Oh wow: Independence War, F15 and European Air War.
98/99 : Great years indeed.
Edit: AND Xwing Alliance! Great years: we’ll never see the like again
As somebody who is hitting 32 years old this year, I too am terribly fond of mid to late 90s games.
I also pine for a shiny new space flight sim to grace my current gen PC/XBox/PS3.
I liked it… the co-op did it for me.
Heh, 09 list is missing the bittersweet release of Left 4 Dead 2.
Mental blockage due to excessive internet drama.
Just wait for 2019! Now THAT’S going to be a year.
Myth II was amazing at the time–the 3d terrain, the formations, the physics of some of the objects. And all of the mods for it! There was a WW2 one that was super cool.
Was Unreal good? I thought it was a decent engine with good graphics but I heard the game kind of sucked.
You heard right. I played all the way through it, just because it was fascinating to see what graphical splendor they would expose me to next, but I can’t say I really enjoyed the ride.
But on the other hand, Unreal Tournament (1999) rocked.
So broken. Freespace 2 was arguably a better game on any metric you’d like to measure, except maybe Star Wars content, but in reality, that’s a good thing nowadays.
It wasn’t great, but some of the early stuff in the game was amazing for the time, like the first time you step out of your crashed ship onto the huge open area, with a waterfall it was breathtaking!
That and the damn scary moment walking down the hallway, the music dims, goes silent and all you hear is your footsteps, and then the lights go out. Oh shit.
My favorite game of all-time, Beetle Adventure Racing.
It was good. It really needed some editing down–there were too many “filler” levels along the way, and it was a long game. It actually reminds me a lot of the first Halo, in that respect–too many boring stretches, but when it was good, it was really good. Some of the weapons were lame. But it also had some amazing level design in it, and pretty groundbreaking AI. It was the first shooter I can remember that pitted you against fewer (and sometimes only one) enemy, and provided a challenge by making the enemy smart, rather than just throwing hordes of mindless foes at you like all the other shooters were doing at the time. I think it gets less credit than it deserves, really.
Falcon 4.0
Total Air War
European Air War
Enemy Engaged: Apache/Havoc
Jane’s F-15
Hardwar
I-War
Sanitarium
Resident Evil 2
Alundra
Oddworld: Abe’s Exoddus
Red Baron 3-D
Shogo
Suikoden 2
Warhammer: Dark Omen
Amazing year.
I’m on board this train of thought. Grim, Half-Life, Thief, and Ocarina alone make 1998 the automatic greatest gaming year ever.
No it wasn’t. You’re thinking of Soul Edge/Blade for Playstation, and even that wasn’t out till 98.
Soul Edge was out in '96 in Japan and '97 in North America.
1998 is such an awesome year I had to write a blog post about it (http://doublebuffered.com/2009/02/26/1998-was-the-best-year-in-the-history-of-gaming/). Basically, 1998 was so great because it was both when older trends were at their peak (the last of the great adventure games and flight sims) and new trends were taking off (the maturation of 3d on the PC and dreamcast).
One important one not mentioned so far is Lineage. 1998 (with that and starcraft) created the gaming trends of an entire COUNTRY.
I effin’ LOVED that game.
Not my favorite of all time, but off the bridge and into the alien cave? Hells YES!
Which was better? March 3 or April 12?
Just an FYI for the blog post, Uprising was the first of the first person shooter/RTS hybrids. It came out in 1997 IIRC and I still think it’s brilliant, maybe even better than BattleZone because of the limitations of base placement.