Ah summer, time to kick off the shoes, jump in the nearest body of water and try your best to be eaten by whatever lives in said body of water. Summer may be associated with a lot of things, but traditionally, gaming isn’t one of them as people head outside and leave their various gaming platforms to sit until cooler times come about.

Or do they?

You may find that summer hasn't always been about shovelware and horrible movie tie in games. It is in this spirit of discovery that we delve into the summer releases of days gone by and present our list of the Top Ten Summer Game Releases.

A word of clarification before we get started though. To qualify for the list a game had to be released from June to August, those being the traditional summer months. They also couldn't be a sports game as sports games are seasonal releases and I'm not about to get flooded with hate mail for picking the wrong version of Madden.

10. GoldenEye 007 - August 25, 1997

Younger readers may not believe me when I say that there was a time when James Bond games were actually good. Well, one of them any way. GoldenEye is regarded as one of the best console shooters ever, and was one of the first to feature a zoom equipped sniper rifle for all of those pesky head shots and context sensitive hit locations. The split screen multiplayer was also a hoot with five different game types, eleven levels and dozens of characters from various Bond games. The multiplayer, challenging single player missions, wealth of Bond nods in the form of gadgets and weapons and the fact that it was based on the last good James Bond movie since Daniel Craig took up the PPK all combined to create one hell of a shooter experience.