Vanguard

Atari 2600
Released 1982

Vanguard was one of my favorites as a kid, and frankly, it's still kind of great. It's got a lot of the basic framework for modern day classics like R-type or Gradius. You play as a single ship flying down a corridor. Enemy ships are coming towards you, and you have to destroy them. The levels have a set length, and a few of them contain an invincibility power up.

There's a decent variety of enemies, such as the snake-like enemies that dock with you ship and give you bonus scores (up to 3 times in the level), and stationary guns trying to shoot your ship down. You also need to contend with a fuel gauge that can be slowly refilled with each enemy you destroy.

It's a really simple game, and I managed to get through about 6 stages before I ran out of ships. One thing I still think is kind of neat is that the game has a bit of a theme song that plays when you pick up the invincibility power-up. It's kind of catchy, in a 1982-geek sort of way.
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