But mostly video games. I noticed "leisure arts" on a book cover just now and thought it funny. '84 is the year I became a PC gamer for the most part. Bye bye to consoles for the rest of the 80s. That stuff's for kids, or so I must've been thinking as a late teen. I'm still going to mention NES and SMS later though. Who can resist that.

Some interesting companies founded this year: Accolade, Kemco and Psygnosis just the mention the ones I became familiar with in the 90s.

Babbage's electronics store appeared in Dallas, Texas, the store that became GameStop.

Arcade

Punch Out!! - I remember trying this back then. How unique to fight in first-person! And those zany opponents. Really fun.

1942 - The next iteration on the vertically scrolling shooter. MK and I played this series co-op at the arcade in the late 80s when I was home from college.

Marble Madness - My friend Phil and I, who had challenged each other on Dragon's Lair, had a new game to compete for score. What's best is the track-ball controller which really lets you get your body into the action of trying to keep the marble on the geometric path and avoid enemies. No port can really do it justice without a trackball controller, imo.

PC

My parents bought an Apple IIc this year when it came out, a compact version of the Apple IIe.

I didn't play anything new on it this year but I was introduced to Wizardry I and II. I used to play it after my Verger duties at church on Sundays (I was the guy who opened the church in the morning and filled in for any acolytes that didn't show up). I also used this thing to print up my original DnD campaigns on the dot-matrix printer we had. I guess there were many other things I could play but Wizardry was enough for me and MK when he came over.

Home Console

Not much left after the crash, or, I was distracted by the Apple IIc. Also being in a different high school than my neighbors at this time led to less visits to play console games.

Atari 2600 - H.E.R.O. and Pitfall II, niether of which I think I actually played this year but are notable for being the best of the late crop of AVCS games.

Intellivision - I played nothing and Mattel sold its video game assets to INTV. I don't see much of note other than a lot of arcade ports for the rest of the 80s.

ColecoVision - I seem to remember playing Jungle Hunt on this system this year. It was the last. The system was discontinued a year later. The crash of '83 took another victim.

Board/Card

Toon: The Cartoon Role-playing Game - I tried playing DnD with a friend in the early 2000s and couldn't take it seriously. As a player, I wanted to break the rules constantly and make it into a kind of Terry Pratchett novel. In thinking about this, I discovered Steve Jackson Games Toon and received an "aha!" in my brain.

This is the kind of DnD experience I was looking for. I have yet to play it, but I think the rules are freely downloadable online. I'd be thrilled to come across a real world copy of the published rule book (I just noticed Warren Spector's name there on the cover!).

TV/Film

TV - Danger Mouse (a friend used to quote from this frequently), Mighty Orbots (discovered recently. Visuals by Astroy Boy creator).

Films - Against All Odds, Repo Man, This is Spinal Tap!, Police Academy, Moscow on th Hudson, Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom, Star Trek III: Search for Spock, Ghostbusters, Gremlins, Conan The Destroyer, Revenge of the Nerds, Amadeus, Stop Making Sense, The Terminator, Beverly Hills Cop, Dune, Starman, Birdy, and Johnny Dangerously. These are the films that loom largest in my mind from this year. There would be plenty of material here for future video games.

Books

Bonus: I was an avid reader all through the 80s, both school assigned titles and personal interests. Here are some titles I read then or later. Maybe one related to games.

Gibson's Neuromancer was talked about by kids in my high school but I didn't read it until much later. I missed a good one. Cyber-punk.

Herbert's Heretics of Dune was the fifth of the six original Dune books out this year, and I was a scifi fan of them. It may have been the last one I read. I don't think I read the sixth one.

Ellis Peter's Cadfael mysteries were coming out. The TV show appeared in the 90s and got me hooked and I'm now collecting her books.

E.O. Wilson's Biofilia is out. I want to read all his books after the one on Ants from the 90s.

And that's about it. 1985 is next.