5. Road Rash
Here's a fun fact that 100% of the people who played this game but were as ignorant as I was then didn't know road rash is an actual thing that refers to severe friction burns caused by motorcycle falls that culminate in the driver pasting the road with his body. This, on retrospect, makes a whole lot of sense because the game was entirely about trying to not to let that unfortunate fate befall you. A game about as raw as they get, Road Rash was about winning the race regardless of what it cost. Suddenly, morality wasn't hip anymore. It was okay to bludgeon people with sticks, to run innocuous pedestrians over and to kick the police till they hit a building or an oncoming vehicle. Much like Grand Theft Auto, Road Rash put into a game something that a lot of people had always dreamed of doing but were either too poor or too reasonable to do. It created the image of the cool badass in gaming - we weren't just nerds anymore, we were heartless brutes who drove-over handicapped people trying to cross the road without a hint of guilt. It did so with game-play that set an example for all the racing games that spawned later. Road Rash clearly stood for rebellion through its idiosyncratic characters, in-the-face off-race imagery and inspiration it served. And it's a rebelliousness that we still dearly love reveling in every once a while.