Oh, my. In our era of modern madness and the latest innovations, it’s hard to even remember where gaming all began. No 3D graphics. No insane orchestral soundtracks. No global multiplayer with leaderboards and pro teams making millions.
It was a lot simpler then.
In this list, we’ll take a trip down memory lane to the era of joysticks and turning the TV to channel 3 to make a game work. Some of you may have actually experienced these games back in the day. Some of you may just be checking them out now. Whatever your age, these are the games that defined the decade when the evolving creatures of gaming were just crawling out of the microchip sea and learning to walk on land.
Space Invaders (1978)
Little lines of monsters, marching their way across and down the screen as you frantically try to shoot them out of space – Space Invaders was a classic that still lives on in modern arcades even in the 2020s. There’s just something so satisfying about sniping them off the screen with your little bullets. You know you have to make your shots, or you’re going to get overwhelmed.
The designs of the monsters showed that, even with limited pixels, you could still make something that was recognizably nasty. Bigger and better enemies were on the way, but these were among the first “mob” waves we ever had to deal with. Space Invaders crawled so Halo could fly when we eventually took on The Flood with futuristic assault rifles.
Try: Pixel Invaders – a slot game that pays homage to these quarter munchers of yore.
Pong (1972)
The simple fun of tennis, pared down to its most basic form – that was Pong. You’d swivel your paddle wheel controller and try to keep up with your opponent as the ball bounced back and forth, following angular line patterns. It already showed signs of just how competitive gaming could be, and led to one of the first video game-induced rage quit photos of the early days.
Getting a feel for the controls was essential to keeping the ball from going past your paddle. That thing could seriously get flying, too! It wouldn’t be long before people started blaming the computer when the ball slipped by. In fact, it reminds us of a similar, but even more addictive game…
Breakout (1976)
Lines of colored bricks, all ready to be broken. No, we’re not talking about Super Mario Bros., we’re talking about Breakout. In this game, your platform was at the bottom of the screen, and the goal of the game was to bounce a white pellet off the bricks at the top, breaking them all. While it was fine to send the ball directly at the bricks, the king move was to clear a channel to the top space and then to have the ball bounce around in there, busting out the top players rapidly while you did nothing and watched.
If you’ve played Arkanoid on the NES, you know all about this. Except, there were no powerups in the original. No shooting. And the sound effects were just bleeps and bloops instead of the resonant, echoing SFX of the Nintendo game. Video games were always building on the foundations of what came before.
Asteroids (1979)
The end of the decade game is a game that not only invited you to shoot targets (giant asteroids in space) but also asked you to move and rotate. What a concept! This was almost too much to handle. In addition, the targets would break up after being shot, leaving you with more work to do. UFO spaceships would descend into the battle arena with loopy sound effects that put you under pressure.
You had to line up those shots at long angles, or you were toast.
Amazingly, the record high score in this game was set in 1982 by Scott Safran of the U.S. His total? 41,336,440. What did he put in as his four initials to reign over the top scorers list forevermore? If he were being true to the era, it HAD to be something juvenile, or it just would be such a wasted opportunity. These games were made in the time before swear filters and language blacklists, so you can imagine what the high score initials entered by teenagers looked like.
Try: SpaceXY, a fun crash game trip in a rocket ship.
Oregon Trail (1971)
Jed has died of dysentery. RIP, Jed.
In Oregon Trail, we all had to struggle with the same challenges as our pioneer ancestors. We had to decide whether to be carpenters or bankers. We had to decide whether to ford rivers or caulk the wagon and float it across. And we had to decide whether to take a grueling pace and make it to the destination before winter (while pushing our families and oxen to the limits of wellness) or to take things slow and risk dying in the snows of the Pacific Northwest.
Yes, games could be dramatic even in the early days.
Of course, the 1971 game was just text-based. Folks who remember the 80s version were truly spoiled by eye-popping visuals like a pixelated wagon floating across a river and of the majestic vistas with matching music that would play when you reached milestone locations. The original version had us typing commands into the computer and reading what happened next. It was learning, but learning made fun. And honestly, it worked! We all know a little bit more about the journey west in the time before cars, and we never would have gotten to the point without this game that somehow lives on forever in our imaginations.
Try: Buffalo Trail, a western slot where you can take on the mighty woolly animal and more.
Zork
This is what MIT kids did in their spare time. No really. They wrote it. If there aren’t enough games to play, you just have to make them. And thank goodness we had geniuses working in the late 70s to bring us to the land of Zork.
It wasn’t really about the gameplay. It was more about the story. You had to use limited text commands to tease the tale out of the computer. “>Go north” would send you north, and the game would describe what you saw there. “>Climb tree” would bring you up for your first obtainable inventory item, the jeweled egg. Be careful! “It looks extremely fragile.”
It was essentially a Choose Your Own Adventure book on the computer, and making progress was an agonizing trial and error process. Just keep at it. Surely, there’s a good ending in there somewhere, right? Well, if you play all the way to the end of Zork III, you will [spoiler alert] take over the role of the dungeon master.
Godspeed, brave adventurer.
Sprint 2
Before there was Need for Speed Underground, there was Sprint 2. It was somewhat less graphically impressive, but the high-stakes racing drama was all there, trust us.
Not.
Okay, so you would race around a repetitive track and annoyingly bonk into the sides until you gave up from frustration, but Sprint 2 has the bones of a classic. Avoid the oil spills, keep your speed, and eventually, you’ll take first place.
On the plus side, there are no BS blue shells to help the person in last get some form of racetrack welfare handout. In this game, you had to earn your wins. You see, back in my day…
Western Gun (1975)
Decades before the lawless loose lips firing off profanity in Call of Duty lobbies, we had one of the first PvP shooters: Western Gun. Pixel cowboys would march clumsily past cacti and try to line up a pellet shot with their opponent. It was hardcore mode: one shot, one kill. When you downed your opponent, they were dead.
Not only could you shoot out their cover, but you could also shoot at an angle. The gameplay options were astounding. The progenitor of beloved classics like GoldenEye 007 (N64) and CounterStrike (PC) is right here. This is their great-granddad. Show some respect!
Sea Wolf (1976)
The periscope on the cabinet demanded that you come and play the game. Seriously, this game was impossible to ignore. And once you pressed your face to the viewer, you were treated to some fun ship shooting. All you had to do was time your shots to miss the mines and sink whatever dared come across your field of view.
Hitting extended play made us feel like seasoned battle commanders despite actually being in an arcade with pizza grease on the controls and our too-tight jeans rapidly emptying of quarters.
The 70s weren’t a perfect time, by any stretch, but what we wouldn’t give to go back and play through the decades of gaming for the first time all over again. We wasted far too many hours, but we had a TON of fun. And when you get down to it, that’s what it’s all about.
FAQ
What are the best games of the 70s?
Our list above is not in any order, but we think these are 9 of the strongest, most fun, and definitely most impactful 1970s video games.
How would gamers from the 70s react to gaming nowadays?
Check out GrndpaGaming to find out! He’s a 20-year Navy vet who regularly snipes faces in Battlefield, all while cackling and dropping knowledge from real life experience. Not to be trifled with if you meet in the game. Prepare to be humbled.
What is the highest-selling arcade game of all time?
Pac-Man seems to be the winner, with 400K cabinets sold and over $7B in inflation-adjusted earnings. And you thought casinos kept you playing!
What retro games from the 70s have similarities with crypto slots from mBitcasino?
Check out the recommendations in the sections above. Also, browse the retro slots section.