High school retro game class

[badATchaos]

I'm running a small Video Game Appreciation class at my school. We go through the ages, working our way up to modern games. I play whatever interesting documentaries I can find (mostly G4's Icons) and bring in any historically significant games I might have.
Since I don't have many Wood age games I used Atari Vault on steam to demonstrate early arcade games.
Now that we're getting into 8bit games what games should we look into? Any suggestions?

[kashell]

This sounds like an awesome class. I'll throw the original Final Fantasy as one of the suggestions. It's neat to see how the games went from building a party of four, pixelated party members to these cinematic blockbusters.

[turf]

Super Mario Bros.  It is 8-Bit video gaming

[soera]

Phantasy star is a great 8 bit RPG. Of course Mario 3 has to be in there. Tetris. Bionic Commando. Zelda. Metroid. Punch out. Sonic. Alex Kidd. Golden Axe. Ninja Gaiden. Tecmo football. Mega man

Couple of lesser entries - Rambo, Adventure island, Lolo, Capcom Disney titles, TMNT, RC pro am, Castle of Illusion, Astro warrior, Space harrier.

[fighterpilot562]

Man this is awesome! respect.

[burningdoom]

That is awesome! I wish we had a class this cool when I went to high school.

[pacpix]

That sounds like an awesome class!  I'd recommend, like Kashell said, to include an RPG.  I think it would be interesting for the class to see some of the early groundbreaking RPGs like Wizardry, Dragon Warrior, etc.  The main problem you run into is there is no way to cover all of the important aspects of the 8-bit era.  Hell you could probably do a class on a single genre of a single console generation if you went in depth enough.

[azure]

Can't go wrong with the first Dragon Quest.

[aliensstudios]

Super Mario Bros., The Legend of Zelda, Alex Kidd in Miracle World, Castlevania, A light gun game, A Boy and his Blob, Metroid, Crystalis and Tetris. Maybe some notorious sports games from the time or some early 8-bit rpgs too.

[redblaze57]

Ninja Gaiden if I'm not mistaking isn't it one of the first to feature cutscenes telling a story? at least nonRPG