Collaborative games are something of a niche market in computer and board games. Perhaps it’s just easier to design a game around only one player.

In 1984, Electronic Arts released a cool, run-for-your-life game called Realm of Impossibility. Players had no weapons against hoards of zombies, orbs, and spiders. They could only drop crosses to block them temporarily and collect defensive spells to divert them for a few seconds. The main weapon they had was speed.

You can see the gameplay in this video review. About half of the dungeons have features similar to optical illusions, so beginners could run down dead ends that don’t look like it at first. That and the running like mad are two parts of the joy of this game. The third part is being able to play with someone else.

I remember playing this game with other people, yelling in mock fear of the terrors chasing us, getting separated, blocked, or killed, reviving each other, and booking it for the side of the screen.

“I’ll draw them away. You grab the thing.”

“Run, run! AHH!”

Playing by yourself was fun enough the first couple times, but it was a short game that didn’t change. It didn’t have the replayable nature of Pitfall, which seems odd given that Pitfall was just the Gen-X version of Temple Run. (Maybe it isn’t odd at all. People play Temple Run for hours.) But as a two-player game, both of you running to escape the hoards, Realm of Impossibility was great fun.