Hi, folks…
I’ll have the last article in the series on Maxis Software for you next week. Today, I’m happy to say that the new ebook, covering the historical year 1999, is available, and on a far more timely basis than the last one at that. My thanks go to Richard Lindner, for developing the scripts that produce it, and to my hiking buddy Stefaan Rillaert, for modernizing them slightly and adapting them to run on Linux instead of Windows.
As always when we finish out another year of history, here’s a sneak preview for you of what I have planned for the coming year.
- Maxis in the 1990s and The Sims. We’re up to eyebrows in this already, so I assume that no further explanation is required.
- Driving sims, a hugely neglected topic around these parts. I can’t hope to remedy that neglect entirely, but I can tell you about how these lifestyle-adjacent games came to be, and tell you about the one driving game that I ever got seriously into. (Hint: it involves Porsches.)
- The somewhat anticlimactic later days of the Lemmings franchise, which did at least conclude with one last really good game.
- Deus Ex.
- Diablo II.
- Icewind Dale and Baldur’s Gate II.
- The Russians are coming! Most notably for our purposes, with Evil Islands, an idiosyncratic but engaging take on the CRPG.
- Impressions Games and their historical city-builders.
- Her Interactive. I’ve been promising something about the folks who found fame and fortune — on a modest scale, that is — through the unlikely vehicle of interactive Nancy Drew for years now. I’m finally going to do it this year. No, really, I am!
- The ongoing struggle for relevance of the adventure genre in general: Discworld Noir; In Cold Blood; Stupid Invaders; Escape from Monkey Island; RealMyst; Fairy Tale About Father Frost, Ivan, and Nastya. (Try saying that last one three times fast…) Not an overly heartening list, but needs must.
- The Longest Journey, because this adventure game does deserve its own bullet point.
- No One Lives Forever, a groovy, desperately needed breath of lightness and whimsy for the gamer-dark, testosterone-overloaded FPS genre (even if it does totally rip off the Austin Powers aesthetic).
- The uncanny popularity in Germany and parts of the rest of Europe of Aufbaustrategie games, as exemplified by the Settlers series and especially Anno 1602, the best-selling German game of all time at the turn of the millennium.
- Technomage: Return of Eternity. I stumbled across this obscure curiosity of a console-style action-adventure from Sunflower Interactive, the studio responsible for Anno 1602, when I was doing some preliminary research on the latter game. I found myself weirdly charmed, not least by a script which has never heard of the concept of irony. So, here we are.
- On the digital-culture front, I’m toying with the idea of an article on Napster and the disruption it caused, if I can squeeze it in.
Looking back over my last list, I see that I managed to do a reasonably good job of keeping my promises for a change. One exception is Discworld Noir, which gets pushed into the adventure article above. Another is The Longest Journey, which didn’t reach markets beyond Norway until 2000 or later, so it fits fine here instead. As far as Metal Gear Solid goes… I tried, folks. I really did. But I found it impossible to take seriously in any sort of way. If I wrote about it, I’d just spend all my time making fun of it, and that would just make those of you who enjoy this Japanese console aesthetic hate me even more. I’m sorry, Solid Snake fans. It’s not you, it’s me.
As usual, last-minute suggestions for year 2000 and pitches for things you’d like to see in future years are welcome. I can’t promise to act on all of them, but I will take them all under advisement, within the boundaries of scheduling, personal interest, expertise, and how non-boring I feel I can make any such articles.
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Speaking of which: it looks like I am going to be forced to switch over from per-article to monthly billing within the next months, thanks to a policy change at Patreon. I hope — and think that I have good reason to believe — that this will be a distinction without a difference, as I’ve been publishing two articles per month religiously for quite some years now. So, your new monthly rate will be either double your current per-article pledge or your monthly spending cap, whichever is smaller. If I ever can’t give you two article in a month under the new regime because real life gets in the way in some sense, I still have the option of pausing billing completely for a month. I will certainly never allow you to be charged for content which I cannot deliver.
But I’ll be talking with you patrons some more soon on this somewhat annoying topic. In the meantime, thank you for your support, in whatever way you provide it. I wish you all a great rest of the summer. Stay real, stay safe, stay outside as much as possible, and (particularly if you’re here in Europe) stay cool! See you next week with a monster of an article on The Sims…
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Jaina
July 31, 2026 at 4:29 pm
Iceland Dale? Sounds like a experimental Nordic walking simulator. Curious about this unheraleded lost treasure.
(I know it’s an autocorrect for Icewind)
Jimmy Maher
July 31, 2026 at 6:14 pm
Woops! Thanks. Not an autocorrect — I don’t use it — just muscle memory in the old fingers.
Martin Kramer
August 3, 2026 at 10:30 am
I wish I was there right now. I’m in Europe, and it’s no fun at all at the moment.
