Year: 1980 Platform: Arcade Probably the singularly most famous game to emerge from the '80s is Pac-Man, an arcade game developed by Namco. Incredibly popular from the very beginning, Pac-Man is still widely played today on just about every device possible. Pac-Man was the game that finally pushed the industry away from just space shooters and sports games, essentially inventing a whole new genre in the process. The gameplay was simple enough for anyone to pick up within seconds, and the premise appealed to a far broader audience than anything released up to that point. In fact, it was so popular that Namco announced it had generated over $2.5 billion by the '90s, through quarters alone.
