Top Ten Classic Video Games

10. Pong

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

The Concept: The overall game is intended to represent a casino game of Tennis or Table Tennis (Ping Pong). Each player includes a bat; the bat could 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 that the ball hits it. The ball rebounds and moves back another way. Depending on where in fact the ball hits the bat, the ball will move around in different directions - should it hit one of the top or bottom lines, then it'll bounce off. The idea is simply to help make the other player miss the ball - thus scoring a point.

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

Nostalgia: for me here is the father of video gaming. Without Pong you almost certainly wouldn't have video games - it started the craze that would continue grow and be a multi-billion dollar industry. I am going to remember this game!

9. Frogger

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

The Concept: Easy - you intend to walk in one side of the road to the other. Wait a 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 move on to the other side - hold on that's a crocodile! AHHH! It sounds easy - the cars and logs come in horizontal rows, and the direction they move, the number of logs and cars, and the speed may differ. You must move you frog up, down left and right, avoiding the cars, jumping on logs and avoiding nasty creatures and get home - do that several times and you move to the next level.

Game Play: Another simple concept that's amazingly addictive. This game relies 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 is hunting you down!

Nostalgia: I really like this game for many reasons. I played it for years, but never really became an expert - however, it had been the initial 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 IDEA: aliens are invading the 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 from the sky. Luckily, you have four bases to cover up behind - these eventually disintegrate, however they provide some protection from the alien's missiles.

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

Nostalgia: I wasted lots of time playing this game. While originally simply holywin88 attacked, some clever geek added color strips to the screen and the aliens magically changed color the low they got - that was about as hi-tech as it returned in the times of monochrome video gaming!

7. Galaxians

Origins: Galaxians expanded on the area Invaders theme by having aliens swoop down on the defender. It was one of the first games to have colored sprites.

Concept: Take Space Invaders, then add color, remove the bases and make a few of the aliens swoop down at you and you also have Galaxians. Basically the concept is the same as Space Invaders, you're defending the planet against alien invaders, but instead compared to the whole screen full of aliens moving down at you in a nice orderly fashion, you get 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 are different, as you often have to avoid two or three different sets of alien 'swoopers' but if you can shoot them as they swoop, then you get some good great bonus points. The game is difficult and soon you get used to a number of the patterns

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

6. Defender

Origins: This game was made 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 due to its difficulty, it still was a favorite game.

Concept: 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 of doing nasty things to earth - this time around they're trying kidnap 10 humans. You are in charge of the sole defender and must kill the aliens before they kidnap the humans. You fly over a 'landscape' and can see your humans mulling around at first glance. The aliens appear and drop towards the humans - it is possible to 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 very best of the screen.

Game play: This was a great game that was easy to play but tough to master. Shooting the aliens and catching the humans gave the very best bonuses, and this formed a major portion of the strategy. There have been some different type of aliens that chased you making the game much more hectic than others; often it had been just a relief to complete a level. While not as addictive as some, it did give a feeling of achievement once you reached a high score.

Nostalgia: I continued vacation with a friend for weekly and we spent the complete week in the arcade playing this game and the number one game on my list (I won't reveal the name now!). It was one of the better 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 was programmed by Dave Theurer and licensed to Sega.

Concept: Those pesky aliens are receiving smarter. Rather than sending space ships down to fight, they're hiding in deep space and sending a lot of missiles to blow up the Earth's cities. This game was unique since it work with a 'round' joystick. You used this to move to a spot 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 top of the screen at varying angles and speeds - a number of them would put into multiple 'missiles' half way down.

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

holywin88 : 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 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 key designers. It's probably probably the most cloned games ever, even today there are new games using 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 may move back and forth. Above you is really a wall of bricks. A ball will move from your bat - 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 the bottom of the screen by placing your bat in the manner and bouncing the ball back at the wall - you also have to remove all of the bricks in the wall to advance to another level!

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

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

3. Hang On

Origin: This game was released in 1985 and was developed by Sega. It had been one of the first '3D' racing games and something of the first 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 lead to 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 take a seat on top of a bike and also 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: Yet another easy game to play but very hard to understand. 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 managed to get harder to attain the checkpoint with time. The awesome graphics (for the time) made this game pleasurable to play as you really felt you were in a race. It really is another game that kept you coming back for more.

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

2. Pacman

Origin: Produced by Toru Iwatani, and programmed by Hideyuki Moakajima San, this game came out in mid 1980. The name comes from a phrase that relates to the sound when your mouth opens and closes (allegedly). Namco produced the game, but it really became popular in America when Midway released it.

Concept: You're Pacman and you are very hungry. You discover a maze filled with '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 give you the energy to banish the ghosts back to their central cage. The maze is complex, filling up the complete screen, but there are 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 need to eat all of the dots so that you can progress.

Game play: This is usually a simple concept, but with pretty decent graphics and an addictive tune it became an enormous success. You will find a lot of technique to the overall game - each ghost follows a collection pattern (although eventually they'll forget this and follow you) - in fact there are books dedicated on the very best route to avoiding the ghosts. The game gets harder as you go, with the ghosts accelerating and getting smarter.

Nostalgia: there's something about the music in this game that is just so catching -even when i write it I can hear it in my mind. It's one of the first games that I could remember using music as a major selling point. I wasted many hours playing this game, and although 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 number of hundred copies (again in Germany) - I am proud that as a twelve year old, I was able to 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 am playing it for 30 years now! Developed by Atari and created by Lyle Rains and Ed Logg, the overall game cleverly used vector graphics and real inertia physics to convert a straightforward concept right into a classic game.

Concept: Your little space ship has strayed into an asteroid belt. By using thrusters, a trusty laser cannon and a hyperspace unit, you must move your spaceship in all directions over the screen and prevent the asteroids. It is possible to go anywhere on the screen and also going off the edge is OK - it just happens to be a wrap around universe. The asteroids come at you from all angles. Initially they are large, and are fairly slow. Once hit they split 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 thought of the game is simple - destroy all of the asteroids without colliding into them or getting shot by an alien.

Action: Wow so what can I say. To essentially succeed as of this game you need to use strategy - firing at all asteroids will fill the screen with a lot of small fast paced asteroids, making it difficult to avoid collisions. Therefore the game required that you pick off one asteroid at a time, and then cope with the smaller asteroids. While doing this, you also had to maneuver 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.