#12: Defender (1980, Williams Electronics)

Games began to become more complicated in the 1980s, as we saw with Battle Zone and its 3D environment. But Williams knew they could step it up even further. Gamers were ready for more challenge. They were ready for more buttons. They were ready to be able to fire more than one shot at a time...thank God for that.

And so we got Defender, another one of those games most people have played and loved. Defender holds the distinction of being both one of the first really complex games and for being hard as hell. For once, you're not just blasting enemies - you've got a job to do. Defending the people of your planet successfully earns you more rewards than just going on a murderous rampage. What's more, if you fail to keep the planet safe the game punishes you by making it more difficult to reach high scores and by bombarding you with difficult enemies.

Defender is one of those games that still stands up today. The controls are a little archaic and take some getting used to - the fact that you have to push a button to turn around is really irritating as a modern gamer, for instance - but the game itself is still plenty of fun. Defender spawned a variety of sequels, most notably Stargate (or Defender II) and even a PS2 remake.

The version of Defender I played was emulated in MAME.

#11: Battle Zone (1980, Atari)

Welcome to the 1980s! This is probably the most influential era in video game history. In the 1990s video games became more like cartoons and books; in the 2000s and 2010s they became more like movies but in the 1980s games were kind of doing their own thing. For instance, if you came across Battle Zone back when it was new you'd probably be forgiven if your jaw hit the floor.

Battle Zone is an FPS. One of the first, in fact. You control a tank and use it to battle other tanks in a first-person three-dimensional environment full of debris that you can use as cover. While I might not have felt all that inspired by some of the classic games from the 1970s, I really understood why Battle Zone is on the list once I started playing it. This is a game that was ahead of its time - back when games were largely about the wonder of controlling a little man on a screen, this game gave you an entire virtual world to roam around in.

Incidentally, Battle Zone had a pretty sweet remake for the PC in 1998 that was more of an RTS/FPS hybrid. It was very cool and certainly worth a look if you're into retro PC gaming.

The version of Battle Zone I played was Flash-based and is available for free on Atari's website. I was unable to get this game to work properly in MAME, but insofar as I can tell the two versions are identical in gameplay.

#9: Galaxian (1979, Namco)

So really, who can remember the difference between Galaxian and Galaga without stopping to think about it? Not me. Galaxian, the game we're looking at today, is basically a clone of Space Invaders with nicer graphics and more impressive enemy patterns. More impressive because the enemies actually do something other than move down at you and bob from side to side, that is.

Frankly, in today's world, there's very little reason to play Galaxian instead of the far superior Galaga. But in the magical self-contained world of One Thousand Plus One we're still stuck in 1979. Jimmy Carter is President, Three Mile Island was just decimated by a nuclear meltdown and kids everywhere have begun the long road to obesity as McDonald's introduces the Happy Meal. We don't have Galaga yet. What we have is Space Invaders, essentially a monochrome game that's been out long enough that people are used to it.

So when Galaxian comes out with its pretty colors and enemies that fly at you in unpredictable patterns we're impressed. What's more, it's got animations! Beautiful, beautiful animations. And background music! We haven't seen something like this before. It's new. It's unique. It's now. Keep that in mind as we battle the alien menace.

The version of Galaxian I played was emulated in MAME. If for whatever reason you want to play it yourself, it's readily available with a quick google search.

#8: Asteroids (1979, Atari)

In case you hadn't noticed by now, Atari kind of had a chokehold on the games industry toward the end of the '70s and in the early '80s. It's kind of comparable to what we'll see with Nintendo when we get to the late '80s - they basically ran the show. It wasn't just business clout that did it, though. Great games like Asteroids helped keep Atari on top.

Asteroids follows the standard early games "easy to learn, hard to master" formula. You're a triangle. There's rocks. You need to clear the screen of rocks armed only with a peashooter. If you blast a rock it splits into several smaller rocks, which split again if you blast them and so on until they're gone. It's a metaphor for life, really. See, if you're the triangle, then the rocks are problems! And if you try to solve the problems with violence, they just become more problems! Until, uh, you use violence to make them into tiny problems which you can easily crush and...okay, the metaphor kind of falls apart after awhile.

As usual with early games there have been plenty of remakes of and sequels to Asteroids over the years. One of the most beloved is Blasteroids, also by Atari, which featured power-ups and a morphing ship. Asteroids also led to other classic games like Sinistar.

The version of Asteroids I played was the revision 4 chipset and was emulated in MAME.

#6: Space Invaders (1978, Taito)

My day job when I'm not blogging about video games is at a multinational economic organization headquartered in Washington, DC. That means I have to take the DC subway to and from work. I'm very, very familiar with space invaders. Trust me.

Space Invaders was one of the first games released by Taito Corporation, the company we now know for a wide variety of classic shooters like the Darius series along with the Arkanoid and Cooking Mama games. It's inspired a variety of sequels and remakes, most recently the excellent Space Invaders: Infinity Gene for PlayStation Network, XBLA and IOS. It's representative of video games as a whole - pretty much everyone knows it and has played it regardless of if they do a lot of gaming or not.

What is there to add to this game, really? Perhaps even moreso than Pong, Space Invaders is the video game. Volumes have been wrote about it and what it did for gaming. We wouldn't have games as they are today without it. But chances are you know that. All I can do at this point is play it!

#5: Combat (1977, Atari)

Today we encounter the first game on The List that I actually ran into problems playing properly: Combat, a multiplayer-only shooter for the Atari 2600 VCS. Here's the problem: the version of Combat I played was emulated in Stella. Stella doesn't have netplay. I also think it might be a bit rude to call someone up and go "Hey, come over immediately! It's time to get crunk and play some ATARI! It's for my fantastic new blog!"

So what we end up finding out about Combat comes from the paltry singleplayer experience. I say paltry because it's nonexistent. Combat lacks any sort of AI, so it's two players or bust and in this case we had to go with bust. This isn't a very complex game, though. Basically you're a tank or a plane and you drive around a little map blasting away at another tank or plane. Whoever manages to hit the other guy wins.

#4: Boot Hill (1977, Midway)

So we talked about Pong not long ago. One of the things that came up during our discussion of that masterpiece was how the original arcade version lacked an AI. You played with someone else or, well, you won. It wouldn't be very fulfilling, but you'd win. Boot Hill, a Midway changed all that in 1977. Now if you didn't have any competition you could play against the computer. Who would have thought?

Essentially this is Pong with cowboys. You've got a pistol, a fancy cowboy hat and a mission: fill the other guy full of lead. One shot is all it takes, but you only get six bullets per round. If you exhaust your supply before your opponent does, you don't have any choice but to dodge and pray. If you both run out of bullets the round is a draw and play restarts. Bullets will ricochet off the top and bottom of the screen and there's also obstacles strewn about that can be used for cover. Gears of War it ain't, but I wasn't expecting even this level of depth from a game made in 1977.

The version of Boot Hill I played for this entry was emulated in MAME. In the screenshots you'll notice that there's no background - the original game used mirrors to project the action onto a drawn overlay of a frontier town. Sadly we'll have to miss out on this. Hopefully nobody's too heartbroken!