WargamingScribe
July 31, 2026 at 4:29 pm
The beginnings of mobile gaming might be a good topic, but I reckon you would derive almost no pleasure writing about it. It’s a difficult topic that is at the intersection of several technologies and “company history”.
Knurek
July 31, 2026 at 4:37 pm
The issue with covering early days of mobile gaming is that there hasn’t been a concerned effort for preservation for those platforms (barring the Japanese exclusive Java games) so most (if not all) of those games are truly gone.
The Wargaming Scribe
July 31, 2026 at 4:52 pm
As of 2 years ago, Gameloft had kept in its archives all its mobile Java games – and the emulators to run them. I know it because I use it when I worked there maybe a decade ago and have kept tabs.
Unfortunately, you are right in that it is not available to the general public.
tacitgreg
July 31, 2026 at 4:50 pm
Some random titles: “Perfect Dark”, “Shogun”, “Red Alert”
Ben R
July 31, 2026 at 6:38 pm
Gotta second Shogun, as well. It’s a good start to a big franchise!
killias2
July 31, 2026 at 10:07 pm
Another vote here for Shogun
Joe
July 31, 2026 at 4:55 pm
Have you thought of covering American Mcgee’s Alice?
Jimmy Maher
July 31, 2026 at 6:19 pm
It is interesting to me in a somewhat ironic way, as an artifact of the second era of game designers as would-be rock stars. I want to do an article on the rise and rather spectacular fall of Ion Storm, but probably next year, when I write about Anachronox. American McGee, Gathering of Developers, etc., were all part of that same too-cool-for-school scene. I think maybe I could work them all in there.
Ice Cream Jonsey
August 1, 2026 at 6:17 am
(With you on Metal Gear. I tried.)
I’ll be curious and excited to hear your take on Anachronox. There is so obviously a good game there and I have tried three times to put the UI/UX and game display resolution issues aside and just focus on the game being presented and story being told. I haven’t been able to do it.
Sarah Walker
July 31, 2026 at 4:58 pm
Article on the early emulation scene maybe? The triple controversies of Virtual Game Station, Bleem! and UltraHLE were technically 1999, but not impossible to go back…
hatlock
July 31, 2026 at 5:23 pm
I like this idea as well.
Jimmy Maher
July 31, 2026 at 6:21 pm
As it happened, I started to write exactly that article at one point. I can’t quite remember why I dropped it. But it’s still a fine idea.
Aerothorn
July 31, 2026 at 5:08 pm
As usual, I think you’ve hit all the important beats (sorry to hear you couldn’t get on with MGS – it’s definitely an acquired taste, in the first game is in some ways the least interesting, but as a series it’s one of the most interesting to study!)
The only strong recommendation I have is Crimson Skies, which I think is right up your alley: this is one part flight sim, one part Interstate ’76 (in its customization system and arcadey gameplay), and a big part 1930s radio dramas. It has a few rough missions but is overally a really good time, and also a path not taken (it exists somewhere between traditional flights sims and pure-arcade games, and I haven’t seen any other game really tackle this territory outside of space sims).
Some other ones of note:
*Allegiance, an insanely ambitious Microsoft MMO space sim (???) that still has a small playerbase to this day.
* Vampire: The Masquerade – Redemption, which is an interesting attempt to have both a single-player RPG and a GMed multiplayer RPG, though not one that entirely works (and is released in a bad state).
*Sacrifice, an ambitious and strange 3rd-person action/RTS combo from Shiny.
*Shogun: Total War, which I think was often seen as one of the best Total War games – may be a good point of consideration for the series.
While there are some other games that are a good time (Mechwarrior 4, MDK2, Starlancer, Giants; Citizen Kabuto, Tachyon: The Fringe) they are probably less notable in terms of a full article.
Jimmy Maher
July 31, 2026 at 6:35 pm
Crimson Skies does look cool! I’d assumed it was just Wing Commander with 1930s airplanes, which it is, but it also looks much smarter and more sophisticated in its fiction and aesthetics.
I think I can mention this Vampire game and the many other Diablo-likes in the run-up to Diablo II. The really interesting Vampire game is the one by Troika.
I’d thought to hold off on Total War until Medieval, as I understand that to be a little more refined, in a setting I’m more comfortable with.
I did try Sacrifice when it was new and was completely baffled. I suspect my reaction would be pretty much the same today. You probably have to be far more of an RTS aficionado than I am to appreciate what it’s doing with the genre.
Brent
August 1, 2026 at 9:00 am
I think you might have a mistaken perception about Vampire Redemption – there’s nothing Diablo-like about it. It’s the same style of rpg as Bloodlines. It’s less ambitious of course but it does cover multiple time periods in a way that is kind of cool.
Jimmy Maher
August 1, 2026 at 9:40 am
Hmm… I was just going by the MobyGames page for the game, which is rife with Diablo comparisons. “Diablo with a better story and clumsier combat.”
