Ever have that moment where you sit down with someone who's finally willing to give your favourite pastime a chance? Then again maybe you're reading this looking for some direction and an idea of which titles should be your first purchases - the ones that would really do the wondrous medium of gaming justice. It's a great sensation, but as thousands of gamers know, when someone enquires in varying ways about what 'the big deal is' with a certain game, or even one better they say they want to 'get into' gaming, most of our heads simultaneously explode with the requisite info-burst of wanting them to experience everything from having their first online game on Battlefield to losing all their rings in Sonic. As is the case with the medium itself no longer being an underground folly, gaming is fairly widely accepted as just another hobby or pastime - provided there's no overt use of gore to taunt the headline-loving tabloids into having that "Oh won't someone think of the children?!" debate again. With all that in mind, the games presented within this list don't curtail to any particular all-family ruleset. Instead each choice represents a high point of its respective genre, being easy enough to pick up and play whilst having an appeal routed in the core tenets of what make us love the overall medium so much.