If you grew up in the seventies or eighties, your generation was the first to grow up in a world where video games were a common pastime enjoyed by children. In many cases, those children are now adults whose passion for video games has not died. Many households have several video game systems, and it’s not uncommon for a fan of gaming to spend hours at a stretch on a single game.

The games themselves have certainly changed since the days of 4-bit home game systems like the Atari 2600 and 8-bit machines like Nintendo’s classic NES. The first video games were quite crude by today’s standards. Graphics depicted little more than stick figures comprised of large pixels. The very first video game, pong, involved a rectangle you slid back and forth to hit a circular “ball” back towards your opponent. The sole control was a knob you turned left and right.

When the Atari Video Computer System was released, its controls involved a joystick and a button. From there, the rudiments of modern gaming were born. With one hand, you hold the base and hit a ‘fire’ button with your thumb. With the other, you work a directional control. This style of gameplay led to the development of the first classic games, whose clever challenges have ensured that even today, in their various incarnations as free online flash games for kids, they are as enjoyable they ever were.

The gameplay on these free online games has been adapted for play with a computer keyboard. Where game programmers decide to lay out the controls varies widely. The arrow keys make a natural directional control, but the fire key will be variously designated as the enter key, space bar, or control key.

Where the mouse has been substituted for the joystick and fire button, those accustomed to joystick- or joypad-based gaming may find the action a little strange. Take Missile Command, the classic Cold War game of missile defense, where one uses a cursor to aim the exploding point of anti-ICBM missiles in order to protect a series of cities from an endless barrage of nuclear missiles. In most of the free online versions of this game, one uses the mouse to move the cursor and left-clicks to launch the missile. In the arcade and Atari versions, the joystick moved the cursor and the fire button, appropriately, launched the missile. While the game engine is ultimately the same, it feels noticeably different to use a mouse if you’re used to the Atari original.

For the most part, though, the experience is preserved when you locate free online games that recreate the classics, and many of the big hits are out there. It’s still fun to weave behind the shields and pick off invading aliens in Space Invaders; it’s still challenging to weave through trucks, cars, alligators and snakes in Frogger; and it’s still nerve-wracking to race through the maze against the ghosts in Pac Man. In their new incarnations as a free online flash kids game, they are often adorned with improved graphics and sound effects, but the original fun that kids of the eighties enjoyed is preserved. All the classic addictive fun is waiting online, for free.

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