My Favorite Game from Every Year I've Been Alive Part 2: 1997-2001
I'm sure nothing important happened.
Running From the 90s
Read Part One (1991 to 1996) here.
1997
I know you’re excited to learn what I was up to at the age of six, but I don’t remember, so you’ll have to read about world events for a bit.
1997 was all about two things: Titanic, and the death of Princess Diana. Even with my bad, geriatric memory, I can still remember those two things being a massive deal. My parents and older family members would discuss Diana’s death in shock, and my older cousins would rant about how great Titanic was. The entire world was struck with DiCaprio mania and people would scream “I’m the king of the world!” and spread their arms at random intervals. It was like a meme before the Internet.
Rapper Biggie Smalls was shot, something everyone, including Biggie, saw coming. His first album was called “Ready to Die”, and sixteen days before being shot, he released “Life After Death”. It sounds like he knew all along. If Biggie wasn’t your cup of tea, you could turn on the radio and have your ears groped by not one, not two, but three different songs by P. Diddy. Some people claim that, if you listened to all three songs in a row, your radio would start leaking baby oil. Continuing this trend of musical tragedies, Limp Bizkit released their debut album, unleashing Fred Durst on an unsuspecting populace.
Oh and an entire cult called Heaven’s Gate commited mass suicide. Believing they were going to be whisked away on a comet to the great beyond, the group poisoned themselves. That’s not very funny, but get used to it, there are more like this coming up.
Videogames were doing much, much better than the rest of the world. This year saw the release of several absolute classics, and the start of several mega-franchises. Starting with a little known indie title “Highly Responsive to Prayers”, the first game in the now ultra-popular Touhou bullet hell series. The first Dodonpachi released this year, as well as the first Armored Core on the PlayStation. Joining this team of firsts is none other than Fallout, the post-apocalyptic RPG. Sensing a severe lack of satanism in gaming, Blizzard releases the first Diablo game.
Wait, I almost forgot about another first: Grand Theft Auto. It’s a very niche franchise, I don’t know if you’ve heard of it. The first title, the top-down arcade destruction game, was released for PC this year. It was released on the PlayStation years later. No one would have known this little game would spawn a multi-billion dollar franchise that would span decades.
Kids were being introduced to first person shooters thanks to the release of Goldeneye 007 and Chex Quest. Goldeneye brought the fun of a LAN party into the homes of millions with its innovative splitscreen versus mode, leading to hours of fun and accusations of screen-peeking.
Other lucky kids opened their box of Chex cereal to find a game disk along with their dry wheat squares. Chex Quest was a non-violent/kid friendly re-skin of DOOM that was packed in specially marked boxes of Chex. It replaced the scary demons with aliens, the shotguns with laser blasters and removed all the blood and guts. Now, that might sound lame, but the game was still DOOM at its core. It was a great gateway drug to get kids hooked on PC games.
Speaking of shooters, one of my favorite shooters of all time was released this year: Shadow Warrior. Not to be confused with the mediocre re-boot from 2013, Shadow Warrior was a Build-Engine classic. You played as Lo-Wang, a guy who was named like a racist Chinese caricature, but was a ninja, which is Japanese, but he spoke like a racist Chinese caricature, which ended up confusing more people than it offended. The game featured cool guns, a katana, ugly demon enemies and some of the most tightly-designed levels in a shooter. It was tough as hell, too. Definitely recommended if you’re looking to play a real boomer shooter. This year also gave us Blood, another excellent/tough as nails Build Engine shooter.
Postal was released this year, heaping even more controversy onto the gaming world. Based on the term “going postal”, which refers to a series of workplace shootings done by postal workers throughout the 80s and 90s. In the game you play as a dude in a trench coat who shoots guns and goes on several killing sprees to rid the world of the hate plague.
If all this action wasn’t your cup of tea, you could play Final Fantasy 7, arguably the most popular JRPG in existence. Or so I’ve heard. I’ve never played it, and unlike Chrono Trigger, I don’t plan on playing it.
Picking just one out of all these magnificent titles must have been a nightmare, right? Who could look at a list like that and pick ONE game? I could.
