Zak McKracken

Ten reasons why Zak McKracken and the Alien Mindbenders is the greatest game of all time:

1. It's positive: you save the world using your brain, but without killing anyone
2. It's fun - most non-violent games are (yawn) dull.
3. It's realistic: you play an ordinary guy in an ordinary city.
4. It's ground breaking: most of the characters are female, and are NOT chosen for their chest size
5. It's huge: travel the world, go to other planets
6. It has beautifully efficient coding - the low-res version fits on one 320K disk
7. It's mind expanding - all the main ideas are based# on genuine 'fringe' phenomena
8. It works at your own pace - no mindless clicking, very few times puzzles
9. It has had a greater influence on players than pretty much any single game (i.e not including franchises) since Colossal Cave. There has never been an official sequel, yet 17 years after its release there's another fan sequel coming out this year, there was one last year, another one is due out next year... it seems to reach parts that other games don't reach.
10. It was the first proper computer game I ever played. Everything afterward has been an anticlimax. But this year should see the release of a major fan-made sequel. I can hardly wait!