Mike Russo
August 1, 2026 at 8:03 pm
I’ve played about the first third of Redemption, and while the MobyGames description is a bit of an oversimplification, the game is emphatically not a Bloodlines-style immersive sim/RPG hybrid. You do have a party and there is a (very very slow-paced) plot, but it’s nothing to write home about on those fronts, and the overall vibe is pretty much click-the-monsters-and-guzzle-potions. Eminently skippable, worth a slight glance as part of the intro to the eventual Bloodlines article but not more than that IMO.
The Wargaming Scribe
August 1, 2026 at 9:50 pm
I am with Mike Russo. It is a mediocre action-RPG game with no choice beyond allocating stat points that’s only relevant because of its licence. Watch 5 minutes of video and you will have seen 90% of the experience if offers.
Michael
August 3, 2026 at 9:32 am
>I’d thought to hold off on Total War until Medieval, as I understand that to be a little more refined, in a setting I’m more comfortable with.
This isn’t unfair, but I would definitely suggest playing Shogun as part of that article. It’s quite a different experience.
All the later Total War games end up a lot “fuller”, but with Shogun it’s almost like they weren’t quite sure what they were making yet. Slightly board game-y, quite unbalanced, pretty easy to win, but I think it’s the only one of the series I ever actually finished.
hatlock
July 31, 2026 at 5:19 pm
Some other titles that are likely worth mentioning from 2000:
-Giants: Citizen Kabuto – I’m personally curious and a fan of any game that has game mechanics that introduce unique perspectives of a game world or have characters interact with it in different ways. The earliest games like this I can think of are Castelvania III and Super Mario Bros. 2. It also has RTS controls so it fits in my third point below.
-I’d re-iterate Red Alert 2.
-Maybe you could generally explore the RTS games of 2000 and also include Sacrifice, which incorporates RTS gameplay centering around a player controlled avater like granddaddy of the genre Herzog Zwei. It also includes some serious voice actors and has a demented cartoon look and feel.
Chris Foster
July 31, 2026 at 5:56 pm
Impressions! I worked there from ’92-’97 as my first industry job straight out of college.
Can’t wait to read your history and analysis of the studio!
Jimmy Maher
July 31, 2026 at 6:36 pm
Cool! Can we talk sometime?
Chris Foster
August 1, 2026 at 12:49 am
Absolutely! Happy to chat.
Marcel
July 31, 2026 at 6:10 pm
I did not expect Evil Islands to be covered by you. This game has a special place in my heart – it was one of the first games that the young me managed to finish on my first own PC. Although, if memory serves me correctly, I was using cheats all the way, because that game was really difficult for me, from the very beginning. I don’t remember that much about the characters and story, but the atmosphere was great. And the cutscenes looked beautiful. I’m very nostalgic about this game, I have great memories playing it on long autumn and winter evenings, very much looking forward to that article.
Jimmy Maher
July 31, 2026 at 6:41 pm
Yeah, the problem with the game is that it’s just absurdly difficult. The developers patched in an Easy mode after so many people complained about it, and even that is pretty darn hard. There’s a joke here somewhere. “In (post-)Soviet Russia, monsters grind YOU.”
Throteka
July 31, 2026 at 6:44 pm
1999 is also the beginning of the Flash gaming era. A new tool has revolutionized game creation and distribution, ushering in a new field of intense creativity.
> Impressions
Here’s a recent interview that I think covers some new ground:
https://milkandhate.wordpress.com/2025/07/19/an-interview-with-chris-beatrice-impressions-games-tilted-mill-entertainment-pharaoh-zeus-master-of-olympus-immortal-cities-children-of-the-nile-caesar-iv/
Zack
July 31, 2026 at 6:55 pm
“Impressions Games and their historical city-builders.”
Hell yeah ! Been looking forward to this for years.
Joe
July 31, 2026 at 6:58 pm
Another game that might be interesting to write about is Messiah, though you would probably hate it quite a bit ;)
John
July 31, 2026 at 7:12 pm
Ah, Metal Gear Solid. On the one hand, intriguing stealth game play mechanics. On the other hand . . . everything else. It’s a series I wish I could like. Alas, I still recall the day I watched a review of (I think) Metal Gear Solid 2, which revealed that the first two hours of the game involved less than twenty minutes of actual gameplay. That’s when I decided it probably wasn’t the series for me, and everything I’ve heard about the series since then has only served to confirm that decision.
As for the articles you are writing rather than the one that you aren’t, I’m most looking forward to the one on Deus Ex. Deus Ex is another one of those incredibly influential games from the 90s that I didn’t play at the time for various reasons but whose spiritual successors I have enjoyed tremendously. I’m simultaneously tempted to go play it and terrified that it either hasn’t aged well or that it wouldn’t live up to the hype.
Zed Banville
August 1, 2026 at 8:36 pm
Deus Ex, which released in 2000, has aged well (apart from the 3D graphics, as with all games with 3D graphics) and will more or less live up up to the hype.
