1995, Game of the Year

[The_Liquid_Laser]

The 1995 Game of the Year is Chrono Trigger.
The runner up is Donkey Kong Country 2: Diddy Kong's Quest.
The master thread for all of these contests can be found here.

Please comment on what you believe to be the Game of the Year for 1995.  You might even want to discuss/argue with other posters first before you vote.  Or maybe you just want to argue with yourself first?  Whatever.  Please vote for Game of the Year for 1995 and post why.  Without further ado, here is the list of games.

 

Descent (PC/Mac)
While this is called a FPS, it doesn’t feel at all like other FPS games of the era.  It feels more like Wing Commander in a bunch of tight corridors.  This spawned a subgenre of FPS called six degrees of freedom which allows you to do things like turn the floor into the ceiling.  Descent sold over 1.1 million copies.

 

Full Throttle (PC/Mac)
Tim Schafer’s first game as lead designer was also the first LucasArts Adventure game to ship only on CD-Rom.  Full Throttle had one more “first”.  It was the first LucasArts Adventure game to sell over 1 million copies.

Warcraft II: Tides of Darkness (PC/Mac)
Blizzard keeps the RTS train accelerating with the release of this game known for its funny dialogue.  Warcraft II would sell over 3 million units.

 

Chrono Trigger (SNES)
The minds behind Dragon Quest and Final Fantasy team up to make this classic, time-traveling RPG.  Chrono Trigger would sell over 2.5 million units.|

Donkey Kong Country 2: Diddy Kong’s Quest (SNES)
Nintendo decides to press the “Win” button again by publishing another Donkey Kong Country game.  DKC2 would sell over 5.1 million copies.

 

Super Mario World 2: Yoshi’s Island (SNES)
In spite of the name, this was really the first in a series of Yoshi platforming games.  Yoshi’s Island would sell over 4.1 million copies.

 

Panzer Dragoon (Saturn)
Panzer Dragoon was easily the best game out of the launch titles on the Sega Saturn.  It was gradually ported to a variety of other systems.

 

Rayman (Jaguar/Playstation/Saturn)
The biggest game in that first year that heralded in the 3D era of the Playstation was actually a 2D Platformer.  Rayman was the game that turned Ubisoft from merely a developer to a publisher.  Rayman would be ported to many different systems, but it would sell 4 million copies on the Playstation alone.  It was also be the #1 best-selling Playstation game of all in the UK.

Twisted Metal (Playstation)
Blow up other people’s vehicles in this game developed and published by Sony.  Designed by David Jaffe and Mike Giam, Twisted Metal would sell over 1 million copies.

 

Other (please specify)
If you think another game deserves to be "Game of the Year" other than one of the 9 I listed above, then please vote “Other” and say your game in the comments.  If the "Other" category takes at least 2nd place and no other game gets at least 50% of the vote, then I will do a runoff vote including the most mentioned game(s) from the comments.

The winner of this vote will be decided Tuesday, Oct 10 at 11:59 EST.

(Also there is currently a very competitive vote going on for 1994 here.  Voting ends on that Sunday, Oct 8 at 11:59 EST.)

Last edited by The_Liquid_Laser - on 11 October 2023