Square took a time out from producing RPGs to create this 2.5D scrolling shmup, and its a good thing too as its a really stellar game. The main gameplay mechanic here is the fact that your ship has a grappling arm attached to it which can steal weapons from the wreckage of enemy ships. The diversity of the different weapons really makes the game interesting, and Square have done a really fantastic job with the presentation, with a dystopian graphics style and some excellent music.

Easily Capcom's best creation in the 3D fighting stakes until Power Stone came along. Rival Schools in a frenetic, over the top fighter which has you competing two on two tag style (your team mate can also help you from time to time by pulling off specific team attack moves). The game is a colourful, fun and underappreciated release that I wholeheartedly recommended

Clever and quirky isometric puzzle game where you need to roll dice around a platform so that the numbers on top match those of the neighbouring dice. The game has a lot of modes, some with specific puzzles which give you a certain number of moves to succeed, and others which take place as a competition to see who can get a full collection of numbers first, the multiplayer mode is especially brilliant and makes for a very cool party game.

The first Mega Man game to put the capabilities of the 32-bit systems to use (X3 was a SNES port), and also one of the most memorable. For those unfamiliar with the series the Mega Man games are 2D platformers which have you shooting enemies throughout elaborate, intricately designed levels, with the "X" series they then added adventure elements and upgrades with more of an exploration bent. Mega Man X4 has some of the best levels and environments of the series, its got a fairly good difficulty curve, and the feature of choosing to play as Mega Man, or series favourite Zero adds a lot of longevity and diversity to the gameplay.

Very original isometric horror RPG which has you playing as a magazine journalist covering a new serial killer called the Joker. The whole plot and gameplay here are admirably unique, and absorbing and the game length is quite considerable.

Intense and hugely underrated all out action game where you blast through the stages planting and detonating bombs. The main character here is fast and responsive, the core gameplay idea is exciting, and fun, there's brilliant set-pieces, a respectable storyline, extras such as the upgrade chips which you need to assign to power-up your character, and tons and tons of style.

Following the hit original (often dubbed Resident Evil with Dinosaurs due to its close gameplay similarities), Capcom decided to branch out more with this sequel and created a more action orientated game with less emphasis on the survival horror fundamentals laid down by Resident Evil. Dino Crisis 2 is simply all about blasting dinosaurs, lost of them, with loads of different weapons, and as such it succeeds at being a very fun action title.

This vertical bullet hell shooter (a sub genre of scrolling shmups where the stages are filled with huge numbers of coloured bullets in elaborate patterns) is one of the all time classics of its type, and is a very good introduction to the game style. The game is action packed, has huge screen filling weapons, memorable boss fights, and great presentation. The PS1 port of DoDonPachi is very good, in fact in this case its actually graphically better than even the Saturn version (multiplatform shmups usually tend to be better on Saturn), everything runs smoothly and slowdown is also at a minimum too.

An inventive and highly original take on the RPG genre. The game has you playing as an angel searching for souls to fight in an upcoming holy war, each warrior has to be found, and trained in both combat ability, and personality attributes (heavenly warriors must be archetypal heroes). The main gameplay is based around 2D platforming sections, and menu based combat in the dungeons, and exploration and searching for new recruits in the towns and villages. The whole game is infused with a very beautiful, very downbeat tone, with the stories of the events leading to the deaths of each of the new recruits being quite memorable and often tragic.

After playing through all the Tomb Raider games in succession for this article I really felt that Core probably didn't do enough between releases to progress the series, I tend to think the first game was probably the time when the original series was at its most competitive. Either way, when looking through all the releases and the elements they added I would have to say that The Last Revelation is probably the most polished of the games, it includes the best elements added to the prior games, adds rope swinging, has improved graphics, and removes some of the less welcome additions, the puzzles themselves are as well designed as ever, and the environments are also quite atmospheric.