Top Ten Classic Video Games

10. Pong

Origins: Pong was predicated on a game called 'Tennis for Two' that was a simulation of a game of tennis on an oscilloscope. Physicist William Higinbotham, the designer, falls in history as creating among the first electronic games to use a graphical display.

The Concept: The game is supposed to represent a game of Tennis or Table Tennis (Ping Pong). Each player has a bat; the bat can be moved vertically. The screen has two horizontal lines at the top and bottom of the screen. A ball is 'served' and moves towards one player - that player must move the bat so the ball hits it. The ball rebounds and moves back the other way. Depending on where in fact the ball hits the bat, the ball will move in different directions - should it hit one of the top or bottom lines, then it will bounce off. The idea is simply to help make the other player skip the ball - thus scoring a point.

Game play: although it sounds utterly boring, the overall game play is really very addictive. It is easy to play but very hard to understand, especially with faster ball speeds, and more acute angles of 'bounce'.

Nostalgia: for me here is the father of video games. Without Pong you probably wouldn't have video games - it started the craze that could continue grow and become a multi-billion dollar industry. I'll always remember this game!

9. Frogger

Origins: this game originated by Konami in 1981, and was the first game to introduce me to Sega. At that time it was very novel and introduced a fresh style of game.

THE IDEA: Easy - you need to walk in one side of the road to another. Wait one minute - there's a lot of traffic; I better dodge the traffic. Phew Managed to get - hold on, who put that river there. Better jump on those turtles and logs and get to another side - hold on that's a crocodile! AHHH! It sounds easy - the cars and logs are in horizontal rows, and the direction they move, the amount of logs and cars, and the speed may differ. You must move you frog up, down left and right, preventing the cars, jumping on logs and avoiding nasty creatures and obtain home - do this several times and you move to the next level.

Game Play: Another simple concept that is amazingly addictive. This game depends on timing; you find yourself dinking in and out of traffic, and sometimes going nowhere. The graphics are poor, the sound is terrible, but the adrenalin really pumps as you try to avoid that very fast car, or the snake that's hunting you down!

Nostalgia: I really like this game for most reasons. I played it for some time, but never really became an expert - however, it had been the first ever game I managed to reproduce using Basic on my ZX81 - I even sold about 50 copies in Germany!

8. Space Invaders

Origins: Tomohiro Nishikada, the designer of Space Invaders was inspired by Star Wars and War of the Worlds. He produced on of the first shooting video gaming and drew heavily from the playability of Breakout.

The Concept: aliens are invading the planet earth in 'blocks' by moving down the screen gradually. As the intrepid savior of the planet earth it's your task to use your solitary laser cannon, by moving horizontally, and zapping those dastardly aliens out of your sky. Luckily, you have four bases to cover behind - these eventually disintegrate, however they provide some protection from the alien's missiles.

Game Play: this is a very repetitive game, but highly addictive. Each wave starts just a little closer to you, and moves a little fast - so every new wave is really a harder challenge. The game involved a fair quantity of strategy together with good hand eye co-ordination.

Nostalgia: I wasted a lot of time playing this game. While originally simply green aliens attacked, some clever geek added color strips to the screen and the aliens magically changed color the low they got - that has been about as hi-tech as it returned in the days of monochrome video games!

7. Galaxians

Origins: Galaxians expanded on the area Invaders theme insurance firms aliens swoop down on the defender. It was among the first games to have colored sprites.

Concept: Take Space Invaders, add some color, take away the bases and make a number of the aliens swoop down at you and you have Galaxians. Fundamentally the concept is equivalent to Space Invaders, you're defending the world against alien invaders, but instead compared to the whole screen full of aliens moving down at you in a nice orderly fashion, you obtain groups of aliens swooping down in haphazard ways.

Game play: in the event that you liked Space Invaders then you'll love this. The strategies will vary, as you frequently have to avoid several different groups of alien 'swoopers' but if you can shoot them because they swoop, then you get some great bonus points. The game is difficult until you get used to some of the patterns

Nostalgia: this was among the first games that I played on a pc that was almost exactly like the arcade fame. I had a vintage Acorn Electron, and this game was almost perfect on this little machine. I miss my old Acorn Electron!

