E.T. : The Extra-Terrestrial – The Ready Player One Video Replay

The title screen for the ET video game, with the text ET and a picture of the alien's head

Released in December 1982, E.T.: The Extra-Terrestrial is a notoriously bad game. Based on the Steven Speilberg movie of the same name, popular gaming lore blames it for the collapse of the video game industry in 1983 and claims hundreds of thousands of E.T. game cartridges were buried in a landfill. There’s some truth to this … Read more

Starmaster – The Ready Player One Video Replay

A dogfight with an enemy. White stars appear on a black background. A green enemy starfighter appears in the upper left.

Starmaster is Activision’s take on the emerging first-person, star-fighter genre. Released in 1982 and written by Alan Miller, it features gameplay similar to Atari’s Star Raiders (without the complexity of the “Video Touch Pad Controller” add-on hardware). It plays a minor role in Ready Player One, appearing in a single line. Quote Beside the Atari was a shoebox containing … Read more

Yars’ Revenge – The Ready Player One Video Replay

An insectoid 8-bit character appears to the left of the screen. A colored band appears down the middle. A red swirl has just passed the colored band.

As a kids, Yars’ Revenge was always one of our go-to games on the Atari 2600. Despite not being a two-player game, my friends and I would spend hours trying to get the highest possible score … and see if we could catch a glimpse of the Ghost of Yar. Atari released Yars’ Revenge in 1982. Created by … Read more

Space Invaders – Ready Player One Video Game Replay

8-bit monster aliens appear against a black screen, descending toward orange shields. At the bottom of the screen is the player icon, shooting Space Invaders.

Developed by Tomohiro Nishikado and released in 1978 by Taito in Japan and Bally (via their Midway division) in the US, Space Invaders is one of the quintessential 1980s video games. And, if I’m being honest, a little misunderstood (at least by me). I rarely played the game in the arcade; my exposure was always through the … Read more

RPO Replay: Street Fighter II

Two combatants face off against each other in Street Fighter II

The Ready Player One Replay is an ongoing exploration of the games that inspired the novel Ready Player One by Ernest Cline. Love it or hate it, there’s value in revisiting our geeky roots. Quote Since then, we’d used Street Fighter II to settle our disputes. My Joust skills were a lot rustier than I thought. — Ready … Read more

Dungeons of Daggorath – Ready Player One Replay

A simple, dotted line rendering of a monster in one of Dungeons of Daggorath's rooms

Dungeons of Daggorath is one of the most important games in Ready Player One (Amazon). Located in one of 256 recreations of James Halliday’s hometown (and childhood home/bedroom) on the planet Middletown, TSR-80 version of the game provided to be the gateway to one of the keys associated with dead programmer’s Easter Egg hunt. Quote “Daggorath” (with … Read more

RPO Replay: Tron – Deadly Discs

The Ready Player One Replay is an exploration of the games that inspired the novel Ready Player One by Ernest Cline. Quote After I beat Aech at three rounds of Tron: Deadly Discs, he threw down his Intellivision controller in disgust. — Ready Player One p. 40 Game Play Tron – Deadly Discs is a single-player game for Atari 2600 and … Read more

Ready Player One Video Game Replay

A male teenager climbs up the side of a stack of mobile homes, looking off into the distance, where he sees a dystopian skyline. Cover art from the novel version of Ready Player One

Welcome to the Ready Player One Video Game Replay! Ernst Cline’s dystopian novel Ready Player One (Amazon) is set in a cyberpunk-ish future in which climate change, economic upheaval, pandemics, and other catastrophes have transformed our world. Poverty is rampant, with many people living on the fringes of big cities in the hopes of scraping … Read more