Mike Russo
July 31, 2026 at 7:27 pm
No IF this year? 2000 feels to me like an inflection point as the scene shifts more fully away from big puzzlefests you highlighted in your previous IF article, and a lot of celebrated authors are either getting their start or having productive periods where they poke at what you can actually do with this stuff; Emily Short debuts with Galatea (and also Metamorphoses), Plotkin does Shade, there’s 9:05 and Shrapnel from Adam Cadre, and My Angel from Ingold, Rameses by Stephen Bond…
Jimmy Maher
August 3, 2026 at 12:27 pm
I don’t think so this year, no. My problem is that those big puzzlefests tend to be the interactive fictions I respond to best. The format doesn’t really work for me when it shifts too far away from its roots in games. I think that other interfaces than the parser work best for less granular interactive storytelling. The dirty little secret here is that plot and characterization aren’t what parser-based “interactive fiction” does best; it’s setting, and the manipulation thereof. Most of the games you mention haven’t aged all that well in my opinion; they come across as a little too gimmicky for my taste.
Mike Russo
August 3, 2026 at 5:09 pm
Yeah, that’s entirely fair! I’m not sure I feel much need to go back and play any of those games, and I tend to enjoy these kind of less puzzle-focused games. With that said, as someone who’s been an active participant in the IF scene for the past half-decade or so — after drifting away from it in the mid-aughts — Shade, Rameses, and similar games of that vintage still do come up in criticism and design conversations because they were at the leading edge of some important trends that still percolate today.
I do think the transition of the IF scene towards more subjectivity, getting more exploratory about narrative, and bringing in themes like feminism and mental illness — while trying out a lot of different craft approaches to supporting that transition — is a big deal. It leads pretty directly to the rise of choice-based games as a major if not predominant form of IF, and while that’s in all honestly a pretty niche topic in itself, it had massive implications in producing what’s I think pretty clearly the most significant video game story there is (Gamergate, sadly). Definitely the kind of thing that could be captured in multi-year trend articles over the years, of course!
Mike Taylor
August 21, 2026 at 7:43 am
For what it’s worth, I want to chip in supporting Mike Russo’s suggstion. However much or little you enjoy, for example, Galatea as a game, I think that it and others of the time represent a really important transition in gaming. Not just a shift in emphasis in parser IF, though certainly that. But I think there’s a case that in this, as in other ways, IF blazed a trail that other gaming genres only subsequenlty picked up on. To say that the IF of the era was “gimmicky” may not be wrong, but to me it feels like criticizing the early Beatles albums for the poor use of stereo separation. They were in the business of figuring out what the medium could do.
Would other games have made “the transition […] towards more subjectivity, getting more exploratory about narrative, and bringing in themes like feminism and mental illness” without this stage of IF blazing the trail? Well, I suppose in the end it would have become inevitable. But it does look to me that on our timeline this is where such important trends got started.
So if your aim is to write about what’s important more than about what you enjoy, early-2000s parser IF definitely gets my vote.
Jeff Sampson
July 31, 2026 at 7:44 pm
Daikatana came out in 2000… I guess that could be mentioned in the Deus Ex story, since it makes for a happier ending to point out that Ion Storm still produced one to three beloved games, thanks in part to Romero. Chrono Trigger was one of the inspirations for Daikatana(it’s why Romero’s non-magnum opus has time travel and a party of three and a sword), if you need a 2000 related rationale to give the JRPG genre one last try, by playing its most beloved and not overly long or hard title. (And one with no random encounters.) The Chrono Trigger sequel also came in 2000, but that was a divisive game.
Interestingly, Deus Ex has a part where it looks like you’re being forced to abandon your brother to a heroic last stand, but if you stay and fight he’ll live. This was inspired by the JRPG Suikoden, where it looks like a character has a JRPG plot-mandated death, but you can save him if you refuse to leave him and keep fighting. I think Cyberpunk 2077 also got this idea from Deus Ex.
I never played it, but Daikatana had some ideas that others would try later, like putting RPG mechanics and companions into a shooter. Some might say Daikatana was already redeemed by this remix of its dialog(CGW mentioned this in a “cool stuff we noticed” sidebar): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=y8SC7z8W134
TW
July 31, 2026 at 8:02 pm
I’m not sure if you’re already aware of this or if it’s too late to be useful, but the website TCRF has a lot of information on the development history and unused content of The Sims: https://tcrf.net/The_Sims_(Windows)
AlphabeticalAnonymous
July 31, 2026 at 11:10 pm
Ah, “No One Lives Forever” — or “NOLF” as we called it back in the day. It was never a runaway success, but I agree that its choices of style made for a welcome breath of fresh air. Some of the comedic NPC dialogue one can encounter while sneaking around is still with me up until today: “You look like you need a monkey.” “A monkey? I wouldn’t take that filthy beast if it were free.” “Free?! Do you want my children to starve?” “If they’re starving, then I suggest you feed them the monkey.”