6. Defender

Origins: This game was created by Williams Electronics in 1980. THE OVERALL GAME was created by Eugen Jarvis, Sam Dicker, Paul Dussault and SLarry DeMar. It had been one of the first games to feature complex controls, with five buttons and a joystick. While slow to catch on because of its difficulty, it still was a favorite game.

holywin88 : Most of the shoot-em-up games of the era were horizontal shote-em-ups. This game changed the playing field by being a vertical shooter. Yet again aliens are intent to do nasty things to earth - this time they're trying kidnap 10 humans. You're in charge of the sole defender and must kill the aliens before they kidnap the humans. You fly over a 'landscape' and will see your humans mulling around on the surface. The aliens appear and drop towards the humans - you can kill them at this point, but should they grab an alien, you need to shoot the alien, and catch the human prior to the alien reaches the most notable of the screen.

Game play: This was a great game that has been easy to play but tough to master. Shooting the aliens and catching the humans gave the best bonuses, and this formed a major section of the strategy. There were some different kind of aliens that chased you making the game far more hectic than others; often it had been just a relief to finish a level. While not as addictive as some, it did give a feeling of achievement when you reached a higher score.

Nostalgia: I went on vacation with a friend for a week and we spent the entire week in the arcade playing this game and the number one game on my list (I won't reveal the name now!). It had been one of the greatest memories of my teen years!

5. Missile Command

Origins: In July 1980, Atari published a revolutionary game. It didn't have a joystick, but had a ball that controlled an on screen cursor. It had been programmed by Dave Theurer and licensed to Sega.

Concept: Those pesky aliens are getting smarter. Rather than sending space ships right down to fight, they're hiding in deep space and sending a bunch of missiles to blow up the Earth's cities. This game was unique as it use a 'round' joystick. You used this to move to a point on the screen and fire a missile into this spot - the culminating explosion would destroy any missiles that hit the 'cloud'. The missiles were essentially lines that moved down from the most notable of the screen at varying angles and speeds - a number of them would put into multiple 'missiles' half way down.

Game play: that is a very strategic game. Placing your bombs in the right place and timing them right could essentially clear the alien missiles quickly and easily. As the game move ahead you found yourself spinning the wheel frantically looking to get the bombs in the right place. This game was adrenalin pumping fun - sometimes you seemed to be up against impossible odds and yet you'd breath a sigh of relief when one city survived.

Nostalgia: this was one of the first games I played on a table top machine. While these didn't really catch on, it had been still fun to be able to put a can of soda down while you played!

4. Breakout

Origin: This game was heavily inspired by Pong. It had been created in 1976 by Atari, with Nolan Busnell and Stew Bristow being the main element designers. It's probably one of the most cloned games ever, right now you can find new games in line with the same theme developing. Apparently the Apple II computer was inspired by this game - wow where would Steve Jobs be now without Breakout.

Concept: The idea is simple - you've got a bat in the bottom of the screen that can move backwards and forwards. Above you is really a wall of bricks. A ball will move from your bat - each and every time it collides with a brick, the brick disappears and the ball bounce back at you. Your task is simple - stop the ball going off underneath of the screen by placing your bat in the manner and bouncing the ball back at the wall - you might also need to remove all of the bricks in the wall to advance to another level!

Game play: it is a fairly difficult game to understand. Because the bricks get lower each level and the ball speed increases, it becomes a lot more difficult to 'break out'. Also, sometimes the angle that the ball comes off the bat is indeed acute that it's very difficult to guage where in fact the ball will bounce! It's one of those games where you just keep saying 'just yet another game' and before very long five hours have passed.

Nostalgia: when I lived in Wales we'd a little utility room that housed books and my little ZX Spectrum - I used to spend hours playing this game as my Father sat and studied. It had been like a male bonding session!

