[Contributors: Jason McMaster (video capture), Keith Vincent (intro animation); Moral support: Ryan Kuo, Elise Vogel; Intro music by Spooky Johnson's Original Rock and Roll Band]

"You are standing in an open field west of a white house, with a boarded front door. There is small toilet here."

Any gamer worth his salt will recognize this as a toiletized version of the classic opening lines from 1980's Zork I.

Since the dawn of pixels, developers have attempted to bring their virtual worlds to life by featuring a variety of people-actually-live-here cues. Yes, there are white houses with boarded front doors and mailboxes. There are beds in which non-player characters can sleep, and kitchens in which to eat. And there are toilets to make virtual poops in.

Nothing arguably brings a game world to life more effectively than the inclusion of a humble, flushable can. Virtual toilets are an essential ingredient in creating the visual fabric of a fictional game world. Which is why we've decided to spend the next 30 days -- yes, I said 30 days -- celebrating this unsung, unappreciated hero of gaming.

We're about to take you on a decades-spanning, counter-clockwise-turning journey through time, exploring the virtual bowls of yesterday and today. You will contemplate the many thousands of surreal man-hours that went into designing these virtual bowls. We'll approach each bowl with the clinical eye of a sociologist; we'll study the bowl carefully, testing out the functions of each bowl, giving it a flush or two, and since most toilets occur in first-person shooters -- as a bonus -- we will attempt to demolish it.

Grab a can of Lysol and today's paper, because your circular, spinning, whirling journey down the drain of videogame toilet history begins now...

Bowl 1: Duke Nukem 3D (1996) [Watch the video]

Bowl 2: Katamari Damacy (2004) [Watch the video]

Bowl 3: Resident Evil 5 (2009) [Watch the video]

Bowl 4: Silent Hill: Homecoming (2008) [Watch the video]

Bowl 5: Counter-Strike (2000) [Watch the video]

Bowl 6: Dead Rising (2006) [Watch the video]

Bowl 7: Bully (2006) [Watch the video]

Bowl 8: BioShock (2008) [Watch the video]

Bowl 9: Assassin's Creed (2007) [Watch the video]

Bowl 10: Call of Duty: World at War (2008) [Watch the video]

Bowl 11: The Darkness (2007) [Watch the video]

Bowl 12: Dead Space (2008) [Watch the video]

Bowl 13: Fable II (2008) [Watch the video]

Bowl 14: Doom 3 (2004) [Watch the video]

Bowl 15: Fallout 3 (2008) [Watch the video]

Bowl 16: F.E.A.R. 2: Project Origin (2009) [Watch the video]

Bowl 17: Prey (2006) [Watch the video]

Bowl 18: Left 4 Dead (2008) [Watch the video]

Bowl 19: Killzone 2 (2009) [Watch the video]

Bowl 20: Grand Theft Auto IV (2008) [Watch the video]

Bowl 21: Gears of War (2006) [Watch the video]

Bowl 22: Star Ocean: The Last Hope (2009) [Watch the video]

Bowl 23: The Suffering (2004) [Watch the video]

Bowl 24: Half-Life 2 (2004) [Watch the video]

Bowl 25: Eat Lead: The Return of Matt Hazard (2009) [Watch the video]

Bowl 26: No More Heroes (2008) [Watch the video]

Bowl 27: The Chronicles of Riddick: Assault on Dark Athena (2009) [Watch the video]

Bowl 28: Madworld (2009) [Watch the video]

Bowl 29: House of the Dead: Overkill (2009) [Watch the video]

Bowl 30: GoldenEye 007 (1997) [Watch the video]

Bonus Flush: Shadow Warrior (1997) [Watch the video]