--- title: Top 10 Atari Arcade Games description: Breaking news and analysis from time.com. Politics, world news, photos, video, tech reviews, health, science, and entertainment news. canonical: https://time.com/archive/7124096/top-10-atari-arcade-games/ author: TIME Staff article:opinion: false article:content_tier: free article:published_time: 2012-02-02T15:24:23.000Z article:modified_time: 2026-02-25T05:07:44.768Z article:section: Entertainment og:title: Top 10 Atari Arcade Games og:description: In this week's TIME Magazine, we write about a group of 10 original Atari programmers who are banding together to form a new casual gaming company. Here's a look at some of the old company's best coin-op titles. og:url: https://time.com/archive/7124096/top-10-atari-arcade-games/ og:site_name: TIME og:image: https://static.time.com/v3/assets/bltea6093859af6183b/bltde093bcdab65f2d0/6988d9b9bc6cfc69913e2a3c/time-logo.jpg?branch=production og:image:width: 1200 og:image:height: 675 og:image:alt: TIME og:type: article twitter:card: summary_large_image twitter:title: Top 10 Atari Arcade Games twitter:description: In this week's TIME Magazine, we write about a group of 10 original Atari programmers who are banding together to form a new casual gaming company. Here's a look at some of the old company's best coin-op titles. twitter:image: https://static.time.com/v3/assets/bltea6093859af6183b/bltde093bcdab65f2d0/6988d9b9bc6cfc69913e2a3c/time-logo.jpg?branch=production --- * [Entertainment](/section/entertainment/) # Top 10 Atari Arcade Games > Sponsored content. Supplied in partnership with Ally. 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Terms and conditions apply. * Savings buckets are a feature of Ally Bank's Savings Account. * No ATM fees from Ally Bank at Allpoint and Moneypass ATMs plus we reimburse for fees charged by other ATM owners nationwide up to $10 per statement cycle. * Early direct deposit offers eligible direct deposits up to two days sooner. * Spending buckets are a feature of Ally Bank's Spending Account. by [TIME Staff](https://time.com/author/time-staff/) Feb 2, 2012 3:24 PM UTC by [TIME Staff](https://time.com/author/time-staff/) Feb 2, 2012 3:24 PM UTC ## Pong 
Goal of Game: Defeat your opponent in a table tennis-type match. Hit your ball past their paddle and hear that satisfying electronic beep of victory.



History: The first truly successful video game, and the one that set the industry on the long road to success, Pong launched Atari. It remains an incredibly simple game in concept, yet more difficult to master than it might first appear.



Sequels: Pong Doubles, Pong in a Barrel, Super Pong, Quadrapong timeadmin ## Tank 
Goal of Game: Move your tank around a maze and either shoot your enemy, or have them drive over one of the mines.



History: Because of some exclusivity agreement, Atari was forced to form another company, Kee Games, which distributed Tank. Following the game's massive success, the two companies were allowed to form into one — Tank might have helped Atari avoid bankruptcy. It was one of the first games to use ROM, which allowed it to have two separate looking tanks.



Sequels: Tank 2, Tank III, Ultra Tank timeadmin ## Breakout 
Goal of Game: Bounce a ball off your paddle and the walls in order to bust through a wall made of colored bricks.



History: As the story goes, both Steve Jobs and Steve Wozniak (young as can be) worked on this game — a one-person version of Pong, or a video game version of racquetball — and Jobs somehow managed to sucker Wozniak out of a significant bonus. Wozniak, though, credits his work on the game with helping him develop the Apple II, saying, "After designing hardware arcade games, I knew that being able to program them in BASIC was going to change the world. All of that stuff is the essence of the Apple II." As far as the game itself, it was a smash hit, and anyone who has played it has that tinny sound the ball makes when it hits the wall or paddle etched into their brain. timeadmin ## Asteroids 
Goal of Game: Using your tiny, triangle-shaped spaceship, shoot asteroids large and small and the occasional flying saucer. Don't get hit by any debris or saucer lasers.



History: A massive game, simply put. It was Atari's most successful coin-op title of all time.



Sequels: Asteroids Deluxe timeadmin ## Lunar Lander 
Goal of Game: Set your lunar lander down on the craggy surface of the moon without crashing by going too fast or by approaching at a weird angle. Use your thrusters wisely.



History: Atari's first vector graphics game, Lunar Lander was extremely complicated for the time. Each attempt to land forced a player to take into account how much time was left, how much fuel was left, and how fast one was going both horizontally and vertically. timeadmin ## Battlezone 
Goal of Game: You are a tank on a plain surrounded by mountains and volcanoes. You have to shoot other tanks (and flying saucers—is this Earth?) to survive. Drive around and blow stuff up.



History: According to Atari, "the U.S. Army ordered modified versions of the games for training purposes." Part of the reason might be because it was one of the earliest popular "first-person shooters." You are experiencing everything from the perspective of the tank, a gimmick that was helped by the fact that arcade cabinets included a periscope-type viewfinder by which to see the game's wireframe, pseudo 3-D graphics through. timeadmin ## Centipede 
Goal of Game: Stay alive at the bottom of the screen while shooting a centipede that is descending from the top. Spiders, fleas and scorpions also appear to make life difficult.



History: An extremely fast-moving game (and loud—those laser shots don't mess around), it's memorable for the trackball control, which allowed for more precise movement as well as the ability to spin the entire ball in anger when you died.



Sequels: 1982's Millipede timeadmin ## Missile Command 
Goal of Game: Protect your six cities by destroying the rain of missiles falling down from the sky with your own laser defenses.



History: Though the threat was extraterrestrial, it's impossible to ignore the game's Cold War overtones. More than a few players must have believed they were protecting America from Russian nukes. timeadmin ## Tempest 
Goal of Game: You control a crab-like spaceship that travels on the rim of variously laid out fields to destroy enemies coming from the center of a tunnel.



History: It was the first Atari game to allow players to choose what level they preferred to begin on. timeadmin ## Major Havoc 
Goal of Game: Get past an alien space station's defenses, get inside the station, and blow it up.



History: The game memorably combines a space shoot-em-up simulator with a maze component—essentially providing two games in one. timeadmin ```json [{"@context":"https://schema.org","@type":"NewsArticle","@id":"https://time.com/archive/7124096/top-10-atari-arcade-games/","mainEntityOfPage":{"@type":"WebPage","@id":"https://time.com/archive/7124096/top-10-atari-arcade-games/"},"headline":"Top 10 Atari Arcade Games","datePublished":"2012-02-02T15:24:23.000Z","dateModified":"2026-02-25T05:07:44.768Z","description":"","url":"https://time.com/archive/7124096/top-10-atari-arcade-games/","keywords":["asteroids"],"thumbnailUrl":"","author":[{"@type":"Person","name":"TIME Staff","url":"https://time.com/author/time-staff/"}],"articleSection":"Entertainment","image":[],"publisher":{"@type":"Organization","name":"Time","url":"https://time.com/","logo":{"@type":"ImageObject","url":"https://time.com/images/logo.png","width":528,"height":156},"foundingDate":"March 3, 1923","sameAs":["https://www.facebook.com/time","https://www.instagram.com/time/?hl=en","https://twitter.com/time","https://www.pinterest.com/timemagazine"]}},{"@context":"https://schema.org","@type":"BreadcrumbList","itemListElement":[{"@type":"ListItem","position":1,"item":{"@id":"/section/entertainment/","name":"Entertainment"}},{"@type":"ListItem","position":2,"item":{"@id":"https://time.com/archive/7124096/top-10-atari-arcade-games/","name":"Top 10 Atari Arcade Games"}}]}] ```