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The best games of the 1980s
The defining games of the 1980s, ranked by rating.
The 1980s forged video games as a serious medium — from tile-matching brain-puzzles to sprawling castle adventures. The decade's best titles share a relentless economy of design: every mechanic earns its place, every pixel carries weight. Tetris proved a single elegant rule could consume hours; Super Mario Bros. 3 showed how invention compounds across eight worlds. Whether blasting tanks, navigating a cursed fortress, or racing a clock of falling blocks, these games rewarded patience and punished complacency in equal measure.
Best games of the 1980s
Game
Volfied (1989)
A Qix successor from Taito that wraps territory-capturing strategy in a futuristic sci-fi aesthetic.
Game
The Great Giana Sisters
A 1987 German platformer from Time Warp Productions, notorious for its controversial production and its striking resemblance to Nintendo's flagship series.
Game
Super Mario Bros. 3
Bowser's Koopalings rampage across eight worlds in a platformer widely cited among the greatest ever made.
Game
Battle City
A multi-directional shooter for the Family Computer produced by Namco in 1985, successor to Tank Battalion.
Game
Rick Dangerous
A platform game from Core Design released in 1989 across Amiga, Atari ST, Spectrum, and other home computers.
Game
Shadowgate (1987)
A point-and-click MacVenture set inside Castle Shadowgate, residence of an ancient evil only the player can stop.
Game
Tetris (1984)
Alexey Pajitnov's tile-matching puzzle, first released in 1984, became one of the most enduring games ever made.
Game
Mega Man 2 (1988)
In the robot-powered city of Monsteropolis, a lone hero faces Dr. Wily in a precision action-platformer built for mastery.
Frequently asked
Where should a newcomer start with 1980s games?
Tetris is the natural entry point — its rules fit in a sentence yet its depth is bottomless. Super Mario Bros. 3 is equally approachable and shows how far platform design had evolved by the decade's close.
What makes 1980s game design feel different from later eras?
Constraints drove creativity: limited memory forced designers to distil each game to a single iron-tight rule. The picks here — from territory-capture in Volfied to castle-crawling in Shadowgate — each hinge on one clear mechanic executed without compromise.
Are any of these 1980s games still playable today?
Tetris has been re-released continuously and is easy to find on modern platforms. Super Mario Bros. 3 and Mega Man 2 have appeared in various Nintendo re-release programmes over the years. Shadowgate received a full remake in 2014.