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.

BOOKWORM

This must be the single useful piece of software I've ever used in my ESL classes, and the only one kids really reacted to and perceived of as a video game interesting enough to be given repeated plays. Every  9-to-11-year old that tried Bookworm was absolutely amazed by how addictive it is - "Can I play this one  on my phone, is it available? No - why not? It doesn't look like an old game". Later on I found out it was available online and on iPhone. Needless to say, I installed the game on all those defunct machines that were still being  used in classrooms I taught in.

Serbo-Croatian/Croato-Serbian language is a language where spelling is 100% phonetic, so imagine the travails of having to persuade kids to learn the spelling of individual words of a language they're only beginning to understand. Bookworm, a simple game of stringing letters to get to real words while accompanied by a bespectacled worm,  succeeded where I failed so many times as a teacher.

FLOWER

This game  evokes a powerful set of emotions, not unlike those I felt playing Journey. Albeit another game from the same team and implying the idea of a voyage, and whether perceived as a life's parable or not, it takes the player on a voyage of pure emotion, the one of tracking and observing the fate of a seemingly insignificant thing in nature such as a simple flower petal. Hardcore gamers probably rolled their eyes in horror when they first saw this game, but it takes only a bit of streching to accept it for what it is - a marvellous, pioneering, genre-bending gem. You go from light to dark,  enthropy to order, cityscapes to country landscapes, chaos to creation in joyous motion that gives you a sense of genuine freedom, and all of that is accompanied by music that suits each particular change along the way. No enemies to kill or mame or hurt in any way

A tale of a windmaster dancing with a single petal- who can resist embarking on such a great adventure?

FAÇADE

This game recreates the feel of a dinner invitation you unwillingly accept only to find yourself amidst serious marital quarrels and ugliness that a stale relationship gives birth to at times. Nobody wants you to be a marriage councellor, but you  have to simply turn into one for the sake of your own mental well-being. Fake it through  uncomfortable theatrics and jabs at topics like parents, money, careers, personal traits etc  and steer the couple towards a reconcilliation of some kind. Or pick a road more frequently travelled nowadays and  ruin the dinner even further with insults and bad words, budding in  and neglecting your guests' feelings, all leading to Trip and Grace seeing you out and continuing their quarrel behind closed doors. Either way, you clearly see the effect of your comportment.
 This game is a beacon of light for all the wannabe interactive dramas that put too much emphasis on  graphics and too little emphasis on the story and the way it unfolds. And yes, the visual side reminds me of "Waking Life" and "Scanner Darkly"