Could you help me make a top 10 or top 20 list of the best games by year?

I'm going to fill out some really old classics that, had they never been made, we might not have some brilliant AAAs today. Note that I'm working from the archaic memory of one who is a living fossil compared to many youngsters here, but these are some of the historic greats (not enough for 10 per year though - perhaps others can add more)...

1960s (sometime) - Minesweeper - Microsoft might have thought they were clever in annoying everybody with this classic since 19-goodness-knows-what year (was it Windows 3.11?). Anyway, Microsoft hadn't even been born when Minesweeper first gamed its way out of someone's imagination.

1970 - Star Trek - an early (if not earliest) text adventure game, or game-book as it was called for a short time. It made its way to most computer platforms of the time as Super Star Trek, though not until the later 1970s.

1972 - Pong Monochrome classic bat-and-ball game (which was secretly two white dashes and a white SQUARE ball). Although it started out in a video cabinet, it later found its way onto TV sets in wealthy homes around the world. Atari rose like a phoenix from the ashes of a lawsuit on this game, and new Atari machines gave birth to the first 'electronic rifle' controllers in the later 1970s (yes, the screen lost the two 'bat-dashes' and now the singular square ball (now a bit bigger) would bounce around the screen while you took air pot-shots at it - surprisingly good for its day).

1975 - Maze War - if you thought Wolfenstein and Doom started the FPS genre, you'd be wrong! This game was a very early maze-based shooter that became the forerunner of pretty much everything with a hand-held gun in it!

1978 - Space Invaders - an iconic game that proved gaming could be as nasty and addictive as other nasty-and-addictive things. Horrified parents watched as their goggle-eyed, raw-thumbed children hurled newly-invented expletives at those coloured pixels making a *blip! blip! noise, then became addicted themselves. Being 'social' as a concept was dropped immediately. Nobody needed neighbours once Space Invaders invaded (intentional pun) our homes.

1979 - Asteroids - an arcade classic was released by the now globally-famous Atari. Smash up wire-frame rocks into smaller wire-frame rocks, then become miserable when some of the little bits smashed up your spaceship. It became official that, while cats have nine lives, humans have just THREE before it's 'game over'. Some leniency in some games was introduced allowing 5 lives, but it was felt that was for babies....

1980 - **Berzerk - one of the earliest top-down multi-directional maze shooters to have not very much point but we'll play it anyway. It became the forerunner of games we'll buy but wonder why.

1982 - Microsoft Flight Simulator 1.00 was released on IBM. Not only was it the first true flight simulator game, it is arguably the longest-running franchise of all time (ignoring Minesweeper - like most people do). By the time the franchise hit MS Flight Simulator 98 (as in 1998), the paperback tome accompanying the game was comparable to the Domesday Book. Nobody read it, and then everyone then complained that they couldn't fly.

1983 - ** Manic Miner** - prequel to Jet Set Willy and just about every other irritating platform game you can imagine.

1984 - Tetris - arguably one of the greatest games ever in history, and the first game to export from the USSR (landing on pretty much every home platform at the time - this was my first-ever 'computer game' too). It is also the first game to make people take mortgages out to spend their lives beating impossible high scores in arcades before hacking and cheat-engine became a thing.

  • Daly Thompson's Decathlon - an early sports title that paved the way for key-board-mashing and repetitive strain injury everywhere! It relied on pressing keys in rapid alternating pattern to keep the character running, and was arguably more exhausting than a real Decathlon event!

  • Elite - a new wireframe space trading game. Players forgot that they were staring at transparent geometric shapes and took flight across the universe. This officially acknowledged that gamers really were daft-bats if they thought this was flying through space. And yes, I was one of them...

1985 - Mercenary - another wireframe space adventure game that used green background so as not to be confused with Elite... Flying through wire squares and triangles became the new 'surreal'...

  • Driller - epic game built in a very early 3D engine (Freescape) when solid 3D was NEW! It included in the box a 'cardboard planet' (it was actually a coloured Rhombicuboctahedron (thank-you Wikipedia for that term...) and you would mark in pen where you were guessing where to drill and how to reach other 'sides' of the planet. Sadly, Tippex had not been invented, and there were no spare Rhombi-thingies. Now remade by Ovine and a lovely free download (though you'll be making your own Rhombi-wotsit for it this time)!

1986 - Cholo - First-person puzzle/hacking in a wireframe 3D world. Very atmospheric and strange (now remade and available for free from the wonderful Ovine), but let down by no internet and therefore no walk-through. Next!

1991 - A320 Airbus becomes the first game to include real Jepperson flight charts and airport plans. It remains the only game to do so - if that is any kind of accolade. I still have mine in the original box somewhere (successfully hidden from annual clear-outs since its release).

2005 - Mystery Case Files: Huntsville - the first 'proper' hidden-object game that led to the insanity we have of MILLIONS of HO games today.

/r/patientgamers Thread