Top-down and unforgiving since 1997: die and you lose experience, skills and part of what you were carrying.
Four players from four countries in one Dreamcast lobby in 2000, talking past the language barrier with a symbol chat.
Heihachi comes back and drops Kazuya into a volcano; the first Tekken people kept playing at home.
Ryu tours ten fighters in 1987, on a cabinet whose two pressure pads read how hard you hit them.
Rogue add turrets, tesla mines and a gravity well; the harder of the two Quake II packs.
Xatrix drop a second marine on Stroggos with an Ion Ripper and a Phalanx cannon.
Claire on a prison island and then in Antarctica, in the first Resident Evil with fully 3D rooms instead of painted ones.
A prison ship crashes on Na Pali and the Skaarj hunt you out of it; the 1998 engine that ran for twenty years.
A monk, a hive of demon insects and two side dungeons; the 1997 expansion Blizzard did not make itself.
Onslaught adds vehicles and power nodes to maps built for them, on top of the 1999 bot ladder.
Rogue send you back to ancient Rome and forward again across two episodes; the second mission pack.
Marshal John Dalton collects artefacts across seven colony worlds; the single-player sequel Legend Entertainment made in 2003.
Twelve missions a side on Draenor, with named heroes who stay dead if you lose them.
Sega launch the series on the Dreamcast in 1999 against a franchise EA had owned for five years.
Europe from 1087, with a Pope who excommunicates you and crusades to send the troublemakers on.
Hipnotic add three episodes, a Mjolnir that arcs lightning and a proximity mine launcher; the first mission pack.
The 2000 original: a board-game Japan on the campaign map and thousands of ashigaru on the battlefield.
Hand-painted 2D worlds and a difficulty curve that stopped a generation; Michel Ancel, 1995.
Valve remake the Quake mod on the Half-Life engine in 1999, nine classes and concrete bases intact.
The parks go 3D and you can ride your own coaster from the front seat, at night, with fireworks.
The same tiny squads sent into space and back through history, with the graveyard on the hill still filling up.
Two characters swapped at will and no item boxes at all, starting on a train in the woods below the mansion.
The 1994 first game: a whole continent generated at random and a staff broken into eight pieces.
The isometric 1993 original, the year EA bought the licence and the crowd was a single looping chant.
The series turns to polygons in 1997, with a weapon each fighter can draw, drop and lose.
Sandro the necromancer gets seven campaigns of his own, in the standalone box most people still install.
The 1989 original: lay down three kinds of zone, watch the traffic, then send a monster through it.
Road & Track supplied the car data and the police arrive out of oncoming traffic; the 1994 original, on 3DO first.
Kreia argues with every choice you make; Obsidian in a year, unfinished, and better for the argument.
Rumours spread in Sumaru City start coming true; the half of Persona 2 the West did not get until 2011.
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