the best year of gaming post 3DFX-era

[Borealis7]

I was browsing GameSpot and i thought to myself, which was the best year for gaming?
so i decided to make a shortlist of the greatest games and i came up with 3 packed years that signify, for me at least, the best years in gaming post 3DFX-era.

now i'm biased towards RPGs and i think it shows in my lists but i know my history. i didnt include sports games since they are all re-hashes of the same thing, and didnt include expansions.

growing up in that time was so great, almost every game on that list left me with fond memories.

and how do you think these years compare to what we have now?

VOTE NAAAAUUUUUWWW!

revolutionary / notable titles in bold

first nominee : 1998

Battlezone
Grand Theft Auto
SimCity 3000
Starcraft
Unreal
Might and Magic VI: The Mandate of Heaven
Forsaken
MechCommander
Final Fantasy VII
Descent: Freespace - The Great War
Commandos: Behind Enemy Lines
Mortal Kombat 4
Tom Clancy's Rainbow Six
Grim Fandango
Fallout 2
Caesar III
Shogo: Mobile Armor Division
Delta Force
Half-Life
Thief: The Dark Project
Baldur's Gate
Carmageddon 2: Carpocalypse Now
Return to Krondor
Starsiege Tribes
Myth II: Soulblighter

 

[Borealis7]

second nominee: 1999

Sid Meier's Alpha Centauri
Heroes of Might and Magic III
Aliens Versus Predator
Midtown Madness
MechWarrior 3
Heavy Gear II
Might and Magic VII: For Blood and Honor
Worms Armageddon
Dungeon Keeper 2
Jagged Alliance 2
Kingpin: Life of Crime
Drakan: Order of the Flame
System Shock 2
Outcast
Hidden & Dangerous
Homeworld
Darkstone
Legacy of Kain: Soul Reaver
Need for Speed: High Stakes
FreeSpace 2
Age of Wonders
Pharaoh
Planescape: Torment
Unreal Tournament
Quake III Arena

 

[Borealis7]

3rd nominee : 2000

Thief II: The Metal Age
Soldier of Fortune
Majesty: The Fantasy Kingdom Sim
StarLancer
Allegiance
Motocross Madness 2
Ground Control
MDK2
Earth 2150
Shogun: Total War
Descent 3
Deus Ex
Diablo II
Icewind Dale
Driver
Midtown Madness 2
Baldur's Gate II: Shadows of Amn
Command & Conquer Red Alert 2
The Sims
Half-Life: Counter-Strike
The Operative: No One Lives Forever
MechWarrior 4: Vengeance

 

[Jumpem]

The mid to late nineties were such an epic time in PC gaming. So much better than today.

 

[TheNoblePlatypus]

2000 is the correct answer. Diablo 2, Balgurs Gate 2, Deus Ex, Mechwarrior 4. The amount of hours I sunk into Diablo 2....

 

[colonel]

the war with Quake and Unreal Tournament classic, UT won.

 

[JoshGuru7]

My favorite era for nolstalgia purposes was '92/'93:

- X-Wing
- Wolfenstein 3D
- Doom
- Syndicate
- Myst
- Day of the Tentacle 2
- Star Control 2
- Sim City 2000

That's a little bit old school, but of the bolded titles I don't even know which game I wasted the most time in other than it was hundreds of hours for each. It's true that none of them are really that great today, but I would love to see both a Syndicate and X-Wing/Tie-Fighter remake using 2010 technology. How could Syndicate 2010 not sell a bazillion copies?

 

[The Boston Dangler]

with worms, kingpin and a mechwarrior game, 1999 does it for me.

 

[CP5670]

1999. I think most of my all-time favorite games came out that year. Freespace 2, Descent 3, UT and Battlezone 2 all come to mind, and System Shock 2 was very good too.

Descent 3 should be in the 1999 list, by the way.

These years were in many ways the best period for PC gaming, with much more diversity and originality than we get today.

 

[Fox5]

How are 1998 to 2000 post-3dfx era? That was still prime 3dfx era, and even at their fall in 2000 they still made up like 50% of all add in graphics cards sold.

