|
1) My first choice goes to 2004. This was an absolutely bonkers year for gaming. The Nintendo DS. Half-Life 2. San Andreas. Halo 2. Metal fuckin' Gear fuckin' Solid 3. I could go on and on listing banger after banger that released this year but there are two titles that push it over the line and solidly into first place for me. The first title is World of Warcraft. I don't think I need to go into detail about WoW. Everyone in this thread either got caught up in Warcraft or knows someone that got caught up in Warcraft. 'Nuff said, right? The second game is a little title called Cave Story. I feel like Cave Story has kind of been forgotten over the years. Aside from being an incredible game itself, it was the title that really kicked off the indie game revolution. It's legacy and it's impact on the industry can still be felt today, eight years later, and it's still one of my favorite games of all time. You'd be hard-pressed to find an indie dev that Cave Story hasn't influenced in one way or another. 2) 1998. Everyone else has went on about '98 already, I think it speaks for itself at this point. 3) My last year is 2011, because dark souls dark souls dark souls Dark Souls Dark Souls DARK SOULS. (Also Mass Effect 2, Skyrim, Ghost Trick, Arkham City, BASTION, and like a million other really loving good games I could name.)
|
#
?
Aug 10, 2022 00:48
|
|
|
|
| # ? May 9, 2024 21:29 |
|
|
I liked looking at old GOTY lists and shout-out to the one who complained that there wasn't anything new and exciting in games and everything was sequels or remakes, while writing a 2011 top 25 list which didn't include Dark Souls, literally the most influential game of the decade except maybe PUBG also shoutouts to the Gamasutra voters who voted for Solatorobo: Red the Hunter, and Groove Coaster for 2011 GOTY
|
|
#
?
Aug 10, 2022 01:08
|
|
|
Vandar posted:The second game is a little title called Cave Story. I feel like Cave Story has kind of been forgotten over the years. Aside from being an incredible game itself, it was the title that really kicked off the indie game revolution. It's legacy and it's impact on the industry can still be felt today, eight years later, and it's still one of my favorite games of all time. You'd be hard-pressed to find an indie dev that Cave Story hasn't influenced in one way or another. Buddy I have some extremely bad news for you
|
|
#
?
Aug 10, 2022 01:16
|
|
|
1994 Warcraft 1 TIE Fighter Jagged Alliance XCOM Doom2 Master of Magic 1997 Age of Empires Quake 2 XWing v TIE Fighter Ultima Online Total Annihilation Myth Fallen Lords 1998 Half Life Baldur's Gate Starcraft Commandos Thief Madden 99 Mid/Late 90s were the golden age of gaming prior to our current semi golden age
|
|
#
?
Aug 10, 2022 01:17
|
|
|
wuggles posted:EVERYONE, PUT THREE YEARS IN YOUR POSTS I'll add a more consolidated post later (with my original vote & two more years)
|
|
#
?
Aug 10, 2022 01:18
|
|
|
fridge corn posted:Let me be the first to vote for eventual winner: The Year of 1998. This year saw the release of some all time bangers, games that are still heavily played today and that shaped or reshaped entire genres. There is no argument that 1998 was the single best year in gaming as I'm sure most would agree. Below is my list of 1998 releases (using the NA release dates cuz that's where I was at the time) in order of awesomeness. All those loving spaces yet none were filled by Half-Life or the greatest game of all time: Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time
|
|
#
?
Aug 10, 2022 01:36
|
|
|
sirtommygunn posted:Buddy I have some extremely bad news for you *eighteen Cut me some slack I'm tired. 
|
|
#
?
Aug 10, 2022 02:24
|
|
|
1. 2017 is the best year ever for gaming. The Switch launched with one of the best first years for any console, including masterpieces such as Breath of the Wild, Super Mario Odyssey, and Splatoon 2. There were some amazing indie games like Edith Finch, Night in the Woods, Hollow Knight, and Cuphead. And Horizon Zero Dawn, NieR Automata, and Titanfall 2 are fantastic. There was an Uncharted game! Battle royales were fun for a second! It was even the beginning of the Assassin’s Creed series re-unsucking for a second. Heck, if you were/spoke Japanese, you got a new Dragon Quest game! Truly a great time to be a gamer. 2. After first place it gets a lot tougher for me, especially going for classic years vs more recent favourites. In the end, though, 2019 just has too many games I adore. Sekiro, Outer Wilds, Death Stranding and Control are all so so good! I haven’t finished Disco Elysium yet but I already know it’s another all-timer. The Link’s Awakening remake is a beautiful version of the most underrated Zelda game. Rage 2 has many issues but some of the most purely fun FPS gameplay I’ve ever seen. Also, it may not be as good, but Mario Kart Tour came out then, and that’s probably the game I’ve spent the most time playing since then, sooo 3. I hate to do it, given it’s probably the other biggest competitor for first place, but 1998 really was a fantastic year, huh? Ocarina of Time is the obvious highlight, but you also have Grim Fandango, Half-Life, MGS, and my personal favourite ever Game Boy game Wario Land II! Main runners-up are 2007 and 2004! I’m sure those ones need no explaining.
|
|
#
?
Aug 10, 2022 02:27
|
|
|
Somewhat arbitrarily, as a jumping off point, I selected the years in which I replaced my PC's graphics card and made a note of the games that pushed me to do so: 2006 (Oblivion), 2008 (Fallout 3), 2011 (Human Revolution), 2016 (Dark Souls 3), 2022 (Elden Ring)*. From there, it became matter of examining each year's releases and picking the one with the most impressive/impactful/personallyfavourite lineup. So, yeah, this actually isn't a definitive list at all but it's what I came up with, it's very game-focussed *2022 was immediately disqualified for being too young My picks: Honourable Mention 2006 Elder Scrolls 4: Oblivion, Final Fantasy 12, Bully, Okami, The Legend of Zelda: Twilight Princess These games are all bangers. Oblivion got me into modding (well, downloading mods), one of my favourite things to do, even in 2022. Final Fantasy 12 told a story more complex than I thought possible. Bully was the perfect final form of Grand Theft Auto. Okami was the most beautiful game. Twilight Princess... well, we like twilight princess 3. 2008 Fallout 3, World of Warcraft: Wrath of the Lich King, Mass Effect, Persona 4, Spelunky These games are all bangers. Fallout 3 offered freedom and that rare, wonderful feeling of exploring a huge, handcrafted world. Wrath of the Lich King was the most fun I'd ever in an MMO, and probably will ever have. Mass Effect was a cool piece of genre fiction made real. Persona 4 gave me all of the anime I needed for the next few years. Spelunky is a flawless game and one of the first roguelikes I've ever tried, a genre I like very much. 2. 2016 Dark Souls 3, Persona 5, Pokémon Go, Fallout 4, Firewatch These games are all bangers. Dark Souls 3 is my favourite Dark Souls game. Persona 5 game me all of the anime I needed for the next few years, AND got me to listen to video game music on its own. Pokémon Go to the park with my pals. Fallout 4 was the most fun I ever had with an open world game. Firewatch was one of my first walking simulators I've ever tried, a genre I like very much. 1. 2011 Deus Ex: Human Revolution, Dark Souls, Minecraft, Portal 2, Mass Effect 2 These games are all bangers. Human Revolution did everything right and brought vent crawlers to a new generation. Dark Souls is Dark Souls, my favourite series in the world, in all media. Minecraft was a hugely influential, amazing and unique experience. Portal 2 was one of the funniest games I've ever played. Mass Effect 2 perfected the BioWare formula, a formula I like very much.
|
|
#
?
