The Intro: Movies and licensed video-games usually go together about as well as oil and water. Fortunately, during the 90s, Disney had a string of video-games that not only served as passable entries for fans of the movies, but were great games in their own right.

Welcome to the future. In this world, humanity has apparently run out of things to entertain themselves. The mega-rich have been upping the ante steadily to the point where only one thing can really get their adrenaline racing again – racing extreme machines that hover several feet above the ground. F-Zero is an entertaining racer set in a futuristic universe (that frankly sounds awesome).

1995 was a landmark year for video games. The Playstation was only a few months old, and Sony was looking to make a comeback after Nintendo and the SNES had been trouncing their products.

Last year we presented a list of video games whose developers were nice enough to build upon the original and deliver great sequels. These included such famous examples as “Batman: Arkham City,” “Assassin’s Creed 2,” and some subsequent editions by a little-known franchise called “Halo.”

This was tough. 2016 had so, so many stellar games that almost any list would essentially leave out a few favorites. However, we combed through our personal gaming archives, had several heated discussions over email and in person, swapped a lot of skeptical hippo memes and finally managed to narrow it down to a select few candidates.

In a previous blog post we touched on five of the most iconic video games of the 1980s. This wasn’t necessarily a compilation of the greatest games (although some, like Pac-Man and Super Mario Bros. will always have re-playability), but rather those titles that defined a decade.

Who’d have thought that after exploding on the scene in the ‘80s and raking in tons of cash, those old Nintendo Entertainment System game cartridges would enjoy a renaissance on the used market decades later?

There are lots of good video games. There are fewer great retro video games. But only a select handful of retro video games qualify to hold the titles ‘Pioneer’, ‘Groundbreaking’ or ‘Legendary’.