Grim Fandango (PC)
Grim Fandango (PC) | Pete Dreyer, Staff Writer, T3
One of the great gaming stories. Neo noir hero Manuel 'Manny' Calavera is a suave - but dead - travel agent who risks it all to guide people through purgatory to the afterlife.
"Bound only by the paper-thin wrapper of mortality, a soul here lies, struggling to be free. And so it shall, thanks to a bowl of bad gazpacho, and a man named... Calavera."
Shadowrun (SNES)
Shadowrun (SNES) | Matt Hill, deputy editor, T3
No, not the ropey Xbox FPS from a couple of years ago, but this cyberpunk oddity from Data East (remember them?). Audaciously constructed and uncharacteristically dark for a SNES game, it was part Blade Runner, part FIFA (mainly the old isometric viewpoint). You began on a morgue slab with no memory and ended fighting a company CEO who was a dragon, with talking dogs, eerie shamen and gun-toting mercenaries. They don't make 'em like this any more.
F-Zero GX (Gamecube)
F-Zero GX (Gamecube) | Will Jewson, T3 Facebook fan
Combine cornea-splitting graphics, gut-wrenching tracks and ball-busting difficulty with awesome spaceship racers straight out of ridiculous Japanese design 101 that go faster than a rollerskate-wearing greased pig on an ice rink, and you've got yourself one of the most charismatic, intense and fun racing games of the last decade!
Strategery (iOS)
Strategery (iOS) | Christopher Phin, Editor, Tap! Magazine
This deceptively simple multiplayer game regularly brings office life to a standstill. It's a kind of distilled, abstract version of Risk, and its genius is in the fine balance of skill and luck. Best of all, it has a nice 'playing-chess-by-post' quality, pushing turns over the internet so you can play with people all over the world.
Fallout (PC)
Fallout (PC) | Richard Wordsworth, T3.com
Shunted from the shelter of your underground sanctuary into a post-nuclear wasteland, the original Fallout lets you sneak, talk or blow your way through everything from rickety frontier towns to sprawling secret bases, all packed to bursting with B movie mutants, cultists, raiders and giant scorpions. It was also the first game I ever played where shooting someone in the nads was a legitimate tactic, and reverse-pickpocketing a live explosive onto an unsuspecting enemy a messily ironic way to defuse a conflict.
Maniac Mansion 2: Day Of The Tentacle (PC)
Maniac Mansion 2: Day Of The Tentacle (PC) | Jonathan Pile, ShortList
The pinnacle of LucasArt's adventure gaming achievements. The three different time zones working with the twisted logic of the puzzles (paint a kumquat tree red so George Washington mistakes it for cherry tree and chops it down, freeing your friend who's stuck in it 400 years in the future) produced a unique and timeless experience that is yet to be bettered.
Lotus Turbo Challenge (Amiga)
Lotus Turbo Challenge (Amiga) | Charlie Parrish, Loaded
Stretched my Amiga 500+ to its limits, as it did my mother's patience with my Dad and I playing long into the night attempting to crack level codes and out-do each other's times. Fake F1 drivers names worth a mention, too. “Ayrton Sendup” and “Alain Phosphate”. Arf.
Commandos 2: Men of Courage (PC)
Commandos 2: Men of Courage (PC) | Adam Bunker, Staff Writer, T3
'OK' you think; 'I just about got the hang of the fact that I have 8 men (and a dog) to control, all with different skills and attributes', as you make them sneak into a compound and knock out a guard. But that's the training level, and it's the size of a playground. Level 2 has 900 objectives, a billion nazis and is the size of Ireland. There's never been such a maddening difficulty curve like it in gaming, before or since. "I was trained for this!"
Daytona USA (Arcade)
Daytona USA (Arcade) | Mike Channell, Deputy Editor, oxm.co.uk
The quintessential 3D arcade racer, from an era when SEGA was still blowing away home consoles in the arcades, an eight player race with friends is still better than the vast majority of entertainment in Britain's beleagured seaside towns.
Kid Chamelon (MegaDrive)
Kid Chamelon (MegaDrive) | Kris McCarty, T3 Facebook fan
An insane amount of challenging levels and multiple routes throughout the game. Also, it had really cool interchangeable helmets which granted you a diverse array of abilities from a samurai sword through to a hover board. Amazing level design too!
