Top Ten Classic Video Games

10. Pong

Origins: Pong was predicated on a casino 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 one of the first electronic games to use a graphical display.

The Concept: The game is supposed to represent a game of Tennis or PING PONG (TABLE TENNIS). 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 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 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 in fact very addictive. It is easy to play but very difficult to understand, especially with faster ball speeds, and more acute angles of 'bounce'.

Nostalgia: for me this can be the father of video games. Without Pong you probably wouldn't have video games - it started the craze that could continue grow and be a multi-billion dollar industry. I'll always 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 wish to walk in one side of the road to another. Wait one minute - there's lots of traffic; I better dodge the traffic. Phew Made it - hang on, who put that river there. Better join those turtles and logs and get to the other 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 quantity of logs and cars, and the speed may differ. You should 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: Yet 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 stay away from that very fast car, or the snake that is hunting you down!

Nostalgia: I love this game for most reasons. I played it for a long period, but never really became a specialist - 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 gaming and drew heavily from the playability of Breakout.

betwing88 : aliens are invading the planet earth in 'blocks' by moving down the screen gradually. Because 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 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 closer to you, and moves a little fast - so every new wave is a harder challenge.  betwing88  involved a fair level of strategy in addition to 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 lower they got - that was about as high tech as it got back in the times of monochrome video gaming!