The top all-time games are old time games

This piece started out with a Twitter post, asking for people’s top five computer (or console) games. The idea was to put together a list for a “capsule” collection that would reflect the state of the art in gaming.

But I didn’t specify in the original post that the games needed to run on a current-generation device, such as an XBox 360, PlayStation, Wii or PC/Mac. What stood out was how affectionate many gamers are for the old-school games (and how British gamers, at least, hark back to the days of the Sinclair Spectrum and even the Amstrad).

Here’s the list so far (in alphabetical order, and for series, with episodes removed for simplicity). I would have to add Defender, my personal favourite from my early teens.

Baldur’s Gate

Call of Duty

Diablo

Donkey Kong

Elite

Gears of War

Goldeneye

Half Life

Mario Kart

Oblivion

PES 09

Space Invaders

Street Fighter

Streethawk

Tekken

Wipeout

Any suggestions for the original top 5 — the games anyone would need today to build a core collection — are most welcome.

New podcast series on cloud computing

Every cloud has a silver lining – at least it does if you’re trying to rein in your IT spending. That’s the message from interviewees in a new series on cloud computing in the FT Digital Business podcast. You can subscribe to the podcast in iTunes (for UK listeners, it’s in the Business section of the directory), or you can play it here from the web.

First up is a commentary piece from Digital Business columnist Ade McCormack, and then an interview with Mike Redding, of Accenture Technology Labs. We’ll be adding more interviews over the coming weeks.