The minimalist approach let the developers create some truly bizarre environments and give Mario strange ways of navigating them. On the surface it almost seems like the simplistic visuals are left over from the N64, but after a few hours of play you'll notice all kinds of little effects that keep things lively and exciting. If we were ranking the most charming games of the system, this would be at the top of the list.

Besides, what other tense, emotion-fueled multiplayer could inspire exclamations like 'Use the golden mushroom, damn you, use it now!' or 'Holy crap, watch out for that banana peel!'? After seeing the series' regress ever since, this is still the secret favourite for many Kart fans. It may be the greatest team-bonding exercise in video game history. Two players can control a single kart during races, with one handling all the driving and the other dishing out all the power-up punishment. Of course, the multiplayer is what counts, and that's where Double Dash gets creative. Wario Colosseum is such an exhaustively twisty daredevil affair that it's only two laps long, while Baby Park is so simple in its round-and-round madness that it requires seven. The character and vehicle selection is huge, the new weapons are appropriately insane complements to returning classics, and the tracks themselves have never been this diverse. Beyond Good and Evilĭouble Dash didn't revolutionize the Mario Kart franchise like many hoped it would, but the improvements here go beyond surface deep.

Despite low sales and even lower awareness, those in the know will defend the title and its more obscure Sega Saturn sister, Radiant Silvergun, as the pinnacles of twitchy shooter insanity. Sadly, the game barely made a splash when it was released, but its legacy lives on as a downloadable. For those watching from afar, Ikaruga looks like a piece of flowing art. When it's all in motion, your eyes will glaze over and raw instinct takes over. It all boils down to a flurry of black and white pellets flying across the screen in a seemingly inescapable frenzy of action. One colour can absorb like-coloured bullets and store them for your own screen-clearing assault, but the other can deal double damage to enemies of opposite colour.

The game's focus on duality gives your ship its two distinct colours (black and white). In a time when shoot-'em-ups no longer meant a thing, to see one so beautiful and so intoxicatingly vibrant come to consoles was a real feat.

Best gamecube games