When Maxis launched Sim City in 1989, they could hardly have dreamt of the success it would achieve. Playing the game involved planning and building, well, a city. Decide the road and rail layouts, place your residential, commercial and industrial areas carefully, taking into consideration the fact that people don't want to live next to nuclear power plants or have a massive journey to their place of work. Ensure you've got a decent police force and fire brigade and generally try to make your city as pleasant to live in as possible. Get the delicate balance right and people will flock in and the tax coffers will swell, enabling you to add fancy-dan airports and baseball parks to make your city even more desirable. Then unleash an earthquake on it and deal with the resulting chaos!

Sim City was a massively addictive game and spawned a few successful sequels (Sim City 3000 being the latest, with The Sims, based on organising and controlling the lives of the people who inhabit a Sim City, due for release next year). Sim City is one of the best games ever made and not only deserves its place here, but also made our Games of The Millennium top 100, where we said: "It was - and is - a title far greater than the total worth of its constituent parts. More toy set than game, Sim City is the undisputed father of a genre. Long may we remember that."