136 items
"TEN-EIGHTY!" — the grunted title call said it all. Nintendo's own N64 snowboarding game played it straight: weighty, physics-driven boards, board-scraping sound design, and a namesake 1080-degree spin so hard it took nine distinct actions to land. You spent whole evenings just trying to beat the rival rider in Match Race.
The space-themed pinball table hidden in the Windows Games folder that ate untold hours in the computer lab. Rack up ranks from Cadet to Fleet Admiral, one launched ball at a time.
Sierra's Dynamix studio broke the rules of pinball with 3-D Ultra Pinball in 1995—animated spaceships, UFOs, and mining drones appeared on the table as temporary targets, multiple themed tables connected at once, and the whole thing was colorful, chaotic, and absurdly entertaining. It sold over 250,000 copies in its first year, becoming a staple of family PC gaming in the shovelware era. Except it was actually *good*.
Age of Empires II was the medieval real-time strategy game that defined the genre for a generation. Released in 1999, it put 13 civilizations at your command across historical campaigns spanning Joan of Arc to Genghis Khan. The Conquerors expansion (2000) became the definitive version, adding five new civilizations and cementing the game's legacy. Nearly three decades later, HD remasters and competitive esports tournaments prove this masterpiece never went out of style.
Virgin Games didn't just make a movie tie-in — they got actual Disney animators to draw the game, so Aladdin ran, leapt, and sword-swung across your Genesis with real film-grade animation. Four million copies later, it was one of the best-selling Genesis games ever, and one half of an eternal playground debate with the totally different SNES version.
This Xbox launch title did something radical: instead of following preset race tracks, you could pick any line down a whole mountain. The gimmick was fame—impress photographers and film crews, land sponsorships, and become a media sensation. Plus, the hard drive let you load your own music onto the console, a showstopper feature in 2001.
Nintendo's gentle life-simulation game that reached the US on the GameCube in 2002. You move to a village of animal neighbors, pay off a mortgage to raccoon shopkeeper Tom Nook, and fish, catch bugs, decorate your house, and run errands—all on a real-time clock synced to the console, so the game's day and night and seasons matched real life. No winning, no losing—just a cozy daily routine.
The cult favorite of the first big three MMORPGs — never EverQuest's equal in numbers, but beloved for what it dared. Asheron's Call ran through Microsoft's gaming service, its classless characters and famous monthly story updates drip-feeding new life into one seamless world that stayed open for over seventeen years.
A bear with a bird living in his backpack collecting jiggies across Gruntilda's lair: the 3D collect-a-thon platformer perfected. Rare's masterpiece paired note-perfect googly-eyed humor with Grant Kirkhope's unforgettable score on the Nintendo 64.
Swap two gems, line up three, watch them vanish and the rest cascade down. PopCap's match-three puzzle turned a simple web game into one of the most-copied ideas in casual gaming.
The first Bomberman to go 3D: Hudson Soft's 1997 N64 adventure traded the classic grid for free-roaming chaos, and the four-player couch battles were glorious or broken depending on who you asked. The single-player mode hid real depth — 100 of 120 Gold Cards to unlock the true ending — but it was the sing-song TV jingle and the rental-store ritual that cemented it in your brain.
The cabinet at every bowling alley, skating rink, and pizza place: cute dinosaurs working a bubble cannon, three-of-a-color pops, and a slowly descending wall of doom. Bust-a-Move was the arcade game everybody's mom was secretly great at — and the formula was so good it never stopped being made.
Chase a globe-trotting super-thief and accidentally learn every world capital along the way. Broderbund's detective games sent you tracking Carmen's V.I.L.E. henchmen across real geography, and the PBS game show turned the hunt into after-school appointment TV — complete with the a cappella group Rockapella.
A browser-based play-to-earn game where you built an empire in the fictional world of Akzar, drilled for oil barrels, raised stats by spending resources, and raided rival players — with the wild promise that you could cash out and receive a real cheque in the mail.
The spinning, crate-smashing marsupial who became the PlayStation's unofficial mascot and Mario's cheeky rival. Naughty Dog's 1996 platformer sent Crash bouncing through jungle levels and dodging boulders — and defined a generation's PS1 afternoons.
Arcade racing cabinet that promised a coast-to-coast road trip—San Francisco to Washington, D.C.—and actually delivered. You shifted and swerved your way through America's most iconic backdrops, and later the entire globe, one quarter at a time.
Konami's iconic rhythm game where players step on a four-arrow dance pad in time with on-screen cues and music. Debuting in Japanese arcades in 1998, DDR became a global phenomenon—from arcade halls to living rooms—defining an entire genre of music-timing games.
