2000, Game of the Year

[The_Liquid_Laser]

The 2000 Game of the Year is Diablo II.
The runner up is The Legend of Zelda: Majora's Mask.
The master thread for all of these contests can be found here.

Welcome to the 2000’s, a decade we might as well call the PS2000’s.  Most of this decade was dominated by the PS2, an unstoppable sales juggernaut with a huge library of great games.  In spite of this, it is not difficult to find fans on gaming forums who loved the Dreamcast, GameCube or Xbox.  PC gaming also continued to go strong through the early part of the decade, although arcade gaming became virtually nonexistent outside of Japan.

We start this decade with the year 2000, a transition year.  Generation 6 was just getting started in 2000, and we were still seeing great games come from the Generation 5 systems even as they were winding down during their final main year.  So, without further ado, here are the games for the year 2000:

 

Baldur’s Gate II: Shadows of Amn (PC)
Bioware makes improvements on the original with the release of Baldur’s Gate II.  Not only has this game sold over 2 million copies, but it is the 9^th highest ranked PC game on Metacritic of all time.

 

Diablo II (PC/Mac)
Looks like it’s time to face the devil again.  Blizzard continued their winning streak with the release of Diablo II, which sold over 4 million copies total.

 

Deus Ex (PC/Mac)
Warren Spector designs this freeform and immersive game to much critical acclaim.  Deus Ex was named the “best PC game of all time” by both PC Gamer and a reader poll in PC Zone.  It would also sell over 1 million copies.

  

The Sims (PC/Mac)
Will Wright develops the ultimate life simulation game.  The Sims would become the best- selling PC game of all time up to that point with over 11.5 million copies sold.

 

Final Fantasy IX (Playstation)
FF9 was envisioned by the developers as a retrospective for the series, and it would also be the last FF game that series creator, Hironobu Sakaguchi, would work on from beginning to end.  Final Fantasy IX would sell over 5.5 million copies on the Playstation.

 

Tony Hawk’s Pro Skater 2 (Playstation/PC/GBC/Dreamcast)
Do amazing skateboard tricks just like the legendary Tony Hawk.  Pro Skater 2 is currently the third highest rated game of all time on Metacritic.  It has also sold over 5.3 million units across all platforms.

 

The Legend of Zelda: Majora’s Mask (N64)
By reusing the game engine from Ocarina of Time, Nintendo managed to ship out another Zelda game, Majora’s Mask, just 2 years later.  Majora’s Mask would sell over 3.3 million units on the N64.

 

Paper Mario (N64)
Since Squaresoft was no longer making Mario RPG’s for Nintendo, Intelligent Systems was recruited to make this first game in the Paper Mario series.  Paper Mario would sell over 1.3 million copies.

 

Skies of Arcadia (Dreamcast)
You’ll be tripping as pirates in the sky with crystals.  This Dreamcast RPG would later be ported to the GameCube as Skies of Arcadia Legends.

 

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 40% of the vote, then I will do a runoff vote including the most mentioned game(s) from the comments.

Voting for 2000 Game of the Year will end on Saturday, Oct 28 at 11:59 PM, EST.

Last edited by The_Liquid_Laser - on 29 October 2023