Asteroids

Asteroids was the first Atari 2600 game to surpass one million copies sold — an unthinkable milestone in 1981. The arcade conversion sacrificed the original's vector graphics but kept the tension intact: your ship was a vulnerable dot in a field of cosmic boulders fragmenting into ever smaller, faster pieces. The 'shield trick' letting you stay still and shoot was discovered by players and became legend. Asteroids proved an arcade game could work on home hardware.