Game Scoop! Presents: What Was the Year 2000 Like for Video Games?

At the dawn of the New Millenium, PlayStation was sitting pretty. Sony's first video game system surprised everyone in the 90s leapfrogging Nintendo and Sega to become the best-selling home console of the decade. "We a little like your days are numbered." By offering more sophisticated 3D games with more mature imagery and themes, PlayStation had changed the reputation of video games from what was mostly still seen as a juvenile pastime into truly mainstream entertainment for all ages. Sony was now ready to launch its successor, the PlayStation 2, but there was no guarantee that lightening would strike twice. "I think the key word for the next generation PlayStation is emotion." Despite birthing classics like Super Mario 64, The Legend of Zelda, Ocarina of Time, and GoldenI 007, the four-year-old Nintendo 64 was in a distant, second place behind PlayStation. Nintendo's decision to go with expensive cartridges for the N64, instead of cheap disks, like the competition, had pushed away many third-party publishers leading to software droughts. And Nintendo's overall kid-friendly image was starting to feel quaint, next to the edgy, cooler PlayStation and Sega brands, but despite this struggle, Nintendo did have complete dominance of the handheld market and had a plan to give its family-friendly image a significant makeover. Sega's Dreamcast was only a few months old in the US and had an early hit with SoulCalibur, but most of its best games had yet to arrive. Over the next 12 months, Sega would play its hand almost perfectly in its efforts to sell the Dreamcast, but still failed to survive. So what went wrong? The year 2000 was the launch of the best-selling console ever, and many of the highest-rated games ever. It was an exciting time that felt like gaming was about to explode with new innovations, but some beloved companies would struggle to adapt to the changing times. This is why the year 2000 was one of the most important years in the history of video games. At the start of 2000, PlayStation Devs were starting to get nervous. The PlayStation 2 was just two months away from its release in Japan, and 10 months from its holiday release in North America, but North American developers still couldn't get their hands on devkits. According to next-gen magazine sources, no, US Studio had a full PS2 development kit going into the new year. One executive told the magazine, "I need a launch title, and if I don't get a devkit soon, I'm screwed." Now we're thinking even more about doing Dreamcast games, stating that if they couldn't get PS2 software ready for launch, they would throw their support behind Sega instead. One of the few studios that have a PS2 devkit was Insomniac, who are now known for their record-breaking Spider-Man series, but at the time was known as the Spyro the Dragon Creators. Alex Hastings, VP of Software at Insomniac, told next-gen, "The raw horsepower is unbelievable even on these preliminary systems. Whenever you get a new console, you start thinking, 'Okay, how can I get the system to the absolute maximum that it can do?' With the system, this complex and powerful, it's an overwhelming task. People like me have to change our perspective a little bit and not say, 'How can I get this to run 100%, but how can we come close?' Sega, on the other hand, had decided to set the Dreamcast apart from PlayStation and Nintendo with its online capabilities. To that end, Sega launched a new company, Sega Net, which would be a full internet service provider. And in a shocking move, it offered gamers a free Dreamcast if they signed up for two years of the Sega Net service. This offer was even retroactive. If you already owned a Dreamcast, Sega would mail you a check for $200. Sega delivered the first must-have Dreamcast game of the year on February 2nd, Crazy Taxi. The arcade version of the frantic passenger delivery game, released a previous year, was already a huge hit, and the Dreamcast port was even better. IGN called it "the closest thing to a digital drug we've ever seen, think of it as gaming crack. We give it a 9.6. Not only was it addictive, it was also a graphical showcase for the Dreamcast that ran at a smooth 60 frames per second. As of January 11th, 1.5 million Dreamcasts have been sold in the United States, but if any game was going to sell more Dreamcasts this year, it was going to be Crazy Taxi. Nintendo, hoping to give the now 4-year-old and 64 sales a jolt, introduced six new color variations in February. Alongside the original charcoal color, gamers could now choose from smoke, grape, ice, jungle, fire, and watermelon. Nintendo 64's six new colors are so amazing, choosing a favorite might be somewhat of a struggle. But new colors weren't enough to alleviate frustrated gamers, who were upset with the trickle of games being released for the platform. In April, next