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Here are The Oldest Ones In The Book for Video Games; for various reasons *, the NES's US introduction in October, 1985 has been chosen as a cutoff date for The Oldest Ones In The Book of Video Game Tropes.
A good number of the RPG tropes can be found here, since these games trace their roots pretty much directly back to Tabletop RPGs such as Dungeons And Dragons, which were among the first commercial games to be ported over to a video game system.
Examples:
- Arbitrary Headcount Limit (RPG version, Wizardry 1, 1981)
- Artificial Stupidity (Many, many many games; in particular, Pac-Man, 1980)
- Asteroids Monster (Asteroids (obviously), 1979)
- Attract Mode (Many, many arcade games; Sinistar's (1982) is particularly famous.)
- Boss Battle (dnd
 , 1975)
- But Thou Must (Granny's Garden, 1983)
- Character Level (dnd, 1975) or (Dungeons and Dragons, 1974)
- Color Coded Multiplayer (Mario Bros)
- Critical Existence Failure (dnd, 1975) or (Dungeons and Dragons, 1974)
- Cutscene (Space Invaders Part II, 1979)
- Deadly Walls (Berzerk, 1980)
- Difficulty Levels (the Atari 2600 had a built-in difficulty level switch in 1978)
- Easter Egg (Adventure, 1979)
- Extra Lives (Space Invaders, 1979)
- Every Ten Thousand Points (Many, many arcade games)
- Excuse Plot (Donkey Kong, 1980)
- Exit Gate (Manic Miner, 1983)
- Game Over (Space Invaders, 1978)
- Global Currency (Ultima, 1980)
- The Great Video Game Crash Of 1983 (Duh)
- Guide Dang It (Colossal Cave Adventure, 1976)
- Guess The Verb (Colossal Cave Adventure, 1976)
- Hit Points (dnd, 1975) or (Dungeons and Dragons, 1974)
- Interface Screw (Rogue, 1983)
- Inventory Management Puzzle (Colossal Cave Adventure, 1976)
- Jump Physics (Donkey Kong, 1981)
- Last Lousy Point (Colossal Cave Adventure, 1976)
- Level Grinding (Akalabeth, 1979)
- Mook Maker (the oil drum in Donkey Kong, 1981)
- Nintendo Hard
- Numbered Sequels (Space Invaders II, 1981; not to be confused with Space Invaders part II)
- Obvious Beta (ET The Extra Terrestrial, 1982)
- Old Save Bonus (Wizardry 2, 1982)
- One Hit Point Wonder
- One Bullet At A Time (At least as early as Space Invaders, 1978)
- One Up
- Palette Swap (At least as early as Pac-Man, 1980)
- Porting Disaster (Pac-Man on the Atari 2600, 1982)
- The Problem With Licensed Games (ET The Extra Terrestrial, 1982)
- Puzzle Boss (Donkey Kong, 1981)
- Save Scumming (Rogue, 1980)
- Scrappy Level (Donkey Kong, 1981. You know the level I'm talking about.)
- Scoring Points
- Silliness Switch (The potion of hallucination in Rogue, 1980)
- Simon Says Mini Game
- Space Filling Path (Donkey Kong, 1981)
- Super Star (Pac-Man, 1980)
- Super Title 64 Advance (Commodore 64 games)
- Soup Cans (Colossal Cave Adventure, 1976)
- Trial And Error Gameplay (Zork, 1979)
- Violation Of Common Sense (Killing the dragon, Colossal Cave Adventure, 1976)
- You Cant Get Ye Flask (Colossal Cave Adventure, 1976)
- Walkthrough (There were guides written for Colossal Cave Adventure.)
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