Top 10 computer games of all time

2. Tetris
Shaun Nichols: It used to be that computer games were targeted at kids and adolescents. Gameplay was supposed to be flashy and hyperstimulating, relying more on a quick trigger finger than puzzle solving. That notion was put to bed by Tetris.

The game takes seconds to learn: put the blocks together to form solid lines. Everyone from small children to old ladies can and do pick up the game. From there, an obsession begins. The simple gameplay quickly becomes maddeningly frustrating and incredibly immersive. After a while, getting that long skinny piece to complete a four-line combo is like winning the World Cup.

When Nintendo needed a flagship title for its Gameboy handheld console, it eschewed old standards like Donkey Kong and Mario for a port of Tetris, and with great success. Anyone who owned the old monochrome Gameboy from the 1990s likely still gets the old Tetris theme tune stuck in their heads from time to time. Some people have even gone so far as to write lyrics for it.

Iain Thomson: Tetris is arguably one of the most popular games of all time, but the crying shame of the matter is that the creator has seen virtually nothing in the way of royalties.

Originally the game was developed by Russian programmer Alexey Pajitnov in 1986 but, because of Soviet laws at the time, the government pocketed all the royalties. It was only after the Berlin Wall fell that Pajitnov was able to come to the West and start collecting a fraction of the royalties he deserved. He now has a happy career at Microsoft.

Tetris was stunningly addictive and began to spread almost immediately. Western companies ripped off the game from Pajitnov and kept the profits, much like his government at the time. There were more variants than you could shake a stick at but the basic principles remained the same: fill those rows.

On a private note I have tests for technology. If my dad buys it I don't (he bought into eight track, betamax and HD DVD) and if my sister plays it it must be a good game. My sister was a demon at the 3D version of Tetris and was very fond of the game for a long time.

In an age when so much of video game culture was devoted to blowing up lines of slow moving enemies or shooting everything that moved, Tetris was a wonderful relief – a game that relied on skill and cognitive dexterity rather than the ability to spot something and shoot it.

1. Doom
Iain Thomson: Getting the number one was a really tough call on this list but to my mind it had to go to Doom.

Doom is important for many reasons. It was the original first-person shooter to do it right, with good graphics (even if they have dated badly), effective use of sound and a variety of really cool weapons, including my personal favourite the chainsaw.

You could argue that Wolfenstein did all this before Doom but it did it badly. Doom was when the first-person shooter really got into its stride, and Quake et al are just modern knock offs.

But Doom also did something extraordinary in the gaming sphere in that it was given away free, or at least the first part of the game. While this practice is now widespread, in the early 1990s it was revolutionary.

Sure, shareware games had been around for a while but they were usually something knocked up in someone's bedroom. This was a full featured, exciting bit of software from a professional gaming studio that was free. You could put it on a couple of discs and share it round your friends legally. This is something some parts of the media industry still can't get their heads around.

To top it all Doom also had a multiplayer mode that allowed people to play each other over an Ethernet connection, and a map editor so that people could create their own scenarios. Doom did much to popularise online gaming in this way and also gave several people a start in the video game design industry where they could use their own designs as part of their CV.

There's still a hardcore of fans out there who play regularly and I occasionally fire up the software for a quick session just for old time's sake. In terms of long-term influence Doom has to be number one.

Shaun Nichols: Easy there, Iain. Wolfenstein may have been cartoonish and clunky, but did Doom ever have a cyborg Hitler? I think not. [A valid point, but one that got the game into trouble in Germany where they are still understandably touchy about Nazi imagery - Iain.]

You can make a pretty solid argument that Doom helped to jumpstart several very large industries within the gaming market. Obviously the popularity of the game spurred copycats and drove up the need for programmers, but a few other parts of the tech sector also reaped the benefits.

With developers looking to create 3D first-person shooters, specialist firms that created 3D and physics engines suddenly found themselves with a very lucrative new market. These days, 'middleware' platforms such as Havok and the Unreal Engine have become almost as popular as the games that they power.

The demanding nature of the new class of first-person games was also a blessing for the hardware market. With games hungry for processing power, the graphics card in particular went from secondary feature on new PCs to an essential component many gamers chose to remove and upgrade every couple of years.