year in magazine asked the question, "Is Nintendo 64 doomed?" "DOOMED!" Now today, it may seem like an odd question to ask, given the machine was about to receive the gifts of Perfect Dark, the Legend of Zelda Majora's Mask, and Banjo Tui. The 1999 had been a lighter year for Nintendo, with perhaps less exciting releases like Donkey Kong 64, Mario Golf, and a port of Resident Evil 2. While first party software usually sold well, third party publishers were reporting falling software sales on the platform. A claim, publisher of games like Turok and South Park Chef's Love Shack reported that N64 sales made up 60% of its revenue at the start of 1999, but that figure had fallen to just 28% a year later, when PlayStation and Dreamcast started eating into N64's market share. EA reported that its Nintendo 64 sales were flat, while its PlayStation sales were up 31%. The swing was clear, and happening in real time. Electronic Gaming Monthly's editor-in-chief at the time, John Davison, wrote, "For months now, we've been getting reports from developers, retailers, and more importantly, from our readers, that the N64 has seen brighter days. Developers and publishers are disappointed with sales. News are noticing a switch in interest from Nintendo to Sega, and you guys are all getting frustrated with the wild discrepancies in the quality of the games." Sure, first party stuff usually rocks, but everything else sucks. Ocarina of Time, Mario 64, Golden Eye, Banjo Kazooie, and other big releases just hadn't produced the same healthy hardware sales that PlayStation was enjoying. With only 6 months left before the launch of the next generation in North America, PlayStation had outsold in Nintendo 64 3-1. Nintendo's 2,000-game releases had kicked off with Mario Party 2 arriving in North America. We liked it, but IGN gave it the dreaded 7.9. The same score, the first game received, because simply new mini-games and new boards didn't quite seem to justify spending another 50 bucks. Its reputation has improved over the years, though, and in 2015, we named it the second best Mario Party game ever, behind only Mario Party 3, but that didn't help the N64 back in the year 2000. However, the final previews for Perfect Dark started arriving in April, and it was becoming clear this would be a milestone release for Nintendo and Rare. Excitement for the Golden Eye spiritual successor was building to a crescendo. Meanwhile, the Game Boy continued to completely dominate the handheld market. Nintendo was sell its 100 millionth Game Boy in 2000. Even though it was 11 years old, it wouldn't have any real competition in the handheld space until Sony would release the PSP in 2005. The Game Boy would see the release of some more mature games this year, with Konami delivering Metal Gear Solid on Game Boy Color on May 2nd. This is a follow-up to the NES original, set 7 years later, and not a port of the hit PlayStation game. It presented the top-down, pixel art version of Metal Gear in the best light possible, making for a much more playable adventure than the NES version. The Game Boy Color wasn't known for complex gameplay experiences, and stealth games for it were pretty much non-existent. Metal Gear Solid offered a deep, strategic, portable game that remained faithful to the franchise's roots. In February, Electronic Arts acquired DreamWorks Interactive, the gaming arm of DreamWorks that was founded by Steven Spielberg. DreamWorks already had a distribution deal with EA, which had led to the previous year's huge hit Metal of Honor, produced by Spielberg. EA renamed the studio EA Los Angeles and set its work on the sequel, which would be released that year as Metal of Honor Underground. We thought it was amazing and gave it a 9 out of 10. Call of Duty was still three years away at this point, and even EA's own Battlefield was another two years down the line, so Metal of Honor had the Battlefield all to itself. EA would go on to make 15 more games in the series, although EA Los Angeles would eventually be renamed Danger Close Games and then ultimately shut down in early 2013. And then, amidst the console war between Sega, Nintendo, and Sony, Microsoft decided to enter the fray and move that would significantly alter the hardware business for decades to come. In his keynote speech at the 2000 Game Developers Conference, Bill Gates introduced the Xbox. He emphasized it would be built like a PC and leveraged DirectX technology claiming it would make porting PC games easier. Microsoft would use the year to slowly build hype for the Xbox. This is absolutely necessary to drive a whole new generation of entertainment software. On June 19th, though, Microsoft made probably its most important gaming acquisition until it would acquire Activision Blizzard 24 years later. It bought a relatively unknown developer called Bungee. Development on the original Halo would now continue as an Xbox