It helps if you think of the second American console crash as a personal computer boom. The videogame industry didn't die at all, and many games released during this time have more in common with modern games than their later NES counterparts, if you can forgive their counter-intuitive control schemes and sadistic difficulty spikes. (In a Vlad the Impaler sense.)

Off the top of my head, a few worth checking out -

A. 3D Death Chase (ZX Spectrum) - Picture the speeder bike chase from Return of the Jedi, as re-imagined by Quentin Tarantino. This is shameless fun - what gaming of the era wanted to be, and very seldom was. Minus the primitive graphics and sounds, it still holds up today - but you won't know it until you're actually playing the game.

B. Ultima IV (various)- troubled by complaints that the sandbox gaming in Ultima III was often limited to the ability to kill innocent people and steal their money, the creator of Ultima IV explored what it really means to be moral. From the start, you're asked to choose between values in conflict, such as whether or not you can be trusted with your master's money, or you know he won't notice a missing coin given to someone who claims to be in desperate need of it?

There is no wrong answer. It just wants to know which virtue you represent.

Can you master all the virtues, when your survival isn't assured, and there's so many paths off of the main quest? Unlike most epic RPGs, you, yourself, are the ultimate challenge.

1. The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy (various) - Douglas Adams is an evil bastard. You don't play this to win, so much as to enjoy all the very creative and completly unfair ways you will be suddenly murdered without warning - which may or may not stop the story.

Not finished yet, but I don't like the thought of this laptop crashing, so I'll post in installments...