My pick for 1997: Starfox 64
I didn’t even have to think about it. I knew Starfox released in 1997, and I was 100% sure there wasn’t any other release that would top it. This is my favorite game of 1997, and one of my favorite games of all time. I love Shadow Warrior with all my heart, but I don’t have its entire script memorized.
Starfox 64 is primitive, short and very simple, but it does what it does perfectly. It’s a fun, tightly made arcade rail shooter that excels in every category. Each level is unique, with its own little gimmick and theme. It’s short, but the alternate paths encourage replay and exploration. The characters are memorable, the music is fantastic. Sure, it’s nowhere near as difficult or technical as something like Dodonpachi, but it’s still a blast. I replay it constantly, and it still holds up.
I sang its praises extensively in a review.
Runners up: Blast Corps. One of the most fun games on the N64. You break buildings to clear a path for a runaway nuclear missile. It’s the most videogame-ass videogame ever, and it’s a blast… corps.
Harmful Park. It’s a PlayStation sidescrolling shmup where you go through an out of control amusement park. It’s in the subgenre of “cute-em-up”, shooters with a really cute aesthetic. It’s a lot of fun and the graphics are gorgeous. Good luck getting a copy of it. It regularly sells for $2,000 on eBay.
1998
I was seven at the time. All I did was go to school, do homework and play videogames. Not very interesting.
Was anything interesting happening in the world? Glad you asked, hypothetical reader. Bill Clinton was involved in his infamous scandal with Monica Lewinsky, giving a whole new meaning to the term “head of state”. This event dominated the airwaves for the entire year, letting Google’s founding go unnoticed. I’m sure that won’t have any horrifying consequences 20 years later.
While all that was going on in the world, videogames were happening at an alarming rate. 1998 saw the release of Half-Life, one of the most influential games of all time, which sadly introduced the world to the walk and talk in-game cutscene. Guilty Gear came along to show everyone that you could turn the concept of anime into a videogame. Not to be outdone in the fighting game front, Capcom releases Marvel vs Capcom and blows everyone’s minds in the process. Now you could finally have Megaman beat up Wolverine.
Another massive release this year would change arcades forever: Dance Dance Revolution. It introduced millions of gamers to the concept of exercise. It helped spread the electronic music of the time outside of raves by blasting it in the middle of the mall food court, making it everyone’s problem. This game, along with Hot Topic and Invader Zim would shape an entire generation of annoying millennial teens.
Over on the N64, things were getting crazy. Rareware, not content with simply giving us Blast Corps the previous year, releases Banjo Kazooie, a 3D platformer that’s arguably as influential as Super Mario 64. We also got Mario Party, the first Party-type game. Its most innovative mechanic was giving people horrible palm injuries by making them rotate the analog stick repeatedly.
Ocarina of Time, the best-reviewed game of all time, burst onto the scene in 98. One of my greatest gaming sins is that I’ve never played Ocarina of Time. I see you picking up that rock, so I’m going to move on to the next topic.
While not as influential as anything mentioned previously, Bomberman Hero and Buck Bumble were two more N64 games. The reason I mention them is because of their bopping drum and bass soundtracks. Bomberman Hero’s is one of my favorite soundtracks of all time. Give it a listen. Buck Bumble gets on here for its earworm main theme. This song was specifically engineered to get stuck in your head, making you unable to think about anything other than the bicketty buck bumble.
The PlayStation wasn’t falling behind. This year introduced us to Metal Gear Solid, which is still beloved, quoted and admired to this day. A landmark title that expanded the scope of what games could be. We also go the first Spyro game, so kids who weren’t allowed to play M-rated games had something to enjoy, too. Oddworld released this year, too, confusing and disturbing many kids, and thrilling older gamers with its bizarre world, tricky gameplay and cinematic presentation.
On the PC side, we were being treated to massive, complex masterpieces. Thief gave us an incredible stealth game with deep mechanics and huge levels to explore. Baldur’s Gate gave our dads something to stare at for hours and hours on end, and Starcraft came along, creating an entire industry of NetCafes and e-sports.
