This coming Monday (September 12th) is National Video Games Day. Since it falls on a Monday, I intend to celebrate it as a three-day Video Games Weekend! That doesn’t mean I’ll spend the whole three days playing games on my laptop and/or phone. I also plan to head over to Super Abari some time this weekend to play a few of their arcade video games and, of course, pinball. Meanwhile, in honor of Video Games Weekend, I give you “Cedric Explains 1980s Video Games”…

Part 1: Frogger
You are a frog. You must cross a busy road. Oddly the frog is roughly the same size as the cars, but if you come into contact with any of the cars, your frog dies instantly while the car is completely unaffected. If you succeed in crossing the road, you must then cross a river. But you must do so by hitching rides on logs or turtles because – as in real life – if a frog jumps into water, the frog dies instantly.

Part 2: Pac-Man
You are a yellow circle with a mouth. I am not making this up. Your job is to roam around a maze, eating glowing pellets, while being pursued by ghosts. As in real hauntings, if you eat a large flashing pellet, the ghosts turn blue and become edible. This pellet may in fact be LSD.

Part 3: Dig-Dug
I feel like this game was inspired by Bill Murray’s character in Caddyshack, because your job is basically to exterminate varmints. As in real life, the best way to exterminate varmints is to throw an air hose at them, then inflate them until they burst. This game is far less gruesome than it sounds.

Part 4: Burger Time

A restaurant has established an elaborate shelving system for the assembly of hamburgers. The bottom half of a hamburger bun is placed on the bottom shelf, the cooked burger patty is placed on a shelf above that, a slice of cheese on a shelf above that, etc. The restaurant has hired a tiny chef to walk across each of these food items, to knock them off the shelves and onto a plate waiting below. You are that tiny chef. One would think that your primary concern would be keeping your shoes as clean and sanitary as possible. But no. As is so often the case in real life, your primary concern is that you are being pursued by a murderous gang of hot dogs, pickle slices, and fried eggs.

Part 5: Super Pac-Man

This is pretty much the same as Pac-Man except that, as the song goes, “one pill makes you larger”. This pellet is definitely LSD.