Super Mario Bros.

Nintendo was solving the problem of teaching without text. The first screen is staged so that the player is bound to learn the essentials: the mushroom comes toward you and leaves almost no chance of passing it by, the question block hangs exactly where you will have to jump, and the pit reads as an obstacle at first glance. There are no instructions, but it is hard to get it wrong.

The controls are subtler than they look. The height of a jump depends on how long the button is held, and the character has acceleration and momentum, so the same obstacle is cleared differently depending on the approach. The screen scrolls only to the right, there is no going back, and that sets the pace: decisions are made on the move. The levels are assembled from repeating elements, and the whole cartridge takes up about forty kilobytes, so variety is achieved by rearranging familiar parts. Hidden pipes let you skip several worlds, and knowing those passages divides players into those who go straight through and those who look for a shortcut.