Classic Bucket List

A 2D side-scrolling shooter with rag-doll physics and a jetpack, written by one Pole and played in every Polish internet cafe.

Twelve tables, one soundtrack by Robert Prince, and a ball that behaves like a ball; the Android table is the one everyone remembers.

Raven build a fantasy Doom with an inventory, an elvish wand and the ability to look up.

A beat-em-up set in Gdynia with a broken bottle as a weapon; the most Polish game ever released.

Two generations across a continent, with children who inherit their parents’ skills and weapons.

Rotoscoped animation, a rifle and a memory-wiped agent on Titan; the French answer to Another World.

One hundred and forty-nine tile puzzles with a fixed camera and a chip count; the Windows Entertainment Pack in one game.

Kyle Katarn steals the Death Star plans in a Doom-era shooter with levels you can look up and down in.

Bomberman on the Amiga and DOS, and the four-player mode that ruined friendships in one afternoon.

Lara in Egypt for a whole game, and the ending in which Core Design tried to kill her off.

Fifty-four levels of a motorbike on rubber suspension, collecting apples and touching the flower without landing on your head; one Hungarian programmer, and a time-attack scene still going.

Nine scenarios from the Peloponnesian War to the Pacific, and the rules changes that made Civ III worth returning to.

The Mega Drive entry: 1917 Europe, two playable hunters and a stage that walks up the leaning tower of Pisa.

The expansion that ends the Bhaalspawn saga, with Watcher’s Keep and levels past the original cap.

Thirty-two hills and a World Cup, the whole flight steered with one mouse gesture; the DOS game every Polish computer ran through Malyszomania.

The last Insomniac Spyro: Sparx levels, four playable friends and a hundred and fifty dragon eggs.

Durlag’s Tower and three more areas for the first game, still the hardest dungeon BioWare built.

The whip finally aims in eight directions; the 1991 remake of the first game and its high point on the SNES.

Five destinations from the Nevada desert to Antarctica, and the hardest level design the series ever shipped.

Bounce a character up a tower that has no top, chaining multi-floor combos while the floors scroll faster; Swedish freeware from 2001 that lived on school computers.

Ensemble swap history for Greek, Egyptian and Norse myth: favour, god powers and a hydra that grows heads.

Four flashbacks told at her own memorial - Rome, a Russian submarine, an Irish island and a New York skyscraper.

Rome added to the 1997 original, with four campaigns and the units that fixed its worst balance.

Samus sent to exterminate the Metroids on their home planet, on a Game Boy screen with no map.