1. Dragon's Lair
When Dragon's Lair first hit arcades, I was so small that I couldn't see over the five rows of gamers that would inevitably crowd this machine. Putting my quarter atop the game cabinet, I would wait patiently for my turn to play. Slowly, I'd move toward the front of the line, getting glimpses of the most fantastic-looking video game ever. You remember when you first took your younger sibling to see Avatar, and they were so blown away, they became an environmentalist and tried to join the Blue Man Group? Well, Dragon's Lair was the early '80s gamer's Avatar. All the other arcade games at the time looked like this:
Dragon's Lair, however, looked like this:
The longer I'd wait my turn, the wider my young eyes got. After about an hour, I'd finally step up and place my money into the slot, eagerly gripping the joystick. By the way, the game cost $.75 back then -- that's a lot in 1980s money. Adjusted for inflation and the economy crash, that amount would be worth about $.74 today.
Anyway, I was convinced that the wait was worth it. Even though I had used up all of my arcade time, and my Mom would urgently try to drag me away from the machine, nothing would come between me and ultimate joy.
The game opens with me, a knight, trying to cross a drawbridge. Cool! Wait, what? A tentacle-thing just came up and ate me. Dang, I'm supposed to do something? OK, my knight is again attempting to cross the drawbridge... the tentacle-thing tries to get me, I push left. I die. I was supposed to push right. Final life, and I'm ready. Tentacle comes up, I push right. Success! The knight jumps out of the way, and my overjoyed heart soars just long enough for me to see another tentacle hit me from behind. Guess I was supposed to push down. Game over. Head down, I trudge out of the arcade.
What's the part of the Metal Gear Solid franchise we all hate? Sitting through cut-scenes. And that was the entirety of Dragon's Lair: Push the correct button, watch a cut-scene. Push the wrong button, die. Of course, in 1983, gamers hadn't yet learned to loathe this trick, so Dragon's Lair sucked millions of quarters until the super-futuristic "optical disc-reading" technology inside of it inevitably crapped out.
2. Hard Drivin'
The visual leap made by Dragon's Lair was nothing compared to the visual leap made by the road simulation game Hard Drivin'.
That's what 1989 had to offer gamers -- amazingly advanced 3D polygons that players could actually interact with... and totally looked like doo-doo. People actually lined up to play this game. The 3D-rendered interactive world was considered honest-to-goodness revolutionary at the time, whereas now, I would wonder if this was a Minecraft skin.
I could harp further on how the graphics haven't stood the test of time, but that's not the mechanic we all hate. Hard Drivin' had a clutch, like on a car.
This wasn't the smooth racing clutch of today's arcade racing simulators. This was a deep-welled, squeaky pedal that more resembled something that would be on your grandfather's truck. Pushing it all the way to the floor took someone who was about six feet tall, and someone who was that tall could probably just go drive a real car.
In order to fully immerse myself in this game mechanic, I'd have to play the game with a friend. I would steer and yell out for my buddy to shift. My buddy, who would be standing on the clutch, would jump up and down while frantically grinding the stick shift into the appropriate gear. Then, like everyone else, I realized that stick shifts are only great for the power they provide, which one can't really feel while sitting still. But those visuals make me nostalgic for a time when "awesome graphics" still looked like they were drawn on an Apple IIe.
3. Street Fighter
Younger readers may not know this, but before Street Fighter II, Capcom made a game called Street Fighter. This game featured the same theme as its sequel (underprivileged people fighting), and was based on a one-on-one showdown between the player and an opponent.
So, why didn't this title (as opposed to the wildly successful sequel) revolutionize fighting games? I really couldn't tell you. That's because whenever I would step up to play the game, I'd immediately lose, because I was confronted with this:
See those giant red buttons? In order to press them, you had to literally punch the buttons with your fists. The strength of the attack was based upon how hard you hit it; I could barely get it to do a weak attack, much less actually use the controls with any kind of precision. Plus, this mechanic had the potential for violent injury: Oftentimes, someone would attempt a full-force attack, miss the button, and slam their fist into the hard cabinet. We all hate video games that force players to be ripped. That must be a target audience of, like, 10 people.