Blast to the past: The really old games that inspired the now

As everyone hypes up and gawks at the next-generation of consoles and games, it's pretty amazing to think how far we've come from the time of Pong and Super Mario.

At such times, it's worth taking a minute (or ten) to revisit some of the forefathers of modern games, preferably with a cup of tea or coffee in hand.

And no, we won't just be looking at all the mainstream favourites like Street Fighter or The Legend of Zelda this time - those are spoken for.

We're talking games that are much older and less well-known to younger gamers. Games like Herzog and Herzog Zwei, for example.

1. Real-time strategy: Herzog (1988) /Herzog Zwei (1989)

Don't worry if you don't recognise this one. Not only is it a little obscure, but we also wouldn't expect you to remember a name that sounds like it came from a Buzz Lightyear cartoon.

Regardless, these two games, especially the latter are considered to be among the oldest grand-daddies and pioneers of the real-time strategy genre, predating even the infamous Dune.

In fact, Herzog Zwei has been cited as one of the main inspirations for the developers of Warcraft, Starcraft, and Command & Conquer, so you can probably imagine how highly regarded it is.

Historically, the original Herzog was developed and released in Japan by a company called Technosoft in 1988 for the MSX and NEC PC-88 computers, while the sequel, Herzog Zwei followed a year later in 1989 for the SEGA Mega Drive console.

The premise for both games was simple - players used their boss unit, called a Land-Armor to build other units to attack or defend with on a linear map.

Units that made it all the way across dealt damage, and whoever destroyed their opponent's base first won the engagement.

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It's pretty similar to the likes of Battle Cats, actually - the linear base-bashing concept has been around for far longer than most people might give it credit for.

What's more impressive though, is that in addition to all that, Herzog's developers were also able to include the ability for players to give specific commands to units (eg. prowl, attack, defend, etc.) and squeeze the entire thing into a chunk of data just slightly bigger than your average .jpg file.

2. RPGs: Wizardry: Proving Grounds of the Mad Overlord (1981)

Since we're talking about RPGs now, let's kick it off in typical RPG fashion too. Ahem.

A really, really, really long time before the badass Witcher Geralt even became an idea in the heads of someone at CD Projekt RED, there was Wizardry...ok, intro over.

The first title in this eight-game series that came out in 1981 was called Wizardry: Proving Grounds of the Mad Overlord , and it's no exaggeration to say it laid many of the foundations for the modern RPG as we know it.

Yes, games like Final Fantasy, Dragon Quest and many of today's big franchises all took pages out of Wizardry's book - it was the first-ever game to bring the Dungeons & Dragons-style of gameplay onto a computer, which in this case was the Apple II.

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Developed by Andrew Greenberg and Robert Woodhead, the beta version of the game first appeared at the 1980 Boston Computer Convention, with the full title following a year later in 1981. Gameplay was largely text-based, with a few colourful sprites to represent monsters like skeletons and whatnot.

Like the aforementioned D&D, it featured a party system, as well as most of the features you might expect from a modern-day RPG, like a "blacksmith" or "inn".

The fighting itself is much like classic Final Fantasy, where players have a choice between attacking, casting spells, using items, running away - that sort of thing.

It's also impressive in the sense that players could choose characters' alignments too, such as Good, Neutral, and Evil, which affected some of the choices that were given to players during their run.

Not bad for a 40-year old game, eh?

3. Sandbox: Starflight (1986)

First off, I have a confession to make: I'm an absolute sucker for space trading games.

I just find there's something inherently interesting about "buying low, selling high" and all that other stock market jargon, which is odd considering my college math grade wasn't exactly stellar.

Speaking of stars, though, our third entry today is the OG space trading/diplomacy game Starflight, which was developed by Binary Systems and published by Electronic Arts for IBM PC compatibles way back in 1986.

The game was highly praised by critics and was later ported to the Amiga, Atari ST, Macintosh and the Commodore 64 platforms. 

Despite being a space trading sim conceptually, Starflight is viewed as one of, if not the earliest sandbox games in existence, and has lent inspiration to many modern space games, Mass Effect being one of them.

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As you might have guessed from the preamble, the game places you in command of a starship, and it's up to you what you'd like to do from there.

Plot-wise, there's actually a narrative aspect you can follow, but the main draw of the game was of course the trading and alien diplomacy options.

