13. Samba De Amigo (SEGA/Sonic Team)
Probably the only game that will ever come bundled with an expensive set of maraca controllers, Samba De Amigo could be credited with bringing the peripheral-led music game out of the arcade and into the home for the first time - pre-empting the future success of
Guitar Hero. Gameplay was simple, with players asked to shake their maracas to the beat of some dance-friendly Latino sounds, including the hits of Ricky Martin and the Gipsy Kings. Along with the inherent fun presented by the game's mechanic - whilst granted you social permission to behave like a loon in your living room before that was commonplace - the game also boasted really eye-catching presentation and introduced a cast of characters who still linger about the fringes of the SEGA canon in various "All-Stars" spin-off properties. This arcade port recently found a new lease of life on the Wii, although that version suffers from inaccurate controls when compared with the DC one and should be avoided.
12. Sonic Adventure (SEGA/Sonic Team)
RC: I loved every second of it. I still play it today, downloaded from the Playstation Store. To a Sonic fan at the time, it was everything they ever wanted from Sega. I was just blown away at seeing all my favourite characters in 3D and exploring Sonics world. I really got into the story and enjoyed playing through with the other characters finding out their side of the tale. The Chao mini game was a great idea too: a mini-game played on SEGAs VM memory device, in which you bred cute creatures to race against one another. Sega were the best at utilizing the potential of their unique memory card.SL: I loved Sonic Adventure back in the day, and so I find it a little heartbreaking to see it often dismissed these days as the start of Sonics downfall. Yeah the camera is awful and the adventure aspect is largely pointless, but the action stages themselves were great fun. Seeing Sonic racing through the 3-D stages for the first time was a rush for anyone who grew up loving the early games. No amount of retrospective cynicism could ruin that. This mascot-starring launch title is also the best selling game on the platform: one of only seven titles to pass the 1 million sales mark, selling 2.5 million units - double the amount of next best selling game SoulCalibur. This figure doesn't account for its subsequent success on PC and Gamecube as
Sonic Adventure DX and, more recently, XBLA and PSN. And yet, as Stephen rightly acknowledges above, the game is so often dismissed as a failure and seen as the point when SEGA's speedy, blue hedgehog faded from relevance. Some of this is justified, with the game riddled with bugs and compromised by awkward camera angles. Some of the additional characters, such as Big the Cat (who's fishing adventure is about the farthest removed from fun a thing can be), are just painful to play. Meanwhile Sonic's own transition into 3D lacks the sophistication of Nintendo's contemporary Mario games - with some levels easily beatable by just holding forwards as Sonic more or less guides himself around linear pathways. The voice acting is also very bad - and not even in the fun way most Dreamcast voice acting is bad - and the decision to drop the hero into a more "realistic" human setting is just as baffling. Yet for the most part it's still a lot of fun careening around the Emerald Coast, running through loop de loops. For an early adopter of SEGA's console, it's guaranteed to dig up happy memories as soon as Richard Jacques' fist-pumping soft rock soundtrack kicks in on the main menu. Just thinking about it makes me want to boot it up and walk around Station Central as the embodiment of outmoded 90s cool himself. So why is it so high up this list with genuinely well-made, polished games behind it? Because of the memories it engenders mostly. That and the fact that Sonic Adventure 2 (which is broken in more ways than I can make room for here) makes it look like a bloody masterpiece.