I remember Prince of Persia, it was a real class game in its animation and just general game design and movement.   First of its kind to be that smoothly done I think.   Anyhow all the great games now have an origin in the old timer games pretty much

Heres another favourite of all time: DOOM also a giant leap forward and they are still spinning off derivatives now.   People call it new but basically its son of Doom   (except games now are 10x larger but not always better imo, if the gameplay measured upto the graphics people would surely be saying Battlefront soon enough but I doubt it.  Sorry to be old and sceptical :p)