In the early ’80s, one videogame changed the way people think about rodents. That game was Mappy. But a whole other game released around that time for Commodore computers also featured mice and rats. Radar Rat Race was not as influential unless you were a young boy caught rapt with attention at endless mazes and the repeating “Three Blind Mice” refrain.

You were a mouse chased by rats, which was some sort of metaphor about class and/or race. You were scrambling to try to find your way in a maze, obviously a metaphor for the American dream and the pursuit of happiness in a confusing, sometimes arbitrary world. You were searching for cheese, which was an obvious stand-in for nuts, the thing that squirrels are always trying to get. There was also magical dust you could release that would confound those rats who were chasing you. We think this was a metaphor for angel dust. Or the oil slicks from Spy Hunter. Or the trace amounts of rodent dropping you can still find in many of your favorite fine restaurants.

It was, largely, a crap game. But it spoke to us on so many levels, that we still find it a-maze-ing. Oh, look! That was another level we just found right there!