Video games, much like movies and music, are highly subjective.

One person might like sports games, the other might like The Sims, but there are some games that have largely managed to infiltrate every video game player’s armoury over the years.

TIME put their tech team to the test, putting 150 video game nominees through a ranking process, and managed to narrow it down to their top 50. We’re going to skip that queue and go straight for gold with the top five –  let’s get the ball rolling, shall we?

5. Ms. Pac-Man

The “Ms.” may have gotten her start as a knockoff of the original pellet-chomping arcade cabinet, but she’s got way more moves than her husband. An unlicensed modification of 1980’s Pac-Man, this 1982 game was initially called “Crazy Otto”—until the developers sold it to Midway, which branded it Ms. Pac-Man to lure female gamers. But Ms. Pac-Man did much more than put a bow on an already wildly popular game. With four mazes (compared to Pac-Man’s one), smarter ghosts and on-the-move fruit bonuses, it quickly obsoleted the original.

4. Doom

All [modern first-person shooters] owe an immense debt to Doom. Developer id Software’s 1993 classic pit an unnamed space Marine against the forces of Hell, plunging gamers into a high-intensity battle for Earth. Another id title, Wolfenstein 3D, may have arrived a year earlier. But Doom became a true phenomenon, introducing millions of gamers to what have become bedrock principles of the genre, from frenzied multiplayer deathmatches to player-led mods that can alter or completely overhaul a game’s look and feel.

3. The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time

Its approach to letting players explore a 3D world was so consummate and sublime, that it felt less like Nintendo shoehorning eureka concepts into a new paradigm, than the paradigm bending to Nintendo whims. Its clockwork puzzles, artful area and dungeon levels, and breakthrough interface—we can thank Nintendo for intuitive lock-on targeting that preserves our freedom to execute other actions—were so groundbreaking, they’re reverently hat-tipped by just about every designer, prompting some to call the game a “walking patent office.“

2. Super Mario 64

1996’s Super Mario 64 transported Nintendo fans into Mario’s universe as no other game in the series had, simultaneously laying out a grammar for how to interact with 3D worlds (and in its case, divinely zany ones). At more than 11 million copies sold, it was one of the bestselling games for the Nintendo 64, but its real impact was arguably off-platform, where it tectonically shifted the design imperatives of an entire industry.

1. Tetris

Tetris has been a global phenomenon since its arrival in 1984. In 1989, Nintendo put the legendary tile-matching puzzler on the NES and Game Boy, where it catapulted the latter to meteoric success. It’s been available on nearly every platform since, a testament to our never-ending zeal for stacking blocks. …the game’s also generated its share of life lessons, including this apocryphal truism: “If Tetris has taught me anything, it’s that errors pile up and accomplishments disappear.”

I know, you’re fuming because your favourite didn’t crack the the top five.

I suggest you head over HERE and give all 50 a quick skim, if it truly is an all-time classic you should find it somewhere there.

Anyone think the same list in 20 years time might contain ‘No Man’s Sky’?

[source:time]