Aug 10, 2022 02:36
|
|
|
2004 had the best entries in a ton of big series by big companies (including big ones like Metal Gear and GTA - tons of other people listing all of those). But I'd argue that's a sideshow. 2004 was the beginning of our current flourishing indie game ecology. On one end of the scale, Half Life 2 was the first game published on Steam, turning what had been just Valve's automatic update client into an online marketplace, which ended up becoming THE online markeplace. This started tearing down the barriers to entry on game publication. On the opposite end of the spectrum we have Cave Story, a one-man freeware labor of love that showed how massively popular you could get without being attached to a big studio - and more than that, a hugely influential and charming game. For eSports, 2004 had Evo Moment 37, a supreme demonstration of skill that is widely considered the most iconic moment in competitive video games. Oh, and Peasant's Quest came out in '04, too. Can't forget the GOAT. Second place: 1986. Nintendo single-handedly ends the video game crash, releasing the NES in the US with Super Mario Bros. More than that, Nintendo's strict QC on games forced developers to stop making GBS threads out shovelware. Compared to the years preceding it, this is the single biggest year in American gaming. I'd argue that the original SMB is one of the oldest video games that still holds up as a complete experience. The other contender? Tetris, which in 1986 was converted from a text-based prototype on a weird and rare USSR computer into a finished version with color graphics and high scores on the IBM-PC. After that, it could be mass distributed and played - which it was, immediately escaping the USSR and circling the globe on hand-transferred floppy disks. (Official publication would come later.) Third place: 1996 A big year for 3d in games. First, on PC, you have Quake and Duke Nukem 3d. Duke3d was the apex of Doom-style 2.5D games, while Quake's full 3d engine set the standard, and - once open sourced became the foundation of Valve's Source engine. On console, the N64 had Mario 64, which showed everyone how to move a 2d game to 3d in a way that didn't suck rear end. There were also prerendered 3d standouts on the SNES (Mario RPG, Donkey Kong Country 3) Finally, the Playstation was now coming out with solid 3d titles (after an anemic launch list where Rayman was the top pick), including Crash Bandicoot, Resident Evil, and Tomb Raider. Honorable Mention: 1998. Half-Life, OOT, MGS, just tons of great 3d games that founded franchises. For 1998 in the US, Pokemon Red and Blue singlehandedly extended the lifespan of the original Gameboy by multiple years. Obviously you could count them for 1996 instead, but I'm using a US perspective. Tunicate fucked around with this message at 04:55 on Aug 10, 2022 |
|
#
?
Aug 10, 2022 02:46
|
|
|
i'm focusing on what i've played because, well, i've played a ton of games. if it was purely about what was significant in the industry, then this order would be different for sure 1. 2018 It was a very tough decision in a range of three years, 2017 through 2019... as someone who has played video games since owning a colecovision at 4, I've always been an indie game fan and I prioritize those over AAA releases personally... maybe part of it is having been a PC gamer in the 90s when so much of PC gaming was shareware releases from very small teams or even just basement/bedroom devs. And the 2010s are where indie games really soared into the mainstream, so my focus was always going to be on this decade first and foremost. So why 2018, rather than 2017, the Year of The Switch? It was fuckin hard y'all. But going off of the indie zone.... like, drat. All three years are good but.. 2018 had.... DUSK - The triumphant return of the old-school shooter, with brilliant and twisting level design, fun thematic shifting, great gunplay, great speed, just on every level a game as good as the iD classics. Similarly, Project Warlock incorporates some of the best of the early FPS 'maze' era design with verrry slight roguelitey metaprogression in a combination I actually liked a lot rather than hating, which I wasn't expecting. Slick EGA vibes too. Return of the Obra Dinn - One of the greatest detective games of all time, superbly crafted, all of the necessary information is available to the player if they are observant, fantastic aesthetic and vibe. Manages to weave in fantastical elements to the story without being cringeworthy like so many "hey, have you heard about.... Lovecraft?" horror titles. The MISSING - SWERY's best game. It's not his most famous/infamous game, but its his most polished and playable title, its his most cohesive and relatable story, and it has his most progressive (or maybe, least regressive at least) and sensitive writing. Which is weird to say about a game where you fling a woman's corpse around, but it's true! Subnautica - My favorite survival/exploration game ever. A perfect and addictive gameplay loop, with a well designed world that expands to you as you grow in tech and knowledge. Just lovely. Copy Kitty - While it's not a looker, this combination of Treasure action and Kirby 64 ability mixing was one of the most fun games I played in the entire 2010s. I loved to experiment with the many, many different power combinations to see what kind of crazy weapon I'd get. There's more beyond that top 5 of course... CrossCode was my favorite ARPG since Ys Origin, I actually prefer Graveyard Keeper to Stardew Valley, Yoku's Island Express found a new way to make a Metroidvania, Overload did what Descent Underground didn't, and House Flipper made house renovation fun. Octopath Traveler was a fun as heck pick-up-and-play JRPG with the perfect bite size chapter lengths for quick or lengthy sessions. Mega Man 11 actually manages to be a legit good sequel and continuation of a series long dead and forgotten. Celeste should maybe have made my top 5 but I forgot it came out this year lolllll!!! Astro Bot Rescue Mission is the best use of VR to date. Donut County, Prey: Mooncrash, Moss, Minit, I could go on and on. normie games in 2018: Dragon Quest XI, Hitman 2, Red Dead Redemption 2, Spider-Man, God of War, Shadow of the Colossus Remaster, Monster Hunter World, Ni No Kuni 2 (was it really that recently???), Dragonball FighterZ, Assassin's Creed Odyssey, Tetris Effect #2: 2017 It was neck and neck, but my priority weighted towards indie games... but 2017 was still an amazing year as well. Super Mario Odyssey - While it's not my favorite 3D Mario game, it's still an excellent attempt at bridging the gap between the obstacle course games and the open playground games. There's just so much content in this game, and while most of the best content is behind the various doors of each world, hey, I still enjoyed 'em! A pure celebration of the Mario franchise. Raging Loop and The Sexy Brutale both kicked off what would become a glut of time loop games, but they both excel above the chaff in different ways. In particular I thought Raging Loop's use of the Mafia/Werewolf trappings applied to a real (if supernatural) world setting to be incredibly novel. I may not have liked the supplementary material, but I was hooked on the main story. One of my top VNs. Hollow Knight is not my favorite Metroidvania but I'd be remiss if I didn't mention it. It was a big paradigm shift for the genre and inspired a wave of future titles like Grime and Ender Lilies. Outside of the Metroidvania space, Splasher is the first time a pure 2D platformer gave me the same kind of fun as the Rayman Origins/Legends duology, which is for a good reason: it's by the same designer. While much more indie in its aesthetic/budget, Splasher is every bit as well designed and fun to play as those games, and structured just as similarly. The Norwood Suite... I could talk about these games for hours. Cosmo D is just a genius (i hope I never find out about his politics), with walking simulators that weave surreality with an aesthetic best described as "real-time 90s FMV CG, but stranger". In one game you're making pizzas based on orders that ask for feelings and vibes rather than ingredients. In Norwood Suite, you're infiltrating a party to take a composer's secret device, and finding strange hidden pages in almost every room that evoke the feel of Disney dark rides. Just a really cool developer and there's nothing like his games. Cuphead may not reinvent the wheel as far as run-n-gun action games go, but you can't deny the power of its art direction. A real labor of love with loads of fun bosses and varied settings. I gotta play the DLC!!! Other games in 2017: The Mummy Demastered was Wayforward's best licensed game ever, a fantastic mix of Metroidvania and Contra gunplay. Monolith is the first time I think I've ever truly liked an action roguelite without caveat. Trackless' combination of walking simulator and text parser is still brilliant to me. The Tenth Line manages to fully evoke those days of obscure PS1 RPGs with systems upon systems to learn. I have not played Night in the Woods yet but I will, and everyone vouches for it. normie games in 2017: Breath of the Wild, Uncharted: The Lost Legacy, Yakuza 0, Splatoon 2, Nioh, Samus Returns, Sonic Mania, Hellblade, Pyre, The Evil Within 2, Gravity Rush 2, XCOM 2, Assassin's Creed Origins, Destiny 2, Wolfenstein 2, Horizon Zero Dawn, Prey, Persona 5, Resident Evil 7, Nier Automata, PUBG. It's hard for me to see this year not show up in most people's lists when you consider how many incredible games came out this year (well... Destiny 2 and Wolfenstein 2 notwithstanding). it hit #2 for me primarily because I do not resonate as much with AAA games as others. #3. 2019 Recency bias? No, it's quality bias. The amount of high quality games coming out in recent years is just staggering. And I don't even have to bring titles like Sekiro or Death Stranding into it (..because.... I haven't played them yet). AI: the Somnium Files restored Uchikoshi to the top of my favorite VN authors, after some ups & downs with the back half of the VLR trilogy. Yes, it's horny, but it's never insulting, and it's so drat likeable with its incredible cast of characters, and a story with twists and turns that keep from crossing that point of no-return of pure Uchikoshi ridiculousness. Blasphemous translates a Souls-like to 2D with deadly precision, with a fantastic hosed up Cathopocalyptic world, great and memorable boss fights, and an actually reasonable difficulty curve that even an idiot like me could handle! Hypnospace Outlaw is a portal to an alternate 90s world wide web, and it's glorious. Jay Tholen's masterpiece of crunchy ancient web design and investigative dramedy manages to be humorous and memetic without relying on actual pop culture references. Worth replaying if only because there's plenty of hidden content to find. The Eternal Castle could be the first attempt at a cinematic platformer since Another World to not only stand alongside those classics but actually surpass them. It's no secret that Another World has frustrating trial and error gameplay, and Eternal Castle manages to avoid that by making traps readable, and staging enemy encounters so that you know what you're about to get into. Couple that with a drop-dead gorgeous CGA aesthetic that mixes rotoscoped spritework with pixelated CG animation, and you have a true hidden gem. Baba is You is a bonafide puzzle classic. From a devious and deceptively simple concept comes some of the most head-scratching brainteasers the genre has ever seen. okay i have to have a sixth, sorry. Sayonara Wild Hearts is just a magical trip, as short as it is. One of the best musical story games of all time. Other games in 2019: Cathedral feels like a modern NES classic. Later Alligator marries wonderful animation with engaging minigames. Elsinore somehow manages to make a time-loop spin on Hamlet work, while also being meta commentary on the nature of time loop storytelling. Amid Evil is a great tribute to the Hexen/Heretic series. Monster Boy feels like a legitimate Monster World 5 and maybe someday it'll get the official moniker. Katana Zero carries forward the "one more try" legacy of Hotline Miami with razor sharp action. Whispers of a Machine is a big step up from Kathy Rain and as good as anything from Wadjet Eye. Supraland manages to make a first person Metroidvania/ARPG/Toy Story hybrid work, somehow, with highly rewarding exploration. Slay the Spire is a game that annually deserves higher rankings in GOTY lists than it gets, and I say that as a roguelite-hater. A Short Hike is the best 3DS game to never be developed for the 3DS. Outer Wilds is brilliant. Heaven's Vault could have made my top normie games in 2019: Sekiro, RE 2 Remake, Apex Legends, Control, Beat Saber, The Division 2, Jedi: Fallen Order, Untitled Goose Game, DQ Builders 2 (slaps), Link's Awakening remake, Astral Chain, Pokemon Sword/Shield, Gears of War 5, Mario Maker 2, Tetris 99, Disco Elysium, FF14: Shadowbringers, Devil May Cry 5, Fire Emblem: Three Houses, Death Stranding, Luigi's Mansion 3 The 7th Guest fucked around with this message at 17:32 on Aug 10, 2022 |
|
#
?
