3. Grand Theft Auto III
Let's be honest, GTA 3 sold systems. It was a killer app that nothing at the time could touch. If you owned a PC or console you almost certainly owned GTA 3, it was just that ground-breaking... or was it? Heading back again to the days of the Amiga 500 and Atari ST we find ourselves in 1991 playing Hunter, a true 3D third-person game where you had the use of any number of vehicles to finish various missions. Different game modes offered an early incarnation of free-roam and was by far the most interesting to players as it removed the limits that preset missions confined the player to and thus encouraged map exploration. Cars, boats, helicopters, hang gliders and so many more vehicles were available to the player and even a wind surfer could be mounted to venture out in Hunter's hunter-green unique world. As with many early games on this list visually it was way ahead of its time. The true polygonal landscape along with actual physics and day/night cycles was pretty much beyond anything seen up to that point. The ability to simply complete the task at hand employing whatever vehicle you wanted or even do the whole thing on foot felt new and exciting, and it would be a full ten years later before the GTA franchise opted for similar 3D open-world game mechanics found in GTA 3. Hunter created the term 'sandbox' and it was every bit a killer app of its time as GTA 3 was.