Robotron was an arcade game that came out in the early 1980's. I believe it is fairly well known, but I don't think it was very popular. The reason is that it was extremely fast and difficult for a new player. If you didn't know what you were doing, the game would last 2 minutes -- if you were lucky.

The year is 2084, and the world has been taken over by robots. You are the last hope -- you must save the people from the evil robots before they destroy you. Unlike todays 3D games, this takes place all on one screen -- no scrolling. On every level your goal is to destroy all of the robots, and for a bonus you save the humans before the robots destroy them. Even though destroying the robots (and not rescuing the people) will advance the game another level, it turns out "being greedy", as my friends and I call it, is worthwhile in this game. Meaning, you want to rescue as many people as you can. The reason is that the people are worth a large amount of points, and every 25,000 points gets you an extra life.

The reason I hated this game in the 80s was that it was so hard -- what we called a "quarter eater". When you are a kid and you have $1 to spend, you don't want to lose it all in 5 minutes.

Now that you can buy Robotron for most home machines and basically play it for free... It has become one of my favorite games. If you play 5-10 games of Robotron, it's like drinking 5 cups of coffee. It's an amazingly fast paced game. The other interesting part of this game is the controls. The original game actually had 2 joysticks -- one for moving and one for firing. So this game has your minds full attention.

Definitely check it out and give it a chance if you like old games.

More information can be found at this site.

You can play Robotron online here. (It's just like the original except harder since you don't have the two joysticks)