I have seen some questions asking about old Games 100 lists, so I thought I would post this.

In the Nov/Dec 1980 issue of Games Magazine, they published their first "Games 100" list. They said they limited their selections to "proprietary, commercially produced games", specifically explaining why "chess" was not included. However, some other games that we would today feel belong in that category manage to show up.

If there is a comment other than the rules summary, I have included it. The list was presented in alphabetical order, so I am doing the same. I have listed the publisher, price, entry level, playing time and game type (chance, strategy, action) as listed in the magazine. Note that their use of strategy is pretty loose, and really means skill. And the easy/medium/difficult is supposed to be entry difficulty, not difficulty of the game.

I have selected pictures that are as similar to the picture in the magazine as possible.

This list is less than 100 entries long, because electronic games and game systems (like the Atari 2600), as well as puzzles (like Rubik's Cube) are among the 100 games. There was originally no entry for Quintessence, so it appears out of order on the list.

The other entries in the Games 100:
Astro (Kosmos International, $50) - electronic astrologer
Baseball 3 (Extex, $45) - handheld electronic simulation
Bank Shot (Parker, $50) - Electronic billiards
Boffers (New Games Foundation, $14) - foam swords
Brain Baffler (Mattel, $60) - Electronic word game
Capsela 700 Series (Play-Jour,$45) - construction set
Checker Challenger (Fidelity Electronics,$160)
Electronic Boxing (Bambino, $40)
Electronic Space Invader (Extex,$45)
Fore Par Table Golf (World Wide Games, $99) - carroms-like golf game
Football II (Mattel, $30)
Frisbee and Master Frisbee (Wham-O,$4&$6)
Gunfighter (Bandai, $35) - electronic gunfight
Head to Head Hockey (Coleco, $40) - Electronic Hockey
Microvision (Milton Bradley, $50) - handheld cartridge based electronic game
Odyssey 2 (Magnavox, $180) - video game system (TV)
Omar II (Tryom, Inc, $80) computer backgammon opponent
Rubik's Cube (Ideal, $10)
Sensory Chess Challenger (Fidelity Electronics, $150)
Skyro (Parker, $5) - flying ring
Split Second (Parker, $50) - handheld computer game (8 games)
Tomytronic Electronic Tennis (Tomy, $35)
Track Ball (Wham-O,$10) - "laccrosse-like racquets"
Video Computer System (Atari, $180) - the Atari 2600 VCS
Weird Wands (Weird Products, $5) - Dexterity game
Wildfire (Parker, $50) - handheld pinball
Wizard (Waddington's House of Games, $50) - four electronic games