Board 8 > Thirty years of video games -- a transience retrospective.

(+) Yeah! (+)

top game from each year so far

1987 - Zelda
1988 - Mario 2
1989 - Mega Man 2
1990 - Mario 3
1991 - Mario World
1992 - Link to the Past
1993 - Secret of Mana
1994 - Illusion of Gaia
1995 - Seiken Densetsu 3
1996 - Super Mario RPG
1997 - Final Fantasy 7
1998 - Xenogears
1999 - Suikoden 2

no surprises here
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I was light on funds during 98-mid 00 iirc. A lot of rentals during the summer months, so I have experience with most of the major titles but not really a lot of deep experiences. So I've played Resident Evil but I didn't really give it an honest play through, etc. In the time span listed I mainly played BG, FFT, Bushido Blade, a LOT of Quake 2 and 3, OoT, original GTA and FFVIII. And a lot of replays of FFVII and CT. Vagrant Story whenever that came out. Basically I played Quake until Square came out with something, rinse and repeat.
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The Mana Sword posted...

top game from each year so far

1987 - Zelda
1988 - Mario 2
1989 - Mega Man 2
1990 - Mario 3
1991 - Mario World
1992 - Link to the Past
1993 - Secret of Mana
1994 - Illusion of Gaia
1995 - Seiken Densetsu 3
1996 - Super Mario RPG
1997 - Final Fantasy 7
1998 - Xenogears
1999 - Suikoden 2

no surprises here

1987 - Zelda
1988 - Life Force
1989 - Dragon Warrior
1990 - Ys I & II
1991 - Mario World
1992 - Link to the Past
1993 - Doom
1994 - Donkey Kong Country
1995 - Donkey Kong Country 2
1996 - Resident Evil
1997 - Castlevania: SotN
1998 - Final Fantasy Tactics
1999 - Resident Evil 3

Imo
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I played the heck out of Life Force
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transience posted...

Okay, 1999 isn't horrifically bad for most people. It's just me. It had some notable video games, especially in the PC space. Everquest is a major milestone for the world of MMOs. It still gets new expansions today! I just looked it up and it's on its 23rd expansion. Impressive! I've never totally understood what made Everquest tick when others did not. It's something I'd like to understand just from a history lesson perspective someday. Everquest was big amongst my circle of friends in the late 90s/early 2000s.

My hours spent playing EverQuest may very well trump the number of hours anyone here has spent playing any particular game.

It's not that EQ is really all that good, but it was the first of it's kind (unless you prefer Asheron's Call) and it filled a void I really needed at that point in my life. If I wasn't a morbidly depressed college student who needed something to occupy myself for about three years so I wouldn't go off the deep end and kill myself, there's no way I would have logged 250 days played on my main in that time frame.

Yeah, that's right. 250 days. In 3 calendar years. On one character. I had alts, too. If you took away the number of hours each day I spent either sleeping or playing EverQuest, you would literally have nothing left.

I dropped it cold turkey once WoW came out, though. In that vein, 2004 > 1999.

transcience posted...

I played the heck out of Life Force

It's an awesome game! Glad to see more love
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What's the best home version of Life Force?
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2000
https://i.imgur.com/SWUBgW6.png

Notable Games:

Baldur's Gate 2
Chrono Cross
Counter-Strike
Deus Ex
Diablo 2
Dragon Warrior 1 & 2 (GBC)
Dragon Warrior Monsters
Final Fantasy IX
Front Mission 3
Hitman: Codename 47
Icewind Dale
Legend of Mana
Lunar: Eternal Blue
Parasite Eve 2
Perfect Dark
Pokemon Gold/Silver
Resident Evil: Code Veronica
Skies of Arcadia
Strider 2
The Sims
Threads of Fate
Tony Hawk's Pro Skater 2
Vagrant Story
Wild Arms 2
WWF No Mercy
Shenmue
SSX
Zelda: Majora's Mask

transience's take:

1 - Dragon Warrior Monsters
2 - Final Fantasy IX
3 - Zelda: Majora's Mask
4 - Strider 2
5 - Chrono Cross

