'80s Level Design

I have been pondering on what sort of game I would develop if I were a level designer in the 1980s, keeping in mind all the restriction on the technology they had then.

In the early '80s the golden age of videos was happening, there were some monumental games released such as: Space Invaders, Pac-Man, Mario Bros., Donkey Kong and Centipede; just to name a few. In this period scrolling games were gaining popularity, developers were starting to experiment with psuedo-3D and alternative forms of controls, such as racing wheels for racing games.

Around the mid '80s and onward saw the third generation of video games makes it's debut, with the NES, Sega Mega System and Atari 7800, which in turn saw The Legend Of Zelda, Super Mario Bros., Ghostbusters and many more games set in history.

Back to the original point, if I were in this designing a game in this era, I would design a side scrolling game to fit in with the upcoming trend. It would most likely be a space themed, which seemed to be a very popular theme at the time because of games like Space Invaders and movies like Star Wars. The game would also be a shooter because that was a genre growing popularity. It would have very limited controls, so directional buttons, a shoot button and a jump button. It would look very simple in terms of graphics because of the limited technology. The audio would also be quite simple, but there would be a digital background track because they were occuring in games at the time.

So to summarise, I would make a space-themed, side scrolling shooter that was very basic in that it had only a few controls and looked simple.