Speedball 2 - sports game (Bitmap Brothers)
If you're a football fan, you'll know that the baying of any given crowd reveals an inherent truism: we're a nasty, violent, vicious species, and sports rob the common individual of their respectable veneer. Speedball recognised this years ago. Speedball 2 did it with far greater style. And it still hasn't been surpassed. From its ironic calls for ice cream at half time, to copious deaths throughout a season, Speedball 2 remains the ultimate in dystopian futuristic sports.

Manic Miner - platform game (Matthew Smith)
Listen to your average ZX Spectrum obsessive, and you'd be mistaken for believing that Nintendo's Miyamoto had never existed, and that Mr Smith created this genre single-handedly. It's not true. It's all a grand, slightly romantic, but nonetheless reprehensible lie. But Manic Miner is special, simply because it was the first experience many UK gamers and developers had of a dominant genre.

Wolfenstein - first person shoot-'em-up (id)
It was the first although some longterm gamers might cite 3D Monster Maze as an innovator (and precursor). And, yep, it's true - the odd, low-tech and very stylised ZX81 title did pre-empt Wolfenstein, but to mention the two in the same breath is akin like comparing your average Joe in his local having a cigar, and Clinton opening a pack of Cubans in the Whitehouse. You dig?

Zaxxon - shoot-'em-up (Sega)
What a prestigiously oblique game this was. We'll conclude this short moment of reverie with a question: which came first? Knight Lore or Zaxxon? And on that note...

Final Fantasy series - RPG (SquareSoft)
Choosing a solitary Final Fantasy title would be, Future Gamer has decided, an impossible task. Although the series prior to FFVII didn't create a massive splash in the UK, the influence of early titles can be discerned in games too numerous to mention. It's better to acknowledge the enormous contributions of every episode. And have you seen the ballroom dancing scene in FFVIII yet? Worth the asking price alone.