Top Ten Greatest Games of All Time

DOOM - HELL WAS NEVER THIS COOL!

Doom is undoubtedly one of the most influential and significant games ever created for the PC. This hellish incarnation puts you in a mosh pit of spawning demon imps and possessed marines with the fires of Hell serving as the backdrop. Doom almost single-handedly inspired the first-person shooter that remains one of the most popular genres in the scene today. This hellish beast of a game introduced id Software into the big leagues as well as welcoming the gaming world to the concept of shareware and fan-created mods. Of all its accolades, Doom has the honor of causing parents to flutter in panic at the birth of gore and violence into the gaming mainstream. That’s pop culture for you.



SUPER MARIO – A SAFE DRUG FREE ENVIRONMENT

Where else can you chase a turtle-shell dragon, run after moving mushrooms that make you grow into grotesquely giant proportions, climb up giant bean stalks that shoot out from bricks, and jump over clouds in a safe drug-free non-hippie environment than with Super Mario? Needless to say, Mario stands as one of the most iconic characters in gaming history, even if the sizzle of the 2d platform side-scroller has all but become a niche market in recent times. It’s a safe bet to say that almost any real gamer with a decent resume of ‘games-played’ would have picked up a Mario game at one point of another, and enjoyed it. It’s also a very safe bet that Mario, regardless of his iconic status, will not be the inspiration for the revival of suspenders. That’s never be cool to the masses except to hill billies. Or so I would like to condition myself to believe.

TOMB RAIDER – SHAKE WHAT YOUR MAMA GAVE YA!

A franchise milked beyond what Lara Croft’s ample sized bouncy twins could ever produce, this curvy adventurer remains as one of the most publicly recognized gaming heroines the world has ever known. The actual games that make up the core of the franchise are not exactly ground breaking stuff, but they do support the bootylicious Lara Craft and her induction into pop culture more than her skimpy attire does. Millions of hot-blooded males lapped it all up. Millions of women questioned the anatomical impossibilities. But with two block buster movies under her belt, a comic book spin-off, books, posters, toys, infinite bedroom private role-plays, and countless more, Lara Croft is undoubtedly pop culture’s polygonal darling.

COUNTERSTRIKE - TAKE THAT #%@$ DOWN!

Counterstrike, more affectionately known simply as CS, is the single reason that has brought about the onslaught of the pseudo geek army from the underground to the public eye. CS is the computer game that almost single handedly generated enough multiplayer interest to its name to inspire countless aspiring clones…or ‘entrepreneurs’ as they would like to be called, to set up LAN shops in infinite nooks and crannies across the globe until you couldn’t get away from the horrendous saturation of such shops everywhere. It goes down in gaming history as the undisputed prince of popularity when it comes to MODs. No other game has as many gaming leagues and geek clans formed in the honour of mastering the game to the point of point-and-click precision. CS has firmly integrated itself into pop culture with its unwavering presence, because anyone who hasn’t been living in a cave for the past five years would have heard of it.

TETRIS – LINE UP IN AN ORDERLY FASHION!

How about Tetris? The game that launched thousands upon thousands of clones and remains the God of the puzzle genre. Created by a Russian programmer named Alexey Pajitnov with countless variations and remakes later, Tetris never gets boring. Whoever thought the simple idea of connecting combinations of four jointed squares into horizontal lines could be so fun? Ask anyone you know and chances are they have had a go at the game. That Russian fella obviously had great insight!



STREET FIGHTER II – JOIN THE FIGHT CLUB!

Shoryuken! (…an impaling fireball shoots from my my eagle-spread hands!). Take that you stupid brute!

In 1991, Capcom released Street Fighter II, a one-on-one 2d fighting game that caused a revolution and altered the gaming industry forever. With the games mindblowing success, countless fighting game clones have been produced that used the general (and sometimes entirely copied) fighting concept of Street Fighter II with mixed results. The game was the first to introduce a larger number of playable characters, each with their own distinguishable moves and special abilities. In most arcades across the world, one-vs-one fighting games still make up the core of the machines. Ten years on and Street Fighter is still the true King of Fighters, so to speak. Fighting in ridiculously ill-advised skimpy costumes and shouting weird verbal assaults has never been cooler. Not to mention the silly nonsensical Japanese-to-English translations that are a trademark of any good fighting game.

FINAL FANTASY – THAT NEVER ENDS!

Final Fantasy stands as one of the longest running and most successful gaming franchises since the days of the old Nintendo consoles to its heyday when it first hit the Playstation and then over to the Playstation 2. You know a game has great street credibility when movie producers are willing to fork up big bucks to pump out a blockbuster movie in its name. That is exactly what happened with the release of the major blockbuster movie, Final Fantasy: The Spirits Within in 2001. Final Fantasy, particularly with the release of the eighth installment of the series, has been welcomed into the halls of Pop Culture greats by showing just how cool and creatively stunning those Japanese folks really can be. Having spiky hair, androgynous looks, and an ambiguous racial heritage is all the hype here.

PAC-MAN – A SLICE OF THE ACTION!

Genius is often discovered in the unlikeliest of places. It’s almost ticklish to know that the idea of one of the most recognized video game icons came about from a partially eaten pizza. Its creator was simply staring at a pizza with one eaten piece from it. The light bulbs flickered on, and Pac Man was born. Pac Man is a great example that shows how simplicity is often the key to success. The concept? Running ghosts existing solely for the reason of eating poor anatomically-challenged Pac ‘Man’ alive, who in turn only existed to eat little dots across the screen because…well, they never gave him a reason why he had to do it. Poor fella.

Brilliantly addictive and easily recognized, Pac Man may have experienced infinite deaths at the hands of these vicious goggled-eyed oddly shaped ghosts, but will remain forever alive and partially eaten in the eyes of gamers and pop-culture alike.

THE SIMS – IT’S MY LIFE!

The best selling game of all time. That’s how much a part of culture The Sims has become. With countless expansion packs and re-issues, the Sims allowed your average Joe or Mary to take control of their lives and attempt to shape it up as they see fit. The game gave gamers the ability to create characters from scratch and take control of the decisions (and mundane tasks) that were required to make their customized Sim have a happy and fulfilled life (and satisfy the desires of the sadistic whose sole aim is to see their Sims piss their pants in the presence of their crushes…ok, I admit. I was one of those sadists.). The Sims, with its huge international sales, truly reflects on our pop culture and our wanting to take control of our lives and to make more active decisions in determining our own fates. It isn’t just a game that simulated life. Oftentimes the lines were blurred and it became a game that life should be like.

GRAND THEFT AUTO – YOU TALKING TO ME PUNK?!

Grand Theft Auto is a direct, if not slightly exaggerated, comment on the state of violence and crime in our society, and how slicing a man’s head off with a katana isn’t that big a deal. If Doom introduced graphical violence to the masses, Grand Theft Auto bathed in the blood of the whole premise of it. It is as much an influence on the impressionable youths of our pop culture as it is a strong statement about our tolerance and acceptance of over-the-top violence. The game is littered with derogatory racism and glamourization of gangster-ism, and to top it all off; the game design and execution definitely falls easily in place as one of the best ever made. Many find themselves haplessly addicted to the idea of inflicting painful revenge on all those who oppose. Resistance is futile!