Frogger

Release Date: 1981 Platform(s): Arcade Developer: Konami Genre: Action In theory, you should never lose at Frogger. The gaming world's first frog superstar has a straightforward task: to get across a highway, and then a river -- dodging vehicles in the first stretch, jumping across logs and turtles on the second. The surrounding world is obvious to its...

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Daytona USA

Release Date: 1993 Platform(s): Arcade Developer: Sega Genre: Driving The first time you successfully drift around a turn in Daytona USA, it all makes sense. First, steer into the curve. Then hit the brakes -- you'll learn how hard you need to push on the pedal -- and correct against the turn just so . You'll find yourself sliding sideways at high speed, your car in a...

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Command & Conquer: Red Alert

Release Date: 1996 Platform(s):  MS-DOS, Windows, PlayStation Developer: Westwood Studios Genre: Strategy Real-time strategy games tend to be fairly serious sorts of experiences. They're about war, for one thing, which is already serious enough, and they're generally enormously taxing and demanding, requiring players to take in an entire battlefield's worth...

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Star Wars: TIE Fighter

Release Date: 1994 Platform(s): PC Developer: Totally Games Genre: Shoot 'Em Up Star Wars: TIE Fighter features visceral space combat It was perfect symmetry. Before making Star Wars: TIE Fighter, designer Lawrence Holland of Lucasfilm Games created a suite of World War II dogfighting games, including Secret Weapons of the Luftwaffe. For Star Wars' space dogfights,...

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Mario Golf

Release Date: 1999 Platform(s): Game Boy Color Developer: Camelot Software Planning Genre: Sports As Mario's unlikely shadow career as the world's most versatile sportsman evolved with the glorious playable Mario Kart games, golf was perhaps the most likely candidate for further expansion. The rolling hills of the Mushroom Kingdom would be an ideal location to sink a...

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Star Wars Jedi Knight: Dark Forces II

Release Date: 1997 Platform(s): PC Developer: LucasArts Genre: First-Person Shooter Imagine the pressure. The original Dark Forces successfully coats a doom-like first-person shooter with the veneer of the Star Wars universe, it delights gamers, sells well, and a sequel goes straight into production. The anticipation for the next installment of Kyle Katarn's adventures...

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1943

Release Date: 1987 Platform(s): Arcade Developer: Capcom Genre: Shoot 'Em Up The year that the war ground on may have been 1943, when rationing continued to bite down hard, construction work on the Pentagon was completed, and the Japanese forces were driven back from Guadalcanal, but it's a whole lot more enjoyable if you think of it as this wonderful little vertical-scrolling...

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Rogue

Release Date: 1980 Platform(s): Unix Developer: Michael Toy, Glenn Wichman, Ken Arnold Genre: Strategy / Role-Playing Rogue first appeared on college Unix systems in 1980. It contains an infinite variety via a series of randomly generated, ASCII-rendered dungeons that must be explored in a bid to retrieve the Amulet of Yendor (Rodney spelled backwards) from...

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Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas

Release Date: 2004 Platform(s): PlayStation 2, PC, Xbox Developer: Rockstar Genre: Action With sales of more than 20 million copies since ts launch in 2004, Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas is the biggest-selling PlayStation 2 game of all time, and not without reason. Though initially a game about gang bangers and turf wars in a fictional Los Angeles (Los Santos), channeling...

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The Incredible Machine

Release Date: 1992 Platform: MS-DOS, 3DO, Macintosh Developer: Dynamix Genre: Puzzle Emergent game play and physics-based interactivity may seem like fresh concepts, but it was The Incredible Machine that really introduced these major game components almost twenty years ago. Without a doubt inspired by the ridiculously elaborate contraptions imagined by...

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Age Of Empires

Release Date: 1997 Platform: PC Developer: Ensemble Studios Genre: Strategy While advances in video games are typically characterized by leaps in technology or game play innovation, lateral crossover is also important. Like some novel technology concocted in one of its temples, Age of Empires crossed two existing game play templates and boiled down the result...

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Dr. Mario

Release Date: 1990 Platform(s): SNES, NES, Satellaview, Game Boy Developer: Nintendo Genre: Puzzle In Nintendo's rush to create a Tetris clone unencumbered by the legal disputes of the original, it seems nobody stopped to ask a few fundamental questions. For example, when did this world-saving plumber find the time to acquire a medical degree? Perhaps the reason no one...

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NBA Jam

Release Date: 1993 Platform(s): Arcade, SNES, SEGA Genesis, SEGA CD, Gameboy, SEGA Game Gear Developer: Midway Genre: Sports The catchphrases are legendary: "He's on fire!" "Is it the shoes?" "From downtown!" You're apt to hear all these and more during a single game of NBA Jam, and if you need proof of the game's cultural currency, walk up to somebody, say any of these one...

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Civilization

Release Date: 1991 Platform: PC Developer: Microprose Software Genre: Strategy Want to make a PC gamer of certain age cry? Whisper "Civilization" in his or her ear. There are any number of reasons why the tears might flow, but it's likely because more sleep, weekends, job, and relationships have probably been lost to Civilization than any other game. This seminal...

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Metal Gear Solid

Release Date: 1998 Platform: PC, PS1 Developer: Konami Genre: Stealth When designer Hideo Kojima brought his Metal Gear series to PlayStation, he did more than just kick-start the most popular stealth franchise in gaming history. He began a conversation that continues today, sharing his fears of nuclear holocaust, his distrust of the industrial-military complex, his love...

