Top 10 computer console games

Last week's list of the Top 10 computer games of all time provoked a storm of reaction, and understandably so. Games are something that the technically minded often hold dear, because they were the first time we really got into computers.

Some of the complaints were about games that we love, but that don't translate to the computer very well. There are good reasons for this. I've always regarded console systems as the idiot savant of IT: very good at what they do but little use for anything else. Shaun is a passionate advocate of such systems, and this week's list has taught me a lot about how his generation look at computer gaming.

Like all good scientific stuff, with the exception of The Matrix, good things come in threes. Last week it was computer games, this week consoles and next week - well let's just say that, if you're fond of yellow eating machines or barrel-throwing monkeys, stay tuned.

Honourable Mention: Fallout 3
Shaun Nichols: This game is a lot more than an Honourable Mention for me. In the past year or so, I've spent more time playing Fallout 3 than just about any other title.

The third instalment of the series has been by far the most popular, and makes just about everyone's list of the top four or five games of the past few years.

Fallout 3 reminds me a bit of Half-Life in that it doesn't really break ground for adding a ton of new features and concepts, but takes the elements of previous titles and does everything a bit better.

The graphics are amazing, the storyline is immersive and deep, the missions are unique and challenging, and the world is large and fun to explore.

There have been earlier RPGs that have had some of these qualities, but few that can deliver them all on the level of Fallout 3.

Iain Thomson: I appreciated Shaun's comments on the game, not least because he's turned up late for work on two occasions with a story about the latest downloaded episodes, and with eyes like Keyser Söze on full burn.

You have to appreciate a game that inspires that kind of loyalty. Yes, Fallout 3 may be this year's thing, and in the years to come may be looked on as an embarrassment, but I've a sneaking fondness for something so immersive that it can make a chap forget the important things in life.

The storyline is also very amusing. As someone who grew up in the shadow of the Cold War, the plot is catchy and darkly chilling.

Honourable Mention: Metroid
Iain Thomson: Nintendo was originally a US-centric operation and had very little impact in Europe, so when Shaun argued his case for Metroid I had to do some digging.

It turns out I missed a trick. Metroid was actually the precursor to two of the games yet to come on the list, and was a rather nifty bit of work. The game explores the boundaries of what you can do in a virtual environment in a way that other games sought to follow.

Having since researched and played the game, I have to say I regret missing it as a youngster. Most games were far too simplistic when I was growing up, and Metroid managed to bring the basic elements together in a unified whole. Although it's now outdated, Metroid showed the way the industry was flowing.

Shaun Nichols: Metroid is sort of the black sheep of Nintendo's big hits. The game is decisively darker in its tone and overall visuals than the company's other big titles from the 1980s.

Still, mentioning Metroid to a certain age group of gamers will cause more than a few eyes to glaze over. The game was a nice combination of side-scrolling action with a bit of non-linear game play and a good plot thrown in.

It is also likely to have caused more than a few young male gamers to be thrown for a loop when the ending screen revealed that the super-tough space mercenary with whom they had been blasting away half the galaxy was actually a woman. A groundbreaking title in more ways than one.

10. Resident Evil
Shaun Nichols: Resident Evil is considered one of the pioneering titles in what's now known as 'survival horror'. While in other shooters you may be a buffed out space marine or a mythical hero, this genre put you in the position of an average character just trying to get through a nightmarish situation.

In Resident Evil, you have to escape a house full of monsters. This wasn't your father's haunted house, however. The creatures were particularly well designed, and had a knack of jumping out of the dark when you least expected it.

The game hit at a particularly good time. A generation that had grown up playing older console games now had a bit more money and an interest in more difficult and sophisticated games. If you were a teenager or 20-something with an interest in video games and slasher movies, Resident Evil was a dream (or nightmare) come true.

Iain Thomson: OK, cards on the table there's a hint of fanboy about this listing. I've introduced Shaun to many things since arriving on the West Coast but Spaced really hit a core, and Resident Evil plays a major part in one episode. Since then the word 'zombie' has introduced a whole series of quotes.

But that's not to downplay the effect of the game. Resident Evil is the watchword for zombie killing, and a generation raised on the Evil Dead films and others recognises the importance of the series.

9. Final Fantasy VII
Iain Thomson: In my younger days I was a Dungeons and Dragons player, and I suspect Shaun was too, but Final Fantasy VII was a real step in bringing Dungeons and Dragons to the screen.

There's an inherent problem in bringing Dungeons and Dragons to the games market in that it's all about imagination. Final Fantasy VII managed an effective bodge of imagination and visuals, and proved an acceptable substitute for many. It has certainly struck a chord; you don't sell 100 million units on advertising alone.

