Here it is, the very best games of the '80s. Remembered as a period of wild experimentation, what you'll find on this ranking is some of the best retro games of all-time. From the sheer ingenuity of The Legend of Zelda to the unbridled scope of Elite, our pick of the 50 best games of the '80s reflect just how unbelievable the era was for the industry.
Some of these games are fun to play, even today, and some of them have been vastly surpassed in the intervening years by smoother, better-looking games that took what was there and improved. That's what games designers do. Our criteria here is not how do these games stack up against the games we make and play today. Our criteria is which games of the '80s do we owe the greatest debt to because they innovated so much at the time, and because they represent all that is best about original game design. So keep on reading to find our ranking of the best games of the '80s.