This is where I reveal myself to be a fake gamer. There’s an absurd amount of classics on display here, and I haven’t played a lot of them. No Metal Gear Solid, no Ocarina, only a few hours of Banjo Kazooie, and I’m terrible at StarCraft. Sorry to disappoint, but I can’t name those as my favorite if I haven’t played them.
What did I play for 1998?
My pick for 1998: King of Fighters ‘98
Even over Marvel vs Capcom? Yeah. KoF 98 is much better in terms of balance. Marvel vs Capcom is fun, but it’s broken as hell. So is KoF, I’ve seen the glitch videos, but it’s a more solid experience.
The King of Fighters formula was perfected by this point. The roster is great, you have all the heavy hitters, Terry, Joe, Daimon, Mai, the Orochi team. The music is fantastic, the graphics are great. The gameplay is rock solid. You have that nice, old-school feel with an emphasis on neutral and short combos. Lots of poking and reading your opponent. After KoF 2001 the series would go into this weird combo-crazy insanity that culminated in KoF 15, where everything is a touch of death.
I like Marvel vs Capcom, but if you offered me a first to 10 on MvC or King of Fighters, I’d pick King of Fighters every time.
I’m going to have to try Ocarina of Time and get back to you on that one.
Runners up: There’s this game called Space Station Silicon Valley, which also released this year. I used to love it as a kid. It’s a cool game developed by the team that would later become Rockstar Games. It was like a GTA game where you were a little micro-chip, and you’d hack into robot animals and control them to solve puzzles and do platforming. It’s really charming, but it has a deadly glitch that makes the game impossible to complete.
Circuit Breakers is a PS1 racing game I used to love. It’s like Micro Machines; it’s top-down. I still think it’s fun, and the soundtrack is another Drum and Bass banger.
Can’t forget Gex: Enter the Gecko. The game that’s more influential than brunch at Danny DeVito’s house.
Xenogears released this year, too. I talked about it in an article. I don’t like this game at all.
1999
I actually remember something from this year, and it all has to do with Y2K. You see, back then people thought that when the year changed from 1999 to 2000, the date format would cause a computer glitch that would basically crash every system on Earth. There were concerns, and a lot of them had been addressed before the 90s, but the public didn’t know, and some thought it would be the end of times. An older relative of mine explained it to me, but I was 8 years old at the time, and understood none of it. The fact that we’re all here means that the world didn’t end in 2000.
The other notable event of 1999 was the Columbine High School massacre. Two students killed 13 people while injuring 20 more. This tragedy was blamed on dozens of things, including videogames, as the two perpetrators were fans of DOOM and Duke Nukem 3D, referencing them multiple times in their writings. They also wore black trench coats while doing the massacre, like in the game Postal.
The Matrix premiered that year, revolutionizing pop-psychology for the foreseeable future. It featured guys in black trench coats shooting guns. Along with that we had Fight Club. These two movies would become the personality of an entire generation of men. If nihilistic post-modernism wasn’t your thing, you could get a ticket to go see The Phantom Menace.
In the land of games, we were getting some more certified classics. Nintendo released Super Smash Bros for the N64. It brought the most popular characters of the time together for 4-player party fighting action. It was a massive hit that would go on to launch a franchise and directly inspire the crossover-filled pop culture grey goo we have now. If it weren’t for this game, we wouldn’t be able to play as Darth Vader in Fortnite and shoot Kamehamehas at Billie Eillish. The original game was so good that I’m willing to accept this brainrotted cultural landscape. Up to a point.
The arcades were eating good this year with the release of Crazy Taxi, Hydro Thunder, Jambo Safari, Garou: Mark of the Wolves and Street Fighter 3: Third Strike. An absolutely stacked showing.
The arcade I used to go to had most of these, and it was impossible to decide what to play on just a dollar. One of my favorites was Jambo Safari, a game I don’t see talked about too often. It was one of those that you played with a steering wheel and special controls. You drove a little jeep through the African Savannah, and you had to capture animals using a lasso. You’d push a lever forward to throw the lasso, then pull it back to capture them, all while trying to follow them around. It was a crazy combination of driving and fishing, with the finely tuned controls you’d come to expect from a SEGA arcade release.