Aug 10, 2022 03:06
|
|
|
my pick
|
|
#
?
Aug 10, 2022 04:35
|
|
|
I'll try to keep each year to my 10 favorite games, going by NA release dates only since if it didn't happen to me personally, then it clearly wasn't important. The years are ordered from worst to best: #3: 2003: -- Warcraft 3: The Frozen Throne -- Call of Duty -- Rise of Motherfucking Nations -- Freelancer -- SimCity 4 -- Age of Wonders: Shadow Magic -- Legend of Zelda: Wind Waker -- Disgaea -- Dark Cloud 2 -- Final Fantasy X-2 (gently caress you, it's good) I mean, what a loving year if you liked strategy games or simcity. Age of Wonders: Shadow Magic, Freelancer, and SimCity 4 were especially huge time sinks for me, but I also played the hell out of TFT and Rise of Nations. It was also a strong year for JRPGs on the PS2, and there were way too many good ones to fit on this list. And it's the year that maybe the best Zelda game came out (outside of Japan). 2002 and 2003 were highly formative years in my life as I met some new, very important friends and discovered many things about my tastes in media. If you never found a friend who would stay up all night to LAN AoW:SM with you for twelve straight hours, you're missing out. These heavily rose-tinted glasses are propelling 2003 to near the top of the rankings for me. #2: 2004: -- Half Life 2 -- Metroid Prime 2 -- World of Warcraft -- Rome: Total War -- Metal Gear Solid 3 -- Burnout 3: Takedown -- Shadow Hearts 2 -- GTA: San Andreas -- Shin Megami Tensei: Nocturne -- Ace Combat 5 2004 is when I graduated high school and decided to not go to college, so I had a lot of free time on my hand in the second half of the year. And, well, it turns out that's not a great thing to have when one of the most influential and addictive video games of all time is coming out! My life was thankfully relatively unscathed by WoW, though. I only pumped 1000 or so hours into it before I moved on, which is not nearly as much as some of my friends and family. Oof. Aside from that, obviously HL2 is the popular pick here, but for me, 2004 was the year of the PS2. Metal Gear Solid 3 and GTA: San Andreas are both in the running for the greatest game of all time, in my opinion. And while Burnout 3 isn't quite that good, it's at least the best racing game of all time. And all three of these are better than Half Life 2, the best game on PC that year. The PS2 was just that dominant. Okay, this would just be loving indulgent and blatantly nostalgia-fueled at this point. But c'mon, Dragon Quest 8, Psychonauts, SC: Chaos Theory, Guitar Hero, Devil May Cry 3, Battlefield 2, Silent Hunter III, Hearts of Iron II, Phoenix Wright, Guild Wars, God of War, Shadow of the Colossus, Castlevania: Dawn of Sorrow, FEAR, SWAT 4, Trackmania Sunrise, and two other possible contenders for the greatest game of all time: Resident Evil 4 and Civilization IV. Actually, you know what, gently caress it. #1: 2005 The year of game. It capped off what I deem as the golden era of AAA gaming, which is by pure coincidence the most formative years of my life. The time I spent with these games will stick with me forever, and the simple fact is that these are the games that made me who I am. And I think cumulatively, these are the three most important years for what the video game industry has become. There are other years that were more formative to the early and middle years. I can recognize that these years would not have happened if earlier important events in the '80s and '90s hadn't happened as well. But if you want to trace the DNA of modern gaming, I think it all goes back to 2003 - 2005. All the puzzle pieces that form modern games are here, in RE4 and SotC and HL2 and GoW and so many other games from this era, including many that I failed to mention such as Halo 2 or even Japanese visual novels such as Clannad. The world of gaming was constantly evolving up until this point, the point in which the blueprint for the modern game was formalized, and it's been barely altered since. The only real disruptions since then has been the introduction of the souls-like. I think some later years have been even better than some of these years in terms of overall game quality (2017 is a very strong one), but these are the most important to me personally, and in my opinion, to the industry as it is today. I may be the only person alive who thinks this, but that's okay. 
Dr. Video Games 0031 fucked around with this message at 04:47 on Aug 10, 2022 |
|
#
?
Aug 10, 2022 04:43
|
|
|
I decided to solve this with actual data rather than voting (this is not a vote) The scientifically correct answer is a tie between 1993 and 2001, because each has the highest number of GOAT games.  1993 has: Day of the Tentacle Daytona USA Doom Gunstar Heroes The Legend of Zelda: Link's Awakening Mega Man X Mortal Kombat II Myst NBA Jam Phantasy Star IV Ridge Racer Sam & Max Hit the Road Secret of Mana SimCity 2000 Star Fox Syndicate While 2001 has: Advance Wars Animal Crossing Devil May Cry Final Fantasy X Gran Turismo 3: A-Spec Grand Theft Auto III Halo: Combat Evolved Ico Ikaruga Max Payne Metal Gear Solid 2: Sons of Liberty Phoenix Wright: Ace Attorney Rez Silent Hill 2 Super Smash Bros. Melee Tony Hawk's Pro Skater 3
|
|
#
?
