10 Games We All Used To Play In IT Class

Line Rider came along a bit later than the majority of the games on this list, arriving in 2006 when filters and blockages of solutions like proxy sites had become far more sophisticated than just a few years previously. The presence of countless mirrors meant that there was always some way to play it, however, and the fact that it became popular in tandem with the emergence of YouTube as a platform gave people more incentive to play, as creations could be shared worldwide rather than just around the school.

The addictively simple premise of Line Rider involved drawing lines with a pencil tool not entirely unlike the one seen in Microsoft Paint. A sledder would then ‘ride’ these, with simulated physics determining if he would stay upright or crash.

The challenge was either to make the longest, most ridiculous and/or visually impressive course for the rider, with huge jumps and loops the highlight of any course. The constant re-editing necessitated by tweaking lines to ensure his continued survival meant that hours disappeared in a flash, doubtlessly affecting the quality of a huge number of student coursework submissions.

Line Rider was popular enough to graduate to the Nintendo DS, but it struggled to make much of an impact largely because the browser game (from which many of the most beautiful courses are still immortalised online) by comparison was free.