Speaking of SEGA, the Dreamcast makes its US debut. Hyped up by a massive advertising campaign centered around its September 9 release date, plastering game magazines with 9/9/99. It wouldn’t sell as much as the PS2 or Gamecube during its lifespan, but it would go on to be remembered by gamers as the platform with the best/most accurate arcade ports, and by a bunch of youngsters for having “impeccable vibes”. Looking at its promotional material, UI design and general style, I can’t say I disagree. The vibes are immaculate.
The PC market, not wanting to be left out, releases two absolute classics of multiplayer shooting: Unreal Tournament and Quake III: Arena. Two games which, in my humble opinion, are the glittering peak of multiplayer first person shooters. It had hundreds of gamers hauling their heavy-ass PCs to LAN parties, to huddle up in a dark room shooting each other and chugging Bawls for hours and hours on end.
As a direct counter to all this goodwill on the PC, David Cage curses the world with Omikron: The Nomad Soul. An overly ambitious confused mess of seven different gameplay genres, none of which work. It’s a fantasy sci-fi epic set in the future where you play as a wandering soul who has to solve his own murder, fight demons and David Bowie is involved for some reason. Yes, the real David Bowie, not a look-alike. This sounds like the raddest thing ever, but it falls on its face in its execution. This was the game that killed The Super Best Friends let’s play channel.
My pick for favorite of 1999: Donkey Kong 64
I don’t care about the constant character switching, backtracking and 4,000,000 collectibles, I love this game. This was the first game I ever got 100% completion on. 101%, actually, since I even went for the secrets. I spent so many hours playing this, and loved every single minute of it. I have a very vivid memory of staying home from school one day and playing this all day. It’s the kind of feeling you can never recapture.
The game itself is fantastic. Its platforming is kind of basic, but it gets the job done. There’s tons to do, explore and collect. You turn a corner and find a dozen different things you can get. There is a ton of backtracking, sure, but I didn’t mind it as a kid. I think I was a lot more patient back then. I played this game again a few years ago, and still didn’t mind the backtracking, but I can see how it can upset a lot of people.
It’s full of charm and personality, the graphics are colorful and fun, each section of the island is uniquely themed and each level is a blast to explore. Except for Gloomy Galleon. That stage can go hang out somewhere else. The soundtrack is great, too.
Oh, and anytime this game gets brought up, it has to be mentioned: This game holds a Guiness world record for most collectibles in a videogame. Wow.
For all my love for the other games this year, I can’t really justify putting anything other than Donkey Kong 64 as my favorite.
Runners up: Ape Escape. It’s another ape-themed platforming collect-a-thon. What? I like apes. It’s a ton of fun, bursting with personality, and the soundtrack is sublime.
Tony Hawk’s Pro Skater. The first entry in the Pro Skater series isn’t the most impressive, but it’s still a ton of fun. It convinced me I could do an ollie in real life, but gravity sent me a painful reminder that no, I in fact cannot ollie.
I love Smash Bros, but I prefer Melee over the original. Possible spoilers for 2001.
2000
It’s the new millennium, and the world didn’t end. It was a relatively uneventful year, a welcome change from the previous turmoil and what we all now know would come to pass later on. For now, we were dreaming of the chrome-coated future that awaited us in the year 2000.
The future we got was less flying cars and robot servants, and more Britney Spears and nu-metal. The airwaves were being smacked around by “Oops I did it again”, two NSYNC tracks and Blue dabadeedadabai. It was a horrible time to have ears. If that wasn’t your thing, you could join the alternative side of things and dive head-first into the nu-metal movement that was gaining steam thanks to the release of Hybrid Theory by Linkin Park and The Chocolate Starfish by Limp Bizkit. I used to think Linkin Park and Limp Bizkit were the coolest things ever back then. I was also nine years old at the time. I’m sure those two are unrelated.
I bet you’re all thrilled to hear about my pre-pubescent music tastes, but it’s time to get to the videogames.
The PlayStation 2 arrived this year, bringing with it some cool launch titles. None cooler than Madden 2001, of course. Now you could see football, with more graphics! The future is here, and it wears a jersey. Along with it was Riiiiiidge Racer 5, remember that one?