Overall: 13th

Gamerankings

1 - Tony Hawk's Pro Skater 2
2 - Perfect Dark
3 - NFL 2K1
4 - Baldur's Gate 2
5 - Resident Evil: Code Veronica

I remember 2000 as the year of Square. They started off the year with an event called Square Milennium where they announced Final Fantasy IX AND X AND XI. That's absolutely unthinkable today - it would take like 25 years for them to all release. Equally unthinkable is their game output. It was a different game every month and they were all notable. Saga Frontier 2 in January, Front Mission 3 in February, Vagrant Story in May, Legend of Mana in June, Threads of Fate in July, Chrono Cross in August, Parasite Eve 2 in September, Final Fantasy IX in November. Wow. E3 2000 was the first E3 that I was generally conscious of and I had this huge zip file of .wmv files of every trailer they put out. I kept that thing on my computer for years afterwards. Square was never better than they were in 2000. You would never know from their output that they were about to completely vanish from game development.

The games were good, too. Real good. Vagrant Story had next-level presentation, especially that intro. Legend of Mana was friggin' gorgeous. Front Mission 3 was mecha-FFT and that was a lot of fun. Chrono Cross had a beautiful (at the time) watery look and a soundtrack for the ages. And Final Fantasy IX was the whole package.

FF9 went back to the series roots and, for someone like me who hated FF8 so much and had so much invested in the series history, it was just what the doctor ordered. FF9 looked modern but played like a classic game. You had crystals and black mages and callbacks to FF2 and a general structure that resembled FF4 and nngggh I loved FF9 back in 2000. I still like it a lot, but I absolutely loved it back then.

The general gaming public remembers 2000 as the year the Playstation 2 launched. The Dreamcast was nice and all but everyone was waiting for the next great thing. I remember the PS2 launch but, like the PS1 launch, remember it as being a complete dearth of good software. People were excited as hell for The Bouncer which really tells you everything. I could run down PS2 games in 2000 but none of them resonate today except maybe SSX.

Shenmue is probably the biggest game released in 2000. Its scope was beyond any other game at the time. Open worlds were not popular yet (GTA3 doesn't come out for another year). Others can describe Shenmue in detail much better than I can - it's a game that focuses on small minutia while also having the scope of a huge game. Shenmue sold well in relative terms but the development was so expensive that it was probably seen as a complete failure and is most likely a major reason that Sega departed the console market soon after.
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Speaking of small minutia, Nintendo came out with one of those in 2000. They took the pure majesty of Ocarina of Time and deconstructed it brilliantly in Majora's Mask. Majora is a game with elements of town simulations, survival horror and action adventure, all blended together to make something pretty unique. Majora didn't resonate super well in 2000 coming off of the greatest game of all time but has picked up steam as a Weird Thing set in the Zeldaverse. Also coming out on the N64 was Perfect Dark which is Goldeneye perfected. I don't think Perfect Dark resonated quite like the original, but that's more because 007 caught lightning in a bottle. It was such a specific flashpoint in time whereas Perfect Dark was pure refinement.

My game of the year was Dragon Warrior Monsters. Some people love Pokemon - I grew up with Dragon Quest so breeding slimes and babbles to be killing machines feels a lot more natural. I'm actually playing the 3DS remake right now - I'm rocking a Dragon Lord/Mortamor/Demon At Arms/King Cureslime team. DWM is my favorite DQ game and I like the series a whole lot.

The PC had some killers in 2000. The Sims.. I'm not sure what to say about The Sims. It feels like it brought casual gaming to the forefront but I don't know if that's actually true. The Sims is one of the 7 or 8 most successful PC games ever made though. Diablo 2 is the gold standard for Blizzard games, right there with Starcraft and maybe Overwatch depending on how the life of that game goes. Diablo 2 kind of perfected the loot RPG on PC. That might be too narrow - it pretty much dwarfed all point and click RPGs or all PC RPGs throughout the early 2000s. Baldur's Gate 2 came out in 2000, and that game is huge, but ultimately I feel like the Diablo model won out. It might be apples and oranges, I'm not sure, but Diablo certainly persisted where other games have not. Diablo 2 was still getting patched as recently as last year despite the fact that its max resolution is like 800x600.