Aug 10, 2022 04:57
|
|
|
#1 (first place): 2001 The GameCube and the Xbox launched three days apart, with launch window games that immediately showed off how incredibly capable they were compared to the prior generation. It's easily the second biggest generational leap after 2D-to-3D. Super Smash Bros. Melee - the GameCube's killer app, and the entry that turned "Smash" into a household word for ages to come. Star Wars Rogue Squadron II: Rogue Leader - With astounding lighting effects and sound design, the game that finally properly realized playing a Star Wars movie, after various attempts on the Nintendo 64. Pikmin - Shigeru Miyamoto's first new addition to Nintendo's core franchise canon since Star Fox in 1993. Eternally charming and absorbing environments, music, creatures, and sound effects. Luigi's Mansion - Another incredible hardware showcase, with engrossing real-time lighting, super detailed animations, and tons of fully interactive objects. The Nintendo 64 also still had a bit to give, with the first entry in the Paper Mario franchise (and easily the best RPG on the system), and Conker's Bad Fur Day, which pushed both the limits of the hardware and the limits of good taste. Just in terms of hardware features, the Xbox was insane. 733 Mhz Intel CPU, Nvidia graphics, Dolby Digital 5.1, 8 GB built-in hard drive, dual-layer DVD game discs, built-in ethernet port. The first two months didn't have as many hard hitters as the GameCube, but of course, it did have Halo. 2001 was also a huge year for the PS2, featuring several of its killer apps; Gran Turismo 3, Grand Theft Auto III, Metal Gear Solid 2, Final Fantasy X, Silent Hill 2. One of the best multiplatform titles of all time, Tony Hawk's Pro Skater 3, also released in 2001. And the Game Boy Advance also launched, with a very solid first year. #2 (second place): 1998 The heaviest hitting year of the Nintendo 64. Ocarina of Time, which unleashed a mountain of revolutionary gameplay mechanics and birthed modern day adventure games. Banjo-Kazooie, a Nintendo-quality platformer not from Nintendo, with deeper mechanics and more relatable characters. F-Zero X, 30 cars racing on crazy futuristic tracks at 60 FPS with PCM music on a console otherwise plagued with chugginess and MIDI. 1080° Snowboarding, a very tight and polished downhill racing game complete with a trick mode. Turok 2: Seeds of Evil, not the greatest framerate, but otherwise very impressive visually with very cool weapons; one of the first titles to take advantage of the Expansion Pak, along with Star Wars: Rogue Squadron. Also featuring Half-Life and Starcraft on PC, Metal Gear Solid and Resident Evil 2 on PS1, and the debut of the Pokémon franchise in North America plus the debut of the Unreal Engine and the Game Boy Color. #3 (third place): 1999 The bridge to the next generation begins. More advanced games appear on all platforms, and the Dreamcast debuts, bringing cutting-edge arcade games to the home without sacrifices and affordably. Also home to my favorite game of all time.                       Honorable mention: 2000 -- Home to 3 of my top 5 games of all time, Perfect Dark, Majora's Mask, and Tony Hawk's Pro Skater 2. Also an excellent year for the PC, with The Sims, Diablo II, Deus Ex, and Counter-Strike, as well as Final Fantasy IX on PS1 and Marvel vs. Capcom 2 on Dreamcast. The PS2 also launched, which didn't get discontinued until 2013. Synthetic Hermit fucked around with this message at 05:45 on Aug 10, 2022 |
|
#
?
Aug 10, 2022 05:16
|
|
|
My answer is probably 2001. It had a tremendous amount of games that I remember fondly and which were extremely influential. It was big particularly for Nintendo, which released like a dozen new first party titles and a bunch of franchise entries, but everyone got some love here especially with great sequels to good games. Super Smash Bros. Melee Phoenix Wright: Ace Attorney Advance Wars Paper Mario Luigi's Mansion Zelda Oracle of Seasons and Ages Animal Crossing Golden Sun Pikmin Conker's Bad Fur Day Red Alert 2: Yuri's Revenge Diablo 2: Lord of Destruction Black and White Civilization 3 Final Fantasy X Metal Gear Solid 2 Grand Theft Auto 3 SSX Tricky Tony Hawk's Pro Skater 3 Sonic Adventure 2 And, of course, Halo: Combat Evolved. What a hell of a year. It's weird seeing excellent end-of-life N64 games and Gamecube launch titles on the same list.
|
|
#
?
Aug 10, 2022 05:24
|
|
|
Love this thread! And nice to see MGS3 and HL2 on several posts this page. In my top games ever for sure. I remember when HL2 came out, I had just graduated from High School, living the life, downloading and playing that while the sun came up. Fun to see this same experience mentioned above, cool that we all had these touchstones. It was so insanely ahead of its time, it was next gen and then some in design. It was like being in a movie. And MGS3 knocked my socks all the way off and was my fav game ever when I played it in Jan 2005. I played the whole MGS series starting with Twin Snakes that month, so that was a memorable gaming experience. Also makes me very happy to see 1996 represented with Duke 3D, Quake, and Mario 64. Was thinking I may post that myself too! Tough to pick, plus like with movies I didn't experience all these key things in the years they came out. I pretty much caught up on 3D PC gaming in '99 for example. But here we goooo (as Mario would say)! 1. 2018. Such an incredible year for games! Nice to see 2018 represented a couple posts up too, and it's so good we picked different games too. For me I gamed more than ever in 2018, looking back it was a peak of the modern game era. Insanity for me how good it was, any year in that range at the end of the decade. Yakuza 6 and Yakuza Kiwami 2 came out. Yazuka mania was running wild! Plus I caught up on Yakuza 0 and Kiwami at the beginning of the year, so I was all in. Those four games, and the bit I played of 5, just an insane experience. Kiryu is a legend. And it's not often I play hundreds of hours of one series like that in a year. So unique and cool that they released two a year while catching up. Red Dead Redemption 2, hot drat I love that game. Now I say "Sure" with an Arthur Morgan accent sometimes, to amuse myself, and as a tribute. A one of a kind game. Maybe a swansong for that style of Rockstar game, time will tell. Pretty terrific. Soul Calibur 6. I hadn't had fun fighting gaming with my friends and fam like that since the Dreamcast days. Countless fun nights playing that, and my top rival moved to China! So that was a special time, and not to get bittersweet here, but I don't know if that degree of local couch fighting game mania will happen again in my life. But it's always special when it happens, and this was really special. Also by rival I mean he annihilated us all with his Mitsurugi mastery, but I won maybe 33% of the time, and nights when I was on a hot streak and won were always fun. We'd do best out of 30, best out of 50, stuff like that. Smash Bros Ultimate hit in December, had a lot of fun playing that with friends too. I was never a big Smash fan, more into 2D arcade fighters, but I dabbled in the previous one. And this time they showed me the ropes and we played more, and I really found the fun of it and "got it". Good stuff 2. 2001. A great period for games, me and my bro got a PS2 for X-Mas that year too. Last console we got was a Dreamcast in 99 which we love too of course. And PC gaming was piping hot. And fun to see that with different games posted too. GTA3 blew me away. I had that Tetris effect kind of thing, seeing a blue trashcan outside I thought of those blue objective cones from the game. It was one of the all time great games, an insane mix of fun elements and pizazz. And genre defining. I sure love it. Max Payne. Just drat, one of my fav games ever, and got me into film noir too. The writing is so sharp, and the gameplay is magnificent. I've replayed this a bunch of times. Had the mousepad for many years too. Fun trivia that came up in a photo recently, Robin Williams also used the Max Payne mousepad. One of the best ever. MGS2, holy moly, legendary. I didn't get into the series until Jan 2005, and I actually played it right after 3, but I ate it up. Lore, experimental kookiness, lots of fun, pure Hideo gaming. So invested in that world. Solid Snake is my fav character, go figure! Whatta guy. Plisken I should say. Silent Hill 2. The best survival horror game ever to me. With the easy caveat of RE4 being my fav action-y one, with SH2 being the old style done to perfection. And it's so surreal, Lynchian and dreamy, plus it's one of the most depressing games ever. But in a very enticing way. And that music is so good. Love it. Capcom vs. SNK 2, oh yes. Had that imported Dreamcast disc, Millionaire Fighting 2001! Such an incredible fun game, and just a great representation of that incredible time. Playing fighting games all night with my friends, just so magical. Mark of the Wolves also hit that year, what a time. 3. 2013. Tough to pick the last year here, so many great candidates. Usually I'm looking at maybe five or six games I liked, and seeing what represented a vibe and place and time. '13 seems like it's a special bit worth mentioning. Super Mario 3D World, that's the system seller killer app for me for the Wii-U. It rules, I loved it so much. The thing is I was a really hungry Mario fan, I hadn't loved a 3D one since Mario 64. To me this was finally a follow-up that was up my alley. It was just about everything I love about Mario in a slick package, and I'd been waiting nearly 20 years for it. Hot drat that is satisfying. Grand Theft Auto V. Again, to me this is by far the best GTA since Vice City, though I liked them all. I hadn't felt that immersed and impressed by the series since those teenage days, and man, just so good. I love all the little moments like we see in RDR2, people asking for a ride and having a nutty story, all that stuff. And just a pleasure to explore the world. And I love Lazlow, JB Smoove, and those cats. Just a classic. Some other 2013 games I really liked were Saints Row IV, Tomb Raider '13, Bioshock Infinite, Deadpool, Borderlands 2 for co-op, FC3 Blood Dragon, and The Last of Us. I said that last like when opening credits say "And Anthony Hopkins" at the end. And there you have it. So many great years to choose from. And naturally 2017 was incredible, Breath of the Wild, Yakuza 0, Mario Odyssey, that's up there for me too. And like mentioned above, 2004 and 96 are great ones for me too. 97, 98, too many cool years. And these days two or three meaty games I love make for a nice gaming year, say Doom Eternal and Cyberpunk in 2020, or 2019 with Control, Death Stranding and RE2R. And if I wanted to get wild I could look up what a great NES year is, I appreciate people doing that, played those in stacks from yard sales and video stores in the early 90s. Good thread folks. Heavy Metal fucked around with this message at 06:27 on Aug 10, 2022 |
|
#
?
