CCIV: Game of the Year 1999 Round Two

[Neon Ignition]

We bullet time dive into the second round in our efforts to close out the 90's with another raft of titles aiming to win over your votes.



Which of the above games are amongst the best of 1999 and why?

[Asura]

YEAH YEAH YEAH YEAH YEAH

[Hirst]

I reckon Crazy Taxi will sweep the board on this one. Great example of Sega knowing how to run an arcade machine - easy to pick up for beginners, loads of "pro" gameplay mechanics to keep experts coming back, combined with their usual understanding of current pop culture trends. It's a game that loads of non-gamers will readily state is a great game and I reckon was quietly responsible for shifting a ton of Dreamcasts once the port turned up.

[QualityChimp]

Man, that Game Boy Color Chase H.Q.: Secret Police had laaame boxart in comparison to the original!

[Asura]

Crazy Taxi has a practically flawless scoring system, and remains one of the apices of videogames as a form of design.

A good scoring system has numerous elements, and Crazy Taxi just nails them all - feedback, readability, taking something really quite complex and making it feel simple. The game practically begs you to come back and try to beat your score, and gives you all the tools you need to do it. If you get into it, you can play it for months.

[QualityChimp]

There are a few games there that I probably should have played more, but never got the chance to, so have no attachment to.
All the DC games passed me by from Chu-Chu Rocket to Crazy Taxi.
Same for the N64 stuff like Castlevania.

Don't like football so Champ Man has no power over me!

I didn't really play much PC stuff until after 2000, so Command & Conquer missed me by.

I wanted to play Dino Crisis, but missed the boat.
I'm reeeeally hoping it gets the remake treatment like the Resident Evil series is getting.

So I like a few games in that list but nothing to make me say it's GotY.

[wakka]

Yeah, Crazy Taxi. One of those near perfect games.

[dataDave]

Apart from importing a Dreamcast and going on a spending rampage each month I spent 1999 clearing my 1998 back log.

[Neon Ignition]

All they had to do with Crazy Taxi was deliver new courses but they just had to add a jump button

[Cepp]

Crazy Taxi easily although Crash Team Racing was good.

Never got to play Champ Man 3, always stuck with 97/98 and I remember reading about Comic Party and wanting to play it. Shame we never got it in English but the manga and anime are fun.

[Asura]

Never got to play Champ Man 3, always stuck with 97/98

3 is where it took a nosedive. If my memory serves me; the publisher got in a different developer, and the original ChampMan developers shopped around for a new publisher, eventually coming to rest at Sega and making Football Manager (and several other sports management games that adapted the same system, like NHL Eastside Hockey Manager).

Kinda like what has happened more recently with Harvest Moon and Story of Seasons.

[Atticus]

Loving the Crazy Taxi love. What a game! I'd love to revisit it sometime but I'd want the authentic Dreamcast experience with the original soundtrack ... so I probably never will.