Dreamcast20 #19: Chu Chu Rocket

2018 marks the 20th anniversary of the Dreamcast, Sega's final - and in my opinion the finest - home videogame console. Despite a range of excellent games, it simply failed to compete against Sony's PlayStation 2. To celebrate, The Angriest counts down its 20 best games.

Some times the best videogames are the simple ones, and they often don't come simpler that puzzle games. Chu Chu Rocket. Conceptually it's pretty easy: there's a grid upon which a train of mice are walking in a straight direction. Also roaming the board are cats looking to eat the mice. The player can drop arrows onto the grid to change the direction of the mice and guide them into a rocket that allows them to safely escape. If they get on the rocket, the player wins. If they get eaten by cats, the player loses.

It's a simple enough concept, but it's all playing just a little too fast to handle. It rapidly becomes a frantic combination of strategy and twitch gaming as the player starts having to lay down paths in faster and faster ways and in more and more complex set-ups.

N64:20 #12: Tetrisphere (1997)

In 2016 the Nintendo 64 turns 20 years old. It was Nintendo's third videogame console, produced to succeed the enormously successful SNES. Upon its release in 1996 Time magazine claimed it was "machine of the year". While the N64 failed to best Sony's enormously popular PlayStation - a console in whose early development Nintendo had a key hand - it still sold almost 33 million units worldwide and hosted some of the greatest videogames ever made. To celebrate its anniversary I'm counting down my top 20 N64 videogames; not necessarily the best titles released on the format, but definitely my personal favourites.

Canadian developer H2O Entertainment started working on a new puzzle game in 1995, to be released on Atari's struggling Jaguar console. The game involved shifting groups of coloured blocks around a sphere in order to destroy them and eventually reveal the core underneath - and thus win the level. It was the sort of high-concept puzzle game that traditionally sold quite well on videogame consoles. After Nintendo purchased the rights to release a version of the game for the Nintendo 64, the Jaguar collapsed and the game - then titled Phear - became a Nintendo exclusive. Since Nintendo held the rights to the legendary puzzle game Tetris the new game was retitled Tetrisphere, partly to reflect it's Tetris-like gameplay and aesthetic and partly as a bluntly commercial sales pitch. The gambit worked: while lacking significant marketing upon release Tetrisphere still managed to become a solid seller for the N64 and a very popular puzzle game.

NES30 #3: Tetris

In 2015, Nintendo's hugely successful Nintendo Entertainment System (NES) turns 30 years old. The NES, an adaptation of Nintendo's already successful Famicom console, re-invigorated console gaming internationally after the collapse of Atari and went on to sell 43 million units worldwide. NES30 celebrates this anniversary by counting down my favourite 30 games for the system.

In 1984 Alexey Pajitnov was an artificial intelligence researcher working in a Soviet Union laboratory. He had a tendency to program small computer games to test new hardware when it was installed. One day he created a simply puzzle game comprised of falling blocks. He made the shapes tetronimos - objects comprised of four squares arranged together. When it became clear that his screen was rapidly filling up with tetronimos he programmed his game to erase any row on the screen that became completely filled with squares.

When Pajitnov's little game proved hugely popular among the laboratory workers, a few of them ported it to the PC. It suddenly became an enormously popular game across Moscow, under the now legendary title Tetris. Today Tetris is almost certainly one of the most famous and well-played videogames in the entire world. and for many gamers it is a brand synonymous with Nintendo.

NES30 #19: Dr Mario

In 2015, Nintendo's hugely successful Nintendo Entertainment System (NES) turns 30 years old. The NES, an adaptation of Nintendo's already successful Famicom console, re-invigorated console gaming internationally after the collapse of Atari and went on to sell 43 million units worldwide. NES30 celebrates this anniversary by counting down my favourite 30 games for the system.

Dr Mario exists because Tetris exists. So successful was Alexei Pajitnov's addictive falling block puzzle game that by 1990 pretty much every owner of a Nintendo console also owned a copy of it. With a huge number of gamers playing Tetris, Nintendo were understandably keen for them to buy another game. So intent were they on making their own puzzle game a smash hit they branded it with their flagship game franchise, Super Mario Bros. They assigned one of their top designers, Gunpei Yokoi, to oversee its development. The resulting game, Dr Mario, is not as good as Tetris - what puzzle game is? - but it is a wonderfully enjoyable puzzle game nonetheless.