The PS2’s launch, at least in North America, wasn’t all that great. Sure, it had Madden, but the real heavy hitters wouldn’t be showing up yet.
The PC was the one vacuuming up all the good releases. We got the classic devil-themed ARPG Diablo II, which would eventually give us Diablo Immortal, the greatest game ever made, for those who have phones. If playing with demons wasn’t your thing, you could play with digital dolls in The Sims, the premier life simulator and the first game where you could lock a family in a room and set it on fire. You’d think Postal would have come up with that one. Like Diablo, it would then morph into an unholy, micro-transaction filled abomination decades later. For now, enjoy the good games.
If you thought those previous two games were too casual, you could boot up Counter Strike 1.6, and get sweaty and angry. This tactical shooter competed with Quake III and Unreal Tournament for the title of King of the LAN party.
If singleplayer PC action was more your speed, you could grab a copy of Deus Ex. This immersive sim follows JC Denton, a man in a black trench coat who shoots guns. That sounds oddly familiar. You go through different missions that take place in huge levels. Approach each problem in one of many different ways, use stealth, use guns, use vents or sneak through the sewers. It also features a story where a terrorist attack on New York city leads to a conspiracy of government overreach. That also sounds familiar. There’s also a technocratic surveillance state ruled by a small cabal of elites. Huh...
The Sega Dreamcast got Jet Set Radio, a music CD with a free game included. This game would be remembered for its amazing soundtrack, stylish graphics and its hip, urban vibes. Notice the lack of praise for the actual gameplay. This game, in my opinion, is cool and all, but it’s leagues below the Pro Skater series, and most of the levels feel like they were made for a different game.
Skies of Arcadia arrived this year, too. A somewhat underrated JRPG, it has a simple yet charming story with loveable characters and a basic but enjoyable combat system. It has a lot of fun stuff to explore, airship battles, and a special attack where your entire crew, including the cooks, start flying around nuking every enemy on screen. I have played this but not Chrono Trigger.
On the arcade front we got four cool games. First off, Metal Slug 3. As you can tell by the 3 in the name, it’s the third installment in the Metal Slug franchise, and in my opinion, the best one. It takes the player from a crab-infested beach, to the jungle, to a zombie-infested camp and into outer space. It’s a ton of fun, like every other Metal Slug, and incredibly brutal in its difficulty. Mashing the fire button for fifteen minutes straight during the final level gave me severe carpal tunnel syndrome, but it was worth it.
Next is the forgotten/overlooked Cannon Spike. A top-down shooter where you can play as different Capcom characters including Cammy, Nash/Kevin and Arthur from Ghosts n’ Goblins. Shoot your way through a few square arenas and fight cool bosses. It even has a stage set in Raccoon city. It’s fun, and I wish Capcom would port it.
The third arcade classic we got was Capcom vs SNK. For the first time ever, you could pit Terry Bogard vs Ryu and see who’s the best. I know there was a Capcom/SNK crossover title before this one, but this was the first fighting game with both of them in it. It was a real treat for fans of either side, and a solid fighting game to boot.
That wasn’t the only fighting game with Capcom and VS released in that year. That other title was none other than my favorite game of 2000…
My pick for 2000: Marvel vs Capcom 2
It’s MAHVEL BAYBEE. I didn’t pick the first one for my favorite previously, but the second one has to be included. It’s an unbalanced mess of degenerate strategies and infinite combos, but it’s too much fun to ignore. This was the first fighting game I ever played, and it sent me down the dark path of number notation and thinking about frame data. This game was the reason why I went to the arcade. All of my quarters went into this one. I could skip playing Time Crisis or Tekken or any of the others, but not MvsC2. After the local arcade closed, I spent years tracking down a copy of it on PS2, which was (and still is) incredibly rare. I finally got one and used up an entire years’ worth of birthday/Christmas money on it. Then it got stolen a decade later. I still feel that one.
This game has an absurd roster of 52 characters, back in an era where crossovers weren’t something you saw every single day. The gameplay is fast, frantic and not very balanced. There are only around seven good characters, with the rest being mediocre and a few that are borderline unplayable. If you play this game at a sweaty level, you might get sick of Magneto, Storm, Sentinel and its variations, but I’ve never been good at this game.
