18 items
The game that changed multiplayer shooters forever. Call of Duty 4 ditched WWII for the modern day and invented the template everyone has copied since — killstreaks, custom loadouts, Prestige mode. By 2008, every Xbox 360 household was living in its lobbies.
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.
A little silver camera perched on the TV, and suddenly YOU were in the game — flailing at ninjas, washing virtual windows, waving both arms like you were landing a plane. The EyeToy turned the PlayStation 2 into a mirror that fought back, and turned every living room into a very sweaty arcade.
The JRPG that made you cry, that made your friends at sleepovers obsessed with the exact same story beats. Cloud, a mercenary with a huge sword, stood at the center of a world in crisis—and a scene where everything fell apart taught a generation that video games could break your heart.
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.
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.
The Real Driving Simulator — and it meant it. Gran Turismo made PS1 owners grind license tests, obsess over gear ratios, and fall in love with a used Nissan they tuned into a monster. Suddenly a racing game wasn't about power-ups; it was about the cars.
Naughty Dog's PS2 platformer arrived in December 2001 with no loading screens and no seams — just one continuous world for a silent hero and his motor-mouthed otter-weasel sidekick. Critics adored it, and with Ratchet & Clank and Sly Cooper it formed the PS2's beloved platformer trinity.
You and your sibling on the couch, dropping in and out whenever someone's mom called dinner, one of you smashing everything for studs while the other solved the puzzles. This wasn't the grim prequels — this was pantomime comedy and fifty-nine characters to unlock.
Konami's PlayStation blockbuster told you NOT to shoot: Solid Snake crept through Shadow Moses ducking sightlines, hiding under a cardboard box, and answering the codec mid-mission. Hideo Kojima's stealth epic made video games feel like movies — and made one boss read your memory card out loud.
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.
Before downloads, trying a game meant a silver disc: the sampler that came in the console box, PlayStation Underground in the mail, a Jampack from the store — or the legendary discs handed out with Pizza Hut orders in 1999. You played the same three demos a hundred times and loved every second.
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.
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.
Four buttons, one per limb, and a family that settles everything with an Iron Fist tournament. Namco's 3D fighter went from the arcade to every PlayStation household, and Tekken 3 — with King, Paul, and a thousand sibling grudge matches — became the fighting game of the late '90s.
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.