On the FPS side of the house we have Deus Ex. It featured stealth, FPS and RPG elements jammed together into one package. It's probably easiest to compare Deus Ex to System Shock 2 due to its player perspective, platform and subject matter. Deus Ex had a wider net though while System Shock 2 seems more relegated to cult status. Counter-Strike is a more traditional FPS and is one of the biggest games in probably our biggest genre. People still play CS 1.6 today. It's somehow still in the top 20 games on Steam.

2000 really recovered nicely after the video game crash of 1999. The Playstation went out with style - I didn't even mention Tony Hawk's Pro Skater 2 or Strider 2 - and we even got a mainline Pokemon followup with Gold/Silver. Skies of Arcadia hit the DC in 2000 too. Marvel vs. Capcom 2 hit arcades and the Dreamcast. There's so many games here that it's hard to even write about them all. Video games were healthy on all fronts and the next gen was coming - but Square really drove the bus that was 2000.
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2000 is v. good
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don't forget that with CS came the popularization of leet-speak!
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did it? I was deep in the warez scene of the early 90s so that stuff was old news to me by then
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fair enough!
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Best Zelda
Best Pokemon
Top tier FF
Great DQ spinoff

what a great year for games
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2000: Skies of Arcadia > Final Fantasy IX > No Mercy > Majora's Mask > Chrono Cross > Vagrant Story > Parasite Eve 2
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I know I'll get a lot of hate but many of the games in 2000 I hated. Most of the notable RPGs of the year Im not a fan of, never got into Diablo, I'm one of the few who vastly prefer Pokémon r/s/e over g/s/c, I would rank majoras mask above OoT but honestly I didn't love either a whole lot...

Resident evil: code Veronica came out in 2000 at least...
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Best year hype (2001)
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I lost track of how many times I've played through Shenmue. I'm sure I've purchased thousands of toy capsules
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no writeup tonight - my wife's out of town for the week which means I'm on kid duty! I'll get 2001 done tomorrow - it's gonna be a doozy.
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have your kids write the ones they were alive for
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I hope you like Mario Maker
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2000 Top SHINE 5

Zelda: Majora's Mask - Best Zelda game in the series (or maybe 2nd I haven't decided yet after finishing BotW). Bomber's Journal for life. Moon is your god. You've met with a terrible fate. Ben drowned

Diablo 2 - I lost 2 years of my life to this game. I don't know where they went. I haven't really played much of Diablo 3 because I'm afraid of the same thing happening

WWF No Mercy - Best wrestling game ever

Pokemon Gold/Silver - Bro....they put all of Kanto in this game. THAT'S CRAZY

Chrono Cross - Earns a spot just for it's opening CG movie
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transcience posted...

I hope you like Mario Maker

who doesn't
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Heroes of Might and Magic 3 deserved mention for 1999 imo.

1999 is underrated. Its probably because nobody here seemed to play PC games before Steam

Heroes 3
Planescape: Torment
Age of Empires 2
Sid Meier's Alpha Centauri
System Shock 2
Unreal Tournament
Everquest
Quake 3 Arena
Command & Conquer: Tiberian Sun

I mean those are some of the best of PC gaming, in the genres that the PC did better than consoles ever did (FPSes, Real Time and Turn Based Strategy)
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I played them a lot in the early to mid 90s but not from 98 or so until.. 05? it's a fair criticism of my efforts
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That is a great collection of PC games.
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I played a lot of Quake 3 Arena

I don't know if I was ever any good at it though
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I just thought it was surprising in that best year ever announcement topic that 1999 was being hated on quite a bit. I remember loving some new releases that year, then i looked it up and was like "oh, its mostly PC, i bet that could be part of the reason".

I mean its pretty much the sandwich between the best year (1998) and the best couple months (september to december 2001), and 2000 gets respect it deserves as well. But ya 1999 is underrated for gaming.
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transience posted...

Saga Frontier 2 in January, Front Mission 3 in February, Vagrant Story in May, Legend of Mana in June, Threads of Fate in July, Chrono Cross in August, Parasite Eve 2 in September, Final Fantasy IX in November.