3. Hang On

Origin: This game was released in 1985 and was developed by Sega. It was one of the first '3D' racing games and something of the first ever to introduce a 'realistic' aid to playing the game - that it a more substantial replica motorcycle style cabinet, with speedo, brakes and a throttle. This game became the benchmark for future racing games and result in the highly praised Out Run series. The game cleverly used 'billboards' and trees to provide you with the feel that you were moving at high speed.

Concept: You are a motorcycle racer - you sit on top of a bike and have to race around a 3d race track, overtaking other riders and reaching certain checkpoints within a time limit. The overall game featuring different places and conditions (such as night).

Game play: Another easy game to play but very difficult to master. Timing the turns was essential, particularly if other bikers got truly in the way. Each slight touch of another bike, or crash right into a barrier slowed you down and made it harder to reach the checkpoint in time. The awesome graphics (for the time) made this game pleasurable to play as you truly felt you're in a race. It is another game that kept you coming back for more.

Nostalgia: As a kid I always wanted a real motorbike, which means this gave me a sense that I actually had one. I was very good as of this game (an d Pole Position) and constantly had my name on the high score table - it's perhaps the only game I possibly could truly say I was a master.

2. Pacman

Origin: Developed by Toru Iwatani, and programmed by Hideyuki Moakajima San, this game arrived in mid 1980.  holywin88  comes from a phrase that pertains to the sound when your mouth opens and closes (allegedly). Namco produced the game, but it really became popular in the us when Midway released it.

Concept: You're Pacman and you are very hungry. You discover a maze full of 'dots' and zip around eating them. Unfortunately there's some ghosts who aren't too happy relating to this and they'll chase you and eat you - but hey, there's some really big dots that provide you the energy to banish the ghosts back to their central cage. The maze is complex, filling the whole screen, but you can find no dead ends - gleam passage way between each side of the screen. In the center, may be the cage that holds the ghosts - occasionally bonus fruit appear next to the cage. You essentially have to eat all of the dots in order to progress.

Game play: That is a simple concept, but with pretty decent graphics and an addictive tune it became a huge success. There is a lot of strategy to the overall game - each ghost follows a collection pattern (although eventually they'll forget this and follow you) - in fact you can find books dedicated on the best route to preventing the ghosts. The overall game gets harder as you go, with the ghosts speeding up and getting smarter.

Nostalgia: there's something concerning the music in this game that's just so catching -even as I write it I can hear it in my mind. It's among the first games that I could remember using music as a significant selling point. I wasted many hours playing this game, and even though I was never great I always had fun trying to devise new routes. Additionally it is probably my most successful programming achievement - I designed a version of this for the Acorn Atom and I actually sold a couple of hundred copies (again in Germany) - I am proud that as a twelve year old, I could use logic and programming skills and make some money doing it.

1. Asteroids

Origin: It's truly amazing to believe that this game was first released in 1979 - I've been playing it for 30 years now! Developed by Atari and designed by Lyle Rains and Ed Logg, the overall game cleverly used vector graphics and real inertia physics to convert a simple concept into a classic game.

Concept: Your little space ship has strayed into an asteroid belt. With the use of thrusters, a trusty laser cannon and a hyperspace unit, you need to move your spaceship everywhere over the screen and steer clear of the asteroids. It is possible to go anywhere on the screen and also going off the edge is OK - it just is undoubtedly a wrap around universe. The asteroids come at you from all angles. Initially they are large, and so are fairly slow. Once hit they put into smaller asteroids, and these smaller asteroids split again - small the asteroid the faster it goes. Occasionally an awful alien ship can look and begin firing at you - he'll occasionally hit the asteroids and split them. The idea of the game is easy - destroy all the asteroids without colliding into them or getting shot by an alien.

Action: Wow so what can I say. To really succeed at this game you must use strategy - firing at all asteroids will fill the screen with a lot of small fast moving asteroids, making it difficult to avoid collisions. Which means game required that you pick off one asteroid at the same time, and then cope with the smaller asteroids. While doing this, you also had to go gingerly; with real inertia, you often found yourself drifting without realizing it and suddenly you would be in the center of four or five asteroids.