Vintage Video Games From the 80s That We Were Obsessed With

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Back in the 80s kids didn’t have handheld video games or apps on their phones to play with. At best, they had a newfangled home device like the Atari 2600, ColecoVision or the Intellivision tethered to their televisions so they could play 8-bit video games. If kids were lucky, they'd have had a Nintendo Entertainment System (NES), but if not, they had to head to the arcade with a pile of quarters in their pocket and pray that they didn’t die too quickly at the hands of a rogue ghost or by falling through ice. Entire allowances could be spent in minutes going head-to-head against friends in Street Fighter. And while Minecraft has the look of some of these 8-bit games, the game play on today’s system is so much smoother and easier than the often frustratingly stilted games and controllers that kids of the 80s spent countless hours of their lives trying to master. Don't even get us started on having to blow on cartridges repeatedly to get them to work. Here are a few favorites from yesteryear that kept kids glued to their consoles and fighting for screen-time back in the 80s.

Before Lara Craft rocked our world, there was Pitfall Harry, an intrepid adventurer who tried to make his way through the jungle to find treasure, while swinging on vines and avoiding crocodiles and quicksand. This Activision game was designed for the Atari 2600, and this side scroller was a bestseller.

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