Jonathan
August 1, 2026 at 12:34 am
I hope you’ll also cover Red Alert 2! It deserves it.
I suppose you could loop in Command & Conquer: Tiberian Sun (although that came out in 1999) for juxtaposition’s sake. Red Alert 2 is still beloved today, spawned a variety of mods, and still has people playing it.
Jimmy Maher
August 1, 2026 at 7:44 am
I’ll see what I can do. I can already see an angle; I think this was just about the last big videogame to feature extensive full-motion video. And anything with Barry Corbin is worth a look. ;)
Frans de Jonge
August 2, 2026 at 1:12 pm
C&C3 and RA3 also had extensive full-motion video nearly a decade later, so I’m not sure if that quite works as an angle. ;-)
As much as I love Tiberian Sun and Red Alert 2, I think Shogun would be a more interesting inclusion from a gaming history perspective. The C&C games were in many ways a logical continuation of what came before, even if that could’ve easily been executed significantly less well.
Warlords Battlecry also came out in 2000, setting the blueprint for Warcraft 3.
Curtis
August 1, 2026 at 2:45 am
For some reason Rogue Spear feels like a Y2K game to me but turns out it was ‘99. I’m guessing there are probably few games you’d rather play less than the early Rainbow Six series, but curious if you ever plan to cover them?
Jimmy Maher
August 1, 2026 at 7:38 am
I think I’ll do something at some point on these military games, which increasingly turned into pretty blatant propaganda after the September 11 attacks, with Army of One and all that. It’s a very interesting cultural story, with resonances that go well beyond games. But yeah, expecting me to play them at any length is a bridge too far. ;)
Alex
August 1, 2026 at 5:31 am
As always, looking forward to these next articles. Regarding Discworld Noir: I´ve only played through the first chapter quite recently, but what I saw was just so good… Personally I think that this is the game Grim Fandango wanted to be like. Should the legal situation ever be cleared for a re-release, I´d buy it in a second.
Regarding NOLF, unfortunately I can´t share the praises. All I saw and still see was a quite typical shooter in an usual setting, but there is nothing that made a lasting impression, except maybe for the main character. Never even cared to finish it. On the other hand, Deus Ex just blew me away and had an impact that rings until this day. Within the first hour of playing, I became a fan of stealth-based gameplay for life, so to speak.
On a last note, the mention of Technomage is VERY surprising, to say the least. I read a review on release, but never saw a single copy in stores. Tried it a few years ago out of curiosity, played for about three minutes, then quit and never thought about it again.
Spyros Athanasatos
August 1, 2026 at 10:27 am
The Longest Journey…..the last adventure game I ever played and finished. To me, the swansong of adventure games. To be honest, I’ve been waiting years for you to cover it. Can’t wait.
xxx
August 1, 2026 at 9:09 pm
> I’m sorry, Solid Snake fans. It’s not you, it’s me.
Is it, though? Is it really? Because those feel to me like games that have aged very, very badly. Playing them nowadays is not unlike the experience of a modern reader working through one of those Victorian novels where the author is being paid by the word. I’ve never understood the popularity of the characters (goofy and one-dimensional, yet played completely seriously), the plots (ludicrous stories told via unrelenting soap-opera melodrama), or the insistence on letting the convoluted and silly stories get in the way of actually letting the player play the game.
I can see why people were impressed by the MGS games at the time. They popularized the idea of a stealth game for a console audience, where it hadn’t really been done before. They were at the cutting edge of graphics for the cutscenes. And they satisfied the 90s/00s nerd desire for their hobbies to be taken seriously, by turning video games (still largely seen as something for kids and basement-dwellers) into Serious Cinematic Whatsits. But once that shine has worn off… there’s just not much there.
Ross
August 4, 2026 at 2:49 pm
I think the appeal of the story itself in the MGS games works the same way as the appeal of All Quiet on the Western Front, or M*A*S*H or Catch-22. It’s the fundamental absurdism of war itself. The ‘punchline’ such as it is, over and over, is “But is any of this actually any more ridiculous than the fact that the actual historical thing that came the closest humanity has ever come to ending global wars was for two superpowers to point enough nuclear weaponry at each other to blow the planet up a dozen times over?”
Percapit
August 7, 2026 at 6:49 am
I don’t think any of that is intentional nor is Kojima capable of being that interesting
arcanetrivia
August 1, 2026 at 9:29 pm
Escape from Monkey Island
My beloved black sheep of the family… Idk what you use for research, but in case you weren’t already aware, there’s some good Youtube interviews with some of the team like Mike Stemmle and Chris Miles (art director). Look up Tech Talk with Daniel Albu/Conversations with Curtis.
Paulo Vicente
August 2, 2026 at 8:21 am
That’s a good plan but I noticed a couple of absences…
The blog hasn’t covered football games yet, I think? The managerial ones in particular are an interesting phenomenon, text heavy, almost spreadsheet games, seemingly incredibly unsexy on the surface, and yet the Football Managers and Championship Managers always drew in a dedicated audience.