exclusive, and as a series would go on to define the console and the brand. Bungee would remain with Microsoft until going private again in 2007. No one outside Microsoft knew it at the time, but the forthcoming Xbox now had its own killer app more than a year before its release. Now, what was going on with PC gaming in 2000? While the PC gaming market is thriving today, and executives like Xbox's Phil Spencer worry about the lack of growth in the console space, a March 2000 next-gen headline read is the PC market in trouble. Industry leaders answered with a resounding yes. The biggest pain point in 2000 was the lack of standards on PC, leading developers to spend a lot of time trying to optimize for endless, different hardware configurations. Aidas was the publisher of Tomb Raider, Legacy of Kane, Hitman, and Minimorm, its president Rob Dyer said, "We've got a really, really miserable PC market and it's not getting any better." I'm going away out on a limb, but I think the PC is going to cease to be any kind of viable platform within the next 18 to 24 months. It's going to be completely supplanted by Microsoft's Xbox or whatever else. I think Microsoft, if this Xbox is for real, is basically raising the flag and saying, "We're seeing a huge problem on the PC side. There are just so few games that do anything on the PC." David Cage, CEO of Quantic Dream, that would go on to develop games like Heavy Rain and Detroit Become Human, added, "PC is probably condemned to disappear, or at least to become more and more a niche for hardcore gamers." The reason is simple. You need to pay about 5 to 10 times more to have a good PC than a console. Not only is it cheaper, but also your hardware won't be outdated a month after you buy it, as it is on PC. Now these predictions were, of course, way off base. They were from a time before Steam, though. Valve's marketing leading software store, that would arrive three years later and would do a lot to revive the PC gaming market. Speaking of Idaas, on June 23rd, it published Deus Ex. It was considered an instant classic thanks to its level of player freedom and choice. Many considered it to be one of the greatest video games ever made. In fact, our Diablo 2 review, that same year, opened with the line, is Diablo 2 the greatest thing since sliced bread, "No, that's Deus Ex." Deus Ex would go on to inspire generations of hit games like Dishonored and Mass Effect, all taking influence from the systems of choice and consequence in Deus Ex. Diablo 2 was actually released just a few days after Deus Ex. Jokes aside, we called it an incredible improvement over the original Diablo. It was much bigger than Diablo 1, offered new classes, a more customizable skill system, faster combat and revolutionary multiplayer with battle net integration. Diablo 2 became hugely influential, but not just to other fantasy ARPGs like Path of Exile. The looter shooter genre, i.e. Borderlands or Destiny, owes a great debt to Diablo 2. A controversial shooter arrived on PC in June in the form of Soldier of Fortune. Created by Raven Software, which then was known for Heretic and Hexen, but today is a successful Call of Duty Studio, Soldier of Fortune's whole selling point was the 26 points on any body you could shoot off or explode. Gamers loved it, and we gave it a 9 out of 10. Next-gen magazine called it as good enough PS as you could ever ask for. But there was some pro-clutching around the world. In Canada, it was labeled an adult motion picture and given the same rating as a pornographic film. And in Germany, it was officially deemed harmful to young persons. Despite this criticism, Soldier of Fortune would go on to have two sequels in 2002 and 2007. Now in 2000, eSports was in the early stages of building an audience and hadn't broken through to the mainstream. But a mod released for Half-Life the Year prior called Counter-Strike would not only help, but revolutionize the space. Half-Life developer Valve would go on to hire Counter-Strike's two developers and acquire the intellectual property, which resulted in the official release of Counter-Strike on November 9th 2000. As the first eSports teams and leagues were being formed, Counter-Strike was the flagship title being played. It's easy to understand objectives and high-stakes rounds made it an entertaining spectator sport. Later series like Rainbow Six, San Valorant would adopt an iterate on Counter-Strike's Tactical Objective-Based Gameplay. Today, its sequel, Counter-Strike 2, is typically the most played game on Steam on any given day. Now Sega, despite being in its death-throw era, managed to secure an important dreamcast exclusive in the next mainline entry in the Resident Evil series, Code Veronica. Not only did it make the leap from the aging PlayStation 1 to Sega's fancy new console, it also ditched the pre-render backgrounds of the original trilogy and gave us fully 3D