1987 in video games: Gunship, Bombsweeper, Out Run, and Super Mario (of course)

The first thing that jumped out at me about 1987's top game for PC, Gunship, was seeing the name Sid Meier amongst the programmers. Sid Meier! Gets me excited knowing that Civilization is just around the corner.

Alas, Gunship didn't draw me in like Civ later would (and continues to do). It was fun flying around for a bit, and I've read many testimonials of people who played it for hours on end, but even back then I don't think I would have invested that kind of playing time.

I did like being Sgt. FGD, though. You can play it here: https://classicreload.com/gunship.html

Don't be tricked by the name: this isn't famed Windows time-waster Minesweeper. Instead, Bomb Sweeper is another entry in the Nintendo Game & Watch series, with the puzzle element being the movement of partitions to create pathways and stop a bomb (or bombs) from detonating. It's a fun game, as Nintendo continued to find creative ways to exploit the rudimentary graphics and interface.

You can play it here: https://itizso.itch.io/nintendo-bomb-sweeper

What to say about Super Mario Bros., the reigning number-one game on home consoles? I took the week off from playing it again, because I still have two more weeks after this to go!

In the arcades, the racing format continues its dominant run. It's a good chance for me to play these games because I didn't play them all that much back then. I probably played Off-Road more than any other, but that barely counts as a racing game and was more responsible for leading me to games like R.C. Pro-Am on the NES rather than something like Rad Racer.

In any case, The top arcade game for this year is Out Run, and it offers a couple of tricks: it featured slopes which occasionally cut off your viewpoint of what lay ahead, which looked really cool, but more creatively there wasn't one set path to reaching checkpoints. You could actually make choices about how to navigate the world, which was both impressive and way more challenging, because I failed to find my way to any of those points for the first couple of runs.

But choosing your own music before starting the race? That's sublime.