Remember the days of the original Super Mario Bros.? The era of arcades and the birth of the home console had quite a few gems that were new and different - and took a fair amount of getting used to. Back then, completing games like Mario Bros. or getting the high score on Tetris was paramount to being a gaming overlord. Nowadays, it's all about your achievements, trophies and how many frags you can get in Halo or Modern Warfare - but with the inception of casual games, players have a chance to revisit these old gems under the redefined banner of casual. These are just a few of the games out there that originally premiered as hardcore back in the day.

Tetris (1986)

Tetris originally debuted in the US in 1986 and the puzzler took America by storm. A copy of the game came with every original Nintendo Game Boy sold and while the concept was simple (fit differently sized blocks in a line to score points), the fan reaction was anything but. Tetris itself has sold over 70 million copies and the L-Block piece has been featured on GameFaq's character battles for many different years. While the game will always live on as one of the Game Boy's most successful pieces of software, Tetris lives on both in newer versions for other Nintendo handhelds as well as on many flash game sites online. The game never ends, so the whole point is to get as high a score as possible before ending your session with defeat.

Retro Fun Fact: The blocks in Tetris can be identified by letters I, J, L, O, S, T and Z due to their resemblance to the alphanumeric characters.

Super Mario Bros. (1985)

Where would we be without Super Mario Bros.? Certainly, the short plumber with a penchant for edible fungus has had a huge influence on the landscape of gaming as we know it, but today the two button control scheme seems almost simplistic to the hardcore gamer. Casual players, however, are able to fully enjoy Mario's hopping and bopping antics as he attempts to save Princess Peach from the clutches of the evil Bowser. Perhaps the most interesting aspect for casual players is the ability of Nintendo to take this classic formula of jumping and grabbing powerups and keeping it fresh for the entire experience. For players who like to see how high a score they can get, there's a convenient counter at the top of the screen counting off your points.

Retro Fun Fact: In 1993, Nintendo released a compilation called Super Mario All-Stars that included all of the Super Mario Bros. games for the NES and Famicom systems.

Breakout (1976)

Not many casual gamers know Breakout by its real name - it's had many different versions over the years, but Atari originally released it in arcades with a heavy influence from Pong. While Pong had the player controlling one paddle trying to score points on another paddle, Breakout took a grid of bricks, a paddle and a ball and allowed the player to disintegrate the bricks by bouncing the ball off of them. Some bricks took more than one bounce to disintegrate, but the goal was always the same - clear the board of bricks and advance. As you continue along, the ball gets faster and faster until it becomes most difficult to control. Like Tetris, this game can be found on many different flash sites under a different name.

Retro Fun Fact: The PlayStation version of Breakout featured a flimsy storyline focusing on a hero named Bouncer who must rescue Daisy from a villain named Batnix.

Dig Dug (1982)

Underground, there are apparently many monsters - such as dragons and rubber balls that wear goggles. As the hero of Dig Dug, you must travel underground and use your bicycle pump to destroy them while also collecting tomatoes. The game itself is pretty simplistic, but allows for a number of challenging scenarios as the lower you destroy enemies in the ground, the more points you get. The game is made more challenging by the ability to dig under rocks and have them fall behind you a short moment later, making monsters that chase you get completely crushed. The game has 256 levels at which point the game puts an enemy right on top of you at the start of the level, killing the player instantly.

Retro Fun Fact: Dig Dug is one of the many video game properties lampooned by the popular television series Robot Chicken, who did a mock-trailer for a movie of the beloved classic.

Joust (1982)

In Joust, players take on the role of a knight with a lance who must defeat all his enemies by essentially bouncing on top of them in midair. The simplicity of the game, much like all the others on this list, allowed for a good amount of variance in enemies and environments. The knight is mounted on an ostrich or a stork and continuously bounces on top of his enemies avoiding the hot lava below. While it isn't the most complicated of games, it certainly keeps hand-eye coordination sharp and - let's face it - everyone loves riding ostriches.

Retro Fun Fact: FoxTrot creator Bill Amend once programmed a version of Joust for the Mac featuring Jason Fox's made up hero Slug Man battling versions of the evil Paige-o-Tron.