It was my first fighting game, I have tons of fond memories of playing this with my friends at the arcade, and then for hours and hours at home on the PS2. Got into a lot of arguments with my friends over whether or not Cable was cheap, or if air combos were unfair. It was the first game I actively seeked out in different stores, and its soundtrack lives rent free in my head to this day. Putting anything other than Marvel vs Capcom 2 on this spot would feel horribly wrong.
Runner Up: Metal Slug 3.
2001
Nine eleven. You knew this was coming. So did George Bush. Allegedly. Other things happened this year, but they don’t really matter.
Anyone who was alive at the time remembers where they were when it happened. I was at school, and the power suddenly cuts off. It was weird because that never happened there before. It was coincidental, since I was hundreds of miles away from New York. Then one of the teachers comes in and tells our teacher “they blew up the towers”. I was 10, so I didn’t know what that meant, but I could tell it was bad since my teacher was visibly upset as the other teacher explained the situation. When you’re a kid and you don’t understand a situation, you don’t really react, but if you see an adult or an authority figure be affected by something, that’s when you know it’s serious. The power came back on and the teacher turned the TV on and saw the footage, then turned it off saying something about how “the kids don’t need to see this”.
This was the start of the modern era. More forever wars in the middle east under false pretenses, the introduction of a surveillance state, trillions in debt and military spending. We didn’t know how good we had it before then.
There’s no real way to transition from that into videogames, but here we go.
2001 was, ironically, a fantastic year for games. The sixth console generation was in full swing with the introduction of the Gamecube, Gameboy Advance and the Xbox.
The Gamecube had a weird launch, with no Mario games, just Luigi’s Mansion. This unexpected game puts Luigi in a haunted house where he hunts down ghosts. No one could have guessed that Nintendo’s new console would launch with a horror-lite game featuring not-Mario.
Mario fans might have been disappointed with the launch line-up, but ape fans were pleased because Super Monkey Ball was finally here. An incredible arcade game where you roll a little monkey in a ball through surrealist levels. You don’t control the monkey, you turn the world and the monkey rolls on it. Its finely tuned controls and impeccable physics made this intuitive to play. The developers took advantage of this physics engine to make some sadistic stages that demand a lot from the player, and the game is so well designed that it can meet all those insane challenges. It’s easy to pick up and play, but it takes real skill to master.
Pikmin was another unexpected, experimental game. A type of RTS where you solve puzzles using an army of little plant creatures. Not content with just being odd, the game goes into weird territory by adding a timer, meaning you have to do things quickly or else. The addition of this timer makes the game a lot of fun. It adds a sense of urgency and it forces the player to learn the game and be efficient. The other games in the series kept the day/night timer, but removed the global one. A shame, really.
Keeping with the theme of timers we got Animal Crossing, a life sim where things change in real-time. Stores open and close at specific hours, villagers have their little routines and go to bed at night, special NPCs show up in specific days, the seasons change when they do in real life. It’s the coziest game ever. The simplicity of this first game gives it a lot of charm. There isn’t much to do, but what you can do is a lot of fun. I used to love trading items with my friends using the password feature, and swapping memory cards to visit other towns. Sure, the newer Animal Crossing games let you visit other towns via the Internet, but there was something special about visiting another town after going through the trouble of getting someone else’s actual, physical memory card. I didn’t like the fact that a town would take up an entire memory card, though. That was some bull.
Devil May Cry came out on the PS2 and changed action games forever. It had a smooth combat system, a creepy atmosphere and some hit or miss boss fights. The game overall is excellent, and it spawned one of the best game franchises ever. Everyone pays more attention to DMC3, and don’t get me wrong, that’s a great game, but the first one still holds up, even with the fact that you fight Nightmare 200 times. This one little game filled a lot of dark souls with light.
The PC went and introduced a few shooter classics like it was nothing. Max Payne introduced us to Bullet Time, which would then go on to be used in every single shooter ever. In that game you play as a guy in a black trench coat shooting guns. Wait, that’s technically a jacket, not a trench coat. Close enough. It was heavily inspired by The Matrix, and it shows, with lots of diving around and blasting dudes.