Nothing will ever match peak Square output.

I feel like this is literally impossible to do these days unless you're exclusively developing for handhelds.
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Quake 3 was good but the way rail guns took over that game was kinda frustrating.

I really enjoyed FF9. I didn't necessarily enjoy the end boss nonsense but still. Enjoyed it.

Diablo 2 really took over my free time.

Shake had a good writeup for EQ a long time ago, probably summer/fall 2005. There wasn't anything put together quite like EQ (I can add some caveats here but let's keep going) and a lot of EQ was based on people forming social bonds with each other. But I never played it and my memory of Shake posts is probably crappy.
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Did you deliberately put the Lunars in their PS1 years instead of their Sega CD years because the remakes are the ones people remember, or was it an oversight?
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the latter -- I actually didn't know they came out in English on Sega CD

but did anyone here play them on Sega CD?
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transcience posted...

the latter -- I actually didn't know they came out in English on Sega CD

but did anyone here play them on Sega CD?

Vlado
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I played em on both. PS1s were better, but Lunar 2 is actually pretty different between the two in the level up system.
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I actually liked Lunar 2. I couldn't get into the first one at all for whatever reason.
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i prefer lunar 2 as well, but love 1 also
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2001
https://i.imgur.com/u86CcAT.jpg

Notable Games:

Advance Wars
Black and White
Burnout
Castlevania: Circle of the Moon
Dark Cloud
Devil May Cry
Dragon Warrior 7
Dragon Warrior Monsters 2
Final Fantasy X
Golden Sun
Gran Turismo 3 A-Spec
Grand Theft Auto III
Halo
Ico
Luigi's Mansion
Max Payne
Metal Gear Solid 2
Paper Mario
Pikmin
Phantasy Star Online
Shadow Hearts
Silent Hill 2
Sonic Adventure 2
Tales of Eternia
Tony Hawk's Pro Skater 3
Wario Land 4
Zelda: Oracle of Ages/Seasons
Zone of the Enders

transience's take:

1 - Shadow Hearts
2 - Final Fantasy X
3 - Dragon Warrior Monsters 2
4 - Tales of Eternia
5 - Advance Wars

Overall: 14th

Gamerankings

1 - Halo
2 - Grand Theft Auto 3
3 - Metal Gear Solid 2
4 - Gran Turismo 3 A-Spec
5 - Tony Hawk's Pro Skater 3

GameFAQs

1 - Final Fantasy X
2 - Super Smash Bros. Melee
3 - Metal Gear Solid 2

Starting with 1998, video games seem to work in a 3 year cycle. Every 3 years we have a monster year with tons of huge franchises and notable new IPs getting released. 2001 is one such year. If there was one year that could compete with 1998, it'd be 01.

2001 had so many gigantic games. Two games in particular stand out above the rest. Halo revolutionized console FPS games. I kind of consider it the first 'modern' console FPS due to the dual stick control scheme that it standardized for all games. It's difficult to go back to 007 due to the control scheme, framerate, etc but Halo still holds up there. I think it's one of the most nostalgic FPS games ever made. Oh, and it's probably the most killer a killer app has ever been. It literally validated an entire console for a huge segment of the audience. The attach rate for Xbox owners and Halo was probably like 90%. It began the process of bridging the FPS gap between PC and consoles. Halo 1 didn't have online multiplayer yet but it did have LAN play. Online multi wasn't far off.

I guess I should take a break here and talk about the Xbox. When Microsoft announced they were doing consoles, they were laughed out of the damn room. Gamers scorned the very idea of it. They were basically building a PC that went under your TV. Ethernet cables, hard drives -- what were they thinking? And then Halo came out and it was clear that this was the future. Sure, the Xbox was still crushed by the PS2 -- what wasn't? -- but you could see that it was forward thinking. It took years to get rid of the stigma of Microsoft -- really, of an American company playing in Japanese waters -- but Halo existing is such a huge step. The whole console market changes if Halo doesn't come out in 2001.