environments to explore. We thought it was the best entry in the series yet and gave it a 9.5. Because of its lasting popularity, fans are still asking Capcom for a Code Veronica remake today, and there are rumors of just such a thing. Ah, Steve! Dreamcast got another critical hit in March with Chuchu Rocket. We thought it was the best multiplayer game we'd played in years on any console, so take that Mario Party 2. Not only was it a cute and addictive game in its own right, it was one of the very first online games for the Dreamcast or any console. Even though it was limited by the Dreamcast's 56K modem, Sega was really innovating in the console space here. If this were to be Sega's last harder release, you can't say they weren't really giving it their all. In 2000, Ubisoft was mostly known for Rayman and had yet to produce any Tom Clancy, Assassin's Creed, or Far Cry games. But the French developer made an important acquisition this year with RedStorm Entertainment. RedStorm was founded with the intention of making games base in the Tom Clancy series and Clancy himself was one of the founders. The following year, Ubisoft would publish RedStorm's first Ghost Recon game. Tom Clancy games, many of which would be developed by RedStorm, would go on to be a main staple for Ubisoft. May saw the sixth annual Electronic Entertainment Expo or E3. The biggest game in the show this year was Metal Gear Solid 2. Konami showed a 5 minute video clip on a giant screen outside its booth every hour on the hour. Although it wouldn't be out for another year, Nintendo demonstrated Conquer's Bad Firday at its E3 booth. The scroll had received a makeover since the last time he was shown as a family-friendly mascot. Now he was leading an edgy, emirated game full of violence, profanity, and lewd humor. "I am the great mighty fool, and I am going to throw my sh*t at you." Developer Rare already had a QC3D platformer series with Banjo Kazooie, so Conquer's new emirating was partly too differentiated from Banjo and to try and attract an older audience to the N64. It won us over. IGN gave Conquer's Bad Firday its Nintendo Game of the Show award, beating out games like Banjo Tui, the Legend of Zelda Majora's Mask, and Paper Mario. According to Newsweek, Infogram CEO Bruno Bonnell was in opposition to Nintendo's new grown-up attitude. Infograms was basically Atari in 2000. Bonnell is quoted as saying, "It was a mistake, and I told him that. He randomly criticized Conquer's Bad Firday for its inclusion of the word f*ck." What is that word doing in an Nintendo Game? Bonnell asked. Another game intended to woo an older audience to the N64 was the aforementioned Perfect Dark, the spiritual sequel to Golden Eye 007. It bested Golden Eye in every way, with more weapons, more levels, more cheese, better AI, and a great single-player story. First-person shooters on consoles were still a bit of a rarity at the time, but until Halo would come along, Perfect Dark was the new gold standard for the genre. We said, "If you don't own Perfect Dark, you don't deserve to own an Nintendo 64." Perfect Dark would go on to be the best-selling game of June in North America, quite impressive considering the sales charts have been dominated by Pokémon each prior month this year. An infamous game was released for PC on May 23rd. John Romero's Dicatana. Known for a Wolfenstein 3D doom and quake, this was Romero's first effort since leaving Id Software. This new game had been officially announced three years prior with an ad that simply said, "You know it, John Romero's about to make you his bitch." The ad made no mention of the title Dicatana or anything about the game itself. And it did not have the desired effect. Instead, it soured people on Dicatana years before its eventual release. Dicatana turned out to be a pretty dull first-person shooter. After four years in development, Dicatana was eviscerated in reviews. It ran on the Quake 2 engine, which itself was three years old at that point. In spite of the edgy marketing setting it up as the next doom, we said, "After all that time, all that work, the end product feels like the designers weren't trying to excite or impress us at all. It goes exactly where you'd expect does what it's supposed to do and nothing more." We gave it a 5.8. As an interesting footnote to Dicatana's sad tale, the only home console it was ported to was the Nintendo 64, which was actually a timed blockbuster rental exclusive before it was available at retail. We gave the N64 port a 4 out of 10 and EGM called it poop. Romero would move on to making mobile games. Remember that perfect arc was the best-selling game of June? Well, the N64 did it again, as Kirby 64 was the best-selling game of July. Maybe things were turning around for the N64 after all. By August, even though it was releasing great games and offering incredible incentives to buy a Dreamcast, the writing was starting