I can wax nostalgic about video games for hours every day. My personal best years in gaming:

1983 - We got Intellivion for Xmas 82.. Played a lot of Lock & Chase, Astrosmash, Night Stalker, Sea Battle, etc.
1989 - The year I bought myself a NES.. Played Bionic Commando, Contra, Castlevania.. First job mowing lawns gave me income in addition to my allowance which went up to $10/wk. to blow on gaming magazines and the occasional game, as well as a decent budget for arcade games which were in their heyday... Golden Axe, Robocop, Narc, Hard Drivin, Stider, that was 1989 for me. Probably the single best year.
1992 - Now working one full-time and one part-time job for the summer, as soon as I wrote my final exams I I bought myself Genesis, then SNES the next day. Played a lot of Super Contra, Street Fighter 2, Castlevania 4, Super Battletank (first game with photo-real graphics on home systems imho), Populous, Strider, etc.
1994 - The year I bought my first PC.. played a lot of Doom 2, Alone in the Dark 2, Ecstatica, Tie Fighter, and countless demos from PC Gamer and other magazine pack-in discs
1998 - The year I got into multiplayer... played insane amounts of Quake 2
2000 - The year I bought my first true custom-built gaming PC.. played Quake 3, Deus Ex, Aliens Vs Predator, and in 2001 played tons of Tribes 2
2002 - At end of 2001 I bought another even better gaming box... played tons of RTCW, Medal of Honor, and ended the year playing BF1942 about four hours per day
2006 - The year I bought my first bleeding-edge custom-built gaming PC (dual GPUs, 30 inch 4 megapixel monitor, $150 mouse, etc.)... played BF2, Quake 4, Call of Duty 2, Prey, HL2: Ep1

2007 was a decent year, might look like a stand-out once I get some distance and perspective.

Argh, Portal song stuck in my head!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

An accurate countdown.

And yes, 2007 was awesome.

2007 - I'm making a note here: huge success.

In retrospect, it was a pretty damn good year for gaming.

2008 is shaping up to be even better than 2007...

I don't care about any 2008 releases but Fallout 3. If that doesn't live up to the prior installments (or at least come *close*) I'm giving this whole year the finger. As hard as I can.

That said, there are obviously some great games this year. I'm just a raving Fallout fanboy, and will weep for the franchise if 3 sucks. I can't take another disappointment like Deus Ex 2.

2007, while basically a good year, didn't have anything that I'm still going to be playing 10 years from now or would call a personal favorite short of Portal. BioShock would've been if it weren't for the awful, awful final act.

Good year, yes. Best? Not even close.

1998 ftw, yo.

i liked 1996... Duke Nukem 3D.. C&C: Red Alert.. and.... Quake...
might not be many others, but all 3 are among my top 3 played games in the 90s..

But most importantly.. Voodoo Graphics came and showed us (well, me atleast) the light..
when i first saw glQuake (1997), after playing software mode in 400x300, it was a religious experience.. well.. as I imagine a religious experience to be..

2007, huh? Sadly, my PC was cutting edge in 2003/2004, so I didn't get a chance to witness the marvelous games this year. Oh well. Paying for college will do that to ya.

On paper, 2007 seemed like a really great year: Half-Life 2: Episode Two, Portal, Team Fortress 2, BioShock, Mass Effect, Call of Duty 4. But only Episode Two managed to make it into my all-time top 20. Maybe it's just too soon for the other games to bump older favorites.

I'd probably have to pick 1995 as the best year, when Chrono Trigger, Command & Conquer, and X-COM: Terror From the Deep (my introduction to the series) were released. It's hard to pick just one year, though. The best "era" I would say was 1997-2000, when my top 5 all-time favorite games came out (Deus Ex, System Shock 2, Half-Life, Fallout 1 and 2).

1997 was definitely the pinnacle year in portraying what video games could become. Like someone said, GLQuake was a breakthrough in 3D graphics card support (obviously meaning that before it - the 3d engines were rendered in SOFTWARE mode), Quake II came out, Fallout was one of the most intelligent, dark and humorous games ever released - even to this day AND - the original Grand Theft Auto came out - so obviously 1997 should be 1.


There were so many great games from 1997 - here's an incomplete list of games from 1997 via Wikipedia:

* February 10 - Mario Kart 64 (N64)
* February 28 - Turok: Dinosaur Hunter (N64)
* March 20 - Castlevania: Symphony of the Night (PS) (Sega Saturn)
* April 30 - Star Wars: X-Wing vs. TIE Fighter (PC)
* May 31 - MDK: (PC) (PS)
* June 26 - Dungeon Keeper (PC)
* July 1 - Star Fox 64 (N64)
* July 30 - Carmageddon (PC)
* August 25 - GoldenEye 007 (N64)
* August 31 - HeXen II (PC)
* September 7 - Final Fantasy VII (PS), (PC)
* September 19 - Oddworld: Abe's Oddysee (PS), (PC)
* September 30 - Fallout (PC)
* September 30 - Total Annihilation (PC)
* October - Grand Theft Auto (PC)
* October 9 - Star Wars Jedi Knight: Dark Forces II (PC)
* October 26 - Age of Empires (PC)
* October 29 - Riven (PC) (Mac)
* October 31 - The Curse of Monkey Island (PC)
* November 14 - Postal (PC)
* December 6 - Quake II (PC)
* December 19 - Wing Commander: Prophecy (PC)
* December 23 - Gran Turismo (PS1)

*dead

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