Tetris (Nintendo 1989)
Tetris is all about score. There's nothing especially complex about its scoring system - clear one, two, three or four lines of blocks with tiered scores awarded for each. And do it while the game gets faster. That's it. No bonus alien flying across the top of the screen, no ticking clock to beat or bonus for successive scoring. Just Tetris.
Someone once said that Tetris is the perfect human game because when you lose, you are faced with nothing but a screen full of your own mistakes. You want to put that right, so you play again. With an infinite game duration (unless you run out of scoreboard room like the guy below on the NES version), only your own errors will make you lose. Sure, it gives you some rockets once you've done ok, but you can do better, can't you?
