One of our very favourite games of all time is Atari's Missile Command. It was launched in 1980 and required the player to defend his cities at the bottom of the screen from waves of descending bombs that streaked, complete with trail, randomly down the screen. The real beauty of the gameplay was in the fact that you had to fire your missiles - which came from three depots, one on the left of the screen, one on the right and one in the middle - with a decent 'lead'. You had to anticipate where the descending bomb would be in the second or so it would take your missile to reach its target. When a missile reached its target it would then explode and any missile caught in the blast area would be eliminated.

It was fantastic stuff, made even better by a magnificently innovative control method (for 1980) - a track ball. The ball could be spun quickly and with great accuracy to move your crosshair around the screen, and the missiles were fired from each of the depots by pressing one of three buttons. Survive a wave of bombs and you were rewarded with points and more missiles to use on the next stage, and so it went on. Missile Command spawned a thousand clones but the essential gameplay remained the same. Although the game's been produced in 3D since then, the basic play of the original has never been bettered. No wonder Atari were such a gaming force back then.