Events
Notable releases
- Alley Cat is released for IBM PC compatibles
- King's Quest (Sierra, IBM PC), the first animated adventure game, the first in the King's Quest series, and the first to use the AGI engine.
- Namco releases Gaplus, Tower of Druaga, Pac-Land, Grobda, which is a Xevious spin-off, Super Xevious and Dragon Buster, which is the first game to use a life bar.
- Nintendo releases Balloon Fight.
- The Ancient Art of War by Dave Murray and Barry Murray, the first major real-time strategy game, is released by Brøderbund.
- Paperboy by David Ralston (Atari, arcade game), later ported to many platforms, featured innovative bike handle steering controller.
- Elite by David Braben and Ian Bell is published by Acornsoft, an early and very influential wireframe 3d space trading game offering full six degrees of freedom and a then unique open ended design.
- Gauntlet by Donald R. Lebeau is released for the Atari 8-bit computers.
- Knight Lore by Ultimate Play The Game is released for the ZX Spectrum (and later ported to the BBC Micro, Amstrad CPC, MSX and Famicom Disk System). Knight Lore is the third title in the Sabreman series but the first to use the innovative isometric Filmation engine.
- The Lords of Midnight, a groundbreaking strategy adventure game by Mike Singleton is released.
Hardware
Business
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