1997

Let's just drop one name right off the bat… Final Fantasy VII.

There are more, of course - though some gamers won't need it. Tomb Raider II continued the lovely Lara Croft's spelunking with more polished gameplay - this was arguably the series' apogee. And a Nintendo 64 first-person shooter called GoldenEye 007 turned out so well, some stubborn gamers still call it the best console first-person shooter of all time.

Nintendo also launched shooter Star Fox 64 into the great beyond, and burned rubber with Mario Kart 64. On PlayStation, the falling blocks-riddled Super Puzzle Fighter II Turbo actually managed to make sweaty martial artists cute, and Castlevania: Symphony of the Night clarified that 2D action games would never die - they would just become undead legends full of bats and vampires.

PC players, however, were all about the 3D gaming - specifically the type that began with the word Quake and ended with the roman numeral II. Fellow shooter Star Wars: Jedi Knight - Dark Forces II commanded a strong presence, and Star Wars: X-Wing vs TIE Fighter launched the fight into the frigid, black vacuum of space. Age of Empires helped us rule all that we surveyed, and Dungeon Keeper and Carmageddon helped us with our sadistic frustrations when that mantle of leadership got too stifling. Of course, the bombastic RTS Total Annihilation and post-apocalyptic RPG Fallout helped out quite a bit, too. 

Even arcade games fought for our paychecks, with light-gun shooter House of the Dead, fighters Marvel Super Heroes vs. Street Fighter and Street Fighter III: New Generation, and trackball-pounding Golden Tee 97 all eating quarters.

Finally, no discussion of 1997 would be complete without mention of the Sega Saturn's awesome version of Bomberman, which let no fewer than ten players link up and heave bombs at one another's super-deformed heads as they ran through a maze. Multiplayer mayhem at its finest.