Snake is a genre of action video games where the player maneuvers the end of a growing line, often themed as a snake. The player must keep the snake from colliding with both other obstacles and itself, which gets harder as the snake lengthens.
Archon: The Light and the Dark is a 1983 video game developed by Free Fall Associates and one of the first five games published by Electronic Arts. It is superficially similar to chess, in that it takes place on a board with alternating black and white squares, but instead of fixed rules when landing on another player's piece, an arcade-style fight takes place to determine the victor, and each piece has different combat abilities. The health of the player's piece is enhanced when landing on a square of one's own color.
Shoot 'em ups are a sub-genre of action games. There is no consensus as to which design elements compose a shoot 'em up; some restrict the definition to games featuring spacecraft and certain types of character movement, while others allow a broader definition including characters on foot and a variety of perspectives.
Shadow of the Beast is a platform game developed by Reflections and published by Psygnosis in 1989. The original version was released for the Amiga, and was later ported to several other systems. The game was known for its graphics, with many colours on screen and up to twelve levels of parallax scrolling backdrops, and for its atmospheric score composed by David Whittaker that used high-quality instrument samples.
Custer's Revenge is an adult action game published by American Multiple Industries for the Atari 2600, first released in November 1982. The game gained notoriety owing to its goal of raping a Native American woman who is tied to a post.
Centipede is a 1981 fixed shooter arcade video game developed and published by Atari, Inc. Designed by Dona Bailey and Ed Logg, it was one of the most commercially successful games from the golden age of arcade video games and one of the first with a significant female player base. The primary objective is to shoot all the segments of a centipede that winds down the playing field. An arcade sequel, Millipede, followed in 1982.
Frogger is a 1981 arcade action game developed by Konami and published by Sega. In North America, it was distributed by Sega/Gremlin. The object of the game is to direct five frogs to their homes by dodging traffic on a busy road, then crossing a river by jumping on floating logs and alligators.
The following article is a broad timeline of arcade video games.
American Multiple Industries, doing business as Mystique, was a company that produced a line of pornographic video games for the Atari 2600 called Mystique Presents Swedish Erotica, which included the games Beat 'Em & Eat 'Em, Bachelor Party and Custer's Revenge. It was one of several video game companies that tried to use sex to sell its games.
Bachelor Party is a pornographic video game for the Atari 2600 by American Multiple Industries in 1982.
Beat 'Em and Eat 'Em is a pornographic video game for the Atari 2600 made by American Multiple Industries in 1982. Players control two nude women; the goal is to catch semen in their mouths, which is falling from a masturbating man on a rooftop, without missing. Its gameplay has been compared to the Atari game Kaboom!. There is also a gender-reversed version of the game titled Philly Flasher that features identical gameplay. Beat 'Em & Eat 'Em has received negative reviews since its release and is an oft-cited example of pornographic Atari 2600 games.
Switchblade II is a 1991 side-scrolling action-platform run and gun video game originally developed and published by Gremlin Graphics in Europe for the Amiga home computers. It is the sequel to the original Switchblade, which was solely created by Simon Phipps at Core Design and released earlier in 1989 across multiple platforms. Despite being primarily developed in the UK, its graphics had a distinctly Japanese style similar to anime or manga.
Space Fury is a multidirectional shooter arcade game developed by Gremlin. Sega/Gremlin released the game in North America in June 1981, and then Sega released it in Japan the following month. It is the first game with color vector graphics, and was Sega's second game to use speech synthesis. Coleco published a ColecoVision version with raster graphics in 1983.
Tac/Scan (夕ック/スキャン) is a space combat shooter released as an arcade video game in 1982. It was developed by Sega Electronics and published by Sega. An Atari 2600 version was released in 1983.
Dragonfire is a 1982 video game written by Bob Smith and published by Imagic. The player grabs treasure guarded by a dragon while avoiding fireballs. It was originally released for the Atari 2600 then ported to the Intellivision, VIC-20, Commodore 64, Apple II, ZX Spectrum, ColecoVision, and TRS-80 Color Computer.
Blockade is an arcade video game developed by Lane Hauck for Gremlin and released in November 1976. It is a two-player game where each player controls the direction of an arrow on the screen which creates a trail behind it. The object is to avoid any walls surrounding the playfield or trails created by each player for a select amount of turns. Blockade spawned many clones which came to be known as snake games.
Head On is an arcade video game developed by Sega/Gremlin and released by Sega in 1979. It was the first maze video game where the goal is to run over dots. Designed by Lane Hauck at Sega/Gremlin in the United States, it was the fourth highest-grossing arcade game of 1979 in both Japan and the US.
Gremlins is a 1984 video game developed and published by Atari, Inc. for the Atari 2600. It is a tie-in to the 1984 film Gremlins. Atari released another, substantially different game based on the film for the Atari 5200.
Skull & Crossbones is a pirate-themed beat 'em up developed by Atari Games and released as an arcade video game in 1989. Developer Tengen ported the game to the Amiga, Amstrad CPC, Atari ST, Commodore 64, MS-DOS, Nintendo Entertainment System, and ZX Spectrum.
Jack the Giantkiller is a 1982 arcade game developed and published by Cinematronics. It is based on the 19th-century English fairy tale "Jack and the Beanstalk". In Japan, the game was released as Treasure Hunt. There were no home console ports.
