Games released on November 18
16 games that still hold up, from Donkey Kong Country in 1994 to Far Cry 4 in 2014
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Donkey Kong Country 1994
Turns 32 this year SNES
Donkey Kong and Diddy Kong take turns through 40 levels of jungles, temples and snow, drawn from 3D models rendered on Silicon Graphics workstations. It re-established Donkey Kong as a major Nintendo franchise.
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Donkey Kong Country 3: Dixie Kong's Double Trouble! 1996
Dixie Kong and her baby cousin Kiddy Kong cross 8 worlds and 48 levels to save Donkey Kong and Diddy Kong, throwing each other to find hidden areas, in the third Donkey Kong Country.
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Chrono Cross 1999
Turns 27 this year PlayStation
Serge slips into a parallel world where he drowned ten years earlier, and the story crosses between the two, Home and Another.
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Star Wars: Rogue Squadron II - Rogue Leader 2001
A space combat game for the GameCube in which you fly as Luke Skywalker or Wedge Antilles through battles from the original Star Wars trilogy.
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Metroid Prime 2002
Turns 24 this year GameCube
Samus moves into first person without the game turning into a shooter, rolling through pipes as a ball and scanning everything for the story. It showed that a first person game could be about exploring.
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Metroid Fusion 2002
Turns 24 this year Game Boy Advance
Samus works through a space station overrun by X Parasites while a clone of her, the SA-X, stalks the corridors. With Metroid Prime, it brought the series back after eight years away.
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Tom Clancy's Splinter Cell 2002
Turns 24 this year Xbox
A stealth game in which Sam Fisher, an agent of a covert NSA division called Third Echelon, looks into missing CIA officers in Georgia, using the darkness as his cover.
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XIII 2003
Turns 23 this year GameCube, PlayStation 2, Xbox
XIII wakes with amnesia and sets out to uncover his identity over 13 chapters, in a first person shooter drawn like a comic book and loosely based on a Belgian graphic novel series.
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Dragon Ball: Advanced Adventure 2004
Turns 22 this year Game Boy Advance
Young Goku fights through the early story of the Dragon Ball manga, up to the battle against King Piccolo, in a side scrolling beat 'em up with a one on one fighting mode of 30 characters.
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Metal Slug Advance 2004
Turns 22 this year Game Boy Advance
Two recruits at a survival training camp fight the invading troops of General Morden in a Metal Slug game for the Game Boy Advance, with a life bar and 100 cards to collect.
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Left 4 Dead 2008
Turns 18 this year Xbox 360
Four Survivors fight their way between safe areas after a zombie outbreak, while an AI Director adds or takes away items and infected to keep the tension steady.
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The Legend of Zelda: Skyward Sword 2011
Link, a resident of the floating town of Skyloft, goes down to the abandoned lands below the clouds to rescue his childhood friend Zelda, in the first game of the Zelda timeline.
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New Super Mario Bros. U 2012
Turns 14 this year Wii U
A Mario launch title for the Wii U on one connected world map, with a Flying Squirrel suit and a fifth player on the GamePad who lays blocks for the others. It is the first Super Mario game in high definition.
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Little Inferno 2012
Turns 14 this year Wii U
You sit in front of a fireplace burning toys and gadgets bought from catalogs to keep warm as the world outside grows colder, in a short puzzle game about finding which things to burn together.
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Dragon Age: Inquisition 2014
Turns 12 this year PlayStation 3, PlayStation 4, Xbox 360, Xbox One
The Inquisitor sets out to calm a Thedas in turmoil and close the Breach, a tear in the sky that lets demons through. Its hub regions, full of camps, dungeons and world bosses, do not scale to your level.
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Far Cry 4 2014
Turns 12 this year PlayStation 3, PlayStation 4, Xbox 360, Xbox One
A shooter set in Kyrat, a Himalayan kingdom in civil war, in which Ajay Ghale comes home to scatter his mother's ashes and is caught in it, with a grappling hook and elephants to ride.
