The Year of Release Game

the rocky connrrr picture show

2007

Lost Odyssey, Mistwalker

Gameplay that feels like a direct evolution of Final Fantasy X. It’s got an Uematsu prog rock score and Sakaguchi’s schmaltz, but also over thirty interactive kinetic typography shorts written by novelist Kiyoshi Shigematsu. I played it quite recently because I never had a 360 back when it was current, and while it didn’t become my favourite FF I did have a cozy time with its characters. Comfort food for the starving FF fan.

connierad

the rocky connrrr picture show
Currently 75% off on the Microsoft store if you have Xbox Live Gold!

matt

2006

Dead Rising
This game sold me an Xbox 360. The amount of zombos on the screen at once, the stupid voice acting and slapstick attitude of the whole thing, perfect. Trying to save NPCs who scream “Fraaaaaaaaaaaank!!!” all the time was very special.
And of course the time limit and save system that many hated, but I loved. Initially it made the game real hard. But as you got to know the game more and more, subsequent play throughs were entirely different experiences. After many play throughs you could experience all the game had to offer, then challenge yourself to do everything possible in one sitting.

TheFragranceOfDarkCoffee

matt Damn I was typing this at the same time!

TheFragranceOfDarkCoffee

2006

Dead Rising is a funny sort of beast. It almost feels like a path not taken in AAA game design in its particular flavor of sandbox. “Here’s a weird place with some weird rules on a funky little timeline; go do something interesting” is an incredibly rich pitch for a game and one I wish we’d see come back into vogue. Dead Rising 2 probably represents the peak of this idea, but Dead Rising remains something fascinating and special. To me it’s the essential starting point of the Xbox 360 era.

fridgeboy

Whoa! That’s wild that you both chose the same game at the same time, and not exactly like the most 1000% mainstream obvious choice either (not that Dead Rising is obscure really, just not necessarily what I’d expect to see doubled.)

New addendum rule re: double posts for a year

Let ’em ride. If more than one person posts a single year close together, don’t feel the need to delete or anything. Some years can have two games, who cares.

Syzygy

2005

Easily the best Star Wars game; arguably the best creative work to come out of the franchise; painfully overlooked post Disney buyout for how ahead of its time it was a decade prior; historically telling for the relationship between Bioware and Obsidian, and thus for the relationship in general between ambitious game dev and market demands.

baftaboo

Syzygy It was not possible for me, although I did try!, to appreciate the light/dark revisionism of The Last Jedi, given how adroitly this game handled the same theme over a decade before.

fetus8

2004

The Legend of Zelda: The Minish Cap

2004 was a pretty crazy year for game releases. Half-Life 2 was my other choice but I figured why not highlight one of the weirder Zelda games instead.

I got sick and stayed home for a few days from school within a week or so of this releasing and spent a lot of time playing this. It’s burned into my memory in a way. I loved the art style and thought the shrinking mechanic was really cool. 2D Zelda games have always been my favorite Zelda games, but this one might still be my favorite to this day.

Jax

2003

pov: you looked up “adventure” in the dictionary

The Legend of Zelda: The Wind Waker

(Oh the last post was a Zelda game? TOO BAD!)

Ahem..

At some point (1998) The Legend of Zelda became a series about a boy on an adventure, often times accompanied by a horse. It should be about a boy on an adventure, who has a boat. Yes this game is big, yes it’s empty, yes it takes forever to get anywhere. And I wouldn’t have it any other way.

TracyDMcGrath

2002

Rage of the Dragons

Evoga’s vaguely double dragon themed tag team fighter, with gorgeous art and a heck of a combo system. Deserves a lot more love than it gets (and may soon get it with a Switch port in the works). One of the better fighters on the Neo Geo

whatsarobot

TracyDMcGrath I am reeeeally looking forward to that Switch port.

tokucowboy

Maaaaaaaan. I’m not even gonna touch 2001.

exodus

YEAHHHH rage of the dragons!

2001

the year of 2001 has got to be
CAPCOM VERSUS SNK 2
MILLIONAIRE FIGHTING 2001

The ultimate mashup fighter from the ultimate fighting game companies, a game in which justin wong destroyed me on an arcade cabinet without looking at the screen, a game in which JOE was fantastic no matter what anybody says, one of the most enjoyable and goofy fighting games of all time, and those special intros!! 2001!!!!!

(there are way too many good games in 2001, it is a year when the dreamcast still existed and hope was still alive, which is why I stated this so definitively despite there being so many choices)

zm1704

exodus Still probably my favorite 2D fighter. They don’t em like they used to

captain

We’ll just have to bounce the timeline back and forth to cover all of 2001. I’ll start with Brandon’s least favorite (and an admittedly boring) answer

2001

(menu screenshots you can hear)

Melee is not a Smash Bros. game in the vein that its successors filled out. Maybe my favorable impression owes to the tender age I was at when I played it (near release, around 6 or 7), but where Smashes 3, 4, and 5 feel more like going through the motions, somehow more commercial (which is uh saying something for a mascot fighter), Melee had some special ingredients to it. That I immediately think of the character select screen is no coincidence: the menues are special! The Special Movie is inspiring! Pausing battles repeatedly and examining the characters’ silly poses mid-animation is fun all by itself. There aren’t 70 characters and a million stages to choose from, and maybe this is some kind of logical fallacy but there’s this sense that when your toybox is filled with less stuff, the stuff that’s in it matters more.

I’ll quote @treefroggy’s post for good measure:

captain

shoot lol

sabertoothalex

2000

It’s PS2 launch year and I’m getting one at launch because my dad’s girlfriend pre-ordered me one. I need to decide what game I want at launch and I can only get one. I’m a little baby child who loves Gundam and Omega Boost making Armored Core 2 an obvious surface level pick for me. This was my intro to FromSoft and more hardcore mech games and I was thoroughly confused and delighted with it.

exodus

1999

You knew I was gonna choose a dreamcast game, but which!?

Well, you can’t spell y2k without Space Channel 5, which came out at the end of 1999 in Japan. The retro-future aesthetic, the curved metallic blobs, the low angle camera, the sterile white backgrounds, this game defined the y2k aesthetic for a whole generation. And it’s not too bad of a rhythm game either. Unfortunately it burned out the life force of the art director to such a degree that after the 2nd game, which she directed, she left the industry for 20 years. but!! she came back for space channel 5 vr, and is doing things again!!

fridgeboy

1998 is a wild one huh?

exodus

Lots of wild ones through the early 2000s-90s!! that’s why we go back and forth I guess.

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