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The games that made it memorable: Love Star Wars? Then the summer of 2003 took you on a roller coaster ride of giddy highs and depressed lows that was impossible to forget – Star Wars Galaxies, perhaps the most disappointing MMO in history, and Knights of the Old Republic, an RPG that was better than all three prequels combined, released less than a month apart (June 26 and July 15). With the exception of those feverishly anticipated titles and July 1's Warcraft III: The Frozen Throne, however, the real summer didn't begin until August. Then, in rapid-fire succession, came Konami's last great survival horror (Silent Hill 3, August 6), an enhanced and discounted version of a PS2 Greatest Hit (Virtua Fighter 4: Evolution, August 13), the return of a classic Nintendo franchise on GameCube (F-Zero GX, August 25) and what many at the time declared the best fighting game yet (SoulCalibur II, August 27). Whew! Did kids even bother returning to school that fall?
The commercial you saw over and over:
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The games that made it memorable: The summer of 2010 has been so boring, especially compared to those from our nostalgia-soaked '80s and '90s childhoods, that it's tempting to act the elderly curmudgeon and declare that gaming "just ain't what it used to be!" Untrue – go back only a single year and you'll find that we were actually spoiled for choice. For example, we received not one, but two huge, open-world, positively reviewed superhero games in Prototype and Infamous. The perpetual promise of fully destructible environments was finally, and spectacularly, realized through Red Faction: Guerrilla. The Western genre was reborn before Red Dead Redemption with Call of Juarez: Bound in Blood, and the Wii hardcore were revitalized before Super Mario Galaxy 2 by the surprisingly deep and difficult Punch-Out!! The real shock, though, was the string of successful movie and comic adaptations. X-Men Origins: Wolverine was good, Ghostbusters: The Video Game was better and Batman: Arkham Asylum was the best… ever. On the other hand, if you bought The Sims 3 and its infinite world of customization, you probably didn't need any other games last summer. Or this summer. Or next.
The big summer movie:
The commercial you saw over and over:
Aug 23, 2010
Relive 30 years of Christmas past with our collection of retro TV commercials and childhood wish lists
We calculated the best 120 months in gaming - you won't believe the results
Nothing cures buyer's remorse like a system-defining game on day one
