As Nintendo’s Mega Drive hardware competitor, the SNES had one advantage over its rival and that was a thing called Mode 7. Essentially this hardware trick enabled the backgrounds, when in this mode, to be whizzed around the screen at a phenomenal rate.

One of the first games to take advantage of this was the Wipeout of its day – F Zero - a simple racing game featuring futuristic hover racers. There were tracks aplenty, each getting gradually more tortuous, and several different skill leagues (or Cups as they were called) to work your way through.

F Zero was unlike most other racers of the day because it really rewarded practice. After a few hours of play you’d notice that the shoulder buttons enabled you to turn at an angle of a few more degrees than normal, and this made all the difference when it came to getting around the game’s many hairpin bends as quickly as possible. Hundredths of a second could be shaved off your time when you got things right and this made it absolutely perfect multiplayer fare. You’d have a go and set a time, then hand the controller over and challenge a mate to beat it.

The gameplay was so sublime that an after-pub session could take hours as you desperately swerved to avoid the jumps in the track (you slowed down in mid-air), the greyed out patches at the side of the track (which slowed you down) and the other, computer-controlled racers.

A triumph of game design and obviously coded by people who knew their gameplay as well as their technical onions, F Zero deserves its place in this hallowed Hall of Fame. F Zero X, the updated N64 version, was released at the back end of last year, and though it’s a good game, it doesn’t have the class of the original.