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Sadly, the genre has suffered lean times with the undisputed master, LucasArts, pulling the plug on the follow-ups to classics including Sam 'n' Max and Full Throttle. Sam'n'Max has found a new home with episodic adventures, but many of us are still yearning for full-length adventures to test our brains and wits again. For you, we've come up with Computer Shopper's Top 10 list of the best graphical adventure games. It's been hard to do, and in the process we've had to lose some old favourites including Zak McKracken and the Alien Mindbenders and Broken Sword. The games we have chosen are here in reverse order:

10 It Came from the Desert

Meteorites. Strange disappearances. Giant Ants. It can only be It Came from the Desert.

Cinemaware's 1989 classic is best described as an interactive 50s B-movie. You play the role of a geologist sent to investigate a meteorite crashing in the remote desert town of Lizard Breath. Soon you realise all is not what it seems, and before you know it you're fighting to save the town from a plague of giant ants.

It Came from the Desert is a graphical adventure, interspersed with a series of mini-games. You have to find the queen's layer and destroy it before 15 days are up, or the ants will overrun the town. You must use your investigative skills to prove the ants exist to the townsfolk, do battle with the beasts with a variety of weapons and vehicles to slow the tide and even escape from hospital in a hilarious chase sequence. The claustrophobic small-town atmosphere is spot-on, and defeating the ants before time runs out is a serious challenge.

9 Leisure Suit Larry 3: Passionate Patti in Persuit of the Pulsating Pectorals

Sierra's Leisure Suit Larry series games are best known for their smutty humour. This game revolves around the misadventures of Larry Laffer, a hopeless lothario with a receding hairline, white polyester leisure suit, and chat-up lines that should have died with the 1970s.

Set on a tropical island paradise-cum-tourist trap, the game follows Larry's comical misadventures as he stumbles through a sequence of embarrassing romantic failures. The game's second protagonist is Passionate Patti, a club pianist with the misfortune of being the woman of Larry's dreams. You control the actions of both Larry and Patti in an interweaving plot that takes them from health spas to jungles.

Released in 1989, this was one of the last Sierra titles to use a text parser that required you to type commands to interact with the game. Although the humour is often crude, clever puzzles and challenging gameplay make this often-surreal adventure a classic.

8 Indiana Jones and the Fate of Atlantis

This game was so good that rumours abounded for ages that it would be the plot of the fourth Indiana Jones film. Fate of Atlanis features everything that's great about the original movies: fighting against Nazis, a strong female companion (Dr Sophia Hapgood) and, most importantly, a plot that revolves around a one of the world's great mysteries.

With the journey taking place all round the world and a choice of three different ways of playing the game, Fate of Atlantis was everything that was brilliant about adventure games.

7 Gabriel Knight: Sins of the Fathers

The first in Jane Jensen's series of point-and-click mystery/horror games takes our eponymous hero on a journey through a dark underworld of New Orleans voodoo, murder, and his own family's mysterious past.

Sharp dialogue and characterisation bring an intense sense of drama and realism to the game. While many adventure games revolve around endless puzzles with little relevance to the story, the puzzles here blend in perfectly with a story that is both compelling and ominous.

With revolutionary rotoscoped character animation, stunning backgrounds, and a CD-ROM version with a voice cast including Tim Curry, Mark Hamill and Michael Dorn, Gabriel Knight re-defined the genre

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of mystery adventures.

6 Simon the Sorcerer

Rare for being a British graphical adventure, Simon the Sorcerer succeeds mostly because of the humour, and the brilliant voice work by Red Dwarf's Chris Barrie. Transported into a magical adventure world, Simon must go on a quest to rescue the wizard Calpso from the evil sorcerer Sordid. Great graphics, great puzzles and amazing riffs on popular fiction make this a true gem.

5 Beneath a Steel Sky

Beneath a Steel Sky was different to the other adventure games being released in the early '90s: it was dark and featured a chilling vision of the future. Playing as Robert Foster, with your robot companion Joey, it's your job to destroy the all-powerful LINC computer that runs Union City.

Comic artist Dave Gibbons drew the accompanying comic book, which introduced the game and illustrated the games backdrops, giving Beneath a Steel Sky a beautiful and original look that has never been replicated.

4 Space Quest III

Picked up by an automated garbage freighter, the space janitor Roger Wilco awakens from hibernation in a fun riff on the start of Aliens. His job is to get off the ship and save the Two Guys from Andromeda, who've been kidnapped and forced to write appalling software games.

It's absolutely brilliant with plenty of in-jokes for sci-fi fans, including the binned tie-fighter at the start of the game and the bounty-hunter that watches you jump to HyperSpace, just like in the Empire Strikes Back.

Tough puzzles (it's easy to die in this one), but great visuals and lots of different worlds to visit make Space Quest III a true classic. If you want a break part way through, then there's nothing like a game of Astro Chicken.

3 Sam'n'Max Hit The Road

The idea of a private detective dog and his psychotic rabbit sidekick isn't a usual one, but it's a brilliant one. Right from the intro where our brave duo decapitate an evil robot doctor, only to discover his head is a time bomb that they throw out of the window because there's "only strangers out there", you're hooked.

Amazing vocal work with a tight script helps drag you into the crazy world of Sam'n'Max. With a journey round the US taking in great sites such as the world's largest ball of twine and an escaped sasquatch, the zany plot is something that has never been done so well again.

2 Day of the Tentacle

One of the first graphical adventures to come with a fully-spoke soundtrack, Day of the Tentacle was a true masterpiece of graphical adventures. The plot is insane: Purple Tentacle drinks toxic water to grow arms and decides to conquer the world.

From there, it's up to you to play the meddling kids (Bernard, Laverne and Hoagie) that will stop him by travelling back in time to stop the toxic waste that has given Purple Tentacle his power. The beauty of the plot is that you've got three characters to control: one in the present, one 200 years in the past and one 200 years in the future.

Puzzles you solve in the past can help you in the future, while objects you send from the future can help you in the past. It sounds complicated, but it's beautifully implemented. Rarely has there been a game so clever and so good.

1 The Secret of Monkey Island II: LeChuck's Revenge

The number one slot was hard to pick, but we had to go with LeChuck's Revenge. The original Monkey Island was brilliant, but this one is by far the best adventure game ever. It's a series that has gone on to inspire the way we think of pirates: Pirates of the Caribbean wouldn't be there without this game.

Playing as the slightly useless Guybrush Threepwood (now with barely-adult beard), it's your job to stop the Ghost Pirate LeChuck again and recover the treasure of Big Whoop. Full of brilliant puzzles, such as the spitting competition or the monkey that you have to use as, well, a monkey wrench, the slightly twisted plot is brilliant to work through.

With hours and hours of game play, an incredibly clever plot that sees the game start near the end with Guybrush explaining what happened (eat your heart out Quentin Tarentino), LeChuck's Revenge is as close to perfect as an adventure game can get.