8-BitAssassin

That's great, congrats! Even 30 years too late, there's still a sense of satisfaction to be had by beating those scores. I've purchased a lot of Activision games on Game Room for XBOX 360 for that very reason. One part challenge, one part nostalgia trip.

Nice. I was just talking with someone yesterday about these records, and was going to try to track them down today. Great timing!

I'm not really up to such a project yet, but as a nerd from Cincinnati, I'm keeping an eye on this as it develops.

I'm going to have to go ahead and defend E.T. It follows the whole "collect stuff and get to the goal" gameplay arc, has great graphics for the time, and is based on one of the most successful movies ever. The biggest drawback is that the pits just don't work at all and are massively distracting. I'd say that without that one drawback, the game would be considered a classic today, even with any other faults it has.

I think I have had the opposite experience with regards to Adventure. I wasn't fond of it as a kid, but grew to appreciate it as an adult. I got my first copy of Adventure in i think 1985 at a yard sale and at the time I found it unplayable because I didn't have a copy of the instruction manual. I'll have to say that the biggest drawback to the game in my experience is that you pretty much need the manual to have any idea what is going on. I must have spent an hour wondering what that "arrow" was and how to fire it if that's what it was. And in the end I had no idea what the end goal of the game was. Unlike some other games of the era, just running around trying to play the game offers little help. After playing it on Stella after having read the manual I can say that it's a great game. It's certainly a little overrated, but it was the "Zelda" of its time.