Donkey Kong
A quest to explore the history of video games would not be complete with playing Donkey Kong. In the 1980s, Nintendo began trying to expland into the North American market with Radar Scope - a space shooter that had been selling well in Japan. However, they did not sell in America and Nintendo was left was a boatload of unused, expensive, arcade cabinets. They decide to convert them into something else, and that something else was Donkey Kong, designed by a young Shigeru Miyamoto. The cabinets were converted, the game sold like wildfire, and the rest is history. You'd be hard pressed to find a man, woman, or child in North America who didn't know Mario's face.
The game itself is charming, and carries a lot of nostalgia value for any Nintendo fan, even if they haven't played it before. I was familiar with the levels simply because it's hard to be a gamer without running into remakes and satires and all manner of art based off them. It's a simple concept - Donkey Kong has stolen Lady (a.k.a. Pauline) and Mario must climb a treacherous tower to get her back. The controls take a moment to get used to, lacking the fluid feel of modern games, and the sound is very primitive, but that is all part of the experience.
Giving a rating or even general thoughts to this game feels like a futile exercise. History has judged Donkey Kong a success, and I'm not one to argue with history.