Be a god with a giant creature and a village that worships you; Molyneux's ambition.
Invertebrates with bazookas, holy hand grenades and concrete donkeys; the party strategy game.
Dogfights against the Kilrathi and a branching campaign; Chris Roberts in 1990.
Base building, research and squads that die in the dark; the 1994 original of the tactics genre.
Fly for the Empire; the best space combat sim, from 1994.
The game that pretends to delete your save; Lovecraft across two thousand years on the GameCube.
Samus in first person on Tallon IV, scanning everything; Retro Studios' miracle.
Psynergy and Djinn on the Game Boy Advance; the handheld JRPG that looked impossible.
Cartoon tanks on a grid with COs and their powers; Intelligent Systems' perfect handheld tactics.
Permadeath tactics on the Game Boy Advance; the first Fire Emblem released in the West.
A murder mystery in a rural Japanese town solved by entering the TV; friendship as a game mechanic.
108 characters to recruit, a castle to build and a war between friends; Konami's RPG peak.
Giant robots, religion and a second disc told from a chair; Square's most ambitious RPG.
Two parallel worlds and 45 characters; the strange sequel to Chrono Trigger.
Objection! A defence lawyer cross-examines witnesses and a parrot; Capcom's courtroom visual novel.
Move to a village of animals, pay off a raccoon and check the shop every day, in real time.
Roll a sticky ball over everything until it is a star; the Namco oddity with the best soundtrack.
A summer camp for psychics and the levels inside people's heads; Tim Schafer's cult platformer.
Guitar, bass, drums and a microphone in one living room; Harmonix's full band.
A plastic guitar and five coloured buttons; the party game of the 2000s.
Arrows on a floor mat and a cabinet in every arcade; the rhythm game that got people moving.
The blacklist of fifteen racers and a BMW M3 GTR; the Need for Speed people remember.
Crash your rivals into walls for boost; the arcade racer at its most violent.
Agent 47 at a Mardi Gras and an opera; the best of the old Hitmans.
Sam Fisher in the dark with three green lights; the stealth game at its most systemic.
Rewind time, run along walls and the Prince who narrates his own mistakes.
Jade, a photojournalist on a planet under alien attack; Ubisoft's cult adventure.
A fledgling vampire in Los Angeles; Troika's broken, brilliant RPG.
Azeroth with millions; the MMORPG that swallowed a decade.
Sixteen levels under Tristram's cathedral; the click-and-loot game begins.
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