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Capcom's 1993 reboot of Mega Man for the Super NES: a new hero, X, a century after the NES games, with a dash, a wall-jump, armor upgrades hidden in Dr. Light's capsules, and Sigma, a villain who used to be one of the good guys. Some players reportedly thought the X was the Roman numeral 10.
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.
Leon Kennedy, a rural Spanish village that wants him dead, and a camera perched over his shoulder — the 2005 GameCube masterpiece that rewired the action game. Resident Evil 4 scored a 96 on Metacritic, swept Game of the Year awards, and handed its camera angle to nearly every shooter that followed.