The 1998 Game of the Year is The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time.
The runner up is StarCraft.
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 1998.  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 1998 and post why.  Without further ado, here is the list of games.

Baldur’s Gate (PC)
Bioware begins making the first of several D&D real-time RPG games with Baldur’s Gate.  Even though it was only the second game that they had developed at this point, Baldur’s Gate became a massive hit selling over 2.8 million copies worldwide.

Half-Life (PC)
After porting Doom to Windows 95, Gabe Newell decided to quit Microsoft and form his own game studio, Valve.  Valve’s first game was Half-Life, their own more narrative take on the FPS genre.  Half-Life became a ginormous commercial hit for Valve, far exceeding their original expectations.  Half-Life sold over 9.3 million copies by 2008, and it was awarded Guiness World Record for “Best Selling First-Person Shooter of All Time (PC)” in that same year.

StarCraft (PC)
Originally it was simply called “Warcraft in space”, but over time people were singing a different tune.  StarCraft is where Blizzard took RTS gaming to the next level with an interesting story, cool Alien/Predator/Space Marine like factions, and an underlying Rock/Paper/Scissors gameplay.  StarCraft would go on to sell over 11 million copies worldwide including fanatical following in South Korea where it became their main official eSport.

Metal Gear Solid (Playstation)
Hideo Kojima started making Metal Gear games all the way back on the NES.  But it wasn’t until this first 3D entry that Metal Gear really started getting some serious recognition.  Not only was Metal Gear Solid highly acclaimed by critics, but it made Konami some decent money by selling over 7 million copies.

Resident Evil 2 (Playstation)
Capcom kicks it up a notch with Resident Evil 2.  Here you can choose between two characters, with each character having a different storyline.  Resident Evil 2 would sell over 5.7 million copies, exceeding the sales of the first game.

Suikoden II (Playstation)
Some storylines are so epic that they have to be completed by assembling the 108 Stars of Destiny.  Suikoden II was not particularly commercially successful when it released, and in fact it has several factors in common with Castlevania: Symphony of the Night.  Both were 2D games developed by Konami in an era when 3D gaming was considered the hot, new thing.  Furthermore, Suikoden II was only given an 82 on Metacritic originally.  It just wasn’t the time for people to be open to 2D games.  Over time, Suikoden II gained a cult following and is now considered one of the greatest games of all time.  The User Score on Metacritic is a 91, and GameFaqs ranks it as the #1 RPG on the Playstation, a system defined as being a console for RPGs.

Xenogears (Playstation)
Tetsuya Takahashi wanted to take Final Fantasy in a different direction, and his ideas for that series eventually turned into Xenogears.  Xenogears would sell over 1.2 million copies on the Playstation.  After the completion of Xenogears, Takahashi left Squaresoft to form Monolith Soft, the developers behind both the Xenosaga and Xenoblade series.

Banjo-Kazooie (N64)
Rare showed off what they can do in 3D platforming and continued to remind us how important they were to both Nintendo and the N64.  Banjo-Kazooie would sell over 3.6 million copies.

The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time (N64)
Miyamoto lead Zelda into 3D with Koji Kondo returning to provide the OST for Zelda.  Eiji Aonuma was one of the directors for Ocarina of Time, and would eventually become the face for future games in the Zelda series.  Ocarina of Time has often been cited as the best video game of all time, and it was also commercially successful selling over 7.6 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 Monday, Oct 16 at 11:59 EST.

Here are some other notable games from 1998:

Cabela’s Big Game Hunter (Arcade)
Dance Dance Revolution (Arcade)
Marvel vs Capcom: Clash of Super Heroes (Arcade)
Soulcaliber (Arcade)
Anno 1602 (PC)
Fallout 2 (PC)
Grim Fandango (PC)
Thief: The Dark Project (PC)
Unreal (PC/Mac)
Panzer Dragoon Saga (Saturn)
Crash Bandicoot: Warped (Playstation)
Heart of Darkness (Playstation/PC)
Need for Speed III: Hot Pursuit (Playstation/PC)
Parasite Eve (Playstation)
Spyro the Dragon (Playstation)
Tomb Raider 3 (Playstation/PC)
1080 Snowboarding (N64)
F-Zero X (N64)
Mario Party (N64)
Star Wars: Rogue Squadron (N64)
Sonic Adventure (Dreamcast)

Zelda is my favorite franchise but oddly found Ocarina grossly overrated and one of the weakest in the series.

Banko for me. To this day best design. All the collectibles, including conversations, have intent. And the hub world being a level in itself was amazing.

Damn I thought this would be an easy OoT pick for me, but I had forgotten Half Life was 98 as well.

We've actually got the original version here of several of my favorite remakes: Black Mesa, OoT 3D, Twin Snakes and RE2 Remake. If we include remasters then StarCraft: Remastered is another great one. Black Mesa is my favorite of the bunch and I think I also gotta go with Half Life 1 among the originals, really packed year though. Hard to rank games this time but I'll make a rough one:

1. Half-Life
2. Ocarina of Time
3. StarCraft
4. Metal Gear Solid
5. Suikoden 2

I'ts highly unlikely to win considering the games on offer this time, but for me it has to be Suikoden II. For pretty much all the other games I've played from this year, there have been better entries in their respective series, but Suikoden II remains the peak of the series, and in general just an excellent RPG. My top 5 for the year would probably be Suikoden II, Metal Gear Solid, Starcraft, Crash Bandicoot: Warped, and Baldur's Gate.

Ocarina Of Time. Banjo-Kazooie is fun, but OOT is just so impressive for its time.

Like I said before, I'm giving it to Grim Fandango.

I can appreciate OoT, RE2, H-L, Fallout 2 and BG, even if I feel all of those are overrated.
Unreal was a step towards Halo.
A favorite of mine is Carmageddon II: Carpocalypse Now, may have to say it's better than the first.
Colin McRae Rally started the whole great series. R4: Ridge Racer Type 4 is another of my favorite driving games.
Also worth mentioning: Tom Clancy's Rainbow Six and Soulcalibur.

Grim Fandango is an awesome game.  It also, unfortunately, marks the beginning of the end for Adventure games.  The game didn't sell at all like they thought it would.  This was the time period when the internet, and online walkthroughs really started to take off, and that ended up causing the demise for the Adventure game genre.

Another crazy year

1. MGS (possibly my favorite game of all time)

2. OoT (top 10 alltime favorites)

3. Suikoden 2 (arguably in my top 5 RPGs)

4. Xenogears/Parasite Eve (top 50)

5. Resident Evil 2 (top 50, 2nd favorite in the series after RE1 Remake)

It gets harder to rank games the lower you go, and my rankings slightly change every time someone asks, but this year is packed!

StarCraft: Brood War. I played it so much in my teens – decent single player, amazing multiplayer, and even better custom maps that would just consume my days after school. For me, it's the best game made to-date.

I don’t play it anymore, but I do still watch pro matches/tournaments; even now, 25 years(!) later, the pro scene is really healthy and dominated by Koreans (much moreso than StarCraft II).