Armor Attack
1980 - Cinematronics - Shooting - Vector
I'm unsure, but I remember this one as being the first vectorial game mentioned in Milestones... Game concept is "shoot all that's moving around". You are aboard of a jeep (well, I guess it's a jeep), moving around in a cityscape scenario. Tank and helicopters are your enemies. Game action is quick and really funny, even though enemy weapons are sometimes unvisible and you'll die without even noticing it. I suggest to emulate the game with artworks for this game or you won't see the path to move your car!

Battle Zone
1980 - Atari - Shooting - Vector
This is probably one of the best examples of vectorial graphics games. Surely it was the first to apply the 3D landscape concept in a game. The accuracy and the realty effect were also noticed by the US Department of Defence (!!!). You are on your tank and the mission is (as always) destroy everything. The radar concept and the chance to move everywhere in the field, make this a real milestone game - just think about all the actual landscapes games! Well Battle Zone has more than twenty years and is still playable as it was in the past. A real must for every retro-arcader.

Crazy Climber
1980 - Nichibutsu - Misc. - Raster
Probably one of the most original concepts for arcade. You are a sort of "spiderman" and your mission is to climb buildings. Obviously there are many obstacles on the way to the top. However the curious feature is not the game concept but the ugly control panel composed by two 8-way joysticks which you have to operate simultaneously to move your hero. This means that emulation is quite hard - but I think it's worth a try.

Centipede
1980 - Atari - Shooting - Raster
Another big classic from Atari. This game was essentially an extension to the Space Invader concept. You control a little spaceship at the bottom of the screen and your mission is to destroy centipedes coming down from the top. The little modification to the Space Invader concept is that centipedes split each time you hit them. There are also many mushrooms on screen, making action more complex. Why it being a milestone? Well you see, I can still remember the changing of mushrooms color between a level and the other, as if it was yesterday. A big classic: no one should ever miss it.

Defender
1980 - Williams - Shooting - Raster
I guess Defender could be annoverated as one of the most difficult horizontal shooter arcade. There were five action buttons and the joystick: this was unusual and actually impressive for an arcade built in the 1980. Your mission is to defend people from aliens attack, and you must do it in the wide game field (you can view map in the radar at the top of the screen). Multi-direction scrolling (different from other shooters like Vanguard), incredible multi-coloured graphics, speed and good sounds, an unbelievable playbility make Defender a real milestone. You cannot tell about being a retro-arcade player if you didn't play Defender once.

Missile Command
1980 - Atari - Shooting - Raster
Another classical survived until our days. Is not diffiuclt to find little releases of this game for various OS or devices. You are the last defender of six cities, the menace is a nuclear missile war. You have three bases armed with anti-nuclear weapons and your mission is to intercept bombs before they hit cities. You have a limited number of missiles and enemy weapons sometimes split in several missiles so it could be difficult to shoot down them. This game was included in a few arcade classic collections, and it can be considered a good and funny game. However, repeated action makes it a little boring after some time...

Moon Cresta
1980 - Nichibutsu - Shooting - Raster
Moon Cresta is probably the most used arcade hardware in the history so far: it's not rare finding other games based on this hardware. Core of the game board was the glorious Z80 processor. This game represented a real innovation in the shoot'em up genre. I guess it was the first to introduce the progressive armament. You start the game with a big spacecraft divided into three parts (called I, II and III), one only of which can be used at a time. During the game you have the chance to rebuild the whole starship. After that you can count on a greater fire power. But it's difficult when you start to loose pieces of the starship... and you will surely start to loose them!

Pac-Man
1980 - Namco (then Midway) - Maze - Raster
Here's the most famous arcade in history. I guess this title is really known by everybody - mothers included (well, my mother knows it so I think this name is really popular...). There are a lot of hoaxes around the concept of this game. It took around one year and half to produce the game (a long time if you consider that gameplay never varies between levels...). You are... well... you are Pac-Man, and you mission is to clear mazes ful with little whiteish pills. You are chased by ghosts, which you can hunt for a few seconds by eating a power-pill. Nothing more.
Each level has got a bonus that could be a fruit or another object and there are 256 levels total, after which... the game crashes (ehm... limited hardware you know...). Puck-man, whose name was changed to Pac-Man to avoid easy allusions to offensive contents, is the first arcade character and was exported outside of the videogaming world to become object for gadget. This game is reported to be the most sold too. I have no other words to describe it: I guess this is the essence of arcades, a game like Pac-Man must be played at least once in the life of every arcader.

Rally-X
1980 - Namco/Midway - Maze - Raster
Nice and little maze game. You drive a car and the goal is to collect all the yellow flags in the maze. You are chased by other cars that you can obstacle by releasing smoke clouds behing your way. This was one of the first concepts ported to other systems (I remember Radar Rat-Race on VIC-20, for example), with other names. There are no other aims except to pick up the flags in a maze. At every three levels the logic changes a little but the goal remains the same. It's worth a try anyway.

Red Baron
1980 - Atari - Shooting - Vector
This was the first flight simulator in the arcade history. Really fun but also really hard to control. I guess the original arcade was provided with a better control stick for operating the biplane. As the name suggests, you play the role of the legendary Red Baron in the First World War. Your mission is to destroy as many enemies as you can. Game is quick and it's hard to control the airplane, because there are no indicators - neither height nor position. However, if you'll be able to practice, Red Baron is a good flight simulation, especially if you consider the year of the release!

Soccer
1980 - Atari - Sport - Raster
Not that exiciting... but probably the first soccer with accurate graphics. The original arcade featured trackball to control action, so the emulated version is a little harder to control. You play a 4 vs. 4 soccer match in a little playground, and the control switches between football players. It is possible to play up to four players. Recommended to soccer lovers only...

Space Chaser
1980 - Taito - Maze - Raster
Another concept around the maze genre. You must collect all the dots in the field without colliding against a wandering missile. You can speed up your ship until you have fuel, and switch between courses where holes are. This game was also developed in many variations, sign it was a good concept.

Space Panic
1980 - Universal - Platform - Raster
This is reported as the first platform game ever, a genre that has collected glory and success in the years to come. Gameplay is simple: you move in a screen full of platforms, each of which is connected to the others by ladders. Your mission is to kill all aliens in the stage. In order to do this you have to dig holes in the platforms to capture aliens. This concept, as you can notice, will then be reprised by another big arcade: Lode Runner.
I found this game very hard (uhm... balancing difficulty level was probably just an optional in 1980... or I just lost my skills?), but enjoyable.

Star Castle
1980 - Cinematronics - Shooting - Vector
Another genre was born. According to MAME.DK and KLOV, this could be one of the first arcades to use Artificial Intelligence. You mission is to destroy the Star Castle, that's protected by three rotating rings. To destroy it, you must open a passage to the target. Easy? Maybe... The Star Castle auto-defends and reproduces the rings when needed. You must be skilled and quick if you want to win. Another curiosity from KLOV: the points counter doesn't reset at 1.000.000, as many other arcades do, but if you want to see that, you must play four hours in a row...