Frogger

Frogger is the arcade game with no shooting at all, and it is the reason the genre survived alongside the shooters. You guide a frog across a five-lane highway and then a river, and the only thing you have is timing.

The design is two halves that test different things. The road is pure pattern recognition: five lanes of cars, trucks and bulldozers moving at different speeds, and the only safe move is the gap between them. The river is the opposite - everything moves at your speed, so you have to land on the logs and turtles that are themselves moving, and some of the turtles dive at regular intervals, which makes standing on them a mistake rather than a safety. Reaching the far bank is not the goal; you have to land in one of five empty lily pads, and a bonus female frog occasionally appears on a log for extra points. It was licensed to Sega for Western release and became a bigger hit than either company expected, spawning a famous Seinfeld episode and a 2011 Google Maps easter egg.

• ▸Two completely different halves - a highway and a river
• ▸Logs and turtles that move at your own speed
• ▸Diving turtles that are traps rather than platforms
• ▸Bonus female frog worth extra points on the river half