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In an era when talented lone programmers could quickly churn out top-notch, technically amazing titles to order, the arrival of Stavros Fasoulas' second horizontal shooter, Delta, came as no surprise. Yes readers, we were spoiled rotten back in 1987.

Who's afraid of the big bad wolf? In 1984, almost everybody who owned a Speccy. Ultimate already had a reputation for quality game design, but their Sabreman series would arguably surpass these previous achievements - with Sabre Wulf alone selling a reported 350,000 copies on the eight-coloured wonder.

In 1942 (the game and the year), the world is in the throes of global conflict. Your contribution to world peace surmounts to taking on the might of the Japanese air force with a single war plane decked out with twin machine guns and a nifty loop the loop trick that baffles and bewilders the dim-witted enemy.

Of course Asteroids holds massive significance in the history of videogames, but as a game in its own right, this awesome machine demonstrated the real depths of possibility the new, and mostly frowned upon, industry had to offer.

Before Fallout came Wasteland - Interplay's masterful first stab at creating a post-apocalyptic role playing game, and easily one of the most ambitious and forward-looking games ever created for an 8-bit system.

The then fledging Sensible Software took advantage of one of Maggie Thatcher's government enterprise schemes to get this strange hybrid title off the ground. Three months down the line and armed with a demo, the duo of Jon Hare (Jovial Jops) and Chris Yates (Cuddly Chrix) went up to Manchester in the UK in the hope of getting the game signed, and came home back to Cambridge with a deal.

Robotron:2084 is the epitome of organised chaos. An unbridled jaunt into insanity and the ultimate in twitch gaming. This is a title that all shooter fans must play at least once in order to experience the finely balanced gaming perfection achieved by the legendary Eugene Jarvis.

Ever willing to take full advantage of a tenuous licensing opportunity, Ocean managed to just about capitalise on the fortunes of the humongous success of Liverpool's finest before the bubble burst for Holly Johnson, Paul Rutherford and the comedy scousers from the 118 adverts. Eh? Calm down.

A homage to arcade footy sensation Tehkan World Cup (the one with the trackball), this top-down stab at the beautiful game was, in effect, the original Sensible Soccer and provided C64 fans with one of the most technically impressive games ever released on the ageing home computer.

In 1985 this seminal title combined strategy, resource management, tech trees and real-time text adventure vignettes to incredible effect. Based on James Herbert's grisly 1973 horror novel (and released by Herbert's own publisher Hodder & Stoughton), the game tasked you with containing, researching and, eventually, eliminating a plague of giant mutant rats busily chomping their way through Greater London's terrified populace.

Bah humbug Zzap 64 and your miserly 59 per cent. Never was I in such apoplectic disagreement with one its reviews. This ground breaking horror title was, to my mind, the most atmospheric, and genuinely disturbing old school text adventure of the 1980s. 59 per cent? GET OUT!

15 years before Will Wright and Maxis came up with The Sims, Activision's David Crane had a similar idea with this quirky precursor to the life-sim genre.

The atmosphere of early games on the Commodore 64 was somewhat 'enhanced' by crude beeps and bops, complimenting the action on screen. It wasn't until the arrival of the likes of Rob Hubbard and David Whittaker that musical scores became part of the overall package when buying a new game on the beige machine. By the time Last Ninja 2 was released in1988, a score of superbly released anthems and musical scores had been composed for a myriad of games, often helping sales of the title on their own merit. A select few continually appeared in Zzap! 64's Top 10 SID tune list on a rolling monthly basis.

Creatures was a particularly obscure dichotomy in the life of the Commodore 64. At once a cutesy platformer rife with salacious humour and quirky, puzzle-based gameplay while also something of a blood-soaked gore and snuff fest.

Anybody that tells you Virtua Fighter 5 is anything other than the best 3D fighter on the market is, quite simply, wrong. With its fluid and deeply personal combat and wonderfully varied cast, SEGA's latest brawler is an absolute triumph in every sense. But then you knew that already - we told you such back when the PlayStation 3 version came out earlier in the year. Now, though, it's the turn of 360 owners everywhere to see what we've been raving about for months with this augmented version, finally arriving boasting a plentiful supply of new content while still retaining everything that made the PS3 version such a delight.

Nintendo president Satoru Iwata has once again ruled out a price cut for the dementedly popular Nintendo Wii.

Team Ninja boss Tomonobu Itagaki says that he doesn't feel "censored" by ratings boards, and believes that the difficult work undertaken by organisations like the ESRB and PEGI to classify what people find offensive, or too violent, is very positive for videogames as a whole.

Reports from this week's GameCity festival suggested that Frontier's David Braben had talked about - gosh gosh gosh - Elite IV!

Saliva isn't a particularly common ingredient in videogaming, yet it proved to be a damn-near essential component for some of Track & Field's most successful participants.

For the unenlightened, "isometric" can be defined as a form of graphical projection - more specifically, an axonometric projection. It's a method of visually representing three-dimensional objects in two dimensions, in which the three axes of space appear equally foreshortened. Clear?

Let's talk about the term "role-playing game", shall we? It's one of those phrases that has slipped into the gaming vernacular so easily that we tend to forget what it actually means, and end up using it all wrong. Common wisdom has it that any game in which your character earns experience and levels up accordingly can be tucked away under the RPG blanket. For me, that's only half right. The clue's in the name - role-playing. Games in which you create a role and then act out that character in the gameworld. Without the freedom to come up with your own virtual identity, what you're really talking about are adventure games with a few RPG trimmings.

Insomniac has said once again that it will consider putting multiplayer back in Ratchet & Clank one day, even though you won't be seeing it in the new PS3 version.

Sony has updated the PlayStation 3 Store with five new downloadable games, a pair of overdue demos and downloadable content for Folklore and MotorStorm.

Ignition has announced a new DS platform game where you play as a trio of teenage zombies fighting off an invasion of weird floating alien brains.

Before the introduction of the sublime Midway cocktail cabinets (designed for such titles as Namco's Pacman and Galaxian) the somewhat angular Taito design was king of the roost, showcasing many of their offerings such as Space Invaders, Phoenix and Moon Cresta.

PS3-owning fans of The Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion keen to see what happens on those fabled Shivering Isles without forking out for the Game Of The Year edition will finally get the chance to do so next month, as Bethesda Softworks has announced plans to release a retail PS3 version of the expansion on 20th November.

Back in 1980 the world was a very different place, and it could be said that Missile Command was a product of its volatile time.

The first matter of importance when it comes to discussing Lunar Lander is that it's really not such a great game. It comes from a time when technology was still ahead of design - we had the ability to create games, but no real concept of what games to create. Lunar Lander is the product of that wonderful era of exploration, though not a particularly successful one.

Though not the game's original name, the subsequent wealth of first class home conversions to all adopted the non-US title rather than the cheap and titular cold war pun, Rush 'n Attack. To that end, this aggressive and pointed little platformer is best remembered as Green Beret, and still provides a thrilling violence fix for today's murder-crazed twitch gamers.

An obscure, coin-devouring attempt at evolving the saturated shoot-'em-up market of the early '80s, Gravitar is perhaps best described as Asteroids covered in oil with a big weight around its neck. Only in a good way.