10. Pong

Origins: Pong was based 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 among the first electronic games to use a graphical display.

The Concept: The game is intended to represent a casino game of Tennis or PING PONG (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 another way. Depending on where the ball hits the bat, the ball will move around in different directions – should it hit one of many 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: while it sounds utterly boring, the game play is actually very addictive. It is easy to play but very difficult to master, especially with faster ball speeds, and much more acute angles of ‘bounce’.

Nostalgia: for me this 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 will remember this game!

9. Frogger

Origins: this game originated 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 IDEA: Easy – you want to walk from one side of the street to another. Wait one minute – there’s lots of traffic; I better dodge the traffic. Phew Made it – hold on, who put that river there. Better jump on betwing88 and logs and move on to another side – hang 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 can vary. 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 also move to the next 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, but the adrenalin really pumps as you try to avoid that extremely fast car, or the snake that’s hunting you down!

Nostalgia: I love this game for most reasons. I played it for some time, but hardly ever really became an expert – however, it was 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 games and drew heavily from the playability of Breakout.

THE IDEA: aliens are invading the Earth in ‘blocks’ by moving down the screen gradually. Because betwing88 of the planet earth it’s your task to use your solitary laser cannon, by moving horizontally, and zapping those dastardly aliens from the sky. Luckily, you have four bases to hide behind – these eventually disintegrate, however 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 nearer to you, and moves just a little fast – so every new wave is a harder challenge. betwing88 involved a fair quantity of strategy together with good hand eye co-ordination.

Nostalgia: I wasted considerable 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 lower they got – that was about as hi-tech as it returned in the days of monochrome video gaming!