I can’t blame you if you don’t want to look into that mess, but Derek Smart’s antics are colourful, if nothing else.
Leo Vellés
August 2, 2026 at 2:56 pm
Being Jimmy an American by birth (but now I beleive he feels more like an European) I don’t know how much he knows about football (or soccer, as they call it in USA), which may complicate things for him. I still remember the first football manager I played in my C64 in the late eighteis. Never promoted from the fourth division, but I still love teams like Tranmere Rovers, Halifax and Hartlepool
xxx
August 2, 2026 at 7:05 pm
Honestly, it might be for the best if history just forgets that Derek Smart existed.
Percapit
August 7, 2026 at 6:50 am
He still has a way better sense of humor than Chris Roberts
Paladin45
August 2, 2026 at 4:09 pm
Suggestions for racing games? mhmm… I got a few.
From sim like (has far as I can remember to arcade):
– The very first “The need for speed” (3DO, PC), was the closest the franchise got to sim racing before Need for Speed Shift (Shift 2 cars felt extremely slippery, it was horrible).
– Motocross Madness, Monster Truck Madness.
– Street Rod.
– Race Mania, obscure game, but it was sold like crazy on supermarkets here in Venezuela back in 2000/2001.
– Destruction Derbi.
– DeathKarts.
– Motorhead, apparently the first racing game made by DICE (the same one from Battlefield games).
– Carmaggedon.
Other suggestions:
– Knights and Merchants, a mix of the Settlers games with simplified Total War combat. Let me explain, you need serfs to deliver the goods, however roads (made of stone) are necessary otherwise the serf would literally do nothing, Workers (a separate type of unit) are needed for building roads and structures.
In order to make military units, they have first to be outfitted with arms and armor, for example an axeman needs an axe, wooden shield, leather armor and a recruit. The axe and shield are made of wood planks, but in order to make the leather armor, you need leather from the tanner, who also needs pig skins from the pig farm, said farm also needs grain.
Troops can be organized in squads of unlimited sizes. Yeah, you heard that right, there’s no unit limit, however there’s a catch, you literally have to feed them all (a serf delivers food to each soldier from the storehouse), otherwise they’ll die of starvation.
Once 2 units are engaged in melee you lose control of them, it can only be regained when the enemy melee squad is dead (control its not lost when fighting ranged units).
Ohh, also your serfs and workers need to be trained and feed too. The farmer working in the fields, the woodcutter, the stonecutter? they have to go to the dinner and eat from time to time, but the dinner have limited space so not everyone can go inside, etc etc.
CornedBee
August 7, 2026 at 10:14 pm
I loved K&M, but unfortunately the worker AI didn’t love me. I got frustrated when on one mission, I couldn’t defend a scripted attack because my serfs stood idle instead of taking the stone piled up at the masons to the guard towers that needed it.
But until that mission, a great game with great music.
Jeff Sampson
August 3, 2026 at 3:38 am
Some notes for Y2K:
– A rare good Star Trek game came out in 2000: Elite Force. Also quick to play through. One of many Quake 3 engine titles. Gamers of a certain era will feel nostalgic seeing the Quake 3 console on startup. It’s on GOG.
– The Final Fantasy VIII Windows port came out in January 2000, then the Playstation 2 released near the end of the year in NA and Europe. The FF VIII port was one of the last major Japanese releases on PC for a while, because the console market overshadowed the PC market for over a decade after the PS2 debuted.
Consoles were the first to see the benefit of DVD, due to slow adoption of DVD drives on PC. Even PC gamers often had a console sidepiece in the PS2 era, because console games were getting all the hype. In a game like Final Fantasy X, you can see what a big upgrade DVD was due to the pre-rendered movies and voice acting, in a way you can’t with GTA III or Halo. (Those both got CD-based ports to PC, lack of DVD drives was another reason it wasn’t worth porting games like FF X to PC. And GTA III was originally a Dreamcast game during development, which didn’t have DVD. And Halo was originally being developed for the desktop.)
Not sure how the big technology shift could be covered if games with a Japanese console aesthetic like FF VIII and X are out, but there’s no Western made console game from the early PS2 years that fully utilizes DVD. I guess there’s Gran Turismo 3? No voice acting in that though. I don’t mind a PC centric guy writing about what he finds strange or silly or stupid about certain console games, but I don’t know if I’m in the minority.
– The Vampire Masquerade game from 2000 had a build-your-own-adventures-and-GM-them kit prior to Bioware’s Neverwinter Nights. I thought it was an underrated single player game, and it was a good prologue for the Troika game for a non Masquerade fan, because it establishes the long secret history of the vamps. Not essential though. Also the inspiration for the very bold cover of the April 1999 CGW issue, which I’ve wondered if was a possible stunt due to declining print sales.