As further praise I would add that the writers have shown real spirit in developing new characters. Much as you'll see in games later in the list, an understanding of basic human emotions is essential in a good game.

Shaun Nichols: The Final Fantasy series is renowned for packing all the drama and subtlety of a feature film into the form factor of a role playing game. Many consider Final Fantasy VII to be the finest example of the series.

It was not always the smoothest of developments, however. The game was originally slated for release on the Super Nintendo, but was too large for the cartridge system used by the console. Eventually the game ended up on Sony's PlayStation console and became a major hit.

It also became an all-time great. Other games have had great graphics, or a compelling story, or smooth gameplay. But very few are able to combine all three elements on the level that Final Fantasy VII did. Truly a game that raised the bar more than a few notches.

8. Street Fighter II
Shaun Nichols: This one was a bit of a toss up among the various fighting franchises. In the end, we decided to go with Street Fighter because the graphics and gameplay translated from the arcade to the console better than those of Tekken and Mortal Kombat.

Street Fighter was one of those games that you didn't have to be really good at in order to enjoy. Perhaps the only thing more fun than learning all the intricate strategies and button combinations for special moves was picking up the controller, mashing at the buttons and beating someone who had learned all the intricate strategies and button combinations for special moves.

It was also one of the first social games in that you could gather a room full of people and spend hours challenging each other (the loser always had to hand over the controller.) The Street Fighter franchise has also spawned countless other fighting titles, in the form of sequel games and as special collaboration titles with other companies and franchises.

Iain Thomson: This is where Shaun and I fall out. I'm not a fan of these sort of games but their impact on the gaming world cannot be denied.

People like beating each other up in video. I don't understand it. but it's true. There's something about online combat that really appeals to people. I blame a lack of rugby.

That said, the game is tremendous fun, even to the uninitiated. How often can you say you've won a fight on the pressing of a few buttons?

7. Madden Football
Iain Thomson: Ever since we started thinking about this trio of lists there was a constant ringing in my ears of Shaun's voice saying: "John Madden Football, John Madden Football." I gather he's a fan.

It's understandable. Shaun's an Oakland boy and the Raiders are the home team. That aside, the Raiders have a wonderful history and John Madden is one of the few celebrities who has put his name on a game he can be proud of, even going back to the Apple II product. But the game came into its own when it got onto consoles.

The game now has a huge real-world impact. Everyday folk manage their own virtual teams and can get real world prizes, including a game in Times Square.

Shaun Nichols: Ahem. I'll have you know that I'm a San Francisco 49ers fan, Iain. You just committed a sin on par with slapping an Arsenal supporter on the back and shouting "Come on you Spurs."

For those not aware, the Madden franchise has become something of a cultural phenomenon in the US. People queue up for days every year to buy the latest edition, and the online community is so competitive that the top ranked players take up the game on a nearly semi-professional level.

Part of it is because American football lends itself very well to computer simulation. The plays are all mapped out, the progress is measured in small, set units, and the physical interactions can be recreated quite well through mathematics.

This has led console games to become extremely accurate, so much so that some credit the games with improving the real-life skills of high school and university players, making younger players better equipped when they enter the professional ranks.

And with Electronic Arts having an exclusive right to use NFL logos and players, Madden is the only game in town.

6. Sonic the Hedgehog
Shaun Nichols: As the 1990s dawned, Sega hoped that its new 16-bit Mega Drive (or 'Genesis' in North America) could go toe-to-toe with Nintendo. But to do that, the system needed a flagship title.

In 1991, the company got just that when it released Sonic the Hedgehog. A not-so-subtle swipe at Super Mario Brothers, the side-scrolling game featured a hyperactive hedgehog speeding around collecting gold rings across multiple levels.

In addition to providing a mascot for the company, the game also showcased the power of the new console. Sonic the Hedgehog was praised for its fast-paced gameplay, beautiful graphics and artwork and a solid soundtrack composed by Japanese pop star Masato Nakamura.

Sonic came to represent Sega through the remainder of the company's existence in the console market, starring in a number of sequels and spin-offs. Most recently, Sonic was paired up with old rival Mario for a set of Olympics-themed games on the Nintendo Wii.

Iain Thomson: You missed the point Shaun. Mario was slow; Sonic was fast. With Mario progress was slow because you collected every gold coin you could punch through the roof.

Sonic brought the undeniable pleasure of doing a down jump and flying over fields of spikes and getting time points as a bonus. You had to collect only a couple of rings before you could carry on.

Much as Halo rescued the Xbox franchise, Sonic made the Sega system a feature in many people's homes. It was something you could pick up in seconds and spend hours trying to beat the odds to improve your score.

