Classic Video Games Bucket List

Dig for diamonds, keep the boulders above you where they are, and get out before the wall closes.

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

Cut the playing field into pieces without letting the bouncing balls touch your line; four kilobytes of it.

The 1989 Game Boy launch platformer: twelve levels, two shoot-em-up stages and a princess who is not Peach.

A Polish turn-based tactical horror game in a Silesian town that NATO would rather nobody looked at.

The 1986 game that invented the Japanese role-playing game: one hero, one slime at a time.

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

The tournament release of Armageddon - the same rules, the wormpot and online play built in.

The real Japanese Super Mario Bros. 2: the same engine, poison mushrooms and wind, and far harder.

An Atari puzzle game about a robot pushing crates and dodging lasers, still being remade forty years on.

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

The 1987 original that saved Square: four Light Warriors, a job you pick at the start and a time loop at the end.

Robot fighting with a pilot who levels up between bouts; the shareware Street Fighter of the DOS years.

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.

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

Time travel through four versions of every zone, and two soundtracks depending on where you bought it.

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.

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

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

The crew of the Unity land on Chiron and split into seven ideologies; the best writing in any strategy game.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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