But 1998 easily. Starcraft, Unreal, FF7, Baldur's Gate, Fallout 2, and Halflife all in the same year? Easy. And I'm assuming we're only counting pcs, the consoles had some landmark titles in 1998 as well.

 

[datalink7]

For me personally, I'm going to say 1999 because it has four of my top 5 favorite games of all time:

Sid Meier's Alpha Centauri
FreeSpace 2
Planescape: Torment

Additionally, there is:

Heroes of Might and Magic III
Aliens Versus Predator
Dungeon Keeper 2
Jagged Alliance 2
System Shock 2
Homeworld
Unreal Tournament

All of which I enjoyed quite a bit (and Homeworld would be in my top 10 favorite games, just not top 5)

 

[Borealis7]

How are 1998 to 2000 post-3dfx era?

ok, i meant to say "the era of post-pixelation / 3D acceleration"
at that time i had a Creative VooDoo 2 8MB + ATI Rage2 Pro 8MB

And I'm assuming we're only counting pcs, the consoles had some landmark titles in 1998 as well.

well this IS the PC gaming forum

 

[Gothgar]

went with 2000

I played so fucking much Counterstrike, Diablo 2 and Red Alert 2 it isnt even funny

 

[slag]

the war with Quake and Unreal Tournament classic, UT won.

Not even close

Quake 1 is still the best of all the quake releases and unreal/tournament releases.

Quake was the game that put 3dfx on the map with the monster3d and then later canopus cards.

 

[brblx]

How are 1998 to 2000 post-3dfx era? That was still prime 3dfx era, and even at their fall in 2000 they still made up like 50% of all add in graphics cards sold.

it's post-glide. the days everyone having a voodoo to play games with glide ended in 1997-1998 when other companies started releasing more competent cards.

i vote for none of those years, because they all would exclude some of my favorite games. in general, 1997-1999 was the golden age of PC gaming.

 

[MJinZ]

1998 + 2000

 

[aclim]

the war with Quake and Unreal Tournament classic, UT won.

lol not close... Quake is still played professionally in tourneys around the world.

 

[Udgnim]

using gamerankings and calculating top 10 rated PC games after 5 reviews as the metric

1996 89.358
1997 89.065
1998 90.498
1999 91.297
2000 89.741
2001 88.314
2002 90.971
2003 91.342
2004 91.347
2005 89.979 Xbox 360 Released
2006 89.361
2007 90.812
2008 87.161
2009 89.866

please note I removed Team Fortress 2 and Portal from 2007 because of Orange Box's inclusion. 2007 would have scored 91.53 if TF2 and Portal were included.

here's 2004's list of games since it had the highest metric score: http://www.gamerankings.com/browse.html?site=pc&cat=0&year=2004&numrev=0&sort=0&letter=&search=

 

[disappoint]

BF1942: best game of all time. period. it was epic, it was the first with vehicles: planes, ships, tanks. and yes, prop planes>jets.
Also the Desert Combat mod made it even better.

BF2 sucked because the jets are too fast, run out of space to fly on small maps and are overpowered because the AA guns were nerfed.

 

[Tom]

I have a family computer that runs pretty much continously with a Voodoo5 5500 in it for more than a decade.

 

[TheVrolok]

The mid to late nineties were such an epic time in PC gaming. So much better than today.

This. I can't possibly separate those years. They were absolutely epic.

 

[CurseTheSky]

Ugh, I can't decide between 1998 and 2000. Diablo II and Starcraft / Half-Life were some of my favorite games of all time.

 

[SteelyKen]

I pick 1998 for nostalgic reasons.
I bought Unreal then and it was completely unplayable on my Pentium 166 MMX.
It was the spark that first took me down the road to building my own computers.

 

[mmntech]

1998 definitely. Loved Grim Fandango and Caesar III. Playing Tropico makes me want to dig Caesar III out again. Half-Life of course has reached legendary status. Ah the late 90s was the golden age for PC gaming. The early 2000s treated us well though.

For console, I'd mark 2006 as one of my favourite years.

 

[zerocool84]

2000 is the correct answer. Diablo 2, Baldur's Gate 2, Deus Ex, Mechwarrior 4. The amount of hours I sunk into Diablo 2....

Also forgot Counter Strike. Most time I've ever spent with a game.