Ruminations

Why is Armagetron so good? Here are some reasons. Feel free to add and anotate as you see fit.

strategy game

Millions used to play chess. With a few simple rules, an active mind can combine moves to win an advantage over an opponent. No luck involved, apart from the matching of player styles and contextual factors effecting the players' states of mind.
Computers introduce another level of play to the classic strategy board game with their processing capacity: automated tasks can be performed by the computer, creating a more complex 'board', one that changes through time. For example Tetris and Snake both include the irresistable momentuum of time, forcing players to develop preventative strategies to avoid unpleasant future events.
The internet expands the notion of a two-player strategy game (opening up the field, setting a level playing field) and thus heralds multiplayer and team games. Of course, multiplayer games are quite taxing in terms of board-games, with players taking turns traditionally, sequentially, with administrative tasks taking up too much time thus limiting the number of players than can practically play a game.
So, as computer games continue providing people with ever more complex environments, realistically simulating battle-fields for example, so there is space in the virtual library of games for chess-like or GO-like strategy games. Armagetron is such a game, and specifically Fortress. It is simple, with defined parameters. Because the game can be played with only two keys, and the motion of the lightcycles is relentless, the real game is shifted away from the representation, from lightcycles and trails as much as from bits of wood or stone on a board, to the abstract relationships in space and time in the mind of the players. Simple rules providing complex behaviour. It pits player against player, and with the judicious balance of teamwork and individual skill, winning teams display the grace of effortlessness and depth of play.