It’s a question video game fans often discuss: which games have defined your life? Now that question has become a trending Twitter hashtag, and some familiar classics are emerging as the most widely inspiring experiences.

It all started yesterday when streaming service Filmstruck took to Twitter asking people to list their four life-changing movies under a hashtag, #FilmStruck4. In response, Twitch streamer Marcus “EpicNameBro” Sanders tweeted: “I don’t watch movies, so I can’t do the whole ‘What 4 films define you’ thing. But I can do games.” He listed four titles – Final Fantasy Tactics, Demon’s Souls, Cave Story and World of Warcraft – and added the hashtag #GameStruck4.

Since then more than 50,000 gamers (and quite a few developers) have added their own choices for the games that helped to define their lives.

You can probably guess the lead contenders. Scrolling through the hundreds of entries, Pokémon and Legend of Zelda crop up again and again, with the original Red and Blue versions of the former proving the most impactful, and Ocarina of Time and Link to the Past clearly the most defining entries in Nintendo’s beloved Zelda series.

It’s not hard to understand why. Pokémon was a phenomenon from the very beginning, bringing cute critters, a compelling collecting/battling/swapping gameplay loop and a warm narrative to handheld gaming at a time when the Nintendo Game Boy had sold over 60m units worldwide. Accompanied by anime, comics and merchandise, the series has been unavoidable ever since. Zelda, meanwhile, has been winning over gamers with its spirit of adventure and likable characters since 1986.

Just beneath these titles, though, is a wide stratum of defining favourites. Hundreds of players pick out the big first-person shooters as the titles that defined them, with Quake, Call of Duty: Modern Warfare and Halo cropping up again and again. Sonic and Mario naturally fare well, as do gentle life sims like The Sims, Harvest Moon and Animal Crossing.

There are also some surprise favourites. The PlayStation 2 title Simpsons: Hit and Run has proved especially memorable, perhaps because, with its open-world mission-based structure, it provided a Grand Theft Auto-style experience for a whole generation of kids too young to play the real thing (Grand Theft Auto, unsurprisingly pops up a lot too). Lesser platform action titles such as Spyro the Dragon and Crash Bandicoot also feature in many lists – obviously arriving at a time when today’s players were young and impressionable and puzzle-filled platformers were the most popular genre around.

Gaming brands have attempted to leap upon the bandwagon with amusingly transparent choices. PlayStation UK went for Wipeout, Shadow of the Colossus, Last of Us and God of War, while Xbox really seized upon the number four angle, choosing Gears of War 4, Halo 4, Dead Rising 4 and Forza Motorsport 4. LittleBigPlanet developer Media Molecule went for four of its own titles, including LittleBigPlanet; the online RPG Runescape opted for itself four times, as did the official Final Fantasy XV account.

The best attempt was from the Witcher account, which named lead character Geralt’s favourite games as Gwent and Dice Poker (both actual in-game pastimes – how meta) as well as arm-wrestling and fist-fighting. We’re sad that “getting off with Yennefer” wasn’t in there, but what can you do?

As for the Guardian’s games team? Keza MacDonald has named Zelda: Link to the Past, Amplitude, Demon’s Souls and the original Fallout, while I’ve settled on formative faves Space Invaders, Paradroid, Civilization 2 and Doom.

What are yours?