Aug 10, 2022 06:10
|
|
|
Definitely 1997 for me. It gave us two of the most well known and influential games in PC gaming history (both of which sit in my personal top 5 of Greatest Games Ever) - the almighty Quake II the release of which basically drove the 3D graphics adapter market for the next three years, and of course Age of Empires. Plus the first Grand Theft Auto. Almost forgot about that! How criminal of me.
|
|
#
?
Aug 10, 2022 07:23
|
|
|
I can't believe there hasn't been a vote for 1985 yet. It's the first year that came to mind and the more I look into what was released that year, the more confident I feel about voting for it. There are so many groundbreaking and/or popular things to come out of this year. What video games were released in 1985? (in alphabetical order)
and the Nintendo Entertainment System was released that year. There were other games I saw that broke new ground but that I wasn't familiar with so I didn't include.                                 
|
|
#
?
Aug 10, 2022 07:39
|
|
|
Xaranthius posted:and the Nintendo Entertainment System was released that year. There were other games I saw that broke new ground but that I wasn't familiar with so I didn't include. For American audiences, the real release was '86, since all they did in the US in '85 was a few tiny sales in test markets towards the end of the year, not an actual rollout
|
|
#
?
Aug 10, 2022 07:57
|
|
|
I'm loving this thread, especially as my bestie and me have long held that the period 1997-2002 was 'The Golden Age' because every single year there saw banger after banger released. Actually sitting down and choosing from that would be hard enough let alone once you consider other very worth years, so I will have to give it some real thought... Video games are great though.
|
|
#
?
Aug 10, 2022 08:07
|
|
|
Ms Adequate posted:I'm loving this thread, especially as my bestie and me have long held that the period 1997-2002 was 'The Golden Age' because every single year there saw banger after banger released. My personal top 50 list certainly agrees with that: 
|
|
#
?
Aug 10, 2022 08:22
|
|
|
I always said 2017 released the most amount of the best games. However, for this entry I am going to do it a little differently. I am going to rank the year based on how important it was to me as a person and only include games I have played to completion. This is my own rule for the GOTY thread that I implemented in 2021 once I started fully playing games. Lots of people have said why 2017 is so good - seriously not only the Switch coming out, but a ton of games which are all time greats: Horizon Zero Dawn, Nier: Automata, What Remains of Edith Finch, Night in the Woods, Cuphead and then the games I have not beaten which I know from word of mouth, Breath of the Wild, Mario Odyssey, Persona 5 and the whole Battle Royale phenomenon. 1. The year 2011 Most likely I will be the only person to choose this year but I can think of three reasons why I would put it up there. a. Third most important: this is the year Dark Souls came out. I find the first Dark Souls to be the bottom of my favourite list, but it is still an incredible game and unfortunate that it has the rest of the trilogy, Demons, Sekiro, Bloodborne and Elden Ring to go up against. This is a game that changed discourse and had something in it that every single developer wanted to aim, or gaming article writer wanted to compare to. It is a juggernaut of a game that affected everything that came after and FromSoft just kept taking the core and making new things for their own entertainment. It is a testament to their own creativity that they have been able to keep going on wilder and wilder tangents from the spur of this game for their own amusement and still retain that wild inventiveness. Dark Souls shaped my gaming prowess in 2020 via Bloodborne, which would not exist were it not for this game being a smash hit. I owe my true love and reinvigoration of gaming to Bloodborne in the year 2020 and it owes its existence to 2011 and Dark Souls. b. Second most important: This is the year Minecraft came out. We talk about fortnite and pubg and the battle royale blitz, but I do not think any game in existence has done more to open up avenues for new players, for creating livelihoods via content creation, for being used as a tool to soothe those with neurodivergent minds, to being a game that families can bond over, to allowing oneself to just lose months of time to pleasant building and foraging with your own imagination. The beta versions were a couple of years earlier, but this was the official release and with it the popularity surpassed the moon. This is the best selling video game of all time for a reason. It has touched so many lives and introduced video gaming as a concept to so many people who might not have tried it. CoD may be popular, but everyone has played Fortnite and they played it because Minecraft showed them video gaming either in person or via youtube channels. I genuinely think this game had the biggest cultural impact on video games more than any other. I have spent, all the hours counted up from my launcher, 11 straight months of time playing Minecraft across different version. That is over 8000 hours and that is ridiculous but it is easy to do so. The game is all I ever wanted from something where I can make homes with my friends. c. The most important reason of all. Portal 2. Yeah. I need to write a post for the great games thread but this game is my all time number one and has been since I played it. The last real accessible game Valve released (the CS:GO and Dota stuff is more building upon pre-existing game mods, and Alyx requires you to drop a lot of money on VR) it helps that it is their genuine best one. I could talk about it for hours because it does everything I have ever wanted from video games correctly and then surprises me some more. I am not sure if anything will dethrone this game as my favourite. I think about it a lot and I think how it got me to continue writing. In 2012 I was about to start a pretty bad mental journey of a few years leading to a full blown breakdown where video gaming meant nothing. I kept writing though because of this game. This is the game that kept resonating within my mind and would help me to actually do some of my hobby despite everything going on. Everything about it is perfect and I would not change a single thing about this game. It even has funny and engaging multiplayer WITH added DLC long after the fact, as well as an easy to use test chamber creator. Valve's masterpiece and my #1 love. What a superb thread!
|
|
#
?
Aug 10, 2022 08:29
|
|
|
Since the term Golden Age is usually applied retroactively it follows that the mid to late 90s would be considered the Golden Age of 3D gaming.
|
|
#
?
Aug 10, 2022 08:30
|
|
|
Xaranthius posted:snip space harrier duuuuuuuude (everyone should check out yu suzuki's "air twister" on apple arcade)
|
|
#
?
Aug 10, 2022 09:58
|
|
|
VideoGames posted:
gently caress, you're right. I can think of franchises that are as long lasting as minecraft or has the impact on the gaming world, but minecraft is just one, sometimes heavily modded, game. It won't show up on my personal goty list but you cannot deny just how massive it was and continues to be.
|
|
#
?
Aug 10, 2022 10:11
|
|
|
I thought this would be an easy choice, but it turns out videogames own and have continued to own. I'm reading through the thread and thinking ah poo poo, this was also a very good year
|
|
#
?
Aug 10, 2022 12:42
|
|
|
THE AWESOME GHOST posted:I thought this would be an easy choice, but it turns out videogames own and have continued to own. I'm reading through the thread and thinking ah poo poo, this was also a very good year Thinking about how I can go back to all these years in the year of our god 2022 and drat it is a GREAT time to be play video games.
|
|
#
?