to appear on the wall for Sega. The company posted its third annual loss on a row leading to the resignation of its president. His replacement said in a statement, "We aim to revive the company by focusing on growing internet-related services by using Dreamcast. This would not be enough to save the console." Rumors were also circulating that Sega was talking with third-party developers about creating games based on its properties for competing consoles. The idea that Sega could exit the hardware market altogether was even being floated. At the time, the communications director for Sega of America, Charles Bellfield told EGM, "Sega has no plans to support any other game console, whatsoever, period, and I can categorically deny that Sega will exit the hardware market." On August 31st, Sega dropped the price of the Dreamcast from $200 to $150. Also in August, Madden NFL 2001 was released. This was the first game in the series to de-emphasize Madden on the cover and gave the spotlight to a player instead. In this case, Tennessee Titans running back Eddie George, we thought it was the best football game ever made and gave it a 9.4. Madden 2001 would also be a PS2 launch game in October, with NextGen Magazine calling it "the reason to buy the console at launch." But EA would not support the Dreamcast at all, despite being a huge partner with Sega during the Genesis years. In a 2009 retrospective on the Dreamcast, former Sega exec, Charles Bellfield, told GameDeveloper.com, "The fact that EA didn't support us was a ding against us, but I'm not sure what breakthrough game EA would have given the platform from September 1999 through January 2001 that we hadn't already got in the same genre." Indeed, Sega's own NFL 2K1 and NBA 2K1, both released in 2000, are two of the system's highest rated games. On September 9th, Sony released a smaller redesign of the PlayStation with a nice 99.5. $10 price point called the PS1. Ijen wrote at the time that it was flying off shells and spanking the Dreamcast in N64. On set to her 21st, Baldur's Gate 2 was released on PC. Even though we found it to be one of the best RPGs ever, and without peer, it wouldn't get a proper sequel until Baldur's Gate 3, 23 years later, instead of taking on Baldur's Gate 3 itself, developer BioWare began working on Never Winter Nights. And it was in September that Peter Moore, president of Sega of America, realized the Dreamcast did not have a future in North America after the coming holiday season. Sega just could not match the marketing power of Sony or Nintendo. So, Moore and Charles Bellfield hopped on a plane to Japan to present the only way forward they could see for the company to exit the hardware market and focus on software. Bellfield explained, "When we told them that staying in the hardware business was not our advice, the next thing that happened was all the heads of all the studios got up and walked out without saying a word. That in the Japanese culture is pretty rude, but they were shocked. The US was the one region where Sega was finding some success with the Dreamcast. So this suggestion from Moore and Bellfield was not one the executive team in Japan was ready to hear. October 26th was the big day the PlayStation 2 was released in North America for $300. "It's quickly disappearing from stores and it's first day on the sale nationwide." Launch titles included SSX, Madden in a fell 2001, Tekken Tag Tournament, Dead or Live 2 Hardcore, Midnight Club Street Racing, Timesplitters, Unreal Tournament, Gun Gryphon Blaze, Summoner, Kesson, Ridge Rage 2 5, Armor Core 2, and ESPN, Winter X Games, Snowboarding. Sony's sole first-party launch game was the Fireworks' em up, Fanta Vision, which we gave a 6.5 and said was absolutely the most underwhelming, least power-hungry, least impressive title of the bunch. "That's like a baby's toy." Despite Sony's weak first-party effort, the device had a killer app up its sleeve that the other consoles couldn't compete with. The PlayStation 2 was the first console to include a DVD player making a true multifunctional entertainment device. Pretty much every console before it, from the Atari 2600 to the NES to the first PlayStation, was used nearly exclusively for gaming. Now people would spend large chunks of their time using the PS2 to watch movies. This feature would contribute greatly to the success of the console and be many people's first DVD player this guy included. PlayStation 2 would go on to become the best-selling console of all time. For 2024, Sony confirmed that the PS2 has sold over 160 million consoles worldwide since its launch in 2000. The only consoles that have come close to this incredible number are the Nintendo DS, with $154 million, and the Nintendo Switch currently and $153 million. Sony's second best-selling console, the PS4, seems to be tapping out around $170 million as of this recording. So it's interesting to note