– The first Hitman came out in 2000, wasn’t very good, but circa 2000 is when you start to see the establishment of long running institutions like Hitman, Unreal, Steam, etc. One of the first if not the first game to have rag dolling, in Deux Ex dudes still fall down like dominoes when shot. Led to Kane and Lynch, which supposedly led to the firing of Jeff Gerstmann from Gamespot(according to Gerstmann).
– On the topic of driving sims, Midway Madness from 1999 was a proto GTA III game, and the studio was brought under the RockStar label. Driver 2 from 2000 also had the player exiting the car to move around on foot, on the Playstation 1, a full year before GTA III debuted on the PS2. Not ported to PC like the original though. (The PC port of the original still had the tutorial level from hell, alas.) The series also led to Driv3rgate, when the third, badly buggy third game somehow got a 9/10 rating from certain publications.
f
August 3, 2026 at 7:15 am
The list for the upcoming year sounds great, looking forward to it, as always – especially the driving sims.
Seconding a few of the suggestions mentioned in the comments above – Shogun (although Medieval was the title I personally spent the most time with), the Midtown Madness series, Hitman, Messiah, Giants: Citizen Kabuto, Crimson Skies.
Also going to toss a few more onto the pile …
2000:
– Alien Vs Predator, with its asymmetrical approach to FPS gameplay (technically already released in 1999, but maybe it could still make the cut)
– Majesty: The Fantasy Kingdom Sim, an RTS in which you control units indirectly via buildings and monetary incentives
– The first Europa Universalis, which put its mark on grand strategy and spawned four sequels (and countless expansions) over the following 25 years
2001 (besides the probably more obvious choices like Max Payne and Black & White):
– Etherlords, the Russian HoMM / Magic: The Gathering hybrid with a distinct steampunk-ish flavor
– Oni, Bungie’s flawed but interesting Anime-inspired 3rd person action brawler
– Uplink, a slick indie hacking simulator by Introversion
– Noctis (aka Noctis IV), a cryptic lo-fi space exploration game (or experience, rather) by a solo Italian developer.
– Operation Flashpoint: Cold War Crisis – despite its rather dour theme and setting, a markedly ambitious take on a full-fledged, no-holds-barred first person military simulation
And perhaps a little prematurely, but to already nominate one title for 2002:
– Freedom Force, a unique blend of RPG and squad-based tactical gameplay set in a pitch-perfect knockoff version of Jack Kirby’s 1960s Marvel superhero comics
Jimmy Maher
August 3, 2026 at 7:39 am
Several of these are already on my short list. I thought to save Europa Universalis for the sequel, which is more of a version 2.0 of the original. Etherlords does look interesting as a follow-up to the MicroProse Magic: The Gathering, a game I quite liked.
f
August 3, 2026 at 7:55 am
That’s exciting to hear!
And yes, from what I understand, EU2 might be the better entry to lead with. It was also my first encounter with the series at the time. I own 4 and 5 as well by now, and am genuinely fascinated by their scope, but just can’t find the time (or patience) to actually ever dig into them.
FWIW: Etherlords 2 is kind of a similar case compared to the first, maybe the better one to check out after all.
Ahab
August 3, 2026 at 10:43 am
I’d read a ruthless skewering of Metal Gear Solid, and I actually liked the series, insane plots and overwritten dialog and all (until MGS4). On the console side of things, I do think Shenmue would make a great article. I expect you’d completely hate it, and yet have interesting things to say about it.
Speaking of 2000 stealth games, what about Thief II? Seems like an ideal time to do a two-fer. I think both games have their strengths, and both games are fantastic, but Thief II really excels at the open-ended stealth gameplay, as if they had more confidence this time around.
Joe
August 3, 2026 at 1:02 pm
I was wondering if as consoles gain much more prominence in the 2000s you’ll consider covering more games from them. It was getting mighty dry for PCs towards the end of the decade…
Jimmy Maher
August 4, 2026 at 7:06 am
Not having enough to write about has never been a problem. But if it should suddenly become one, I’d be more inclined just to move through those years faster, to get to the interesting stuff that begins to happen post-2010…
f
August 4, 2026 at 8:26 pm
(here’s hoping that Fumito Ueda’s work – Ico, Shadow of the Colossus – will find their way into the 00s console selection)
Josh T.
August 5, 2026 at 4:29 pm
This maybe doesn’t happen until later in the 2000s, but have you gotten into any articles about “PC gaming is dying” yet in your research? I know that becomes a big discourse that decade as PC box retail sales die out and platforms like Steam aren’t fully established yet.
Jimmy Maher
August 5, 2026 at 6:49 pm
Not so much on this go-round, but this is a cycle that tends to repeat over and over. The thing is, those kinds of worries tend to only concern themselves with one segment of computer gaming: the hardcore “gamer” games that were favored by the most traditional demographic of boys and young men. By the mid-naughts, Big Fish was going gangbusters in the casual space, adventure games had made a modest comeback, the indie scene was getting off the ground, and any number of interesting hobbyist games were being made, sometimes with sophisticated toolkits such as Neverwinter Nights. In many ways, all of this strikes me as more vibrant and interesting than yet more iterations on Quake, Starcraft, and Diablo.
