Playing video games is the ultimate form of escape for a lot of people. It is just like playing through a novel, but instead of reading the chapters, you get to travel to lush worlds and great kingdoms where you are the hero and you get to save the day. You get to play god as you dictate the results of every story, through skill and the constant accumulation of your gamer pride.

Currently, video games lord over the lives of numerous individuals. Among the plethora of video games out there, ten in particular made the greatest impact on the general populace.

10. The Up, Up, Down, Down games

Up, up, down, down…oh you probably know the rest. This cheat code became an icon in the 80’s as it gave players multiple lives and other goodies for a good number of Famicom and NES games. Hard games like Contra, Double Dragon and Konami World became manageable for all the young players of that generation. The up, up, down, down code showed the entire world how a skeleton key-like cheat code can instantly boost the sales of games. Now, there are a ton of games from different platforms that have also adopted the use of cheat codes.

9. Guitar Hero series/ Rockband

It’s not easy being a guitar god like Slash, Steve Vai and Tom Morello. Nor is it child’s play to be in a successful rock band like The Smashing Pumpkins or Weezer. You have to go through the rigors of memorizing chords, pulling off eye-popping scales and the confusing pace of drum rolls. From the throes of wannabe musicians comes the Guitar Hero franchise. It is the closest thing to using a real guitar to play some of your favorite rock hits. The game features the use of a guitar controller that is sold separately from the game. The controller looks like a real guitar, complete with fret board and whammy bar. Talk about raising video game realism up a notch.

Now, the game’s developer, Harmonix, just released a simulation for the entire band. Rockband is ideally played with a pair of guitar controllers, a drum controller and a microphone. Now, you can pull your friends out of their rock star fantasies and let them experience the feeling of being rockstars in the comfort of your home. It would be a grave injustice for such an innovative set of games to not make it on this list.

(Why don’t you learn the Ways of becoming a True Guitar Hero.)

8. God of War

Through each limb severed and puzzle solved, Kratos stands atop a pile of good games that made the Playstation 2 (PS2) famous worldwide. A lot of websites and game magazines have rated God of War as the greatest game to ever grace the PS2, and it is easy to see why. Awesome worlds, nicely detailed characters, and zero loading time made the game great. Sony took the capabilities of the PS2 to its limits in developing such a game. It also licks every other action adventure game on any console with its innovative boss fights and exceptional storyline. Perhaps, the best thing about this game is its lead character. No other character kicks more monster-behind than Kratos. In fact, he has set a new standard for lead roles in video games.

7. Final Fantasy VII

Reading novels is pure bliss for the bookworm. Imagine replacing sentences with colorful worlds and paragraphs with graphical action sequences. This is how it feels to play the best Role Playing Game (RPG) to ever come out on any console. Hardcore fans of RPG games firmly believe that Final Fantasy VII (FF7) has the best storyline to ever come out for a video game. FF7 features a gripping storyline and an innovative battle system that revolutionized turn-based RPG games.

6. Street Fighter series

Combat is the ultimate form of release for aggressive people. Some people find themselves relaxed after hitting things like the punching bag and the faces of annoying fellows. You can take all that out on few rounds of Street Fighter. The game revolutionized the fighting game genre with its superior graphics, fluid movements and a wide variety of martial arts techniques. You can match up fireball-tossing Karate masters with mysterious Yoga practitioners and see how they fare against each other. Of course, you will need hours and hours of practice before mastering the move set of each character. That’s okay, since it wouldn’t require broken bones and bloody noses when mastering each martial art.

Street Fighter 2 Turbo

Super Street Fighter II Turbo

Street Fighter Alpha

Street Fighter IV

5. Ragnarok

Saying that Ragnarok is not your typical RPG game is an understatement of humongous proportions. Unlike other RPGs, Ragnarok captured the essence of creating a lifestyle. At the peak of its popularity, hordes of players spent more hours wandering around its fictional world than any other human activity. Ragnarok offered interaction from different players around the world as you engage the game’s rich storyline. You can form parties and guilds so that you can take down powerful monsters and rival guilds. You can also use it as a good alternative to instant messaging. According to some hardcore gamers, Ragnarok isn’t just a game; it is an online community hiding behind parallel worlds and magic spells.

4. Quake

Rack that shotgun and shoot everything in sight. Applying this mantra while playing against other players can actually get you places. Quake follows the path laid by shooting game pioneers, Wolf 3D and Doom, and greatly improves on the good points of both games. Playing through the levels of Quake can induce startling episodes as you shoot down nicely rendered monsters at almost every turn. Though, most players prefer to gut it out with each other in the multiplayer deathmatch mode. The deathmatch is intense as every player is subjected to fast paced action and the thrill of picking up high-powered weapons that randomly spawn throughout the map. Quake is considered one of the chief innovators of the shooter genre. Until now, its death match mode is still quite popular even though it was released a decade ago.

3. Pacman

A family that plays together stays together, at least during Saturday afternoons when school work and office work are non-factors. That philosophy may have been derived for the most popular game for the entire family. Pacman depicts very little violence, but is one of the most thrilling games of all time. Nowadays, parents of current gamers still play the game on their computers since Pacman is one of the leading free downloadable games available in the internet.

2. Mario 3

Most games that came after Mario 3 either took some elements from the game or were inferior copycats. Mario 3 is credited by gaming aficionados as the sparkplug of the graphical revolution that paved the way for the graphically enhanced games of today. For a game from an 8-bit console, Mario 3 displayed superior graphics and gameplay that was supposedly impossible for the Famicom and the NES. Up to now, some people download NES emulators for the sole reason of experiencing this game again.

Super Mario 3 finished in 11 minutes.

1. Space Invaders

People have a knack for shooting down things that they don’t know or understand. Extra-terrestrial creatures are the leading answers for this category, along with ghosts and the Loch Ness monster. Space Invaders gives people the chance to actually obliterate all those nasty aliens. Looking at the game currently, you can say that there is nothing special about Space Invaders since it looks like a caricature when compared to the lifelike games of this generation. But this game takes credit for starting the entire video game revolution because it was the main reason why people bought the Atari console in the first place. The Atari was the very first video game console developed for home use, and its success paved the way for all the consoles that you are currently enjoying.

The real world will always be marked with problems, duties and the irritating faces of mother-in-laws. These ten games gave people another good option when escaping the hassles of their daily lives. Some of them even paved the way for the best games that you currently enjoy. The world of video gaming is just like an escape hatch to another dimension, where better life stories are told and more interesting adventures are present. Who wouldn’t want to live in a world where human responsibility is simply encased by precise button mashes anyway?

(Know the Top Ten Best Consoles In The Video Game Industry where this games are played from and the greatest games on Nintendo Family Computer Console.)

* No matter what video game you play, it pays to have the skills and the dexterity to breeze through the levels and declare victory. With tips to help you become a video game expert, you’ll cruise through just about any game without ever looking for cheat codes and easy ways out.