The Mario Bros. video game franchise is the best-selling of all-time, but do you think it's the greatest game series? (Shuji Kajiyama/Associated Press)

So many gaming consoles, so many iconic storylines: how does one go about choosing the greatest video game series in history?

If you're basing it purely on sales figures, then the Mario Bros. franchise comes out on top. Mushroom loving plumbers Mario and Luigi debuted on Nintendo's 8-bit home system in 1983, and since then, the series has sold more than 220 million games on different platforms.

Pokémon, the role-playing game where you collect cute and cuddly monsters and have them do battle against one another, is also one of the most commercially successful franchises of all-time, having sold more than 200 million copies since 1996.

But do sales numbers provide a better measure of a game's greatness than public acclaim? Guinness World Records polled 13,000 people in 2009 to find out what the most popular video game series of all-time was, and neither the Mario or Pokémon franchises made it to the top. Halo, the science fiction first-person shooter, came first, followed by the Call of Duty military warfare series.

Tell us what you think the greatest video game series is and why.