Jeff Sampson
August 4, 2026 at 3:09 am
Fun fact, The Sims had EA characters as a pre-order bonus, such as The Avatar from Ultima IX, or Kane from C&C. Yes, pre-order bonuses existed in 2000 too: https://www.gamespot.com/articles/the-sims-adds-ultima-characters/1100-2446277/.
Turns out the Sims didn’t need Ultima’s Avatar to be a hit. For perspective, Richard Garriot said during Ultima IX’s development that selling a million copies was something he would like to see. (Ha!) That was the highest number a developer could dream of for a super nerdy game like an Ultima title circa 2000. The Sims blew right past that.
Jeff Sampson
August 4, 2026 at 3:10 am
The EA character skins have been archived, of course: https://archive.org/details/ebworldpreorderskins
Krsto
August 4, 2026 at 9:03 pm
Nice selection for Y2K, Jimmy. I’m especially interested in your take on driving games, particularly Need for Speed: Porsche Unleashed, which strikes the right balance between simulation and arcade gameplay, serious enough to feel rewarding, yet accessible enough not to become overly difficult.
I’m also curious whether you plan to cover Microids’s adventure games from that era, before Syberia, such as Amerzone (1999) and Dracula: Resurrection (1999)?
Jimmy Maher
August 5, 2026 at 10:59 am
Maybe even passing, but no more than that. They look like pretty typical, uninspired fare.
f
August 5, 2026 at 7:30 pm
The indie scene starting to really come into its own in the last early to mid aughts, and all of the interesting experiences and experiments coming out during sounds like a great space to explore.
Another (at least tangentially) related subject that comes to mind, and which at least substantially informed my discovery and knowledge of more obscure games during that period: Home Of The Underdogs, a massive, primarily abandonware-, but also progressively indie-scene-focused website that had its heyday around 2000-2005. It was run by a person in Thailand, if I’m not mistaken, and it still occasionally comes up in conversations to this day. I think it actually had quite an impact on the scene overall.
f
August 5, 2026 at 7:31 pm
(apologies – this was supposed to be a reply in the thread four comments above)
Jimmy Maher
August 6, 2026 at 5:45 am
Yes, I remember Home of the Underdogs well. It did yeoman service keeping games available before GOG.com came along and publishers began to realize there were (modest) profits to be realized with very little friction in maintaining a back catalog. I remember the little frisson of excitement when you would visit the page and see a new update had gone up. It’s my understanding that the proprietor, whose name I won’t even begin to attempt to spell, stopped running the site because she wanted to focus on politics and social activism back in Thailand, and because she felt her work with it was to a large extent done. Kudos to her for knowing when it was time to walk away and being brave enough to do so; that’s a rare quality among humans. I hope she’s doing well. She can certainly be proud of the contribution she made to game preservation.
f
August 7, 2026 at 6:09 pm
Indeed, her work definitely deserves recognition. And yes, ‘frisson’ is the right word for what those moments of discovery (new update, unknown gem, rabbit hole) on HotU always felt like.
Buck
August 6, 2026 at 8:01 pm
“The uncanny popularity in Germany and parts of the rest of Europe of Aufbaustrategie games”
I think these had quite a bit of global appeal, too. I associate Germany more closely with business simulations. Though these were probably already on their way out by this time.
Jeff Sampson
August 7, 2026 at 5:57 pm
There was also the Y2K bug hubbub, one of the earliest tech apocalypse scares.
And Hitman and Elite Force both got solid sequels in 2002 and 2003 respectively, so maybe they’re not essential items for 2000…
Olof Einar Kindgren
August 9, 2026 at 8:02 am
A bit niche perhaps, but I realized that two of my favorite games were released in 2000, namely Um Jammer Lammy (which was the reason I bought a PlayStation) and Space Channel 5 (which was the reason I bought a Dreamcast).
I believe that things like Samba de Amigo (which came bundled with maraccas), Beat Mania (with DJ turntable) and Dance Dance Revolution (with dance mats) came out at around that time too, so perhaps a deep-dive into rhythm games which were popular in their own right and also led to the extremely awkward Guitar Hero hype some years later.
Simplex
August 11, 2026 at 1:11 am
You have been doing amazing work all these years, kind Sir. On behalf of all Europeans, and especially Central and Eastern Europeans, I hope 2001 will include Gothic :)
Jimmy Maher
August 11, 2026 at 5:50 am
Absolutely.
Feldspar
August 21, 2026 at 12:48 am
It might be an unpopular opinion, but I would be over the moon if you end up doing something like the Rennes-Le-Chateau articles spending some time discussing the conspiracy theories featured in Deus Ex.