5. Wii Sports
Iain Thomson: Wii Sports introduced a whole new generation to the idea that consoles could be acceptable, and I'm speaking of the older generation.

Until the Wii came out you could guarantee that if someone was having a conversation about console games they were under 45. Now the older generation are arguing the case for console games, and it's a lovely thing to see.

This was reinforced when my godmother asked for a Wii game for her birthday. She's many things: a devoted grandmother, a hard-as-nails tactician of life's rich passage and she can still drink me under the table, but I'd never have pegged her as a video game enthusiast. Yet she works the Wii like a pro.

The motion control technology behind the Wii is the key reason for this. Many people (myself included) dislike games where you have to memorise key strokes in order to do certain tasks.

Keyboards of any kind are inventions of the past two centuries, but we've been swinging clubs for nearly a million years (or around 6,000 depending on your world user manual). The Wii controller is a thing of genius and I can still remember the arm strain after a drunken night of bowling and tennis when it first came out in the UK.

Shaun Nichols: Wii Sports is in fact the best-selling video game of all time, shipping upwards of 60 million units. Yet it's a bit of a mystery to a great deal of the gaming market.

Many in the 'high end' console gaming space still don't quite understand why the Wii and Wii Sports is so popular. After all, the Wii is a comparatively underpowered console with unconventional controls, and Wii Sports uses primitive-looking cartoon graphics that even the old consoles could match. Who would want that when you could have a gloriously rendered high-def 3D shooter epic on the PS3 or Xbox 360?

The Wii proved that flashy graphics and high-powered hardware didn't matter so much when a game was easy to learn and fun to play. Fallout 3 may have been a developmental masterpiece, but girls liked to play Wii Sports. Guess which one won out in the market?

Kudos to Nintendo for reminding us all that great games are about more than frames per second and background art. In the end it's all about having fun.

4. Halo
Shaun Nichols: It's rare that a single title can establish a brand new gaming console in the market and help forge a new gaming culture at the same time. Halo managed to pull this off.

In the late 1990s, Microsoft wanted to get into the gaming market. By this time it was well known that, in order to really carve out a niche, a console needed an exclusive flagship title to convince users to buy the hardware.

To obtain its banner title, Microsoft bought game studio Bungie and its much hyped in-progress game, Halo. Originally slated to be a dual release for the Mac and PC platforms, Halo was turned into an Xbox exclusive, though later ported to both computer platforms.

When it was released, Halo delivered on its development promise and provided a major leap forward in gameplay. Particularly, the game had integration with the Xbox Live online service, and Halo enthusiasts helped to make up a major portion of the Xbox Live user base and established the service as the top online console platform.

Iain Thomson: Halo saved the Xbox from failure. Without it Microsoft's attempts to muscle in to the games market would have died.

But, and this is where Shaun and I really disagree, this is where it ends. Halo was a bog standard first-person shooter with some cute touches. Yes, it saved Xbox from going down but the game itself wasn't that innovative.

Halo is the Microsoft version of computer games. It hits enough bases to be popular, has some innovative features that had the kinks worked out of them in later games, and was exciting enough to build a marketing campaign around. The multiplayer features were fun, but not anything that other games hadn't done before.

It might sound like I'm down on Halo, and I am. There's nothing here that other vendors hadn't done before as far as I can see, and it's only down to Shaun's persistence that it got as high as it did.

3. Grand Theft Auto III
Iain Thomson: Shaun and I usually disagree on the number one slot, or who gets into the Honourable Mentions, but the lower slots caused this week's biggest row, one that went on until Friday morning. However, I had to call time and Halo got bumped down.

Some of you have commented that Grand Theft Auto III should have been in last week's list, but it was left out for a very good reason.

The first two in the Grand Theft Auto series were pretty poor games. Yes, the UK modification pack was excellent and the soundtrack was usually well chosen, but in gameplay they were lacking and the top down view made the whole thing rather awkward. Grand Theft Auto III cured that with a vengeance, but debuted as a console game, thus the reason for its presence here.

Grand Theft Auto III had three game-changing features. Firstly, the graphics were much improved with a more first-person shooter shooter feel and realistic environment.

Second was the mordant sense of humour it brought to gaming, from the adverts on the radio station to the oft-quoted game strategy of sleeping with prostitutes and then mugging them to get your money back. Sure you had missions, but if you felt you didn't need no stinking orders you could pick up a bazooka and blast something for the fun of it.

Finally, the environment was very open ended. There was nowhere you couldn't go if you didn't mind smashing up cars or drowning.

