Gyromite

Gyromite is one of only two games made for R.O.B., the plastic robot Nintendo sold with the NES in 1985 - and the reason R.O.B. exists is worth knowing. After the 1983 crash, American retailers would not stock another games console, so Nintendo dressed the NES as a toy instead: a robot that would look at the television and press buttons.

That is exactly what it does here. R.O.B. picks up a spinning gyroscope and drops it onto one of two trays, which pushes down the red or blue pillar inside the level. Professor Hector has to collect the dynamite scattered around each stage while the pillars open and close the route, and a Smick enemy patrols the platforms. The trick is that the game plays perfectly well without the robot at all - a second player can hold controller 2 and raise the pillars on request, which is the fastest way to play it and the way most people experienced it after the robot was put back in its box.

• ▸One of only two R.O.B. games, and the robot's reason for existing
• ▸Two pillars raised by real gyroscopes on the robot's trays
• ▸Full second-player mode that replaces R.O.B. entirely
• ▸Sixty-plus single-screen stages with rising enemy pressure