Play Robotron: 2084 for just a few minutes and you’ll immediately become entranced by its eye-catching visuals, excellent use of sound, and fast, responsive controls. Play Robotron for 30 minutes and your arms are starting to ache, the sweat is profusely pouring from your brow and the on-screen enemies are beginning to blend into a dizzying kaleidoscope of colours – but you’re still playing and can’t seem to release your grip on its dual joysticks. Play Robotron for 24 years (although not in one go) and it finally becomes obvious why it constantly appears in our Desert Island Disks section (nine times to date). It’s quite possibly one of the most balanced games ever made, and even today it constantly appears on various compilations and services such as Xbox Live Arcade.

Eugene Jarvis once told me in an interview that the original concept for the game had you trying to steer the game’s many enemies into the numerous electrodes that could be found on each level. Fortunately, Jarvis had a change of heart and decided that killing things with lasers would be a lot more fun. He wasn’t wrong and Robotron went on to enthral gamers everywhere.

Taking part in single-screen arenas, each level is deceptively simple, as it requires you to do little more than blast everything on the screen, while rescuing stranded humans. You start to realise that you’re going to need more than simple reflexes in order to achieve the highest score. Rescuing humans is the key to this, as constantly saving people without losing a life will cause your score to shoot up considerably. Robotron’s many different enemies show surprising levels of intelligence for the time and after a few stages you’ll find yourself in a desperate fight against their overwhelming numbers, proving that Jarvis’ creation is certainly not a game for the faint of heart. Don’t be fooled by its simple looks and gaudy sound effects, Robotron IS quite simply one of the greatest games ever conceived and should be experienced by everyone.