It's all pretty straightforward from there - players can use whatever method they prefer to make some semblance of a living.

Hunting pirates, trading minerals and ores or discovering new planets suitable for colonisation - it's entirely up to personal preference, hence its widespread designation as a sandbox game.

4. RPGs: Might and Magic Book One: The Secret of the Inner Sanctum (1986)

Before we begin, just a quick heads up - don't get this one confused with the modern reiterations by Ubisoft.

of them are entirely separate from one another - the original Might and Magic series has already up and vanished with the closure of 3DO Company, with Ubisoft then stepping in to buy the rights to the name. 

So, this brings us to the question of where the first M&M (the game, not the chocolates) popped up.

Well, my young apprentices, the original title was created by a man named Jon Van Canegham and released for a large variety of computing platforms during the 80s under New World Computing, such as the Apple II and MS-DOS.

Due to its popularity, it received numerous ports to other, later consoles like the NES as well.

But while it's not as groundbreaking as our earlier title Wizardry, Might and Magic is definitely still one of the RPG genre's pioneers, and it has been praised numerous times over the years for its expansive scope, non-linear gameplay, and various other aspects which put it far ahead of its time.

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The gameplay is pretty similar to the aforementioned Wizardry - there's a party and combat system like that of D&D, fighting is turn-based as well as an alignment factor.

However, this latter bit tends to have minimal effects since the party usually acts as a collective unit.

This 35-year-old game was also one of the first to introduce the concept of character customisation to computer gaming, with players being able to select the race, class, and other personality traits for their adventurers, all of which play in part in their combat performance and expertise.

It's actually really detailed and well-thought-out for a game that old, which is probably why it's considered one of the best RPGs ever made.

5. Stealth games: Metal Gear (1987)

This should be a familiar face to most gamers.

The adventures of characters such as Solid Snake have become almost legendary over the decades that he's been around, and he's become so prominent an icon that he's still making appearances in modern games such as Super Smash Bros. Ultimate.

Which brings us back to the topic: the original Metal Gear series created by the one and only Hideo Kojima, which is widely considered to be the foundation of modern stealth games as we know them. 

Assassin's Creed has got almost nothing on Solid Snake in terms of experience - after all, the first game in the series, titled Metal Gear appeared way back in 1987 for MSX Home Computers, putting players in the shoes of a special forces operative tasked with tracking down a superweapon called the Metal Gear. 

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To do that, players would have to avoid or neutralise enemies as Solid Snake (or Big Boss, sometimes) makes his way into the enemy base undetected.

It's not so much about the difficulty of the task, though - what made it truly excellent was giving players an open playing field to adapt their strategies and tackle the game in different ways, in addition to having a relatively solid narrative (no pun intended) to boot.

Amusingly, Metal Gear is also the birthplace of the "hiding in boxes" tactic, which is still quite funny if you think about it.

6. Space Sim: Star Wars: X-Wing (1993)

If Starflight is the grandfather of the sandbox-type space sim, what about the action side of the equation?

In our opinion, that honour belongs to 1993's Star Wars: X-Wing, a floppy disk title which was developed by Totally Games for LucasArts.

It was one of the first games to apply 3D polygon graphics to spacecraft and the first non-adventure to make use of the iMUSE music system.

However, LucasArts had no idea how popular it would turn out to be, although it definitely worked out in their favour in the end.

All 100,000 initial copies were sold out over the release weekend itself, and another 500,000 copies had been ordered by distributors by December that year.

Owing to its popularity, the game has since received many re-releases, and a digital edition for both X-Wing and its subsequent TIE Fighter counterpart was launched in October 2014.

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Chronologically, the events of the game are set just before the events of Star Wars Episode IV: A New Hope, although not much reference is made to the main story within.

In terms of gameplay, players are thrust into the seat of a titular X-Wing, A-Wing or Y-Wing craft taking on the forces of the Empire.

There are three campaigns, or "tours of duty" made up of 12-14 missions each, and the plot aspect is furthered by a series of cockpit broadcasts and messages.

Just like in the movies, players have to allocate power to their offensive and defensive implements, like lasers and deflector shields respectively, which really hit the spot for many Star Wars fans as shown by the game's sales.

On top of all the shooting bits, X-Wing also offered evergreen modes such as a time trial (titled as Proving Ground), to help keep the experience somewhat fresh.

