1983 was the start of a disastrous period for the once-seemingly indomitable video game industry. With the market overly-glutted from too many competing systems (and a similar brawl wrecking havoc among the nascent personal computer business) many individuals and families completely abandoned home video gaming out of sheer frustration. Neither were matters helped by corporate bungling that has since taken on legendary proportions: witness E.T.: The Extra-Terrestrial and the Pac-Man port for the Atari 2600. And yeah, the “Atari Landfill” story is completely true. Let’s not even begin to talk about turkeys like Porky’s and Custer’s Revenge (I’m telling y’all kiddies who weren’t around then, that you missed something else…).

All of which makes it the more astonishing that in the dying glow of video gaming’s first burst of prominence, one title was produced which a quarter-century later is still hailed as one of the greatest and most groundbreaking ...