Four players take on waves of zombies in a post-apocalyptic landscape: it doesn't sound like the most innovative proposition, but Valve infused this enthralling co-op blaster with brilliant technical flourishes. The game's clever artificial intelligence system, named "Director", varied the numbers and ferocity of enemies as well as the lighting and music, depending on the skill and strategies of the players, making for a superbly choreographed experience that felt both spontaneous and cinematic. The industry laughed at the idea of the Wii, with its weird motion controller and comparatively dated hardware … until they saw people playing Wii Sports. Its collection of five perfectly tuned events made competitive multiplayer gaming accessible to everyone in the house, from toddlers to octogenarians, helping the machine shift more than 100m units and contributing to the idea that games can be a highly social bonding experience. There were arguably better games on Wii – Super Mario Galaxy, Super Smash Bros Brawl, for example – but Sports was the title that defined the machine and its ethos. The campaign was excellent too, drawing on Andy McNab-style heroics and pacy 1990s thriller movies and, with Captain John Price, providing one of the only truly memorable characters of this whole genre.

Of all LucasArts' memorable, quip-fuelled point and click adventures – from dark afterlife comedy Grim Fandango to the surrealist Day of the Tentacle – it's Monkey Island 2 that gets the most love nowadays, and justifiably so. The puzzles were just on the right side of deliberately obscure, the characters were strange and colourful, and the music unforgettable. And that ending still sparks discussion, 30 years on. Although Ridge Racer and Daytona USA were vital in introducing the world to 32-bit, textured, 3D visuals, it is Polyphony Digital's painstakingly authentic racing game that deserves a place here. With its exhaustive range of accurately modelled cars, its complex handling model and its emphasis on improving the player's driving skills through a range of licence tests, Gran Turismo radically altered the course of console racing game design for ever.

The 1980s were crammed with wonderful adventure games – The Hobbit, King's Quest, Leather Goddesses of Phobos – but the first point-and-click title to be designed by comic genius Ron Gilbert using the SCUMM scripting language is the classic that busted out of the genre ghetto. Filled with great jokes and B-movie cliches, the game made brilliant use of its accessible and intuitive interface, as well as seamlessly integrating cutscenes and non-sequential puzzles. Among the formative home computer platformers of the 80s – the likes of Lode Runner, Chuckie Egg and Pitfall – Jet Set Willy stands out for its surreal sense of humour and genuinely disturbing atmosphere. Like that other 8-bit pioneer Jeff Minter, Matthew Smith created his own idiosyncratic dream worlds with distinct rules and twisted logic, and as you battled through the bizarre house with its haunted wine cellars, priest holes and watchtowers, you had to contend with truly monstrous visions, from spinning razor blades to giant demon heads. Smith only made a handful of games, but with Jet Set Willy, he combined Monty Python and Hammer House of Horror to unforgettable effect.

Pong was, however, the game that kickstarted the video arcade and home console industries, the profitability of its hardware and the simplicity of the gameplay – just two bats, a ball and a scoring system – ensuring its huge success and iconic afterlife. Devised by development engineer George J Klose as a means of repurposing calculator chips, it was a big success, leading to Mattel's legendary American football and soccer titles, and no doubt piquing the interest of a certain Nintendo engineer … It's a formative space shooter, with the player battling two computer controlled UFOs amid a rudimentary star-scape, but it's that curvaceous fibre glass cabinet (which earned the game a cameo in the 1973 sci-fi movie Soylent Green) that we'll always remember. Players aim and fire at passing battleships, targeting them via a rotating periscope fixed to the front of the cab. Its success inspired the nascent arcade industry to experiment with elaborate novelty interfaces, a factor that proved vital in maintaining the success of the coin-op industry as home consoles proliferated. Western Gun (1975, Taito) Alongside Tank, Western Gun (known as Gun Fight in the US) helped lay the foundations of the multidirectional shooter genre, allowing two players to navigate a cactus-strewn landscape, blasting six-guns at each other until one cowboy fell.