A fantasy MMORPG that replaced chaotic open-world ganking with Realm vs. Realm warfare—three mythologically themed nations (Albion, Midgard, Hibernia) fighting over contested keeps and relics in structured, large-scale PvP.
Racing, but with machine guns. DeathTrack put you on a futuristic circuit where winning meant crossing the line first — or being the only car left that could. Prize money went straight into bigger weapons, and the next city's grid found out.
The dark, click-to-loot dungeon crawler whose endless hunt for better gear defined turn-of-the-millennium PC gaming. You clicked, monsters died, loot rained, and Battle.net kept you up until dawn.
The SNES game whose pre-rendered graphics looked so impossibly '3D' that kids begged for a turn just to see it. Donkey Kong and Diddy rolled through mine carts and jungle levels in a technical showcase that felt like the future.
"Hail to the king, baby." PC gaming's most gleefully crude action hero started as a 1991 shareware platformer and exploded with 1996's Duke Nukem 3D — 3.5 million copies of one-liners, aliens, strippers, and moral panic. Then came Duke Nukem Forever, the most legendary vaporware in gaming history.
A serene ocean-documentary game that lures you into cosmic horror. You're a bottlenose dolphin searching for your pod after a mysterious storm rips them from the sea, only to discover time travel, Atlantis, and an alien menace called the Vortex. Ecco the Dolphin is notoriously, brutally hard — a beautiful betrayal that turns aquatic tranquility into an eerie hunt through the deep.
The first massively successful 3D MMORPG, a game that proved millions would live together in a virtual world. The world of Norrath, corpse runs, the brutal grind, and "EverCrack" addiction became the template for everything that followed.
The Facebook farming game that took over the late-2000s: plow, plant, harvest, repeat — and pester your friends to be your neighbors. At its height tens of millions of people logged in daily to water virtual crops.
Nintendo's 32-bit handheld released June 2001, with a landscape shape and full backward compatibility with the entire Game Boy and Game Boy Color library. The screen was notoriously hard to see until the GBA SP (2003) added a front-lit clamshell. Around 80 million sold across the GBA, SP, and Micro variants.
Nintendo's leap to color: the Game Boy Color arrived in 1998 painting 56 colors on screen at once, with full backward compatibility with original Game Boy games. The screen upgrade alone made Pokémon finally pop in actual colors, and the GBC became essential playground hardware.
The glossy gaming magazines you subscribed to with the little bind-in postcard — GamePro, Game Players, and their newsstand rivals. Multi-platform reviews, screenshot-packed previews, and pages of cheat codes you copied out by hand before a big weekend.
The wisecracking, TV-obsessed gecko who cracked one-liners while wall-crawling through the 'Media Dimension.' In the era of mascot wars — Mario, Sonic, Crash — Gex was the snarky one, voiced by an actual stand-up comedian. It's tail time.
Race against Morty Maxwell to build faster vehicles by solving science puzzles and outsmarting Cyber Chimps. This Learning Company edutainment staple disguised lessons about simple machines and magnetism as competitive car-building challenges.
The Nintendo 64 first-person shooter that redefined console multiplayer: four players split-screen deathmatch, and an iron-clad house rule banning Oddjob because his short stature slipped under auto-aim. Rare's landmark game sold over 8 million copies and owned living rooms until Halo arrived.
![Video thumbnail — Guitar Hero (PS2) - Trailer [2005]](https://i.ytimg.com/vi/NLncFUN2plc/hqdefault.jpg)
The plastic guitar controller that turned living rooms into rock venues and made you feel like you could shred—Guitar Hero arrived in November 2005 with just five fret buttons and a strum bar, playing note-scrolling highways to licensed rock songs. It became a living-room phenomenon. Guitar Hero III (2007) and its brutal finale 'Through the Fire and Flames' defined the genre's peak before the plastic-instrument bubble burst from over-saturation around 2010.
Bungie's sci-fi FPS that proved console shooters could rival their PC counterparts. Released November 15, 2001 as an Xbox launch title, Halo: Combat Evolved sent you to a mysterious ringworld as Master Chief to fight the alien Covenant—and turned LAN parties into a rite of passage.
Single-purpose LCD pocket machines made by Radica — Draw Poker, Blackjack, Slots — with beeping electronic casino sounds. Sold at drugstores and airports, they were the endless video-poker game in your pocket, played on car trips and under the dinner table.
The top-down, sprite-based online combat game where large teams fought across sprawling battlefields with infantry, vehicles, and aircraft. Born from the makers of SubSpace, it became a Sony Online Entertainment fixture on Station.com and outlived its era through a fan-run revival.
