Gaming in the Year 2000

Erik Kubik, Associate Writer

March 8, 2010

2000 was a transition year in gaming. Systems moved from away from the 32 and 64-bit to 128-bit. The Playstation 2 was released in 2000 and it would go on to dominate. The Dreamcast was still going strong and was poised to pump out several AAA titles that year. The two stragglers, the N64 and Playstation 1, still had a flicker of life in them in 2000. But the real winner in 2000 was the PC. Gamers had a plethora of games for all the systems: Banjo-Tooie, Pokemon Gold and Silver, Diablo II, Chrono Cross, Dead or Alive 2, Perfect Dark, Dues Ex, Baldur's Gate 2, Majora's Mask, the Sims, the list goes on and on. Looking back, 2000 should be known as the year that good RPG games came out for the PC.

Let's start with the other systems such as the N64. This was the last good year for the N64. The release of Perfect Dark showed gamers the N64 was still capable of doing great things. Perfect Dark hands down was one of the last good games to come out on the N64. Perfect Dark was the best fps to come to consoles in the last few years and besides Goldeneye the best fps on the N64. This game pushed the aging system to the limit; you had to have the expansion pack to handle the graphics load. I played the heck out of the multiplayer matches with my friends and the bots.

LOZ, Major's Mask was another great game that came out. Granted I didn't play it until years later in college. A different take on the traditional Zelda game in my opinion, gamers were always watching the time and the game was a lot darker then the NES/SNES Zelda games. The use of masks and transformations was a nice touch. I do think Ocarina of Time is a better game; you still cannot go wrong with this classic.

The year 2000 would be the year the PC was crowned King! Where to begin? Three of my favorite games deserve a mention, such as Deus Ex. I was big into fps in high school and there was something that hooked me in this game. It might have been the gripping story, the character development or the combination of two perfect worlds, rpg and fps, in a cyberpunk game packed full of conspiracies. To this day I still have this game, and it's far better than the dismal sequel that came out a few years later.

Another RPG that rocked my world was Diablo II. It would be interesting to survey people back when this game first came out in the summer of 2000 and ask, how many skipped school, stayed up late, cut work, or upgraded their system or Internet connection just to play this game. I know I did, for me this was one of the last good games I could play on dial up. Diablo II was the perfect mesh of dungeon romp, party system, and action RPG. Sure it got repetitive in the end, but open Battle.net let gamers play with hacked characters. The fun never ended with Diablo II.

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