10. Fallout (1997)
One of the problems with this retrospective is settling on a single release from a specific publisher or era. I debated between Fallout and Baldur's Gate, but settled on Fallout for two reasons. First, it came out before Baldur's Gate. Second, it kicked off a renaissance of 2D RPGs with great stories and hours and hours of gaming bliss. RPGs have always given gamers the best bang for their buck, and you could spend the rest of your summer buried in several of these classics for less than half the price of a new game. From 1997 - 2002, Black Isle Studios and Bioware maintained a pact of mutually assured awesome and - either separately or together - created no less than eight spectacular computer RPGs. (I'm counting Baldur's Gate II: The Throne Of Baal as a separate game - any game that provides 50+ hours of gameplay and ends an epic storyline in grand fashion deserves to be called its own game). This run is one of the biggest achievements in gaming history, in my humble - and obviously right - opinion. The original, CD-ROM bound version of Fallout works on some older PCs, but it was made during the dark days of Windows 95 and its dreaded hell-spawn: the early versions of DirectX. Newer computers have trouble running the original release, but should have no problem with the versions on Steam or Good Old Games. The downloadable version still has some bugs, but it's the least problematic version of the game going. Fallout isn't as flashy as this generation's Fallout games, but it's still the real deal. It's got tons of old-school RPG goodness and establishes one of the coolest settings in video games. Give it a go, raise your luck stat to 10, pick the Bloody Mess perk, and watch the hilarity/carnage ensue.