Frogger

Frogger originated as an arcade hit in 1981, licensed for Western markets by Sega, and arrived on the Atari 2600 just a year later courtesy of Parker Brothers – a company that had until then been known more for board games and card games than video games. Nevertheless, it managed to create one of the best-selling titles on the entire console, because the simple concept worked just as well at home as in a pub arcade, and the game quickly became one of the reasons people bought a home console instead of visiting an arcade.

The player's task is to safely guide a frog across a busy road full of cars and trucks, and then across a river, where the only way to survive is to hop across the backs of logs and turtles – with the risk that a turtle occasionally dives underwater along with the unfortunate amphibian. The goal is to get the frog into one of the free dens at the top of the screen, while the game speeds up the traffic and river current with each successive wave and adds complications like crocodiles disguised as logs or snakes lurking on the water's surface. A time limit also forces the player to move quickly, so cautious waiting isn't always an option, and the player must learn to read the movement patterns of vehicles and logs by heart. The successive waves also change the speed and density of traffic enough that even an experienced player must stay constantly focused.

On the Atari 2600, the studio had to simplify the graphics compared to the arcade original due to hardware limitations, but the key mechanics – timing jumps and reading movement patterns – remained unchanged. That's exactly why the game became one of the reasons people bought the console in the first place, and it remains to this day one of the best-known and most-cited titles of the golden age of video games, one that countless later games with the same principle still reference.

Why play it: The iconic road and river crossing that made the genre of hopping games famous on home consoles.