Gaming Trends That Started in the ‘80s

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We love the ‘80s for its iconic media that still reverberates through culture today. While the decade’s movies and music get most of the attention, it was also the start of some enduring gaming trends that have only grown since. Here we have three trends that might not make you nostalgic, but they will show how influential the ‘80s were for modern gaming.

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The Roguelike Genre

Let’s start at the very beginning of the decade, when Rogue was released and instantly became a hit in many colleges across America. The 1980 ASCII game challenged players to navigate a dungeon using turn-based grid maps, with each new room being procedurally generated. What’s more, it popularized permadeath mechanics – you have to restart with a new character if you lose. Thanks to its popularity, it inspired other games like Hack or the Lord of the Rings-inspired Moria. Despite the ’83 game crash on the horizon, games like Rogue persisted.

Nobody knew it at the time, but this was the birth of the roguelike genre. These are games that combine permadeath, procedurally generated maps, and often feature turn-based or grid-based gameplay, although the latter has become less common over time. Popular roguelikes include the equally influential Dwarf Fortress, The Binding of Isaac, FTL: Faster Than Light, Slay the Spire, and Hades. The DNA of Rogue spread much further than that, with some of its mechanics also found in non-roguelike games today.

Electronic Card Games

As personal computers and game consoles made their way into the home, some devs spent their time making fantasy romps like Rogue. Others took a more humble approach; they simulated games that already existed instead, and that’s how we got electronic card games like 1987’s Solitaire Royale. A few years later, Microsoft’s early ‘90s solitaire releases would get more attention and capture the free time of many computer users, but the ‘80s is where the first solitaire games were released.

They joined other electronic card games to form the seeds of an industry that was way ahead of its time. Then the World Wide Web launched in ’89, and, a few short years later, players could play card games with other people. Even solo games like blackjack were reinvented as technology developed, bringing us to today, where it’s possible to stream a game of blackjack into your living room. Now, players can access live blackjack online hosted by real people, merging traditional card game gameplay with modern streaming tech that we could only dream of. It’s a far cry from the flat, digital cards that were on CRT screens in the ’80s.

Classic Arcade Characters

We’ve written in the past about how the ‘80s was a golden age for arcade gaming, and during that time we welcomed iconic characters like the Mario Bros, Donkey Kong, Link and Zelda, and Pac-Man, among others. Besides becoming instant classics, each has spawned a tentpole gaming franchise that is still rolling out new releases to this day. They include complete reinventions that change how the games play, but their ‘80s characters have become timeless.

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Today, Hollywood seems to have cracked the code surrounding videogame adaptations and is bringing a lot of game characters to new audiences. With a Mario movie down and a Zelda movie in the works, some of the biggest ‘80s icons are set to transcend gaming and spread further than they already have.

Between these characters, genres, and spinoff industries, we have multiple gaming trends that got their start in the ‘80s. Even more, they have grown to become more relevant today than they ever have been in the past.