10. Pong Origins: Pong was predicated on a casino game called 'Tennis for Two' which 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 could be moved vertically. The screen has two horizontal lines on 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 another way. Depending on where in fact the ball hits the bat, the ball will move around in different directions - should it hit among the top or bottom lines, then it'll bounce off. The theory is simply to help make the other player skip the ball - thus scoring a spot. 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 much more acute angles of 'bounce'. Nostalgia: for me this is the father of video gaming. Without Pong you probably wouldn't have video games - it started the craze that would continue grow and be a multi-billion dollar industry. I am going to 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 had been very novel and introduced a fresh style of game. The Concept: Easy - you intend to walk from one side of the street to the other. Wait a minute - there's lots of traffic; I better dodge the traffic. Phew Managed to get - hang on, who put that river there. Better join betwing88 and logs and move on to another side - hang on that is clearly 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 can vary. You have to move you frog up, down left and right, preventing the cars, jumping on logs and avoiding nasty creatures and obtain home - do this several times and you also move to another level. Game Play: 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 try to avoid that extremely fast car, or the snake that's hunting you down! Nostalgia: I love 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 gaming 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 Earth it's your task to use your solitary laser cannon, by moving horizontally, and zapping those dastardly aliens out of the sky. Luckily, you have four bases to hide behind - these eventually disintegrate, but they provide some protection from the alien's missiles. Game Play: this is usually a very repetitive game, but highly addictive. Each wave starts just a little closer 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 together with 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!
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