The gloriously weird PS2 game where you roll a sticky ball that picks up thumbtacks, then cats, then cars, then whole skyscrapers. A candy-colored oddity with an unforgettable soundtrack that became an instant cult classic.
Broderbund's gloriously chaotic kids' drawing program — the one with the honking sound effects, the rubber stamps, and the stick of dynamite that blew your whole picture apart in a burst of black-and-white circles. For a generation of 90s kids it was the first "art" they ever made on a computer.
A PlayStation 2 action RPG born from an unlikely collaboration between Square and Disney, where you wield a key-shaped weapon called the Keyblade and travel through Disney film worlds with Donald Duck and Goofy. You play as Sora, fighting shadow creatures called the Heartless across an imaginative mashup of Disney magic and Final Fantasy gameplay. The franchise grew into a beloved epic across multiple platforms and sequels.
Guide a horde of dim, green-haired lemmings to safety by handing out jobs — Digger, Builder, Blocker, Bomber — before they walk blindly off a cliff. The 'Let's go!' squeak, the 'Oh no!' self-destruct, and one of the most-ported games ever.
The first Legend of Zelda built for a handheld, Link's Awakening proved that Hyrule didn't need a TV and a castle. Stranded on the surreal dream island of Koholint, you solved puzzles, dodged familiar monsters repurposed as random cameos, and discovered an ending that still haunts players three decades later.
The first 3D Mario Kart brought four-player split-screen racing to the Nintendo 64, turning every sleepover and dorm room into a competitive battleground. Shells flew, friendships were tested, and players argued eternally about which character had a hidden advantage.
The space shooter your parents wanted you to play: math problems zip across the screen, you fire the cannon at the correct answer, and somehow you're drilling fractions without noticing. Every 90s school computer lab had it, and every kid who touched it felt like an arcade ace instead of a student.
The grid of gray squares you clicked to uncover numbers — and the flags you planted over the mines you hoped weren't there. Bundled with Windows for years, it was equal parts logic puzzle and nerve test.
The first Mortal Kombat in 3D, the last one to hit arcades—and the first where you could pull a weapon mid-fight. Polygonal fatalities were the playground whisper of 1997.
"FINISH HIM!" — and now you had about three seconds to nail a memorized joystick incantation, at exactly the right distance, for exactly your character. Land it and the whole arcade turned to watch. Fatality. Or, if you were feeling truly disrespectful: Friendship.
The plastic cartridge that made you feel explosions in your palms. Nintendo's rumble accessory turned a memory-card slot into a motor, powered by batteries, and changed what players expected from their hardware.
"BOOMSHAKALAKA!" Midway's two-on-two arcade basketball threw out the rulebook — players leapt three times their own height, shoved each other to the floor, and burst into flames after three straight buckets. It was loud, ridiculous, and impossible to walk past without feeding it a quarter.
![Video thumbnail — [Nintendo 64] NFL Blitz TV Commercial](https://i.ytimg.com/vi/KwSb_-1bsFo/hqdefault.jpg)
The arcade football game that threw the rulebook in the trash: seven-on-seven, 30 yards for a first down, no penalties, and late hits actively encouraged — you could body-slam a guy well after the whistle. From the NBA Jam bloodline, with the same announcer energy: "DA BOMB!"
Nintendo's leap into three dimensions, the N64 brought 3D polygon gaming into living rooms with its quirky three-pronged controller and a cartridge library anchored by Super Mario 64 and The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time. Its rumble pak added tactile feedback, while its four controller ports made it the console of couch multiplayer legends.
The clamshell handheld that split gaming in two — literally. Nintendo's dual-screen DS added a touch-sensitive bottom screen and stylus, backward compatibility with Game Boy Advance cartridges, and era-defining hits like Nintendogs, Brain Age, and Mario Kart DS that proved touch controls weren't a gimmick.
The small cube-shaped Nintendo console with a built-in carry handle, released November 2001. Indigo or purple exterior, proprietary MINI-DVD discs, and an oversized green A button that defined its controller. Super Smash Bros. Melee, Mario Kart: Double Dash, Metroid Prime, and The Legend of Zelda: The Wind Waker were system-defining hits.
![Video thumbnail — Wii Would Like to Play (2006) - Wii Commercial [4K + 60 FPS]](https://i.ytimg.com/vi/QBOFhmjTgvY/maxresdefault.jpg)
The white remote-waving console that turned living rooms into bowling alleys and convinced your grandmother that she wanted to play tennis. Nintendo's motion-controlled revolution sold 101 million units by letting non-gamers actually *feel* like they were swinging a bat or rolling a bowling ball, while leaving a trail of cracked TV screens in its wake.