Aug 10, 2022 12:50
|
|
|
Having trouble ranking these years but I'll go: #3 2003. Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic. I finally got to play a Star Wars RPG. I agree that KOTOR 2 is better, but that year didn't have as many supporting games for me. Beyond Good & Evil. This is the closest any game has come to capturing what made Little Big Adventure and LBA2 so great, for me. Also I didn't have room for the years those two came out because, again, not as much came out those years that I liked. Prince of Persia: The Sands of Time. I was so mad when Assassin's Creed came out and wasn't basically a continuation of that kind of game. Forget this open world, run at a wall and hold 'up' nonsense. I want to be made to think about how to use the environment to climb into the next area. SSX 3. I actually preferred this to SSX Tricky, just because of the bonkers amount of options. Love holding a combo for the entire trip down a mountain, only to lose it all when I try an overly ambitious jump with just one too many flips. Zoe is the best. NBA Street Vol 2. For much the same reason as SSX 3, just styling on my opponents until I break their spirit by dunking from halfway. Silent Storm. XCOMish except also there's really cool 3D environment destruction and you can collapse houses on people. #2 2010. Not as many games here, but some of them are absolute all timers. Mass Effect 2. I actually preferred number 3 overall, but on the other hand number 2's ending was better. Rock Band 3. I'm one of those idiots who bought all the expensive peripherals, including a stringed guitar and proper electronic drum kit. I have so many hours and so much money spent on this fake music game. Alpha Protocol. Absolutely the best example of reactivity to choices in a video game ever. Shame about the bugs, hey Microsoft buy the license and give us a remaster. Or give us Archer Protocol, either way. Fallout: New Vegas. It's the best Fallout game. I had a look through the wiki list and I didn't find any other games I really care about, but even just with RB3, AP and FONV it belongs on my list. #1 1993 Nostalgia is doing a bit of heavy lifting, here. Lemmings 2: The Tribes. I think most people didn't love this one but I did, I put hours and hours into it and I saved all 12 Lemmings tribes, even the sports lemmings who had this one really annoying level where I had to click on someone while there was an unconscious lemming behind him hogging the cursor. Day of the Tentacle. This may be the single most quotable video game of all time, and my siblings and I still quote bits of it at each other. Sam and Max Hit the Road. More streamlined adventure game experience, still an extremely excellent game. Syndicate. Running around with a persuadatron and gathering an army of civilians, cops and enemy gang members is a ridiculous experience. Sim City 2000. Dunno why more town planners don't simply put a mountain with a waterfall on it in the corner of their city, then free hydro power for all. Big jump up from OG Sim City, and fun at the end just covering the whole screen with Arcos. Duke Nukem II. I don't care about the 3D nonsense that happened later, the platformers were the definitive Duke experience. Dark Sun: Shattered Lands. Actually kinda hard as heck and frustrating and I don't think I ever finished, but it was still p. great. Master of Orion. Number 2 was better, but this laid the ground work. NBA Jam. I remember wasting so many 2 dollar coins on one of these machines. It's no NBA Street, but it's still p. cool. Pirates! Gold. Someone else already mentioned a Sid Meier's Pirates game released in a different year; I guess it's had two rereleases. Anyway, it's one of the best pirate games of all time, highly recommend. The Settlers. Not sure if I ever actually played the full version of this, but we had a demo disc with a 1 hour version of it that we played over and over again. Transarctica. One of the weirdest ideas for a game ever, you're basically in a post apocalyptic world with a steam engine. Never got very far because it was quite hard, but it was just such an interesting world. Ultima Underworld II. Probs the Ultima game that has aged the best. Ultima VII Part Two. Never got that far in this one but I absolutely smashed part 1. I will never play either again, but they were such amazing games at the time.
|
|
#
?
Aug 10, 2022 13:11
|
|
|
VideoGames posted:b. poo poo, you're right, that's a really big one. Minecraft has always been kind of a blind spot for me. I'm one of the very rare video game likers who's just never even tried Minecraft at all so sometimes I forget just how huge of a deal it is. That and Dark Souls in the same year adds a lot of weight to 2011 just on their own. THE AWESOME GHOST posted:I thought this would be an easy choice, but it turns out videogames own and have continued to own. I'm reading through the thread and thinking ah poo poo, this was also a very good year lol same, my own vote is probably going to come in right under the wire as I continue to second-guess myself
|
|
#
?
Aug 10, 2022 13:13
|
|
|
For me, the year of the game can be none other than 1996. Do you like first person shooters? You've got QUAKE. The OG daddy of the true 3D shooter with bitchin' multiplayer and so many different mods it made your head spin. <250ms ping was KING when it came to Threewave Capture the Flag, Team Fortress, or Action Quake. OH, didn't you know? Action Quake was the precursor to Counterstrike. Boom, look at that. Every first person shooter you love all comes back to quake. "But what about DOOM?", you say. Look, I'm not knocking DOOM, and 1994 is a strong contender, but lets face it, Quake was the first truly 3D multiplayer shooter around. DOOM's got that 2.5D or 2.75D thing going on. It's so close, but not quite there. First person shooters: CHECK. 1996 is king. "But I hate first person shooters". That's fine. How do you feel about 3D platformers set in a rich colorful world? Look no further than Super loving Mario 64. You want to slide down an ice ramp or run through a loving desert or swim in a sunken shipwreck? I've got 4 words for you. SUPER loving MARIO 64. It did it all. It was mind-blowing at the time, and still holds up as a 3D platformer. Without Super Mario 64 where would we be? "BUT I HATE VIBRANT COLORS AND JUMPING". I'm sorry to hear that. Did you know Resident Evil came out that year too? And TOMB RAIDER? You want dark and gritty and some polygonal titty? 1996 was the year for you. Walk around Raccoon City or PEW PEW PEW your way to victory while exploring history with Laura Croft. You can't tell me these two games weren't hugely inspirational, and there wasn't really anything like them before 1996. WHICH IS WHY 1996 loving ROCKS FOR VIDEOGAMES. Still not convinced? Ever play Crash bandicoot? Super Street Fighter Alpha 2 (still the best Street fighter), Blazing Heroes, DUKE loving NUKEM 3D, CIVILIZATION 2. Oh don't forget Command and Conquer: RED ALERT. Super Mario RPG. Also XMEN vs Street Fighter and PILOTWINGS 64. POKEMON RED and BLUE. The OG Pokemon games came out in 1996. Where would you be right now without pokemon? Come on, you are thinking about making eye contact with a trainer across the room and then having an epic battle and filling your pokedex TO THE MAX. You can't tell me 1996 wasn't a great loving year for games, which is why you should vote for 1996 as the best year ever for videogames. Thanks for coming to my TED TALK. LordAdakos fucked around with this message at 15:58 on Aug 10, 2022 |
|
#
?
Aug 10, 2022 15:52
|
|
|
I feel like the only way to evaluate this is to just pick years that have the most games you personally enjoy. If your criteria is importance to the industry then you only have a few answers that make sense, and those are going to be strongly influenced by the region you're from. Like in NA, the answer becomes 1985 when Nintendo releases the NES and saves the home gaming market. Or 2007 when the iPhone comes out and makes mobile gaming into a juggernaut. It's much funner to figure out what games are important to you, or that blew you away, and then just picking those years. It's also a lot harder because drat, there's a lot of good videogames.
|
|
#
?
Aug 10, 2022 16:37
|
|
|
1. 2017 An absolutely incredible year for gaming. The switch had an incredible line-up of games for its first year. Zelda BotW is the definitive game of this decade & a ground breaking title. Notable games: Breath of the Wild Super Mario Odyssey Sonic Mania Horizon: Zero Dawn Resident Evil 7 Night in the Woods 2. 1994 Timeless masterpieces like Super Metroid, Sonic 3 & Knuckles, & Final Fantasy VI were released in 1994. This years represents the peak of the 16 bit era. Notable games: Super Metroid Sonic 3 & Knuckles Final Fantasy VI Donkey Kong Country Donkey Kong '94 Darkstalkers Tekken 3. 2001 The Gamecube, Xbox, & Game Boy Advance all launched this year. So many great games were released in the back half. Notable games: Super Smash Bros. Melee Metal Gear Solid 2 Paper Mario Pikmin Devil May Cry Final Fantasy X Advance Wars
|
|
#
?
