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Events

Notable releases

• Brøderbund releases Where in the World is Carmen Sandiego?, the first game of the prolific Carmen Sandiego series
• Nintendo releases Duck Hunt after the year began and Super Mario Bros. on September 13, 1985. Before the year was over Super Mario Bros. became the highest selling game of the year, selling 10 million copies,^{[citation needed]} then eventually selling 40 million copies making it the best-selling video game of all time until 2008.^[1]
• Namco releases Dig Dug II, Metro-Cross, Baraduke, Motos, Battle City (video game), and Sky Kid.
• Alexey Pajitnov creates the Tetris video game in the USSR. Nintendo released its most popular versions (for the NES and Game Boy) in 1989.
• Atari Games releases Gauntlet (by Ed Logg), the first dungeon crawl arcade game.
• Ghosts 'n Goblins by Tokuro Fujiwara (Capcom, arcade), one of the most popular arcade games of the year, spawned a series of later games
• Adventure Construction Set by Stuart Smith and Racing Destruction Set by Rick Koenig are both released by Electronic Arts and become hits, following on the success of 1982's Pinball Construction Set by Bill Budge.
• Elite Systems UK releases Roller Coaster, a platformer in the mould of the previous year's best seller, Jet Set Willy. Roller Coaster was the first game to ever simulate fairground rides.
• Bubble Bus software release the popular arcade adventure Starquake for several 8-bit computers. In later years, it is ported to 16-bit platforms.
• Pete Cooke's ambitious, sprawling science-fiction game Tau Ceti is published in the United Kingdom.
• The Learning Company releases the first commercial version of The Oregon Trail on the Apple II.

Hardware

• Atari releases the 520ST personal computer
• Commodore releases the Amiga personal computer
• INTV Corp. releases the INTV III home console
• Telegames releases the Dina home console, a ColecoVision clone
• Nintendo does a limited test release of the NES video game console in the United States and the Robotic Operating Buddy (ROB) robot and video game for the NES home console
• Sega's SG-1000 Mark III released in Japan

Business

• New companies: Titus Interactive, Code Masters, Westwood Studios, Inc., Square Co., Ltd., Bethesda Softworks Inc.
• Edu-Ware closes; David Mullich and several other laid-off employees form Electric Transit, which becomes the first company to join Electronic Art's new affiliated publisher program.
• Defunct companies: RDI Systems

References