7. Side-scrolling Platformer: Pitfall! (1982)

Cue the Indiana Jones theme, folks, because this is the closest game we've got to a game adaptation of Raiders of the Lost Ark.

In fact, this 1982 title was heavily inspired by the movie, and the latter's success actually made Pitfall! the number one home video game the year it released. 

Developed by David Crane for the Atari 2600 system and released by Activision, the game has players step into the shoes of Pitfall Harry and do pretty much what Harrison Ford does in the movies, swinging across holes and avoiding various obstacles like crocodiles and quicksand while collecting treasures within a 20-minute time limit.

It's fast-paced and really helped to usher in the side-scrolling platformer as a viable game concept.

So, the next time you boot up a side scroller perhaps you should play the Indiana Jones theme as a nod to Pitfall!. Just a suggestion.

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But what's truly amusing about it isn't the gameplay itself, but how long it took to conceptualise.

In fact, it only took about ten minutes to come up with the general idea, as Crane himself said in an interview.

The programming aspect took a further 1,000 hours to program, though, but it seems like all that effort paid off in the end!

8. RPG: Eye of the Beholder Trilogy (1991-1993)

Yes, yes. I know there are a lot of RPGs in this list, but the genre is just so vast that it's impossible to limit it to just one or two titles. Spoiler alert: I do promise that this is the last one. 

Anyway, if you've ever played those party-style adventure games where you can add NPCs to the roster in the middle of the dungeon, you have the Eye of the Beholder trilogy to thank for that.

The first game in the series was developed by Westwood Associates and released for the MS-DOS in 1991, although it was later ported over to the Amiga, SEGA CD, and the SNES as well.

The games introduce a first-person perspective to a three-dimensional dungeon, where players control the party's movements by clicking on the respective arrow keys.

But apart from the NPC-adding functionality we mentioned before, this trilogy is also well-known for introducing one other feature that we enjoy in some games today.

Think about Mass Effect 2 and 3 for a moment. What feature was common to both games, especially within the character creation process?

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The answer is the character importing. If players had an existing character from a previous title in the series, they could bring that particular character over to the new game and play with it too.

Indeed, this was one of the biggest selling points of the Eye of the Beholder series, and it's a great way to encourage people to purchase the entire set rather than just one or two instalments.

Essentially, players were able to bring over their existing party from their first game into the second game, and then into the third.

As such, you could say we owe this series a debt of gratitude for ensuring we don't have to start from scratch in some of our games today!

9. Beat 'em up: Phantom Fighter (1988)

Hmm...I would actually say this is kind of an "honorable mention", but considering it's the lone candidate for the beat 'em up genre, I've gone ahead and tossed it into the main section with the others on this list. 

As a general rule, regardless of the time period, the success of a movie-to-game adaptation is kind of a toss-up.

Sometimes it works, sometimes it doesn't, and sometimes you're not really sure. Phantom Fighter, which is based on the 1985 Hong Kong comedy horror movie Mr. Vampire by Ricky Lau falls into this third category.

It was developed by Marionette/SRS for the NES and released in September of 1988 for Japan, and then later in North America about two years later, published by Pony Canyon and FCI respectively.

So, what makes it stand out? Well, it's not so much about how prominent the game itself was, but rather the actor who plays the hero in the movie.

In the game, you take control of an anonymous kung-fu master who has to battle through various towns filled with Chinese jiangshi vampires, or kyonshi in Japanese until he vanquishes the evil witch at the end.

For reference, these spirits are usually depicted with a paper talisman pasted on their foreheads and get around by hopping, in a sense.

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Anyway, what's important is that the kung-fu master is inspired by the character played by the late Hong Kong actor Lam Ching Ying (bless his soul), who has become somewhat synonymous with playing such spirit-hunting characters, much like how Robert Englund is basically associated with Freddy Krueger in western culture.

Well, that's about all the stuff we have for today, and it's been a great ten or fifteen minutes spent poring over this metaphorical "photo album".

Of course, there were a lot of great picks we'd have liked to toss in too - stuff like Prince of Persia, Wolfenstein, and even Ninja Gaiden too.

But considering those titles and franchises are generally more mainstream than most of these games we've talked about, they've had to take a back seat.

Still, I think it's really cool to know some of the features that we enjoy in our games nowadays like character importing and party-questing have actually been around far longer than I have. 

This article was first published in Hardware Zone.