Although the very first computer games were created in the early 1950s, the video game explosion really began a little over 30 years ago when mysterious bleeping cabinets with the legend ‘Space Invaders’ painted on them began appearing in the nation’s pubs. Since those crude beginnings the game industry has grown into a business to rival Hollywood, and, of course, has its own awards ceremony, the Golden Joysticks, to celebrate excellence in the field.

The awards are 25 years old this year, and already over 300,000 gamers have taken part in the public vote in the quest to find the best game of the year - promising to make the 2007 vote the biggest yet. In parallel with the awards for today's greatest games comes a poll to identify the ten most influential games in the industry's short history:

1. Space Invaders – (1978)

The first and most memorable of the ‘noisy wardrobe’ installations. The deceptively simple gameplay proved immensely addictive, with players pumping in coin after coin for no reward other than the certainty of another wave of eerie skull-like icons creeping across the screen. Space Invaders lives on today, embedded in thousands of Facebook profiles as part of the Retro Arcade plug-in.

2. Pac-Man (1979)

Pac-man dispensed with even the semblance of logic that informed games from Space War through Space invaders and Defender, to offer players a virtual life as an insatiably ravenous ball being pursued around a maze by ghosts. It gave rise to Marcus Brigstocke’s superb, and widely misattributed observation: ‘Computer games don’t affect kids; I mean if Pac-Man affected us as kids, we’d all be running around in darkened rooms, munching magic pills and listening to repetitive music’.

3. Elite (1984)

The beginning of the role playing paradigm, and the first great example of British innovation in video gaming that still persists today. Elite’s combination of trading, exploration and combat has been copied and improved upon by dozens of developers – leading to today’s persistent online worlds like Second Life and World of Warcraft, but its name as entered the gamer’s lexicon as the ultimate term of approbation.

4. Tetris (1985)

An abstract geometry game that developed players’ spatial awareness, shape sorting ability and logical planning which somehow became the most addictive pastime on every computer, console and mobile phone developed since its 1985 debut. The impossibly catchy music, based on a Russian folk tune called "Korobeiniki" even spawned a hit single for a wisely anonymous Andrew Lloyd Webber.

5. Super Mario Bros. (1985)

The best-selling and most enduring games franchise does not involve armoured super-soldiers or curvy female archaeologists but, improbably, a couple of rotund Italian-American plumbers from New York. Although not the very first side-scrolling game it is by far the best known and is the wellspring from which hundreds of similar games such as Sonic the Hedgehog and Donkey Kong Country have sprung. It improved on predecessors with spin off records by being the first game to inspire a major motion picture – which starred Bob Hoskins and Dennis Hopper. The film adaptation failed to set the world alight but the game series continues to prosper, with every new Nintendo console or handheld having a Mario title as part of its launch line up.

6. Doom (1993)

Again, Doom was by no means the first game based around a series of 3-D corridors and a catalogue of guns. It was preceded by Wolfenstein 3D and Pathways into Darkness (The first game in a lineage that would eventually spawn current market-leading shooter Halo 3). Nevertheless Doom became the iconic example of the 3D shooter genre, appearing on the computers in ER and even being held responsible by some commentators for the Columbine school massacre. Remade in 2004 with state-of-the-art graphics and then spun off into an artistically undistinguished but commercially lucrative movie.

7. Tomb Raider (1996)

Whether Lara Croft did more to empower young female gamers or to arouse young male ones remains an area of doubt, but the Tomb Raider series is indisputably a huge cultural phenomenon and Lara is one of the key icons of her era. Appearing on the cover of (now defunct) hip style bible The Face, in virtually every Sunday supplement feature about gaming published this century, and starring (in the guise of Angelina Jolie) in the most successful video game to movie transfer to date, Lara Croft is one of the most recognisable characters in popular culture today.

8. The Sims (2000)

A soap opera that you control, The Sims was described by its developers as a “digital doll’s house” which goes some way to explain its uniquely cross-gender appeal. With none of the conflict or aggression that typified its goal-driven forebears, The Sims is an open-ended game experience that is more akin to owning a pet than to playing most computer games. With its seemingly limitless series of expansion packs offering new characters and accessories The Sims is a gaming experience that need never end.

9. Grand Theft Auto III (2001)

The Grand Theft Auto series shares The Sims’ open-ended nature but added the vicarious thrills of the most violent, irresponsible action movies. With its true 3D environments GTA3 offered a more immersive experience than its two predecessors. The brutal, amoral tone of the game predictably excited much moral outrage from parents’ groups and the sub-plot involving a prostitute precipitated a series of bans and sales restrictions. Controversy inevitably results in wider exposure though, and the Grand Theft Auto Series has, if anything, benefited from the scandal.

10. World of Warcraft

Blizzard’s World of Warcraft is one of the best-known online communities, with over nine million players paying £8 a month to subscribe to its immersive sword-and-sorcery world. Dubbed 'World of Warcrack' by critics decrying its addictiveness, the game has been accorded the ultimate accolade in pop culture: its own spectacularly foul-mouthed episode of South Park. With a GDP which dwarfs that of many real countries and (of course) a movie spin off in the works it looks as if WoW will continue to be one of the fastest-growing economies of the 21st Century.

This year’s Golden Joystick awards ceremony takes place on October 26th at London’s Hilton Hotel, Park Lane and will be hosted by actor and comedian David Mitchell.

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