The first three-dimensional Legend of Zelda launched the Nintendo 64 into mythic status. Shigeru Miyamoto's masterpiece introduced the Z-targeting lock-on system that became the industry standard for 3D action games, sold 7.6 million copies, and holds a Metacritic score of 99 — still the highest ever recorded.
The computer-lab game that taught westward expansion through dysentery and desperation. Every 90s kid named their wagon party after friends, overhunted buffalo, gambled on river crossings, and died of unexpected causes while technically learning American history.
Microsoft's first console was a giant black box that held a Pentium III and changed online gaming forever. Launched November 15, 2001, the Xbox arrived with the Duke controller (instantly mocked for its size), a built-in hard drive, and Ethernet port. Halo: Combat Evolved was the system seller, but Xbox Live (November 2002) was the revolution: console gaming went online with a headset in the box and broadband required.
Sony Online Entertainment's wildly ambitious 2003 MMOFPS — a persistent online war where three factions fought over huge, seamless continents with hundreds of players in a single battle. Too big and demanding to be a mainstream hit, but unforgettable for the players who lived in it.
![Video thumbnail — Playstation 9 - 2000 PS2 Commercial [High Quality]](https://i.ytimg.com/vi/NyvD_IC9QNw/maxresdefault.jpg)
The black rectangle that invaded living rooms worldwide as an affordable DVD player and happened to pack the best game library ever assembled. With over 155 million sold—the best-selling console of all time—the PlayStation 2 didn't just dominate gaming; it became the era's default home entertainment hub.
Nintendo's Game Boy sensation that turned playground trading into a global phenomenon. Pokémon Red and Blue made 1998 the year school ceased all productive function in the pursuit of catching 'em all.
The third-generation Pokémon games arrived on Game Boy Advance with a whole new region, double battles, and 135 new creatures to catch. Ruby and Sapphire expanded what Pokémon could be — and nobody questioned whether they still needed to own a Game Boy.
The 'Special Pikachu Edition' of Pokémon that let you start with the anime's poster mouse instead of Bulbasaur or Squirtle. Unlike Red and Blue, Pikachu followed you on screen instead of riding in its Poké Ball, and its mood changed based on how you treated it—making you actually care if your electric mouse was happy.
Sony's widescreen handheld that made your backpack feel like contraband. The PSP played UMD games and movies, had actual graphics, and let you game or watch on the go—turning every school lunch period into a gaming session. It felt like the future until the future moved on.
A fireworks-factory accident blasts the little purple car to the Moon, where he's stranded, scared — and then befriended by Rover, a lonely lunar rover left behind by astronauts. Kids remember the arc viscerally: lost far from home, then puttering back with a new best friend.
The game that turned thousands of toddlers into gamers without them noticing: a cheerful purple convertible earns his way into Cartown's pet parade in a world where everything you click sings, dances, or talks back. Humongous Entertainment's very first game — and for countless kids, theirs too.
A cheerful purple convertible car who was born as a bedtime story and became a staple of 90s family PCs. Putt-Putt's point-and-click adventures were forgiving, consequence-free, and brimming with clickable animations — nothing to lose, everything to discover.
![Video thumbnail — Gorillas (a.k.a. QBasic Gorillas or GORILLAS.BAS) (Microsoft) (MS-DOS) [1991] [PC Longplay]](https://i.ytimg.com/vi/lyBD0X81tjk/maxresdefault.jpg)
Two gorillas on a city skyline, hurling explosive bananas at each other. You typed an angle, a velocity, and prayed you'd read the wind right. It came free with MS-DOS — hidden in plain sight on millions of PCs — and it turned a programming demo into a playground legend.
The buddy-platformer that paired Ratchet, a wrench-swinging lombax mechanic, with Clank, a small defective robot — and armed them with the most gleefully over-the-top arsenal on the PlayStation 2. Blowing up enemies with a Suck Cannon or a flamethrower was the whole point.
The PlayStation shocker that dropped you inside a zombie-infested mansion with too few bullets and a save ribbon to ration. It didn't just scare a generation — it named the whole survival-horror genre.
You got a plastic guitar, a plastic bass, a plastic drum kit, and a plastic microphone. Four friends could play one song together at once. This seemed revolutionary for about three years.
