Top Ten Classic Video Games

10. Pong

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

The Concept: The overall game is supposed 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 on the top and bottom of the screen. A ball is 'served' and moves towards one player - that player must move the bat in order that the ball hits it. The ball rebounds and moves back another way. Depending on where 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 will bounce off. The theory is simply to make the other player skip the ball - thus scoring a point.

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

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

9. Frogger

Origins: this game originated by Konami in 1981, and was the first game to introduce me to Sega. At holywin88 was very novel and introduced a fresh style of game.

THE IDEA: Easy - you wish to walk from one side of the street to the other. Wait one minute - there's lots of traffic; I better dodge the traffic. Phew Made it - hang on, who put that river there. Better jump on those turtles and logs and move on to the other side - hold on that is clearly 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, avoiding the cars, jumping on logs and avoiding nasty creatures and obtain home - do that several times and you move to another level.

Game Play: Another simple concept that is 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, however the adrenalin really pumps as you try to avoid that very fast car, or the snake that's hunting you down!

Nostalgia: I love this game for most reasons. I played it for years, 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 initial shooting video games and drew heavily from the playability of Breakout.

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

Game Play: it is a very repetitive game, but highly addictive. Each wave starts a little closer to you, and moves a little fast - so every new wave is really a harder challenge. The overall game involved a fair level of strategy along 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 was about as hi-tech as it got back in the days 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, take away the bases and make a number 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 than the whole screen filled with 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 will vary, as you often have to avoid two or three different sets of alien 'swoopers' but when you can shoot them as they swoop, then you get some good great bonus points. The overall game is difficult until you get used to a few 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 an old Acorn Electron, which game was almost perfect with this little machine. I miss my old Acorn Electron!

6. Defender

Origins: This game was created by Williams Electronics in 1980. The Game was designed by Eugen Jarvis, Sam Dicker, Paul Dussault and SLarry DeMar. It was among 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 popular game.

Concept: The majority of the shoot-em-up games of the era were horizontal shote-em-ups. This game changed the playing field when you are a vertical shooter. Just as before aliens are intent to do nasty what to earth - this time around they are trying kidnap 10 humans. You are in charge of the only real 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 - 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 before the alien reaches the top of the screen.

Game play: This was a great game that has been an easy task to play but tough to understand. Shooting the aliens and catching the humans gave the very best bonuses, which formed a major part of the strategy. There were some different kind of aliens that chased you making the game far more hectic than others; often it was 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 continued vacation with a pal for weekly and we spent the complete week in the arcade playing this game and the main game on my list (I won't reveal the name now!). It had been among the best 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 getting smarter. Instead of 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 go to a point on the screen and then 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 very best of the screen at varying angles and speeds - some of them would put into multiple 'missiles' half way down.

Game play: this is the 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 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 seemed to be 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 in order 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, right now you can find 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 easy - you have a bat in the bottom of the screen that may move backwards and forwards. Above you is 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 easy - stop the ball going off the bottom of the screen by placing your bat in the way and bouncing the ball back at the wall - you might also need to remove all the bricks in the wall to advance to the next level!

Game play: this can be a fairly difficult game to master. As the bricks get lower each level and the ball speed increases, it becomes a growing number of difficult to 'break out'. Also, sometimes the angle that the ball comes off the bat is indeed acute that it's very difficult to judge where the ball will bounce! It's one of those games where you merely keep saying 'just yet another game' and before very long five hours have passed.

Nostalgia: when I lived in Wales we'd just 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 was such as a male bonding session!

3. Hang On

Origin: This game premiered in 1985 and was developed by Sega. It was one of the first '3D' racing games and one of the first ever to introduce a 'realistic' aid to playing the game - that it a larger 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 give you the feel that you were moving at high speed.

Concept: You're 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 game featuring different places and conditions (such as for example night).

Game play: Just one more 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 reach the checkpoint with time. The awesome graphics (for the time) made this game pleasurable to play as you truly felt you're in a race. It really is another game that kept you returning for more.

Nostalgia: As a youngster I always wanted a real motorbike, so this gave me a feeling that I actually had one. I was excellent at 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 arrived 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 took off in America when Midway released it.

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

Game play: This is a simple concept, but with pretty decent graphics and an addictive tune it became an enormous success. There is 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 you can find books dedicated on the very best route to avoiding the ghosts. The game gets harder as you go, with the ghosts speeding up and getting smarter.

Nostalgia: there's something about the music in this game that is just so catching -even when i write it I could hear it in my own mind. It's among the first games that I can remember using music as a major feature. I wasted several hours playing this game, and even though I was never great I usually had fun attempting to devise new routes. It is also 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'm 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 right 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. You can 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're large, and are fairly slow. Once hit they put into smaller asteroids, and these smaller asteroids split again - the smaller the asteroid the faster it goes. Occasionally a nasty alien ship will appear and start firing at you - he'll occasionally hit the asteroids and split them. The thought of the game is easy - destroy all of the asteroids without colliding into them or getting shot by an alien.

Game play: Wow so what can I say. To really succeed at this game you need to use strategy - firing at all asteroids will fill the screen with plenty of small fast paced asteroids, rendering it difficult in order 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 maneuver gingerly; with real inertia, you often found yourself drifting without realizing it and suddenly you'd be in the middle of 4 or 5 asteroids.