Inspired by the likes of NeonNinja and hart704 (a.k.a. HartKnight), I am in the process of playing catch-up with a GOTY series of my very own. Since my hobby of playing video games began in 1994, that is where I began, even though a few games I own were released prior to that year. My goal is to reach 2010 by the end of the year, so that my own GOTY 2010 post can sit right alongside many of yours'.
Here's how I've chosen to make this work: I will display a list of up to five nominees and then choose the GOTY and two runner-ups from that list. The nominees must be games that I have played. The games are categorized by release year, not by the year in which I first played them. All decisions are final. The judgment calls were made not by how the games have lingered nostalgically in my mind at my current age, but by how I believe I would have voted at the end of each year.
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NOMINEES
- Star Fox 64 (N64)
- Goldeneye 007 (N64)
- Diddy Kong Racing (N64)
- Final Fantasy VII (PS1)
- Crash Bandicoot 2: Cortex Strikes Back (PS1)
And the winner is...
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1997 Game of the Year - Final Fantasy VII
Let's think about this for a moment. Was there really any doubt that FFVII would take the glory this time around? Okay, maybe just a little. But for all the other nominees' notable traits and accolades, none of them rises above the number of notable traits and awards that FFVII has won for itself over the years.
Coming off the gaming high I experienced from my first foray into the still not-so-openly popular genre of RPGs, compliments of Super Mario RPG, this was my second RPG ever. It was many people's first RPG. It's the RPG that made RPGs go mainstream and begin to grow to be immensely popular. Thus, it's partly to blame - though in a good way - for the fact that many non-RPGs these days now feature RPG-like elements. Simply put, FFVII did a helluva lot for gamers, Square, and the industry as a whole. Despite what the anti-FFVII folk say.
Fond memories of this game...viewing characters' HP totals rising easily above 400 (the highest HP total I ever reached in SMRPG was somewhere in the high 300s); viewing characters' damage output easily rise into the thousands; watching the game in action for the first time at my cousin's house, being introduced to chocobos for the very first time and jumping at the sound the game would make each time the screen would swirl into a battle scene; watching my cousin play months later while fighting Sephiroth, watching him narrowly live through a tremendously doomful Nova spell; for years, making it a cardinal rule that no other source of noise or music could be playing while someone in the room was playing FFVII; everything else and in-between. Most recently, writing up my own Enemy Skill Materia guide last summer.
Having played through the entire game three times now, two times completely (except for Ruby Weapon), I've got a playthrough of the game down to a science. I use certain characters at certain times, give certain materia to certain characters, steal from certain enemies for certain reasons, train for Limit Breaks in certain places, etc. etc. etc. Part of the fun I enjoy from this game these days comes from reliving this routine each time I decide to play through the game.
Yes, the graphics have finally begun to age, even to my eyes, but the game is not overrated. To this day, it's a game that many gamers still love to play and talk about. If the fact that a game's popularity hasn't weaned much in over a decade means that it's overrated, then so be it. I'm still waiting for a remake.
Runner-up - Diddy Kong Racing
Karts, hovercrafts, and airplanes. Prehistoric desert, snow-covered mountains, tropical islands, a medieval forest, and a galaxy far away. Gold balloons, silver coins, boss battles, trophy challenges, and battlefields. Upgradeable weapons. Open-ended, adventure-sty1e racing with an exciting exploratory element. This game put Mario Kart 64 to absolute shame back in 1997 and there wasn't even really any pre-release hype for it.
To this day, it's one of the top five games that I hyped to death as a kid waiting for its release (this one, even more so than SMRPG and DKC2 combined). I believe I've mentioned once before that when I was a kid, there were a few occasions where I'd be so excited for a particular video game to come out that ordinary day-to-day living was absolute torture with the game not yet in my possession. I used to have a wide-ruled notebook that I used as a "journal" and in the months prior to DKR's release, I actually wrote brief paragraphs detailing certain aspects of the game. Why? So that I wouldn't explode from anticipation. This act of writing about the game actually satiated my passionate need for the game, at least for a few days. Just yesterday, in fact, I found the notebook where I wrote all these DKR "blog posts". Hysterical. One would think I was an eleven-year-old working for Gamespot or Joystiq or something, what with my previews and all. I'd also printed world maps from the game's official website; they were glue-sticked onto some pages. Again, hysterical. It's been a loooooong time since I've been that excited for a video game. I suppose that's partially why I feel games aren't what they used to be. Of course, I am much older now and that might have something to do with it too. I have since learned to be more patient. ;)
Bottom line: I still love this game to death. Its soundtrack alone is just as good as any of the DKC games' soundtracks. It's a real shame Rare couldn't do the game justice in its attempt to port the game to the DS three years ago. They destroyed everything great and sacred about the original, and it goes down in my own personal gaming history as both one of the worst games I've ever played and one of my biggest gaming mistakes of all time. Adding insult to injury, the game scored one-tenth of a point higher than the original game did here on Gamespot, which is all the more painful given that GS didn't exactly score the original too fondly (6.6).
Runner-up - Goldeneye 007
Ahhh, my first FPS. It had a lengthy single-player campaign and possessed a multiplayer component that truly provided endless hours of fun and laughter. Not to mention, the game looked amazing (no surprise, it's another Rare game). Friends would come over and we'd play non-stop. We'd get together with family and play non-stop. I remember New Year's Eve '97 fondly for the sole reason that I had brought my N64 and four controllers to my grandparents' house that year, with Goldeneye and some other games, and me, my brother, and my cousins had somehow managed to get my uncles to play with us as well. Facility, for the win.
Like DKR, this is another game I'd gladly jump back into tomorrow if I had the time and opportunity (to take on the higher difficulties!). It has definitely held up real well over the years and is still a blast to play.
That said, the imminent releases of Activision's new Goldeneye games bring hope of new Goldeneye to enjoy and make memories with, but at the same time, I am very weary. The more I see of them, the less I'm excited about them. Only time will tell.