Yet another legendary, genre-defining game – in an era replete with genre-defining classics - in which a single player takes control of a ship trapped in the middle of an asteroid field. A number of large, slow-moving asteroids drift randomly around the play area and must be shot by the player. When shot, the asteroids will break into a number of smaller pieces, which must also be shot until, eventually, all of the asteroids and fragments will be destroyed and the next wave begins. Asteroids introduced real-world physics to video games for the first time, with speed and inertia all adding to the player’s problems. As well as the inertia of the player’s ship – forcing the player to allow for the ship slowing down and speeding up whenever the thrust button was utilized – shot asteroids would often send fragments flying in seemingly random directions, and at varying and unpredictable speeds. As well as the ever-present asteroids, alien saucers also make a regular appearance. These move diagonally around the screen, firing at the player’s ship and must be quickly destroyed.

Centipede is a vertically oriented shoot ‘em up arcade game produced by Atari, Inc. in 1981. The game was designed by Ed Logg along with Dona Bailey, one of the few female game programmers in the industry at this time. It was also one of the first arcade coin-operated games to have a significant female player base, after Pac-Man. The player defends against centipedes, spiders, scorpions and fleas, completing a round after eliminating the centipede that winds down the playing field. The player is represented by a small, “somewhat humanoid head” at the bottom of the screen. The player moves the character about the bottom area of the screen with a trackball and fires laser shots at a centipede advancing from the top of the screen down through a field of mushrooms. Shooting any section of the centipede creates a mushroom; shooting one of the middle segments splits the centipede into two pieces at that point. Each piece then continues independently on its way down the board, with the first section of the rear piece becoming a new head. If the head is destroyed, the section behind it becomes the next head. The centipede starts at the top of the screen, traveling either left or right. When it hits a mushroom or the edge of the screen, it drops one level and switches direction. Thus, more mushrooms on the screen cause the centipede to descend more rapidly. The player can destroy mushrooms by shooting them, but each takes four hits to destroy. If the centipede reaches the bottom of the screen, it moves back and forth within the player area and one-segment “head” centipedes are periodically added. This continues until the player has eliminated both the original centipede and all heads. When all the centipede’s segments are destroyed, a new centipede forms at the top of the screen. Every time a centipede is eliminated, however, the next one is one segment shorter and is accompanied by one additional, fast-moving “head” centipede. A player loses a life when hit by a centipede or another enemy, such as a spider or a flea. The flea leaves mushrooms behind when fewer than five are in the player area, though the number required increases with level of difficulty. Spiders move across the player area in a zig-zag fashion and occasionally eat some of the mushrooms. Scorpions poison every mushroom they touch, but these never appear in the player’s movement region. A centipede touching a poisoned mushroom hurtles straight toward the player’s area. Upon reaching the player’s area, the centipede returns to normal behavior.