Space Invaders
This arcade game truly kicked off the video game craze in the late 1970s and on into the early 1980s. WithoutSpace Invaders, we might not have many of the great games we have today, more than 30 years later.
Pac-Man
Arcades were never the same once Pac-Man hit the scene. Players used to line up by the dozens with their quarters ready to slug them into a Pac-Man game. Good players had memorized a safe path to use in the maze, but eventually the game was too much even for that.Ms.Pac-ManJust when video game fans thought Pac-Man was the ultimate arcade game, Ms. Pac-Man came out and improved upon the original with more mazes, more colors and more characters.Donkey Kong
The classic climbing game. Tons of other video games have been influenced by Donkey Kong over the years, and it was the first game to include Mario of Nintendo fame.
Frogger
Who could ever forget Frogger? It’s another classic game from the golden era of video games, and rightly so. For the time, Frogger had unusual game play as players controlled a frog trying to make its way across a busy road and a dangerous river.Zaxxon
The graphics were what originally drew many arcade-goers to Zaxxon. And why not? With its 3D-like graphics (at least for the time), Zaxxon was definitely different from all the other space shooters in the early 1980s.Dig Dug
Arcade games weren’t becoming stale when Dig Dug came along, but this game definitely brought a new type of play what with the main character digging underground and using a bicycle pump to take out the enemies.
Asteroids
Space. The final frontier. Or maybe your final resting place if you can’t avoid all those asteroids flying about your spaceship. Asteroids is another classic game. Here, the player had to blast away at asteroids or be smashed to bits.
Centipede
Centipede could seem like just another shooting game to some players, but it had different graphics from most shooters and was special enough to attract many fans.
Missile Command
Here the player has to blow up missiles in the sky before they blow up the player’s home cities. Sounds easy, right? It’s not. Try it some time.
More video game links20 Classic Atari 2600 GamesSea Wolf a legend among early arcade gamesClassic Video Gamers, a blog for old school gamers
Punch drunk
Before there was Pac-Man, before there was even Space Invaders, there was Sea Wolf.. Introduced in 1976 by the Midway company, Sea Wolf was the first arcade video game many of that generation got to play.