The Facility, the watch menu and four-player split-screen; the N64 shooter that changed consoles.
A worm in a super suit; the strangest and best-animated platformer of the 16-bit era.
Fourteen playable characters, an opera and a villain who wins halfway; the SNES peak of the series.
An island of puzzles and books that are doorways; the best-selling PC game of the 1990s.
Sixty minutes to save the princess, rotoscoped animation and the first cinematic platformer.
Cure Bloaty Head and Slack Tongue while the patients queue; Bullfrog's comedy management sim.
Guybrush hunts the treasure of Big Whoop; the sequel with the ending fans still argue about.
The BFG, the imps and the shareware episode that ran on every office PC in 1993.
A bear and a bird collect jiggies; Rare's 3D platformer at its most joyful.
A drunk squirrel, a singing poo and a Matrix parody; Rare's adult cartoon on the N64.
A purple dragon glides through pastel worlds; Insomniac's first hit.
The atmospheric map, the wall jump and the baby Metroid; the SNES masterpiece.
Digitised fighters and fatalities; the game that created the ESRB.
Eight robot masters in any order; the NES difficulty and the Dr Wily theme.
Four fighters, a Yuzo Koshiro soundtrack and two-player co-op; the best beat-em-up of its era.
Guide a hundred green-haired creatures to the exit by giving them jobs; the DMA puzzle hit before GTA.
Wumpa fruit and a marsupial running into the screen; Sony's answer to Mario.
Two commandos, spread guns and the Konami code; run-and-gun at its hardest.
A hundred and fifty creatures, a Game Boy and a link cable; catch them all.
Tails, the spin dash and Chemical Plant; the best of the Genesis Sonics.
The raccoon suit, the world map and the airships; the best NES game.
Alucard explores Dracula's castle, then the castle upside down; the other half of Metroidvania.
Three friends in three centuries stop a purple tentacle; LucasArts at its funniest.
120 stars, the castle and the first analogue 3D playground.
From a settler to Alpha Centauri, one more turn at a time; Sid Meier's masterpiece of 1996.
Ryu, Chun-Li and the hadouken; the fighting game that filled arcades in 1991.
Yoshi, the cape and 96 exits on the SNES; the launch title that still plays perfectly.
A boy with a baseball bat in a satirical America; Nintendo's cult RPG.
Koholint Island, a Wind Fish and a Game Boy; the dream Zelda.
Zone, tax, build a stadium and watch it burn; the city builder that defined the genre.
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