You designed roller coasters and managed an amusement park in this beloved strategy sim. Created almost single-handedly by Chris Sawyer and released in 1999, RollerCoaster Tycoon became a sandbox classic — famous for coaster design and infamous for the player habit of trapping guests. RollerCoaster Tycoon 2 followed in 2002.
A browser-based MMO that ran on any school computer—no download, pure Java, accessible everywhere. RuneScape let you trade with strangers in Varrock, cut yews, dodge scams, and explore the Wilderness, all while technically just looking at homework on another tab.
A deadpan dog detective in a suit and his "hyperkinetic rabbity thing" partner road-trip across America's tackiest tourist traps chasing an escaped carnival bigfoot. LucasArts' 1993 point-and-click classic was sharp, absurd, and voiced by the actual voice of Disney's Goofy.
"The Mother of All Games"—a turn-based artillery tank battler where physics, wind, and an absurd weapon shop turned a single shared keyboard into hours of hot-seat chaos and sudden laughter.
Sega's last console, a gorgeous white system with a built-in modem that promised arcade quality straight to living rooms. It shipped with one of the most inventive libraries in gaming: Sonic Adventure, Crazy Taxi, Jet Set Radio, and the impossibly niche masterpiece that is Shenmue. The Dreamcast launched with mythical marketing (9/9/99) and died a hero when the PlayStation 2 juggernaut made the economics of console competition impossible.
Sega's 16-bit home console arrived in 1989 and dominated the early 90s with its attitude, speed, and Sonic the Hedgehog. The Genesis ('Mega Drive' everywhere else) promised 'Blast Processing' and delivered games that felt faster and edgier than what Nintendo offered, winning hearts — and quarters — across a generation.
Sega's full-color backlit handheld promised to dethrone Nintendo's monochrome Game Boy—and technically it did, with a stunning display that consumed six AA batteries in roughly three to five hours. The eternal playground debate: better screen or battery life?
A cordless infrared light gun for the Sega Genesis that could be built up from a handgun into a shoulder-mounted bazooka. It looked futuristic and felt powerful—there was just almost nothing worth shooting at.
![Video thumbnail — Sega Saturn - It's Out There (1995 Launch Commercial) [HD]](https://i.ytimg.com/vi/cyv6ZehQyTQ/hqdefault.jpg)
Sega's answer to the PlayStation: a cartridge-free arcade powerhouse with dual processors, a CD-ROM drive, and a cult library of 3D fighters and dreamers. The Saturn dominated Japan but stumbled spectacularly in the West after Sega's infamous E3 surprise launch—a retailer and developer betrayal that became business-school legend.
The city-building game that made zoning feel like destiny. SimCity 2000 traded the original's flat grid for a gorgeous isometric view with terrain elevation, underground layers, and a tech tree capped by arcologies — massive self-contained future cities that could blast into space. For a generation of 90s kids on the family PC, it was equal parts urban-planner simulator and disaster-unleashing sandbox.
An elevator game disguised as a skyscraper builder: stack offices, condos, and hotels a hundred floors high, then obsess over elevator schedules while tiny tenants flash red with rage. One of the weirdest, most hypnotic PC sims of the 90s.
![Video thumbnail — Arcade Longplay [117] The Simpsons Arcade Game](https://i.ytimg.com/vi/S9DE-KyZnLc/hqdefault.jpg)
Konami's 1991 four-player brawler let you play as Homer, Marge, Bart, or Lisa on a mission to rescue Maggie. The Simpsons Arcade captured the early cartoon's charmingly off-model animation style, placing you in Springfield with familiar locations and gag-filled bashing. Ported to home computers (Commodore 64 and MS-DOS) back in 1991, it later returned to modern consoles via a digital re-release in 2012.
Launch goofy grimacing faces up the board, match three, and watch the ceiling ratchet down — while your AIM away message covered for you. Snood was the shareware puzzler installed on every dorm and computer-lab machine at the turn of the millennium, and it was written by a geology professor as a gift for his wife.
Mario Kart on snow, basically — and that was the whole charm. Big-headed cartoon kids raced down the mountain pelting each other with weapons and items, then rode the ski lift back up mid-race while rivals took potshots at the line. Atlus's goofy N64 racer was the loud, chaotic flip side of 1080° Snowboarding.
Sega's lightning-fast answer to Mario arrived in 1991 as the face of the Genesis console war. Speed was the point—looping green hills, golden rings scattering on impact, and an attitude that made the 16-bit rivalry feel personal.
An online multiplayer paintball game — teams, squads, and ranked stats — played over dial-up through America Online's games area in the late 1990s, back when premium online games billed by the hour and the meter was always ticking.