The other major release is Grand Theft Auto III. GTA 1 and 2 existed but they were quaint little top down wreckfests. GTA3 gave us the modern concept of the open world. "Open World" is such a loaded term - some people would consider Ocarina of Time an open world - but in general, when people think open world they think of what GTA3 pioneered. Most of the core concepts of GTA originated here. They existed in a simple form in GTA1 and 2 but the introduction of a huge 3d world changed the way it felt. Running over people, causing mayhem and destruction, the radio, the social commentary, the mission structure -- I mean, those aren't technically new to GTA3 but they may as well have been with how it was received. GTA3 was *huge*. The 2000s decade was owned by Grand Theft Auto more than any other video game franchise.
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Those two were the giants, but there were other massive games coming out in 2001 as well. Final Fantasy X was a giant in the JRPG space. In my mind, FF10 is about as big to the JRPG as FF7 was on the PS1. The hype wasn't there, but FF10 was a monumental step up from what we were getting just one year ago in FF9. The move to a new platform came with amazing new graphics, environments and cutscenes. RPGs would spend years trying to catch up to what FFX did in 2001. My game of the year, Shadow Hearts, was a fantastic atmospheric JRPG but looked and played like it belonged on the PS1. I'm not sure if any RPG on the PS2 ever actually matched FFX's graphical fidelity. Its fidelity let them tell a story visually in a way that they never could in previous games - and the shift to polygons also meant limiting the player's freedom. It introduced voice acting which completely changed the way that RPG narratives were presented. There were a lot of growing pains surrounding FFX but it was a giant step forward for the genre.

The GameCube came out in 2001 as well but it wasn't launched alongside a Mario or a Zelda. Instead, we got a weird Luigi game, Pikmin and the local multiplayer game of the generation. Super Smash Bros. Melee hit at the perfect time. I don't feel like the original Smash hit as hard as it could have but the move to the next generation -- and disc-based media -- made Melee a pretty giant step up. I'm not crazy about Melee but it's hard to deny its impact. The GameCube had a lot of issues around first party games throughout its lifespan and Smash helped disguise those. People played this game for years casually and are still playing it competitively today.

As if that wasn't enough, the Game Boy Advance also launched in 2001. I am a pretty notorious hater of the original Game Boy - I think the hardware is just too limited to do much. It was a good system for playing Dragon Quest ports - Dragon Warrior 3 hit the GBC in 2001 and so did Dragon Warrior Monsters 2 - but otherwise it was just a piece of junk for a good ten years. Tetris is fine, Pokemon is probably alright - anything more than that is doing too much. The GBA was the first system to break out of that mold (at least that released here - I could talk for hours about the time I spent playing FF remakes on Wonderswan Color). It was like a portable SNES, except with only two buttons for some reason. That was fine though. The real problem was that there was no backlight or contrast. The original GBA was an exercise in frustration. A Castlevania came out and you couldn't freaking see anything. There were a couple of notable games - I bought the GBA for Golden Sun, an RPG developed by the guys who made Shining Force. (I ended up not liking it.) Advance Wars also came out and that game was addicting.

So much more came out. On the Playstation there were a few notable RPGs still trickling out. Dragon Warrior 7 finally came out. That game was absolutely hilarious - it got delayed for years, finally came out and it looked worse than a SNES game. It's this tortured game that doesn't look at all modern and diehard fans swear by it, all 100+ hours of it. Tales of Eternia - Destiny 2 here in America - came out and was a big improvement over earlier games in the series. Eternia is the only game in the series that I've played (haven't played any since Abyss) and really enjoyed. Over on the N64, we got Paper Mario and Conker to close out that system.
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And yet there was still more. Ico hit in 2001 and was a game changer for video game narratives. Metal Gear Solid 2 was a hugely anticipated sequel with possibly the greatest swerve in video game history. You could never get away with what MGS2 did today. The final stretch of Metal Gear Solid 2 is some of the most memorable content in gaming history, not just 2001. We still point to MGS2 as the prototype of how to subvert expectations and screw with the player. Above everything, MGS2 is intentionally trolling you the entire way and you have to accept that in order to truly embrace it. Devil May Cry invented the concept of the character action game, a subgenre that still exists strong today with games like Bayonetta or Nier. Phantasy Star Online was a.. I don't know if you can call it an MMO, but a persistent online multiplayer game on consoles. Destiny seemed like the natural evolution of PSO. PSO is remembered super fondly after all these years for being a unique experience on console.