Serious Sam burst onto the scene, bringing its unique brand of arcade action. It was less like the boomer shooters of yore. No key hunting or cleverly placed enemies. Instead, you were thrown into a series of arenas where you shot hundreds of enemies. This almost Dynasty Warriors style of shooter was impressive back then, with how many 3D models it could cram on screen. It still is a ton of fun to this day, even if some of the fights drag on past ten minutes.
Return to Castle Wolfenstein re-imagines Wolfenstein before it would then get re-imagined in 2009 and then re-re-imagined in 2014. This was the good reboot. You stormed nazi castles, mowing them down using all sorts of guns, until things get weird and you go up against bio-mechanical horrors and the undead. It was an interesting sort of transitional shooter that still kept the sensibilities of older shooters, like health packs, multiple weapons and big levels, combined with more modern elements like cinematic setpieces and hitscan enemies. Still holds up.
The true modern shooter was also released this year: Halo. It introduced a lot of the things I really hate about shooters. It slowed the player down to a crawl, added regenerating health, limited your weapons to two down from ten, no melee weapon and an emphasis on story. Despite all this, the game was well designed and still fun, offering big levels to play around in and smart enemies that still had oldschool tendencies, like projectile weapons and good placements. It’s a shame that every other shooter copied it poorly. It’s still diet Unreal Tournament.
GTA III and Conker’s Bad Fur Day released this year to convince people that games were a bad influence. They were both lightning rods for controversy for being crude and overly violent. Endless hours of news coverage were dedicated to making GTA 3 the most sought-after game by teens. Nothing sells a game like telling kids they can’t play it because it’s for adults.
On the GBA we got the first Phoenix Wright game and Advance Wars. Phoenix Wright captured the heart of many with its witty writing and loveable characters. Advance wars was an addictive turn-based strategy game that could be played in multiplayer by passing the gameboy around. It was a ton of fun, and it’s still great. The bulk of my playtime was spent with the second game, which got me in trouble a few times for passing the GBA during class.
With all these classics, which one is my favorite from 2001?
My pick for 2001: SSX Tricky… and Super Smash Bros Melee
This is a perfect arcade sports game. The controls are excellent. The weight is good, the way you ride the turns as you go, how the steering reacts with the terrain, the sense of speed, the tricks, the massive air. The way you have to balance doing tricks to get boost and racing. Each track is full of alternate paths, shortcuts and secrets, the characters are full of soul and personality, the soundtrack is packed with drum and bass goodness. It’s one of the games I’ve played the most throughout my life.
I met one of my best friends in middle school because he liked SSX Tricky, too. I played it on a daily basis before and after school. It’s not just nostalgia talking, either. I replayed it consistently throughout the years, and replayed it a few years back, and it’s just as good as I remember it. I definitely have to review it in full some day.
It was hard picking between the two. The hardest decision in this whole series up to now. They’re both 10/10 games that I played for thousands of hours, played with friends, and have good memories with. I kept playing even when I was in college, so it has some more sentimental value spread out, but I can’t really pick. They both win favorite of this year. I won’t do that again, because that’s cheating, but asking me to pick between two of my favorite games of all time is impossible.
Capcom vs SNK 2 gets runner up. It’s a great game, even with all its jank.
Civilization 3 deserves a mention. I played it a decade after release, but it’s the first game where I pulled a 12 hour binge. I had to uninstall it for my own good, but I’ve gone back to it in moderation. A fantastic, deep, interesting game that can suck up hours of your time.
Ikaruga should be highlighted, too, even if it hurts my gamer cred to admit I’ve never beaten it. I sure have tried.
Conclusion
That was the late 90s. A time of turmoil, uncertainty and conflict in the world. There were a lot of good games, at least. Games that were formative for me and gave me good memories and stuff to share with my friends. At this point I was old enough to have hobbies and such, and I knew that games were going to be my thing.
What kind of nonsense awaits us in the next entry? What classic games from 2002 to 2006 will I admit to not having played? I can already see a beloved title from 2004 that I’ve never even touched once. Which one could that be?
Find out next time!
Beloved title from 2004? I bet is Half Life 2