Sam Fisher creeping through the shadows in his three-eyed night-vision goggles, snuffing out lights and slipping past guards. The Xbox stealth game that made hiding in the dark thrilling.
A cocky little purple dragon gliding and flame-breathing through bright pastel worlds with his dragonfly sidekick Sparx. Spyro was the PlayStation's other mascot platformer alongside Crash — collect gems, free trapped dragons, charge headfirst into everything.
"Do a barrel roll!" Nintendo's on-rails space shooter gave the world Peppy's immortal advice, branching routes that made every run different, and the Rumble Pak — the accessory that made your controller shake with every explosion. Over 4 million copies later, it stands as one of 1997's biggest games.
The podracing dream from The Phantom Menace, but actually fun. LucasArts captured the absurd speed and alien canyons of Tatooine that made you forget Jar Jar ever existed — at least until you beat it in an afternoon.
This MMORPG wasn't about saving the galaxy—it was about living in it. Crafters built everything from blasters to starships, player cities elected mayors, and Jedi were so rare and risky (permanent death, at first) that seeing one felt like a legend sighting. Then the NGE overhaul flattened it all, and players never quite forgave it.
Blizzard's genre-defining real-time strategy game — a three-way war between the human Terrans, the insectoid Zerg, and the psionic Protoss. Beloved for its finely balanced factions and bottomless multiplayer, it consumed LAN parties and Battle.net, and in South Korea it became a televised national sport.
The 1991 arcade fighting game that singlehandedly revived the arcade industry and invented the competitive fighting-game community. Capcom's Street Fighter II featured eight selectable characters with unique movesets, and combos—initially discovered as glitches—became the foundation of an entirely new genre. From the SNES port to EVO championships decades later, this game's influence on gaming culture is immeasurable.
Widely considered the greatest side-scrolling beat-'em-up of the 16-bit era — and home to one of the best video-game soundtracks ever made. Axel, Blaze, Max, and Skate vs. Mr. X's syndicate on the Sega Genesis.
The game that showed the world what 3D could be. Super Mario 64 launched the Nintendo 64 by dropping Mario into an open, explorable castle, and its analog-stick control and swooping camera quietly wrote the rulebook every 3D platformer would follow.
The SNES launch title that introduced Yoshi and redefined what a platformer could be. Mario's dinosaur companion, cape-feather flight, and the hunt for all 96 exit-goals kept millions of players glued to their TVs throughout the decade.
Nintendo's 2001 GameCube fighting game where Mario, Link, Pikachu, Kirby, and dozens of other Nintendo characters beat each other senseless on themed stages and knocked foes off the screen. A launch-window blockbuster and the best-selling GameCube title, it became the foundation of a massive competitive and esports community that kept the game alive for decades.
Nintendo's 16-bit powerhouse that dominated the early 1990s and fought the Sega Genesis for console supremacy. Launched in North America at $199 in August 1991, it came packed with Super Mario World and helped define a generation of gaming with over 49 million units sold worldwide.
Masahiro Sakurai's Nintendo crossover brawler launched on the N64 with twelve iconic fighters smashing each other on floating stages in four-player chaos. Released April 1999, Super Smash Bros. sold 5.5 million copies and created the template for a franchise that would define competitive gaming and casual multiplayer for the next 25 years.
Will Wright's dollhouse simulator where you controlled virtual lives, sent them to work, made them fall in love, and then deleted the pool ladder and watched them drown. Launched in February 2000 by Maxis and EA, The Sims became the best-selling PC game of its era—a mania that never ended, spawning sequels that kept the franchise dominant for decades.
Konami's 1989 beat-em-up starred four turtles, infinite pizza, and quarter-guzzling boss fights. Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles Arcade was a four-player coin-op sensation: pick a turtle, bash foot soldiers, work through a story ripped straight from the cartoon. The 1990 NES port added new levels and Pizza Hut advertisements, securing its place in gaming legend.
The 3D adventure that sent archaeologist Lara Croft leaping across ancient ruins, solving puzzles and blasting wildlife. It made Lara one of gaming's first true icons.
Activision and Neversoft's skateboarding game, first released in 1999, about chaining tricks into massive combos and collecting the letters S-K-A-T-E across increasingly iconic venues. The punk, ska, and hip-hop soundtrack defined the era. Tony Hawk's Pro Skater 2 (2000) is widely considered the series' peak and one of the best games ever made.
An underwater educational adventure game where kids explored a cove, collected gems and treasures, and solved reading and science puzzles. A sibling title to Treasure Mountain! from The Learning Company's edutainment catalog, released in 1992.