Grand Theft Auto III was the game to have as the millennium turned and millions of people spent hours shooting mob bosses, delivering dodgy parcels and beating up civilians for kicks in the virtual Liberty City.

Naturally the papers went wild, but Rockstar knew what it was doing when it came to courting the public's attention and for every Jack Thompson lawsuit Rockstar giggled and watched the sales figures climb. It's a strategy that goes right back to Leisure Suit Larry.

Some may say that by placing Grand Theft Auto III so highly we are promoting crime and violence, but that misses the point. Despite millions spent on studies trying to prove a link between violent games and violent behaviour, no proof of a link greater than 'violent people sometimes play violent video games' has been found.

Shaun Nichols: I'm still not sold on this. Yes, Grand Theft Auto III helped to rejuvenate the franchise and put Rockstar on the map, but Halo truly changed the landscape of the console gaming market. Simply put, Grand Theft Auto III sold newspapers while Halo sold consoles.

I think Grand Theft Auto appeals to us the same way that causing mayhem in games like The Sims and Civilization. So much of gaming is about living out a fantasy, and down in the nether regions of the psyche we all have a bit of the outlaw character.

The wide open style of the game was definitely a step forward. Similar games such as The Getaway were fun, but you were restricted to a single storyline. In the Grand Theft Auto franchise, the player can move along on the main quest at their own pace. It's something familiar to classic RPGs, but a new phenomenon to the hybrid action/driving genre of Grand Theft Auto.

Let me close by saying that just because I don't agree with a ranking doesn't mean I don't like the game. I've lost more than a few hours spreading mayhem on the streets of Liberty City, San Andreas and Vice City.

2. The Legend of Zelda
Shaun Nichols: Many will take issue with having Zelda as only the second best game of all time, and I can understand why. While it may not have had the financial impact of other games, many will argue that pound for pound no game was as exquisitely crafted as The Legend of Zelda.

For the younger readers out there, the game placed you in the character of Link, a young hero charged with assembling the triforce of power and saving Princess Zelda. In the process, you navigate a surprisingly vast and engrossing story for a game that could be stored on a floppy disc.

Legend of Zelda introduced the console world to a basic blueprint that is still used in console RPGs today. The player could freely navigate the world, talk to various other characters, gather items and solve puzzles, all while fighting enemies in a fast-paced action-style format.

Many will declare the Zelda games to be Shigeru Miyamoto's crowning achievement. Pretty impressive when you consider that his portfolio includes the likes of Donkey Kong and Super Mario Bros.

Iain Thomson: Miyamoto's contribution to gaming should not be denied, but I suspect it's not going to get him that many dates in the Japanese scene.

Zelda was another step down the road to making computer games accessible to all. There's only so many people you can get to blow things up, but do it in a cuddly fashion and you've got a best seller on your hands.

Although the gameplay could at best be described as fluffy, it was nevertheless fluffy enough to entice people who wouldn't otherwise have been gamers to strap on a handset and get to it. The phenomenal success of the game shows just how successful that strategy was.

1. Super Mario Bros
Shaun Nichols: It's a bit of a stretch to say that Super Mario Bros saved the entire console gaming industry, but not much of one.

In the early 1980s there were dozens of different home computing and gaming consoles all going for the same market. Price wars, diluted game quality and bad business decisions helped create a perfect storm in 1983 with what would be known as the 'great video game crash'.

With the North American market in particular left as a gaming wasteland, Nintendo eyed a move into the home market. To do so, the company needed a big draw to sell the system. Enter legendary game designer Shigeru Miyamoto.

The result was the 1985 release of Super Mario Bros. Perhaps the most important game of all time, it was also the best selling for two decades. It made Nintendo to de facto king of the market and, despite arguably superior challenging consoles in the 1990s and 2000s, helped the company remain the huge name it is today.

Mario is no longer a character as much as it is a brand. The characters from the original game have appeared in everything from racing games to fighting games to sports titles. Twenty-five years later, that little plumber with the red hat has become the most recognised image in video games.

Iain Thomson: I originally argued against Super Mario Bros for the top spot. He was just too damn cute to be a console game hero.

Yes, the game had some depth. The mushroom eating was a good direct reference to Alice in Wonderland and the gameplay owes a lot to Donkey Kong and other Miyamoto games (seriously mate, learn to code jumping properly). Nevertheless Mario introduced a whole generation to computer gaming in a way that no other game has.

In an era when computer games were all about blood and guts, Mario showed the world that you could win a computer game without spilling your opponent's blood all over the screen. People spent hours working out how to save the princess and get maximum points in a way that hadn't hit gamers for some time.

I may not like the game personally, but it was a major point in gaming history.