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The Best Year Ever

By Marino October 17, 2023 18 Comments

There's been a lot of talk this year that 2023 might be the best year ever in gaming. Personally, I don't see it. There's been a lot of good games, but most of them haven't truly live up to the hype in my opinion. Who knows though? Sometimes it's hard to evaluate things that are so recent. Maybe I'll look back on it differently. Regardless, it got me to thinking, what if I applied statistics to the question? If someone asks me, what's my personal answer? What was the best year ever according to me?

This is chart of my collection based on year of release. Does this mean 2011 was the best year ever? No.

If you know me at all, applying stats to that question should not be surprising at all. Well, as it turns out, I wrote a Top 100 Games of All Time list in 2022, which I'm sure would be in the exact same order if I redid it today. Obviously. So, I just took that list, inverted the rankings for points, and made a list of each year from 1981 to 2022. Here's what I came up with for my Top 10 Best Years Ever in the history of games. I should specifically say that the Top 100 is not necessarily what I think the best games are. Many are boosted based on personal experiences and meaning, which I talk about more in that list.

Any "honorable mentions" do not factor into the ranking score. This is pure math.

#10 - 1998

Better than Ocarina. Yep.

Many will say this is objectively the #1, but not for me I guess. That's probably because some of the games people associate with 1998 I don't give a fuck about (i.e. Metal Gear Solid, Half-Life). And, yeah, I put Ocarina at #61. Wanna fight about it? If you want more thoughts on that, you can see my Zelda Top 10 list.

#42 - Crash Bandicoot: Warped
#46 - NFL Blitz
#52 - WCW/nWo Revenge
#61 - The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time
#99 - Tsumu

#9 - 2011

2011 was very good. He ain't lyin'.

Kind of a weird year. Skyrim is an all-time great for sure, but the rest of these are definitely more personal. Aside from EverQuest, I've probably spent more time in StreetPass Mii Plaza than any other game and that's not a lie. 2011 also had Deus Ex: Human Revolution and Bastion, but they didn't quite make my Top 100.

#19 - The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim
#54 - StreetPass Mii Plaza
#55 - Mortal Kombat
#79 - Dead or Alive: Dimensions
#84 - Tiger Woods PGA Tour 12: The Masters

#8 - 2003

Bring EA Sports BIG back, you cowards.

SSX 3 is my favorite PS2 game. And that's saying a lot I guess considering I own 135 of them. Everyone wants to say Tricky is the best, but you're wrong. Tricky is great, but it's really just a special edition version of the first game. SSX 3 is the pinnacle. Honorable mentions for me from 2003 include a game that will never get a sequel, Beyond Good & Evil, and maybe the best job/class system in the history of FF, Final Fantasy X-2.

#6 - SSX 3
#24 - The Legend of Zelda: The Wind Waker
#48 - Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic

#7 - 2012

I love confusing people who only played vanilla with this ending photo from the P4G epilogue.

I didn't play P4G until early 2013, so it didn't make my 2012 Top 10 list, but it's the best RPG I've ever played. I didn't play vanilla before that, so I still don't understand how that story works without Marie's contributions. I also didn't "get" Journey at first, but I kept coming back to it over the years and it's still incredible. Honorable mentions would include Mass Effect 3 (which is FINE) and Rock Band Blitz, which I miss dearly.

#7 - Persona 4 Golden
#44 - Journey
#49 - The Walking Dead
#70 - Theatrhythm Final Fantasy
#89 - MLB 12: The Show
#94 - Hot Shots Golf: World Invitational

#6 - 2017

Some things never get old.

A game that revolutionized my favorite franchise. A game that redefined what a story in a game can be and do. And a game that got me to stand up and shout in excitement. Those are my top three from 2017. Honorable mentions here would include Assassin's Creed Origins, Persona 5, Super Mario Odyssey, Uncharted: The Lost Legacy, and Tekken 7. Just an extremely solid year all around.

#4 - The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild
#31 - NieR:Automata
#32 - Everybody's Golf
#82 - Horizon Zero Dawn

#5 - 2010

No boys allowed.

As we enter the Top 5, we get a year with three games in my all-time Top 20. Mass Effect 2 at this point is clearly peak BioWare. As for Assassin's Creed, you'll hear most people say Assassin's Creed was a concept and that Assassin's Creed II was the proof of concept. That's true. But, Brotherhood was the perfection of that concept. And what can you even say about Rock Band 3? Truly the pinnacle of that wild, plastic era. More importantly, though, so many memories surrounding it.

#4 - 2004

A game so good that it forced the competition to spend hundreds of millions of dollars to kill it.

One of the handful of years that you'll most often get as an answer when asking someone what was the best year ever for games, and rightfully so. It's stacked. No matter who you are, there's likely five of your all-time favorites from that year (if you're old enough, I guess). Honorable mentions include EverQuest II, Fable, Mortal Kombat: Deception, and Champions of Norrath (put it on PS Plus, you cowards!).

#3 - 2018

Death to the valkyries.

This is the most recent year on this list. A God of War reboot had no right being this damn good, but they did it. Simply one of the best action-adventure games of all time. Then, I've got the best of the "big" Assassin's Creed games, the best VR game I've ever played by far, and the best version of the best puzzle game of all time. Honorable mentions here would include Marvel's Spider-Man and Super Smash Bros. Ultimate.

#2 - 1999

This painting was commissioned for the 10th anniversary. It'll be the 25th next year. Yes, EQ1 is still going.

It shouldn't surprise me that 1999 is so high on this list. I mean, right off the bat, my favorite game of all time gave it 100 points in this experiment. But, even putting all the math aside, 1999 was a formative year. I went to E3 1999, which was my first ever trip to Los Angeles, saw all that Dreamcast had to offer, a taste of what PlayStation 2 would become, and a tease of something called Xbox? Back to the list though, WM2000 ranks high on my personal list not only for being an incredible wrestling game, but because of my involvement with League of Heels. If that game didn't exist, LOH might not. And, of course, there's the best Final Fantasy game of all time. That's right. EIGHT! Honorable mentions would include Tony Hawk's Pro Skater and Soulcalibur.

#1 - 2000

The best game of all time... ON ICE!

I probably would not have guessed that 2000 would be in the top spot here without doing the math, but it makes sense considering four games from my Top 30 are here. I've said more than enough about EverQuest on this here web site, so I'll jump to the other stuff. Tony Hawk's Pro Skater 3 is objectively the best one, but THPS2 is definitely my favorite one. It's where I truly fell in love with the series. I was one of the only people in my social group to have a PS2 at launch, and Tekken Tag made me feel popular for probably the only time in my life. Mario Tennis sneaks into my Top 100 largely because of an experience I had at E3 2000 where I played it with three people who did not speak English. Despite this, it was the most fun demo I played that weekend. Sure, the final version is fun too, but that ten minutes at E3 really stuck with me. Honorable mentions would include NFL 2K1, WWF No Mercy, SSX, Chrono Cross, and Final Fantasy IX.

Turns out Y2K was pretty great, y'all.

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