I start with my game of year which is Unreal Tournament. This was the first game I played heavily with friends in LAN parties and I still consider to one of the greatest PvP FPS ever. The speed of play and controls are just perfect for what I want out of a competitive fps.
I also use to play this game in school during my senior year of high school. During my last year of high school, I was bussed to a tech school for half the day where they had a CISCO program that trained us to take the CCNA Test. As you would imagine from a class full of people that sign up to learn networking it did not take us long to figure out how to LAN our computers together. Great memories playing unreal tournament in class with added challenge of if teacher started walking around class room to exist out fast. Great times.
Some of my other favorite games from this year are
Planescape: Torment – Might not be as high up there on my list of wrpg when it come to game play but from a experience/story stand point it one of the greatest wrpgs ever made.
There was also a few great JRPGs this year
Valkyrie Profile being the best of them and probably favorite PlayStation game release this year.
Followed by Legend of Dragoon
Finally Wild Arms 2 which I do not think I seen mention yet, I had a ton of fun playing this game. The only real issue with Wild Arms 2 is the US PS1 launch localization was fairly bad.
Finally a game I actually completely forgotten about till this thread but I did spent plenty of hours in during the early 2000’s Roller coaster Tycoon.