Aug 10, 2022 17:01
|
|
|
IcePhoenix posted:I'm Surprised nobody has mentioned 1996 yet I was also legitimately surprised it took till the 3rd page to nominate '96. I got caught up in work yesterday and missed my opportunity to be the first, but still going to put in an effort post: 1996 isn't my personal favorite year, I am an old fart and lean more toward the 2D era and would probably pick somewhere around '92 - '95 as my golden age. Also while everyone has mentioned '97 through 2001 as an absolute golden age of influential games, 1996 is the year that the boulder first got nudged off the cliff. Super Mario 64 It's cliche at this point to hype SM64 but there's a reason cliches become cliches and even if this was the sole notable game of 1996 it would still be enough drag it into the running for best gaming year ever. It just cannot be overstated how much of an impact this game had on the then unfolding history of 3D gaming. The analog stick was invented for this game and beyond any other innovations like the 3D controllable camera, the control of this game was just tight as hell and set the standard. Imagine suffering through the kind of clunky rear end control schemes we were getting in the mid-90s for an extra few years or even a decade if Nintendo hadn't dropped the E=MC2 of 3D game control right there for everyone to copy from. Quake LordAdakos above me did a great write-up of Quake's low-key major influence on the future of FPSes (first 3d shooter, first online shooter) but one thing that nobody has mentioned is its influence on an aspect of gaming culture that is even now experiencing insane growth and introducing new demographics to gaming as well as new ways to approach games: speedrunning. Quake not only had one of the earliest online speedrunning websites but the current juggernaut in annual speed running events AGDQ literally got its name from Quake Done Quick, a compilation video of the fastest records for Quake at the time. Again, maybe we eventually get to the current speedrunning renaissance without Quake, it's just a major stepping stone. Resident Evil I am putting it on the level of influence here, it's definitely not the best of its genre or even series but it took the concept of Survival Horror mainstream, set a lot of the playbook down, and became a juggernaut of a series in its own right (it also is a good demonstration of the type of pre-SM64 3D controls people were toying with, wooof) -- Then there's just a host of other major franchise starters and genre starters/definers that I could talk about on near the same level if it were any other year: Pokemon Red/Blue, Super Mario RPG, Tomb Raider, PaRappa the Rapper. Again, not necessarily the best eventual games of their genres or series but they launched major franchises and even entire video game genres (PaRappa itself is a fun game that probably would be an honorable mention most years but just happened to be the first major rhythm game). The list of other notable games released this year may as well just be sprinkles on top of the sunday. 1996 was basically the chokepoint between two major eras of 2D-only gaming and fully 3D gaming, and the games that were released this year were the foundations that the entire next major era (one that we are arguably still in) were built on. Queer Salutations posted:I feel like the only way to evaluate this is to just pick years that have the most games you personally enjoy. If your criteria is importance to the industry then you only have a few answers that make sense, and those are going to be strongly influenced by the region you're from. Like in NA, the answer becomes 1985 when Nintendo releases the NES and saves the home gaming market. Or 2007 when the iPhone comes out and makes mobile gaming into a juggernaut. I honestly think both approaches are fun. If this was just a thread about "here's the list of games from my favorite year (aka the year I was 13 and the most invested in video games)" then I probably wouldn't have posted. All the great first page posts about influence were what got me actually interested in writing an effort post. Guy A. Person fucked around with this message at 17:17 on Aug 10, 2022 |
|
#
?
Aug 10, 2022 17:11
|
|
|
Trying to work out what year to start my ~*mathematical analysis*~ from. Feels like the Pac-Man should be included in the debate but there's not quite enough big games from 1980 to really put it in contention
|
|
#
?
Aug 10, 2022 17:16
|
|
|
Rarity posted:Trying to work out what year to start my ~*mathematical analysis*~ from. Feels like the Pac-Man should be included in the debate but there's not quite enough big games from 1980 to really put it in contention I mentioned speedgaming above and I am pretty sure Dragster was literally the first video game that had a speedrunning record in the Guiness Book of World Records (that in 2018 was discovered to be a lie lol) You also had the launch of Nintendo's Game & Watch. Pac-Man alone is probably in the top 10 of the most influential games of all time as well as being the earliest on that list (unless you're just counting Pong being the first video game ever or whatever)
|
|
#
?
Aug 10, 2022 17:24
|
|
|
Neat thread. Here’s why 2000 is my pick for second best year in video games. (yes, it's out of order, but I started writing about 2002 and learned my lesson) Going to go off of chronological order, and touching upon games that I at least have some knowledge of and why they’d be considered influential, either in terms of immediate success or kicking off innovation down the road. This’ll probably be a lengthy post, and it’s based entirely off my own perceptions - I’ll probably miss a favorite of yours.  First off, starting off arguably horribly, we’ve got Resident Evil: Code Veronica on February 3rd. Probably one of the weakest RE titles, but paradoxically one that I know like the back of my hand. It didn’t do a whole lot with the series as a whole, only digging the baffling setting and plot of the series into an even deeper, stupider hole. Anyone who’s played this knows why it was divisive - but it was also a little innovative in its own right, the first time the series used entirely 3D environments rather than pre-rendered backgrounds. It was still a tank camera game, but a little more freed up than the previous entries. It’s also one that I have a ridiculous soft-spot for, despite knowing that other mainline Resi games are undoubtedly better.  A day later, on February 4th, we’ve got the Sims. This one is more or less self-explanatory, it was the kickstart of one of EA’s major cash cows that’s going extremely strong to this day - it’s also the one I never actually played, along with the Sims 4 much later on. 2 and 3 were great experiences, though, and I have the original to thank for giving us the Sims 2 console version, which I played a lot of with my siblings on the Gamecube. That was pretty crappy as far as a Sims experience goes, granted, but still - good times. There had been simulation games before the Sims, but this was the one that really shined a spotlight on life simulators - making fictional people and meddling with their lives, dreams and destinies. The Sims was also a major reason a lot of more casually-inclined people and women (those who weren’t into more violent games that made up a majority these days) got into video games in the first place. Pretty big deal! For being one of the earliest life sims, it also managed to be, mostly accidentally, ahead of its time on homosexuality in games - your sims could kiss whoever they wanted, so long as they were consenting adults. Gay sims could move in together, but they couldn’t get married yet - that would come in the Sims 3 by name, with ‘joined unions’ being in 2. Still, have to commend the developers for letting it happen in the first place, since it wasn’t even initially supposed to be possible. Once they realized it was, though, they just sort of rolled with it.  On February 29th, in a rank exploitation of the dreaded leap year advantage, there was actually a bunch of games releasing, including one of the rare Berserk games (music by Hirasawa himself, even), but the one I’m looking at is Pokemon Stadium. It wasn’t a game I played a ton of, but considering the general aura of pokemon mania that was still dominating the gaming landscape around this time, it was still a very notable release, representing the first time they let you actually see the pokemon battles in full 3D. Mechanically speaking, it was still mostly identical to the notoriously janky mechanics of Red/Blue/Yellow, but at least now the camera was going around them as they fought. Fully 3D moves, too - surf actually looked like it was filling up the entire arena with water, to name an example. You could also transfer your ‘mons from your Game Boy cartridge using a transfer pak. As a game, it didn’t really have the depth of the Game Boy games, but it was still pretty neat and novel for fans. Call it a trial run for the eventual dazzling graphics and move fidelity of much later ‘mon games.  On March 23rd, we’ve got Thief 2: The Metal Age. While building off of a lot of the systems Thief 1 put into play, Thief 2 very much refined a lot of it, more or less perfecting the fully 3D stealth gameplay with an emphasis on what’s traditionally considered standard ‘Thief-like’ gameplay. Instead of an emphasis on monsters and ghosts and such, Thief 2 focused much more on urban stealth and hiding from goons. It also basically became the gold-standard Thief platform for fan mission creation, a neat bit of early modding in the gaming landscape (though DOOM had been doing that for a while now). Five years later, a great total conversion series of fan missions called ‘Shadows of the Metal Age’ came out to generally pretty good acclaim. It would be followed up by Deadly Shadows, the Thief Reboot, and the Dark Mod, which all (more or less) followed in its footsteps.  The next day, March 24th, Kirby 64 came out - not a true 3D game, but it was at the very least 2.5D, still basically a side-scroller. Still, it was the first Kirby game on the Nintendo 64, and was the first one that I and my siblings played. In terms of Kirby innovation, it was the first where you could combine powers from the enemies you sucked up to make more powerful ones - having not played any Kirby game since, I have no idea if they kept going with that, but it was pretty cool to find the OP ones.  Shooting forward over a month, on April 27th, a new Zelda game came out - Majora’s Mask. This was made in a little under two years, following up Ocarina of Time, and as a result they had to reuse a bunch of the same assets from that game. Arguably that ended up making Majora a way more interesting experience, though, pitched as a sort of alternate reality from the Hyrule you knew in the previous entry. It was also a generally darker and more morbid game in general, the constant threat of moon-based annihilation constantly hanging over your head with the enforced time limit. But it also had a lot of levity to it, of course - still a Zelda game, after all, and it excelled at being one, superior to Ocarina in my opinion. It’s not my absolute favorite Zelda game (that’s Wind Waker), but it’s definitely a comfortable and close second.  