An educational adventure game where kids climbed a mountain solving reading, math, and logic puzzles to catch the Master of Mischief's elves and collect treasure. A classroom-and-home edutainment staple of the early 1990s, published by The Learning Company for DOS, Windows, and Mac.
A gunslinging dinosaur hunter ripped from a comic book and thrust into one of the N64's first must-play shooters. Turok: Dinosaur Hunter arrived in March 1997 with an arsenal that escalated from knife to sci-fi firepower — and jungle fog that wasn't artistic flourish, but an 8-megabyte cartridge's desperate compromise. It accidentally made every encounter feel like a hunt through an alien haze.
The MMO pioneer that proved persistent online worlds at scale were possible. Ultima Online's unrestricted player-versus-player combat, player housing, and emergent economies made it the first true virtual society — and the blueprint for every MMO that followed.
The definitive version of Mortal Kombat 3 — the one with all the ninjas back in it. Owner's memory is the Sega Genesis port: the run button, the fatalities, and everybody on the roster.
The late-Genesis showpiece: a run-and-gun platformer starring a robot built from articulated green orbs, with pre-rendered graphics meant to prove the aging console could still hang with the SNES. It also came with a genuinely wild promotion — a hidden $25,000 prize.
The over-the-top arcade hockey game that was a Nintendo 64 launch-window staple — big hits, flaming "power shots," and an ambulance that raced across the screen after a brutal check. NBA Jam's spirit on ice, and one of the first games to get four N64 controllers into one match.
The pack-in game that turned the Nintendo Wii into a living-room phenomenon — tennis, bowling, boxing, baseball, and golf played by swinging the remote. Grandparents, house parties, and flying Wii-motes; it got everyone off the couch.
The Klondike card game that shipped with virtually every Windows PC — and quietly taught a generation how to use a mouse. The real reward was winning: the whole deck cascading off the stacks and bouncing across the screen.
Strap into a cockpit on the carrier Tiger's Claw and fly against the Kilrathi — cat-faced aliens in a war the game dared to let you lose. Wing Commander was World War II in space on a 1990 PC, and it made every other game on the shelf suddenly look cheap.
Blizzard's legendary MMO that defined an entire genre. Released November 23, 2004, World of Warcraft dropped players into the world of Azeroth to quest, guild up, and raid alongside millions of others—at its peak reaching 12 million subscribers and spawning a cultural phenomenon that transcended gaming.
Microsoft's console that beat the PS3 to market by a year and defined HD-era online gaming. Unified Achievements, party chat, a matured Xbox Live — and the Red Ring of Death, the three flashing lights that taught a generation the meaning of hardware failure.
Microsoft's revolutionary bet on broadband gaming — the service that brought voice chat and Gamertags into living rooms and normalized trash-talking strangers over the internet. The $49.95 Starter Kit arrived in November 2002 with a wired headset, a year of subscription, and a radical demand: high-speed internet or stay offline. It worked — 150,000 kits sold in the first week.
The N64 platformer that looked like a pop-up storybook—levels stitched from cloth, cardboard, and pastel construction paper, starring baby Yoshis who squeal, flutter-jump, and eat 30 fruit per page. Critics shrugged; kids never forgot it.
Guide troops of little blue creatures across a series of logic puzzles, choosing each one's hair, eyes, nose, and feet to sneak them past the obstacles. You were secretly learning to think — and it was a computer-lab favorite.
Black bricks, a white ball, a paddle, and the entire free period gone. Brickles was the brick-breaker that lived on the school Macs — a one-man shareware game from 1985 that somehow ended up defining computer-lab downtime a decade later. It is still on sale today.
The grey brick: four AA batteries, a pea-green screen you had to angle toward a lamp, and Tetris in the box. It was outgunned on paper by every colour handheld it faced, and it buried all of them. Nintendo kept the line it started alive until 2003.
The Korean MMORPG where hundreds of players threw themselves at a castle wall and the grind between sieges was measured in months. Lineage II arrived in the West in 2004 with a reputation for being enormous, beautiful and utterly unforgiving of anyone with a job. It is still running, more than twenty years on.
The grey box that took gaming off the cartridge and onto the CD — and took it away from Nintendo and Sega while it was at it. Sony's first console arrived in Japan at the end of 1994 and in America the following September, and it made a generation fluent in memory cards, load screens, and demo discs. It started as a Nintendo project that Nintendo walked away from.
Nintendo's red-and-black 3D machine that sat on a table and asked you to press your face into it. It was on sale in Japan for about five months and in America for about a year, and it is the lowest-selling standalone console Nintendo ever put its name on. Everyone remembers the demo unit at the toy store, and everyone remembers the headache.
