Shenmue needed you :(

I've learned two things since creating this thread.

1) Age of Empires II has a significant fan base.  This looks like a game I need to try out now.  I remember playing AoE 1 at a friend's house for a couple of hours.  The game was good but it wasn't mind-blowing.  I'm very intrigued by AoE II now though.

2) I didn't know anything about Homeworld.  Now that I am looking at screenshots, it still looks pretty good visually, IMO.  I'm also curious as to how this game plays.

AoE was never mind blowing, but when it launched, if you liked to play RTS games and you liked CIV (which, for me at least, was mind blowing when it first came out), it was a perfect mix between the two, in fantastic visual/audio package. AoE II was more of that and better - what I remember the most was that different units had bonuses against other units (i.e. pikemen vs cavalry). It is still really fun to play.

AoE II took a big lead early on in this run-off but Pokemon, Final Fantasy, and Smash are all in hot pursuit.

Exciting times ahead here in 1999!

Voted for Gran Turismo 2 again, the second favorite game of the once remaining would be RE 3 even with the terrible tank contorls of the older RE games before RE 4.

Old Gran Turismo games were incredible for their time, but Jim Ryan was right lol, they're not the kind of games that many fans want to get back to.

This was an extremely close race at the end, but one game ended up the winner by one vote.  The 1999 Game of the Year is Age of Empires II and the runner up is Final Fantasy VIII.

Game of the Decade Thread for the 1990's will be posted shortly.

Well deserved winner.
It's one of those great sequels that takes everything awesome about the first game and boosts it to the next level.
The fact its still a widely played game today, more than twenty years later, is a testiment to how well put together it was.

I didn’t read this whole thread but didn’t anyone point out that SoulCalibur released for home consoles in 1999 and had a 98 on Metacritic and 40/40 in Famitsu(when that actually meant something)…

It was the clear GOTY at the time. I didn’t even know AOEII was regarded highly now.

I just last year got collection of AoE1&2 plus expansions and I haven't been that impressed.
RTS has never been my genre, aside that 30 years ago I wore myself out with Dune 2 to the point that I've rarely since tried them. Too much micromanagement.