Games like Pac-Man, Frogger, Centipede, and Dig Dug proved that video games had a broader appeal than just white male nerds.
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The best arcade game ever. Developer Shigeru Yokoyama and his team deserve a lot of credit for iterating smartly on Galaxian and upping the difficulty before release after play testing proved the game was too easy at first.
More maps and the addition of some random movement to the ghosts made this game superior to the original. The cut-scenes were cute and showed it doesn't take a lot of narrative to enhance how people might interact with the video game medium.
It is a little bit surprising that Nintendo won its lawsuit against Universal Studios, who claimed the game was a rip-off of King Kong, because that is where my first thought went when I saw this game. But I suppose King Kong didn't have to deal with that freakin' awesome hammer so he can count himself lucky.
This and Frogger were my first two games as a kid on the Colecovision so I have a soft spot for them. But replaying it now shows how awfully unfair those spiders were. Still, pretty cool how psychedelic it was turning enemies into mushrooms, and the use of the trackball (surprisingly) felt great.
As mentioned above, Frogger was one of the first video games I ever played and it won my heart. The music was so catchy!
I thought BurgerTime was so absurd that there was no way anyone else had played this or even liked it. Turns out it was a legitimate hit for its time. As for the game itself, you make burgers by walking over the food to get it to fall off stanchions and avoid getting attacked by a hot dog and a crazy-ass egg while being bombarded by some crazy annoying noises. So stupid good.
This game looks great for how simple it may appear at first glance. There's a lot of movement to consider here - the staccato nature of moving from each space around the tube-like frame of view, the forceful thrust forward after clearing a section of the level, and the way spikes were able to move across the "lanes" while flipping and creating a sense of unease. This game oozes cool.
Toru Iwatani and his team's game is not that visually appealing and the sound effects are actually kind of jarring. Then consider that there is very little payoff when you succeed the first time - the screen freezes, the sounds go quiet, and the map flashes a few times. Compare that to the fireworks and parade found at the end of just about every level these days! But the game play was easy to pick up and silly enough to make us all smile. Ultimately, those smiles are what gets Pac-Man on this list.
Playing Resogun recently reminded me of the good fun Defender can provide. But then I think back to how this game controlled way back when . . . and I appreciate the advances of the analog stick.
I'll be honest, I was way late to the Dig Dug craze and I still don't really get it. But I sure as hell dig the character art.