I used to be really into this period of gaming at one time, and in fact for a number of years Mattel's Intellivision console was a special interest of mine. While it was before my time, I do remember my dad owning a few Intellivision systems that he had acquired at auctions and garage sales, and we had a whole crapload of games for it, many of which even included the original boxes, manuals, and controller overlays! I also liked Atari 2600 stuff, though I've never owned or played a real VCS, just emulators, remakes, compilations, and those plug 'n play systems. I've also played a fair number of late 70s/early 80s arcade games, again mostly through emulators and remakes and such, but a few have been on real hardware too! I'm also somewhat familiar with early IBM PC games and Apple II stuff, the latter of which I used to collect a bit of in physical form(!), although I've lost all of my old A2 disks and much of my hardware over the years.
Anyway, enough rambling, here's a brief list of my favorite pre-NES (though not necessarily pre-Famicom, as that system launched in 1983 ) video games:
- Joust
- Robotron: 2084
- Tetris
- Warlords (not to be confused with the later TBS/RTS series)
- Tempest
- Galaxian/Galaga
- Pac Man/Ms. Pac Man
- Pong (surprising, but physics and analog controls add a lot to this)
- Star Wars (Atari's arcade wireframe-based rail shooter, quite remarkable for its time)
- Tron
- Discs of Tron
- Astrosmash (NOT to be confused with Asteroids; this difference actually stumped me for several years as a kid )
- Missile Command
- Battlezone
- Space Invaders
- Q*Bert
- Dig Dug
- Defender/Stargate
I'd be tempted to put Breakout/Super Breakout on this list, except that I actually like Arkanoid and its ilk much better, and Arkanoid wasn't out until either 85 or 86. IMO, it really introduced what we call "Breakout-style" gameplay nowadays, with powerups and different block types. It's too bad I don't have much experience with RPG or strategy games of this timeframe, because I'd probably put some of those down if I did.