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The Legend Of Zelda: Oracle of Seasons/Ages

Release Date: 2001 Platform: Game Boy Colour Developer: Capcom Genre: Action / Adventure The follow-up to the Game Boy's brilliant The Legend of Zelda: Link's Awakening was always going to have its work cut out, even before you consider that, for the first time, third-party developers were handling the most delicate of Nintendo's children. And although Capcom can't compete...

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Jak and Daxter: The Precursor Legacy

Release Date: 2001 Platform: PlayStation 2 Developer: Naughty Dog Genre: Platformer Jak and Daxter's own precursor was Crash Bandicoot, a character who became something of a mascot for the original PlayStation and an example of Naughty Dog's technical skills. Jak and Daxter: The Precursor Legacy is similarly demonstrative of the developer's talents when it comes to character...

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Super Mario 64

Release Date: 1996 Platform: N64 Developer: Nintendo Genre: Platform Mario would seem to have come to the end of his natural life as games embraced the third dimension. Nintendo's mascot was getting on a bit, and he was so emphatically linked to the suddenly rather tired world of two-dimensional scrolling that many fans suspected either retirement or, worse, irrelevance...

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Battlefield 1942

Release Date: 2002 Platform: PC, Mac Developer: Digital Illusions CE Genre: First-Person Shooter Battlefield 1942 puts intelligence into multiplayer team-based shooters. PC players had been ganging up since Half-Life Team Fortress, and limited coordination was hinted at as early as Starsiege: Tribes. But by placing multiclassed team combatants within cunningly designed...

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Age Of Mythology

Release Date: 2002 Platform: PC, Mac Developer: Ensemble Studios Genre: Strategy Ensemble didn't take risks. It didn't have to. From the moment the historical strategy game Age Of Empires launched in 1997, its course was set: It would be king of real-time strategy, absurdly successful, regardless of whatever naysayers might claim about the PC and Mac platforms. The studios...

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The Elder Scrolls III: Morrowind

Release Date: 2002 Platform: PC, Xbox Developer: Bethesda Game Studios Genre: Action/Role-Playing The Elder Scrolls games are best known for the fourth chapter in the series, Oblivion, released in 2006. In comparison,The Elder Scroll's Morrowind is altogether more of a curate's egg, neither as commercially successful nor critically applauded as it's successor....

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Baldur's Gate II

Release Date: 2000 Platform: PC Developer: BioWare Genre: Role-Playing In 1988, SSI's Gold Box series redefined the Western idea of the RPG genre. They took the single most important set of pen-and-paper rules -- Advanced Dungeons & Dragons -- and tied them to an epic series of campaigns that spanned entire continents and several games, breathing life into Gary Galax's...

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Quake

Release Date: 1996 Platform: PC Developer: id Software Genre: First-Person Shooter Despite being a pioneer of full three-dimensional graphics in the first-person genre-- or perhaps because of it--Quake is a master class in level design. It's brightly confident in it's grasp of space and solidity; even the difficultly and episode selection is its own memorable environment....

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Super Mario Bros.

Release Date: 1985 Platform: NES Developer: Nintendo Genre: Platform The problem with classics, is that they are old. They usher in great changes and they redifine the landscape, but less influential games perfect the trends they started and end up being a lot more fun to play. For example, StarFox isn't as ground breaking as Asteroids as far as space games go, but anyone...

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StarCraft

Release Date: 1998 Platform(s): PC Developer: Blizzard Entertainment Genre: Real-Time-Strategy StarCraft was the first western title to pin it's success on South Korea. There was something about this real-time sci-fi strategy game that touched a nerve, making StarCraft a staple of the country's multi-player PC cafes, which were emerging in the 1990s, leading...

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Harvest Moon

Release Date: 1996 Platform: SNES Developer: Natusme Genre: Role-Playing What role would you want to play as in a video game? A spaceman? A God? A soldier? A knight on a perilous quest? Okay... How about a farmer? Tilling the land, tending the livestock, looking after crops, and basing your life around the passing seasons. Not so keen? Are you sure? Harvest Moon is a...

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Grand Theft Auto II

Release Date: 1999 Platform: Various Developer: DMA Design Genre: Action Grand Theft Auto 2 has been unfairly marginalized by the success of both its predecessor and it's successor. Keeping the top-down view of the first game in the series, it has been judged to be a minor iteration on an old formula, before the series' huge leap to 3D. But the game's innovations are far from...

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Diablo

Release Date: 1997 Platform: Various Developer: Blizzard Entertainment Genre: Action/Role-Playing If it's an online quiz you're working with, clicking on things is quite boring and monotonic. However, if it's Diablo, the simple game mechanic turns into something magical. Enemies explode in bursts of blood or collapse into piles of bone, heroes race across...

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Spy Hunter

Release Date: 1983 Platform: Arcade Developer: Midway Genre: Action With its smart weapons, awesome cars, Spy Hunter was viewed as a very stylish game back in the arcades on the early 1980s. It was a title that playing into any boy's fantasies- secret agents, nasty weaponry, and a driving lincese. Make no mistake though, it was the action packed gameplay that kept people coming...

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Donkey Kong

Release Date: 1981 Platform: Arcade Developer: Nintendo Genre: Platformer Donkey Kong was truely a game-changer (no pun intended)  when it was first released back in 1981. It's elaborate cartoon graphics set it apart from the industry standard of a scene filled with aliens and space rocks. It came at a time where the "great" protagonist was merely a yellow circle who...

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