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 among the first electronic games to use a graphical display.

The Concept: The overall game is supposed to represent a game of Tennis or PING PONG (TABLE TENNIS). Each player has 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 in order that the ball hits it. The ball rebounds and moves back the other 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'll bounce off. The theory is simply to make the other player miss the ball - thus scoring a point.

Game play: while it sounds utterly boring, the overall game play is actually very addictive. You can easily play but very difficult to understand, especially with faster ball speeds, and much 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 become a multi-billion dollar industry. I will 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 the time it was very novel and introduced a fresh style of game.

THE IDEA: Easy - you would like to walk in one side of the street to the other. Wait one minute - there's a lot 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 another side - hang on that is clearly a crocodile! AHHH! It sounds easy - the cars and logs come in horizontal rows, and the direction they move, the amount of logs and cars, and the speed may differ. You should move you frog up, down left and right, preventing the cars, jumping on logs and avoiding nasty creatures and get home - do this several times and you also move to the next level.

Game Play: Just one more simple concept that is amazingly addictive. This game depends on timing; you're 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 a long period, but never really became a specialist - however, it was the first ever game I were able 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 planet earth in 'blocks' by moving down the screen gradually. Because the intrepid savior of the planet 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.

betwing88 : this 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. The overall game involved a fair amount of strategy as well as good hand eye co-ordination.

Nostalgia: I wasted lots 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 hi-tech as it got back in the days of monochrome video gaming!