There's a lot to be said about keeping it simple, back in the 80s arcade games were designed with this principle in mind.

You could walk up to a cabinet, its artwork and the lit up marquee straight away might suggest some clues of play.

If someone was on the machine in front of you, watching them for a few seconds would probably suffice to understand the rules.

No need for any fancy tutorials or onboarding, it would be a joystick and some buttons, insert your 10p, hit start, you were good to go.

Even if you hadn't watched someone play before, you'd have it sussed pretty quickly once the game started.

Why so simple? There were obviously constraints with hardware at this time but that was only part of it, arcades were intentionally built to have a low barrier to play.

The player had to understand the rules of the game quickly to then take up the challenge, complexity wasn't welcome, your 10ps were precious, you weren't going to queue for a game you didn't understand how to play.

• Space Invaders: shoot the invaders, avoid the shots.
• Pac-Man: eat the dots, avoid the ghosts.
• Donkey Kong: climb the ladders, jump the barrels and save the girl.
• Defender: protect the humans.
• Galaga: shoot the bugs and avoid them!

The biggest driver for playing was to get a good enough score to get on the Leaderboard, this is where real respect was earnt.

Fast forward to the games of today and the worlds they pull you into, graphical immersive masterpieces, bigger and better in every way and a minimum of 40 hours of play is the norm in most modern AAA games.

But with the games advancement comes the overhead of complexity and steep learning curves that require you to invest time and brain power to learn how to play.

It's probably my 50-year-old man vibe now giving me the 'Games were better in my day' treatment, I'm not saying that at all but sometimes I do wish we'd see more of the simple stuff.

That pick up and play, knowing where you stand with the game and utter focus on play, to get a score worthy of the Leaderboard.

Did you know we have secret hidden games to play on Retro Delights and our very own Leaderboards to earn you kudos?