It amazes me that at one time video games had not only nearly completely inscrutable plots, but that the developers developed an entire mythos to explain what the game’s story. A backstory that, in all likelihood, had more text than the actual game’s programming. One such game is Yar’s Revenge.
I’m not going into into the depths of the Yar’s Revenge universe, but suffice it to say that you pilot a ship that’s shaped like some kind of wasp-thing. Your goal is to destroy the Evil Alien Ship on the right side of the screen. Your little pea-shooter won’t actually destroy anything but the blocky force-field surrounding the Evil Ship, so you have to use your Super Weapon. You charge the super weapon for one shot by either touching the Evil Ship, presumably charging the weapon and destroying the ship with its own evilness, or by eating a portion of the force field, thereby charging the weapon and destroying the ship with the power of your ship’s digestive tract. give the ship the ability to become an indestructible Swirl of Death and hurl itself at you, an indestructible ship shaped roughly like a hyphen that relentlessly pursues you, and a ’safe zone’ about in the middle of the screen and you have something resembling a game.