Deus Ex (PS2)
Deus Ex (PS2) | Duncan Bell, Operations Editor, T3
One of the first games to feel truly bleak and adult, this cyber-punk FPS-cum-RPG epic was all black trenchcoats, black helicopters, looming architecture and ruminations on the meaning of "humanity" in a near-future era of nano-modifications. As JC Denton you had to chase the truth about your brother's death and a globe-spanning conspiracy involving UN agencies, Chinese Triads and the Illuminati. The ending was exceedingly bleak. But it's okay, you also got to creep up on people and shoot them in the back of the head, and incinerate robot aggressors with a rocket launcher.
Double Hawk (Master System)
Double Hawk (Master System) | Michael Sawh, Staff Writer, T3
There are so many Master System games that don't get the credit they truly deserved, and Double Hawk was one of them. It's a two-player shooter with characters that shared more than a passing resemblance to Stallone and Schwarzenegger, and the end level took weeks to get past. I want a re-make!
Kick Off 2 (Atari ST)
Kick Off 2 (Atari ST) | Tom Cullen, ShortList.com
Pals with the swankier Amiga swore by Sensible World Of Soccer. Sensible World Of Soccer my foot. SWOS was way too slow. Way too simple. Being great at Kick Off 2 was similar to being great at table football. Kick Off players had absolutely no built in control of the ball , it would simply bounce off them like pinball. But master the game and you could tame the ball and pass it around your players with pace and control. The Dutch called it totaalvoetbal. I called it 'skillzaah'.
Metroid Prime (Gamecube.
Metroid Prime (Gamecube., Wii) | Andy Robinson, Deputy Editor, CVG (CVG.co.uk)
Everybody's heard of Mario and Zelda, but Metroid - Nintendo's other lead franchise - gets far less attention than it deserves. Prime masterfully transports the moody sci-fi series into the third-dimension – and first person – and it's one of the most beautiful and atmospheric titles the Japanese giant's ever produced.
MX vs. ATV Untamed (Xbox 360)
Quake 3 Arena (PC) | Jon Hicks, Editor, oxm.co.uk
Twelve years after it was released, this is still the purest, fastest and most nerve-jangling multiplayer shooter in the world. The looks may have dated (although even then, not as much as you'd think) but the gunplay is still the most effective adrenaline shot videogames can offer.
Quake 3 Arena (PC)
Red Faction (PC) | Thomas Tamblyn, Freelance/Writer, T3
Arguably the father of physics in-game, Red Faction was ahead of its time, defined by its destructable environment and dark atmosphere. Its ground-breaking graphics made it a joy to play and with a storyline as dark as it was plentiful you found yourself pining after the dark twisted mines of Mars.
Red Faction (PC)
R-Type (Arcade) | Richard Galpin, Project
I was obsessed by R-Type in the late Eighties, early Nineties. As a side-scroller it seemed, at the time, cutting edge. The spaceship looked very cool (metallic, with a large cockpit, excellent power-ups) although I don't think I ever actually defeated the Bydo Empire (thank you Wikipedia) and finished the damn thing.
Robotron: 2084 (Arcade)
Starship Patrol (DSi-Ware) | Andy Robertson, Game People http://www.gamepeople.co.uk
A pixel perfect tower defence game from the makers of Star Fox and Pixeljunk games. Not only is it cheap to download on your DSi or 3DS, but it creates a perfectly balanced challenge with a retro Star Wars theme -- all mapped out on graph paper. For afters why not try the follow ups: 3D Space Tank or Reflect Missile.
Rockstar Table Tennis (Xbox 360)
1942 (Amstrad) | Luke Peters, Editor, T3
Back in the day when monochrome green screens and tape-loading games were the height of sophistication, 1942 on the Amstrad provided hours of post-school joy. This vertically scrolling shoot 'em up set during WWII was like a turbo-charged Space Invaders. Two people could play at once, both squeezed onto the same keyboard jostling for space and arguing who would have 'W-A-D-X-Space' and who would be left with the cursor keys and '0'. But these were the days when a pack of football stickers cost 6p and you could buy a quarter of rhubarb and custards for 15p. So no-one cared.
1942 (Amstrad)
Full Throttle (PC) | Matt Hussey, Freelance writer for ShortList and Wired
A desperate Dan lookalike charging around an apocalyptic wasteland on a bike with 16 exhausts trying to catch the vice president of a bike company? What's not to like? Designer Tim Schafer - maker of Day Of The Tentacle, and would go onto make Grim Fandango, Psychonauts and Brutal Legend - managed to combine humour, gripping plot, and ridiculous playability at the height of the point-and-click genre. For anyone who missed out on those days, this is a must.
