21. Rez (SEGA/United Game Artists)
This strange and much-loved rhythm/shoot 'em up hybrid thing came out at the very end of the console's short life cycle and I never played it at the time. However its cult status has since been assured by ports to PS2 and, more recently, XBLA - the latter benefiting from a sexy HD remaster. Fantastically well realised with a unique visual style, this one saw you flying through a slightly psychedelic wire-frame world to a repetitive drum beat - the aim being to shoot all the enemies and complete the soundtrack. It's really a music game (a concept which can be hard to grasp if you first approach it as a more traditional scrolling shooter) and timing your kills is of paramount importance. And though it wasn't ever an arcade game, Rez does certainly have that addictive score-attack thing going for it too. Designer Tetsuya Mizuguchi (the genius who has another great DC title further down this list) would go on to develop
Lumines and recent Kinect title
Child of Eden.
20. Dead or Alive 2 (Tecmo/Team Ninja)
In many ways technically superior to its contemporary PS2 counterpart, this fighter is still the pinnacle of a series which has (like
Mortal Kombat) lurched headlong into self-parody in recent years. The female characters are the improbably busty stuff of adolescent male fantasy, but DOA 2 actually had a decent game to back up Team Ninja's world famous line in rampant misogyny. The real stars of DOA 2 were not the ladies, but the gorgeous multi-tiered arenas which allowed you to kick a foe through a dojo wall and into a garden, altering the traditionally static confines of the genre and making the fights feel more spontaneous and cinematic. To me it was always somewhat more important to send an opponent flying off a roof and into the rock garden below than it was to actually win the fight. This meant I lost a lot of fights. A few years later the silk-skinned, baby-faced girls of the series would be shamelessly used to flog a fan service "volleyball game" based around collecting different bikinis to customise the characters. And the franchise has never looked forwards since.