Another month ahead, May 22nd - Perfect Dark came out. GoldenEye 007 was made a few years earlier, and this was made by the same team, and as a spiritual successor to that title, so a lot of what it was doing wasn’t exactly new fundamentally. It did, however, massively improve the experience of playing a console first-person shooter in those days, basically an improvement on GoldenEye in every way. Your guns reloaded in front of you now, the AI was better, the multiplayer was a lot more in-depth (there was even a co-op for campaign missions!), the music more intense. You could shoot out lights, put on NVGs and stuff, just a lot of neat little gadgets and gizmos that went far beyond what GoldenEye offered. A lot of innovations in this would become a blueprint for future FPS games, particularly in the multiplayer department, including TimeSplitters, which would also come out later this year.  Two days later, Daikatana came out - which was awful, and probably invalidates at least a bit of my arguments here. Oh well, can’t be perfect. It was at the very least a useful object lesson in what not to do.   June was a pretty big one this year - Deus Ex and Diablo 2 both released, both landmarks for very different reasons. Deus Ex remains my favorite game of all time, and remains a seminal example of the immersive sim, the big one that future immersive sims would try to emulate. I’ve written about it in Harrow’s other thread, it’s on the first page if you wanna glance at that and see why I think it’s important. Diablo 2, however, is a game I don’t like that much, but I am in a minority there - this is the game that basically put action RPGs on the map, leading to future games like Grim Dawn and Path of Exile, among others. I’m not a fan of ARPGs in general, but it’s hard to deny that they’ve become a major hit thanks to D2. Say what you want about the genre now that more odious examples like Immortal are out, but you gotta give credit where it’s due. This also showed that Blizzard was more than comfortable flexing out of its RTS stomping grounds - and helped its image as a studio that could basically do no wrong. Hahaha.  Homeworld: Cataclysm also came out this month, widely regarded as superior to Homeworld’s eventual sequel. Same great systems you found in the original Homeworld, with an evolution and continuation of the story that ended with that game. Amazing music, too.  August 11th - Paper Mario released in Japan, and would come out internationally early in 2001. This was vaguely a spiritual successor in the same vein as Super Mario RPG, which had been developed by Square in ‘96, but there was a lot to differentiate it from that title. For one, it wasn’t isometric - it was an entirely 3D RPG made with the gimmick of 2D characters inhabiting it, fully playing up the whole ‘Paper’ gimmick. It was also just a great RPG to play, with a surprising amount of tactics and strategy to it depending on how you leveled up Mario - lots of fun combinations using the game’s partners and badge system to augment and change how you approach battles. Secrets to find aplenty, too, and a lengthy game to boot. It went on to spawn a spin-off mini-franchise within the greater Mario franchise, with the ‘Paper’ characters and setting inhabiting its own little space separate from the rest.  On August 28th, Mario Tennis came out - this was a lovely little sports game that I and my friends had a ton of fun with, and I generally consider it to be the best of the Mario sports titles. It just felt crisp and easy to pick up and play, with a lot of oomph to it. I don’t even like tennis that much.  September 24th saw Baldur’s Gate 2: Shadows of Amn come out. As a sequel, obviously it wasn’t exactly a groundbreaking title, though I’d find many CRPG fans hard-pressed to say that they didn’t prefer it over BG1. It was a more in-depth story than 1, and with more mechanics and generally ‘more’ of what people really enjoyed about 1. That aside, I think this one was a critically important title for Bioware because it spearheaded a lot of things that the developer is now widely known for - an eclectic cast of characters, some of whom you may want to kiss or have in-depth conversations with to learn more about them, and then get into internet arguments about why the one you like is the best. BG1 had small shades of this, but nothing on the level of NPC interaction (and attempts to make you care about them as characters and not simply as lackeys) that BG2 presented.  Fast-forward another month, to October 15th. Pokemon Gold and Silver came out in North America, though they’d already been out in Japan for a good bit, nearly a year. Imports were harder to get back then, though, and after Red and Blue came out outside of Japan, there was an immediate demand for more. Gold and Silver, thus, were crucial in ‘proving’ that the Pokemon franchise well and truly had financial legs outside of its country of origin, and wouldn’t you know it - it did. Gold and Silver were great games in their own right as well, improving upon every facet of the first titles, as well as ironing out a lot of the weird jank that were present in them. A lot of the new pokemon were creative and very much on the same level of fidelity as the initial 150, to boot. They’d eventually go on to supplant Red and Blue in terms of success, and their eventual remakes would also do gangbusters around ten years later.   October also saw TimeSplitters 1 and MegaMan Legends 2 come out. Both remain fairly niche titles, with Legends 2 the last in that particularly small MegaMan series (despite being a well-adored one). I didn’t play TS1, but you better believe I played the poo poo out of TimeSplitters 2.   Moving on to November, we’ve got a fan favorite of mine, The Operative: No One Lives Forever, which released on the same day as Counter-Strike's commercial release, which would go on to great fame and success to pioneer competitive online FPS. NOLF, however, is the game that I actually give a poo poo about, which was basically an Austin Powers game, if Austin Powers was smarter and a woman. Breathtakingly funny, a game I still quote to my brother to this day, with great characters, a fun Cold War intrigue plot, and a lot of very fun gadget use and shooting to do. This game captured the spirit of being in a schlocky spy movie or TV series in a way that GoldenEye didn’t, which was a more traditional shooter. The developer, Monolith Productions, would later go on to make two sequels (one a spin-off) and the incredible FPS ‘horror,’ F.E.A.R. Highly recommend you all play it, though the caveat here is that NOLF is notoriously difficult to get, being in a sort of legalese hell of copyright between its various title holders. No one is really profiting off of this anymore, and hasn’t been for a long time, but you can download it for free if you know where to look - it’s essentially abandonware. The legal people currently squatting on the rights sure as gently caress aren’t doing anything about it, much less actually selling it, so this is the best way to get a hold of it short of buying it from a reseller on eBay or amazon. They even wrote an article about this in RockPaperShotgun.  Later on in November, the first Hitman game came out, Hitman: Codename 47. I’ve never played this, but I did play basically every other single Hitman game, and this is the one that started the series. It was a very janky, not at all always Hitman-esque sort of game, though, having obligatory shooting segments laced in with the precursors to the creative assassination shenanigans of today.  The last game I want to touch on came out on December 21st in Japan - Phantasy Star Online, for the Dreamcast. Online RPGs had already been a thing in the west for a good while, with titles such as Ultima Online and EverQuest being the de facto standard bearers for a while, and PC exclusives to boot. Japan didn’t really have a game like that in their market, which was dominated by console games - enter Phantasy Star Online and the Dreamcast, which was made to cater to internet connections as a bespoke design feature. Though PSO wasn’t the first console game designed to tap into that (ChuChu Rocket! a year earlier), it was the first to see major success as an emulation of games like those in the western, online RPG market. Diablo was a major inspiration with it, and PSO wears those influences proudly with its semi-random dungeon design and random drop system encouraging play time to get better gear and experience. This was the first console online RPG, and basically paved the way for successive RPGs to be considered for console systems, not just for PC. Unsurprisingly, the game did amazingly well, particularly in Japan, but also abroad. I didn’t actually play PSO on Dreamcast, but I did play the poo poo out of it on Gamecube, split-screen multiplayer with my siblings. We had a great time with it, and I’ve carried a huge fondness for the game ever since. When I played, I had no idea how influential and important it was to gaming. So, that was a lot of words, so let’s condense it a bit for those who don’t want to read all that. Why was the year 2000 the second best for games, in my opinion? Games like Majora’s Mask, Deus Ex, Baldur’s Gate 2, the Sims, and Phantasy Star Online were all very important title releases for one reason or another. Majora’s Mask helped solidify Zelda’s new status as a 3D console franchise, praised for being a quick and capable evolution off of OOT. Deus Ex remains the seminal immersive sim, the one others emulate. Baldur’s Gate 2 was BioWare’s first real, heavily character-driven RPG, a style that would come to dominate their development of future games. The Sims launched a multi-billion dollar franchise this year, that led to millions of new gamers. Lastly, PSO was a landmark innovation for eastern markets, as well as proving that online games could do extremely well on the console. Pokemon basically proved it was here to stay as a global phenomenon, too. But, honestly - it’s the year Deus Ex came out. Obviously I’m biased. Still, I hope this was a sufficiently persuasive take on why the year 2000 was important. I might do another one of these for another year. Erwin the German fucked around with this message at 18:39 on Aug 11, 2022 |
|
#
?
Aug 10, 2022 17:30
|
|
|
Daikatana was worthwhile for producing this https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=y8SC7z8W134
|
|
#
?
Aug 10, 2022 17:34
|
|
|
Rarity posted:Trying to work out what year to start my ~*mathematical analysis*~ from. Feels like the Pac-Man should be included in the debate but there's not quite enough big games from 1980 to really put it in contention please write up your methodology when you're done
|
|
#
?
Aug 10, 2022 18:05
|
|
|
|
| # ? May 9, 2024 21:29 |
|
|
Guy A. Person posted:Pac-Man alone is probably in the top 10 of the most influential games of all time as well as being the earliest on that list (unless you're just counting Pong being the first video game ever or whatever) I'd give Space Invaders that spot over Pac-Man in a heartbeat
|
|
#
?
Aug 10, 2022 18:05
|
|