Pre 2k

1981 Nintendo Donkey Kong

In 1981 Nintendo released Donkey Kong. It was released as one of the early Platform games, as it mainly focused on jumping and avoiding obstacles. You play the game as 'jumpman' aka Mario, and the objective is to save the damsel in distress from the giant gorilla named Donkey Kong.
The success of the game lead to many spin off's and variations such as Donkey Kong Country and Donkey Kong Land for the Gameboy. The franchise has gone on to sell over 40 million units.

1980 Pac Man 

Created by Toru Iwatani and developed by Namco in 1980 as an arcade game.
 Pac-Man ended the Pong-like game phenomena such as Space invaders and Asteroids and created a new genre appealing to both male and female. It is widely referred to as one of the most famous arcade games of all time and highest grossing video games of all time having generated more than 2.5 billion quarters by the 90s
Pacman went on to appear in over 30 officially licensed games and has the highest brand awareness of any video game character.

1978 Space Invaders

Space invaders is an arcade game created by Tomohiro Nishikado which was released in 1978, It was manufactured and distributed by Taito in Japan. Space invaders was one of the earliest shooter games which focused on defeating aliens trying to invade. Space invaders was one of the forerunners of modern video games and vastly helped improve and define the video game industry today. Space invaders was released on numerous platforms and had many sequels.