Over the next nine weeks, Wired.com is presenting a collection of galleries intended to help people become better geeks, nine items at a time. This is the second in the series.

Do you have gaps in your gaming career? Have any non-gamers in your life who want an education in the pleasures of electronic entertainment? There's a whole wide world of games out there, and narrowing it down to a handful is an impossible task.

So when Game|Life's contributors found ourselves tasked with picking nine essential games, we didn't just want to tell you to go play everything. We wanted a more manageable task list. So here are nine goals you should attempt to attain at least once in nine landmark videogames.

Some won't take very long. Some involve finishing the whole game. But all of them are experiences that any gamer geek should have at least once, just to know how it feels.

Above:

Task: Find gaming's first Easter egg.

Atari, Atari 2600, 1979

In the early days of Atari, the company didn't credit its designers, even when they produced exceptional one-man efforts like the sprawling Adventure. Rebelling against company policy, this game's designer hid his name in a secret room. If you want to see a landmark moment in the history of videogames, you've got to seek it out. Just watch out for the duck. —Chris Kohler