The cheat device of the PlayStation and N64 years: impossibly long hexadecimal codes, thumbed in one character at a time with the d-pad, in exchange for infinite everything. Codes came from magazines, a members-only newsletter, and a 1-900 number that charged you $1.29 a minute.
Seven-on-seven football with no penalties, no injuries, and no uniforms — just NFL players in street clothes talking trash on a concrete lot. Taunt the defense while you run and you fill the Gamebreaker meter. EA Sports BIG's 2004 answer to the question of what football looks like with all the rules taken out.
![Video thumbnail — Virtua Tennis - Sega Dreamcast - Intro & full arcade playthrough [HD 1080p 60fps]](https://i.ytimg.com/vi/VaDjt_H0iX8/maxresdefault.jpg)
Two buttons: one to hit, one to lob. Sega's tennis game asked almost nothing of you and gave back the best rallies on the console — an arcade cabinet's worth of instant playability on a Dreamcast disc. It remains one of the machine's most fondly remembered games a quarter-century later.
Slot your game into the Game Genie, slot the Game Genie into the console, thumb in a code from the booklet, and play with unlimited lives. Nintendo went to court to kill it, lost, and was ordered to pay Galoob the entire $15 million bond it had posted — a landmark copyright fight waged over a plastic cheat cart. It was never a Nintendo product, and it wasn't Nintendo-only: Sega gave the Genesis version its official approval while Nintendo was still in court.
The 3DO was an audacious gamble: a roughly $700 CD console that The 3DO Company didn't even build itself — partners like Panasonic manufactured it under license, with royalties flowing back to Trip Hawkins' company. Time magazine called it 1993's "Product of the Year." No amount of prestige could overcome the price.
The Atari Jaguar launched in November 1993 at $249.95 with a bold claim: the world's first 64-bit home console. Critics immediately cried foul — its two 32-bit chips didn't quite add up. The PowerPad controller, bristling with 17 buttons including a phone-style keypad, didn't help. It became Atari's last console.
You plugged this cartridge into your Game Boy, twisted its chunky lens ball around to face you, and snapped a grayscale selfie — in 1998, years before anyone had the word. Four shades, 128×112 pixels, printable on thermal paper. That lo-fi bleakness is exactly why people treasure the photos today.
The handheld with everything: GPS, a camera, cellular, celebrity launch parties — and, it turned out, an executive with a past in Swedish organized crime. The company collapsed under $300 million of debt in 2006, and weeks later that executive crashed a rare Ferrari Enzo at 162 mph. Fewer than 25,000 were ever sold, by GamePro's count.
SNK's answer to a dream: the arcade in your home. The Neo Geo's home console ran hardware identical to its arcade cabinets, so you got arcade-perfect games with zero compromises — for $649.99, plus cartridges that cost upward of $200. The rich kid down the street had one. You didn't.
You pressed the edge of your N-Gage to your ear to make calls — the infamous "sidetalking" — while everyone nearby asked why you were talking into a taco. Swapping games meant removing the back cover and battery. The Game Boy Advance outsold it 100 to 1 within weeks. The joke aged beautifully, though: phones really did become game machines.
The CD-ROM deck that bolted under your Genesis and turned it into a two-story tower of futuristic black plastic. At $299 in 1992 it promised arcade-quality full-motion video — and the grainy FMV era it kicked off became gaming's most fondly mocked experiment. Night Trap's live-action thrills even landed it in front of Congress.
The dream machine: a portable Sega Genesis that played your whole cartridge library on a screen you could hold. It also chewed through six AA batteries fast enough to make the dream expensive. Sega, busy with the Saturn, barely supported it — about a million sold anyway, and now it's a collector's prize.
The Tiger R-Zone strapped to your head and projected blocky red games onto a little mirror in front of your eye. Released in 1995 at $29.99, it looked like Tiger's bid to catch the Virtual Boy wave — though Tiger never admitted it. Big licenses, tiny LCD games, and a permanent spot on worst-consoles-ever lists.
The best NBA Jam that wasn't allowed to say so. When the NBA Jam name went to Acclaim, Midway kept the original arcade team and the whole 2-on-2 formula — big heads, impossible dunks — and had to ship it under a new name. Enter NBA Hangtime, the game where you could finally put YOURSELF on the court.
Two alien rappers from the planet Funkotron crash-land on Earth after Earl's terrible piloting, and the result is one of the weirdest, chillest games the Genesis ever got: random floating islands, mystery presents, tomato-throwing, and a split screen that healed itself when you and your buddy walked back together.