Another simple Atari 2600 game with compelling gameplay: Kaboom! is a 1981 Activision game where you must catch falling bombs (dropped by what looks like a burglar, but we’ll call him The Mad Bomber) onto a set of bats, without allowing any bombs to hit the ground below you.

The bats (you begin with three, stacked on top of each other) are controlled using a classic Atari paddle controller, which allows you to rotate a dial for speedier sideways movement. This allows you to zip from side to side doing crazy movements to catch bombs that you wouldn’t have thought possible. And that is this game’s enduring stand-out feature: the speed at which you can move the bat with the paddle.

If you miss a bomb and it explodes you’ll lose a bat. Once you’ve lost all three of your bats it’s game over.

As the levels increase so does the drop rate of the bombs and the erratic side-to-side movement of The Mad Bomber, which makes clearing levels progressively harder.

Kaboom! is a classic Atari 2600 game, and – like most Atari 2600 games – it only has limited longevity because there’s really not a great deal to it.

More: Kaboom! on Wikipedia