candy to waste time on? It has interesting gameplay, odd mechanics and it's immature, childish, absurd and fun. You should definitely give it a try.