LogFAQs > #962245974

Most of the first video games were extremely simple and abstract, focused around one pure mechanic. When themes and context did start to come into things, I feel that most early games were still about things like fighting or competition. There are some older games that include the idea of love, like Ms. Pac-Man (1981) or Dragon Quest (1986), and there were those Atari porn games like Bachelor Party or X-Man, which were about sex, but the oldest game I can think of where love is a central theme that the entire game is based around is Mother (1989). I feel confident that this isn't the real answer, though. This is a hard thing to search for, so I thought I'd pose the question on a gaming hobbyist board. What is the oldest game you know of that's about love (feel free to define exactly what this means yourself), and can you think of one older than Mother?

As a bonus, I'm curious to know if there are older examples of a few other ideas I can't recall being done in games before Mother, so please tell me if you know of an older game that has:

• A sympathetic final boss, who is defeated by a method other than fighting
• An NPC who protects the player in an area where they're mostly helpless
• A romance between the main character and someone he spends most of the game traveling with