that although the PlayStation brand seems as strong as ever today, Sony hasn't been able to grow its audience since the PlayStation 2 era. Nintendo had a bigger lease of its own on October 26th, the Legend of Zelda Majora's Mask. Despite being a strange injury in the series that introduces time management and barely includes Princess Zelda at all, we absolutely loved it. IGN's Fran Mirabella gave it as close to a 10 out of 10 as you can get a 9.9. On November 6th, Sega released the most expensive video game ever made up to that point, Shinmo. Its reported development cost was at least $47 million, an unprecedented amount for a video game at the time. It was incredibly ambitious, had cutting edge graphics, tons of voice acting, and a detailed open world to explore. Shinmo was a very unique game that took some big swings, was arguably the best looking console game up to that point, and provided a sense of freedom and realism players hadn't felt before to "affault" at times. A lot of it could be described as "mondayne", but we loved it and gave Shinmo a 9.7. Pretty much every other outlet showed it with similar praise, and it garnered a cult following. Given how incredibly expensive it was to make, the 1.2 million copies of the sold were not enough to recoup its development costs, and Shinmo was considered a commercial failure. November 14th saw the release of Final Fantasy IX in North America. This entry returned to the series with more cutesy visual style and high fantasy roots, without it was a refreshing return to form and gave it a 9.2. A sometime during the year 2000, PopCat Games was formed under the name "Sexy Action Cool", and with that, the casual gaming industry was born. In the coming years, PopCat would develop a number of small but beloved puzzle games with high production values like Pegel and Plants vs Zombies. The year 2000 went into being very significant for all the hardware manufacturers, but perhaps Sega in particular, although not in a positive way. It was the final year the company operated as a console manufacturer, despite a string of excellent Dreamcast releases such as Jet Set Radio, Resident Evil Co-Vironica, Skies of Arcadia, Virtua Titness, Marvel vs Capcom, Grandia 2, Samba De Amigo, Shinmo and Powerstone 2. Sega and the Dreamcast certainly went down fighting. The Dreamcast ended up selling just over 9 million copies, making it Sega's worst selling console. That's right, it couldn't match the numbers of the Genesis, Master System, Game Gear, or even the Saturn. One month into 2001, on January 31st, Sega announced it was exiting the hardware market and ceasing production of the Dreamcast. The overall best-reviewed game of the year across all media in 2000 was something I haven't even mentioned yet. Tony Hawk's Pro Skater 2, which has a 98 on Metacritic. We had IGN quite loved it, saying it kicks at least 248 flavors of ass. A brilliant refinement of an already-blind game. We weren't sure how a skateboarding game could ever get better than this, and it could be argued they never did. The Skate series would continue to develop Tony Hawk's Integrate Trick System, and the All the All the Series would lean into its arcade-style gameplay. However, even though Tony Hawk 2 was the new skater on the block, Tony Hawk won actually sold 80% more copies that year, demonstrating the PlayStation 1 still had a lot of life left in its tank. The best-selling gaming hardware of the year was easily the Game Boy, with 18.9 million units sold in 2000 alone. That would be followed by the original PlayStation, but the Gulf was enormous, Sony sold 7.8 million units of its original hardware that year. And although supply had been constrained, nearly as many PS2s were sold as PS1s, 6.4 million. Lagging behind was the Nintendo 64, which managed 2.85 million sold, that figure was slightly more than the Dreamcast's 2.3 million in 2000. The best-selling game of the year was Pokemon Gold, Silver, Crystal for Game Boy Color. We gave it a 10 out of 10. So the year 2000 started with three first parties, and in 2.2, although a new challenger, the Xbox was waiting in the wings. Nintendo had also announced both the Game Cube and Game Boy Advance for launch in 2001, so Sony would have to resolve its supply issues with the PlayStation 2 and start delivering more high-quality games that was going to continue its winning streak. But it was an exciting time for gaming. It was the final year for the consoles of the 90s, and each platform went out with an incredible game lineup. A new console generation was just beginning, and though it would not include a Sega console, those who owned a Dreamcast in 2000 were absolutely spoiled with excellent games all year long. And that, my friends, is what the year 2000 was like for video games. Thanks for watching. What year should we do next? Let me know in the comments, and for all things video games, stay tuned to IGN.