Alleyway

For those who have experienced such games as Breakout and Arkanoid you will be very familiar with the concept of Alleyway, you control a small paddle with the aim of hitting a constellation of bricks with a ball. Each brick you hit disappeares until the whole screen is void of bricks, once acheived you move onto the next level which becomes that little bit harder. Let the ball drop below your paddle and you lose a life, once all your lives are gone you start the whole process over again in the hopes of bettering your level. This may not seem like much but the gameplay is highly addictive and proves hard to put down, as you attempt time after time to better your previous efforts.

Alleyway was originally released in 1989 as a Game Boy launch title and while it wasn't wholey original it did give gamers an alternative to the Tetris craze that was sweeping a gaming nation. The game featured Mario who if you look closely enough was the pilot of your small paddle, everytime you lost a life he appeared to jump ship before facing almost certain doom. There were a few other Nintendo subtleties thrown in such as the cameo of certain famous faces each time a bonus stage rolled around.