Score! Beating The Top 16 Video Games

How do you know that you are getting old?

When you still have a copy of the book Score! Beating the Top 16 Video Games, and the top 16 video games are Pac-Man, Ms. Pac-Man, Defender, Tempest, Centipede, Galaga, Stargate, Qix, Frogger, Make Trax, Galaxian, Asteroids, Donkey Kong, Scramble, Star Castle, and Space Invaders.

This book, written by Ken Uston ("author of Mastering Pac-Man^TM"), was published in 1982 and cost $2.50. In this case "video games" refers to arcade games. Here is a screenshot of one of the video games in the book, Centipede:

Compare the above screenshot with modern video games like Call of Duty (which is even becoming outdated).

I wanted to show the inside of the book, but didn't want to crease the spine, so the following image is blurry near the spine of the book:

The game was very simple:

The board consists of 30 rows and 30 columns and displays a variety of insects and one vegetable...
Destroying a mushroom (requires 4 hits): 1 point
Destroying a centipede body segment: 10 points
etc.

Here is a photo of one of the arcade games in the book, Space Invaders:

There is still an arcade at the local mall in my hometown, but it's much smaller than it was in 1982. I may stop in next time I'm there and write an update.