Atari‘s 1985 arcade hit Paperboy features an isometric road to cycle down and houses to throw newspapers at. It’s an attractive proposition for an arcade game. Especially when the game has real bike handlebars for steering, which the original arcade cabinets did.

The basic premise of the game is to deliver newspapers to subscribers (the ones with “Sun” mailboxes and bright-coloured houses), and to damage the houses of non-subscribers (the houses that are grey with red windows), while at the same time avoiding the many obstacles that are thrown at you (reversing cars, road traffic, kids playing, drunks, street fights, rolling tyres and even werewolves). There’s also a swarm of bees that will chase you if you move forward too slowly. Sort of an encouragement to not dawdle… A big “no, no” is damaging the houses of subscribers, which is very difficult not to do, but if you accidentally damage one they will unsubscribe immediately. A tally at the end of each day shows your remaining subscribers. If everyone unsubscribes, or if you lose all your lives, then it’s ‘game over’.

Paperboy is notable for some very imaginative, crisp 2D graphics (a grabber’s dream), and for its nice, refined gameplay.

And Paperboy definitely plays like more than just a handlebar gimmick, if you’ve got the controls set right. It’s an arcade-gaming classic for all the right reasons: it’s tough, but playable, and decent scores are possible when you concentrate hard.

Paperboy has also been ported to almost every system known to man. See our 10 Best Paperboy Conversions for all of them.

More: Paperboy on Wikipedia