Chuckie Egg
Very simple but fearsomely addictive. Another game that justified the purchase of the sturdy ol' BBC Micro back in 1983.
"One my earliest gaming memories is playing this game on my ZX Spectrum," says Phil Gaskell, Creative Director of Ripstone.
"The 'Birdie Song' theme tune, floaty jumps, and a crazy duck in the later levels. A magical introduction to a now staple genre. I do think Chuckie Egg 2 was much underrated too!"
Worms
Team17's signature game has been ported to so many different platforms that it really couldn't be left out.
It's so popular and remains as addictive as ever. War with worms. Inspired.
"The original is still my favorite. says Skybound's Boutros. "Got a little overwhelmed with all the Iron Donkeys, Chocolate Monkeys and other stuff they added later. I love that they took the classic Tank style game I can't remember the name of and added "lunacy" and mechanical variety."
"A game so ludicrously addictive in multiplayer that it became the source of some genuinely nasty arguments in my household at university," said TechRadar EID Patrick Goss. "At my wedding, my best man was still making jokes about the names I gave to my elite team of worms in his speech."
WipEout
Was the "E" exaggerated for a reason, nightclub conspiracists wonder? Probably.
Whatever. WipEout was the futuristic racer made in Liverpool that drew a lot from the club scene on Merseyside at that time. It was played in nightclubs across the country and it helped to bring gaming out of the bedroom and established it as a cool pursuit.
"Without question a defining British game, and one very much loved globally," says VG247.com's Garratt. "WipEout was, for many years, synonymous with the PlayStation name, and the latest version remains one of the best Vita titles. Sadly now defunct, the futuristic racer holds a special place int he heart of many an ageing gamer for its neo-Asian sci-fi thrills and hardhouse audio. Badly missed."
"Beautiful. Haven't seen so much attention given to the combination of slick visual design and physical feel so well executed outside of Japanese games at the time this was released," says Skybound's Boutros. "If you told me the Japanese made it, I'd have believed you, save for the fact that the visual style was like a UK graphic design studio did the pretty. Which they did."
Lemmings
A game that involved rescuing lots of lemmings from committing suicide by burrowing and building. A fine example of a challenging puzzle game that kept gamers on their toes.
"Loved the character driven powers, the sounds, the fiendishly tough puzzles and the animation and personality they could squeeze into the dozen pixels they used," says Skybound's Boutros.
"Oh no!" adds Patrick Goss. "A classic puzzler that was infuriating and brilliant."
Manic Miner
A crazy and yet inventive game that really only a British mind could produce. Perhaps the greatest and most madcap vision of the harebrained Matthew Smith.
"The entire genre of platform games can be traced back to Manic Miner," argues Automata founder Mel Croucher. "Like Elite, this was inspired by an earlier American creation, the Atari game Miner 2049er, but Matthew Smith turned it into an essentially British experience, featuring poisonous pansies and a form of lethal snot."
"As well as the platform concept, a revolutionary innovation of Manic Miner was the use of in-game music generated by the machine itself, including The Blue Danube Waltz for the title screen, and In The Hall Of The Mountain King, which looped continuously during gameplay.
"As both composers had been dead for a considerable time, there were no royalty issues. Bonus! The game was extremely difficult to complete, and a badly timed run, dodge or jump would kill off the game's hero, amusingly named Willy, and send him back to the start of the game. The game also became celebrated, or notorious, for letting the player cheat and so save themselves several days torture listening to the music.
"Manic Miner was one of the first games I ever played on Spectrum, and, almost unbelievably, still holds up today," says VG247.com's Garratt. "That era was all about jumping, and no one did it better. I never finished it, obviously, but I always loved the descending boot that told me I'd died."
"Nothing says Britsoft like Manic Miner," says digital manager of computerandvideogames.com John Houlihan. "Matthew Smith's iconic platformer was crazy, colourful, gloriously eccentric (penguins and toilets as patrolling enemies?) and also fiendishly challenging. I still can't hear In the Hall of the Mountain King without thinking of the Spectrum version."