The PC went into a bit of a lull in 2001, and for the next couple of years. I feel like there were 5 or 6 big PC games over the past few years and everyone just played those. Counter-Strike, Diablo 2, Starcraft, The Sims. Games were coming out but the new generation of consoles were all the rage. Someone is free to prove me wrong if they have games they want to bring up. The biggest games I can think of on PC in 2001 are Max Payne, Black and White and Civ 3 (which seemed like a down game - a lot of people ended up going back to 2 until 4 came out).

I would call 2001 the first 'modern' year of video games. The PS2 generation was in full swing and with that came a lot of games that looked and played like the games we play today. It was the first year that American games really came onto the console scene with Halo and GTA. An American console launched. The last universally loved Final Fantasy came out. Halo, MGS2 and Melee came out the same goddamn week. 2001 is right there with 1998 for giant tentpole releases.
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I did miss it because it wasn't in the notable games list!
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DQ VII is my personal #1. I definitely get why other people can't get into it, but man. What an ambitious game.

Another (semi)unpopular opinion: the original Paper Mario is the best Mario RPG
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Wanna mention Rogue Leader as another very important 2001 Gamecube title
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Jakyl25 posted...

Wanna mention Rogue Leader as another very important 2001 Gamecube title

AWW s***

also Melee
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deleting my post and rewriting it
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2001 Top SHINE 5


SUPER SMASH BROS MELEE - I have never played a multiplayer game in my life more than melee. Throughout all of my last 3 years of high school as well as every year thereafter leading up to brawl's release I would take it to my friend's house every weekend or sometimes every other weekend and we would no joke play melee for 10-12 hour straight. We all got pretty good at the game and I've never played another Smash Bros since as much as this game despite thinking they were better overall games. Kirby for life still

Metal Gear Solid 2 - Wait did I miss MGS being listed in 1998? If so that needs to be #1 or #2 next to OoT. I was in on Metal Gear Solid so hard and with MGS2 I didn't own a PS2 yet so I borrowed a friend's PS2 for a week to play through this game. It was so cool and I didn't really mind the Raiden twist. A new Metal Gear game felt like an event that I would have been a fool to miss and this would continue with the next couple of games up until Kojama's departure

Star Wars: Rogue Leader - MY EYES. I knew I was getting this for xmas (since I stood in line myself before handing it over to my mom ) and Rogue Leader was the game it was THE GAME. It looked so good and it played so good and it was sooooo goooooood. I eventually convinced my mom that since I stood in line I should get to play it before xmas and opening the gamecube and popping in this game was pure magic.

Sonic Adventure 2 - I technically didn't get in on this until SA2B but whatever I'm listing it now. This was my first actual introduction to 3D Sonic and the music of Crush 40. I cannot imagine life before Crush 40. They are just perfect in their role of making buttrock Sonic songs.

Phantasy Star Online - On one hand I'm disappointed this is the route Phantasy Star went after Phantasy Star IV: End of the Millennium...but on the other hand this game was so addictive I didn't mind playing it either
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transience posted...

Oh, and it's probably the most killer a killer app has ever been. It literally validated an entire console for a huge segment of the audience. The attach rate for Xbox owners and Halo was probably like 90%.

Would be interesting to see how that stacks up against other console killer apps

SMB1 has to be up there right?
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yeah what does that list look like. going consoles only here

1 - Mario 1
2 - Halo
3 - Super Mario 64
4 - Tetris (GB)
5 - Wii Sports (not to this audience though, people probably think TP belongs here)
6 - Sonic 1
7 - Pokemon Red/Blue
8 - FF7
9 - Breath of the Wild?
10 - Super Smash Bros Melee
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I would bet anything that Melee has a higher attach rate than FFVII
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it must

it was out 2 weeks after the GCN launched
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probably. I think FF7 is in a little bit of a different league though. FF7 sold everyone on the Playstation as the Nintendo 64 killer whereas Melee sold Nintendo fans on Nintendo.
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