Your favorite games from 1998

Now that 1998 is 25 years old. What are your favorite games from that year? 1998 had a lot of amazing games.

For me is

Half-Life

Thief: The Dark Project

Banjo-Kazooie

The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time

Wario Land 2

Metal Gear Solid

Crash Bandicoot Warped. Didn't play MGS and Ocarina until 2-3years later

Always a good year to reminisce about.

1998 was the best year to play Pokemon games as they were very popular here in the West, it truly was an amazing time to be a Gameboy gamer.

What can I say, the N64 came with one of the best Zelda games of all time. I may have started off as A Link to the Past, but Ocarina of Time was truly an amazing game, it brought the world of Hyrule to life in 1998. (I can still play the N64 to this day)

With all that aside of me posting pics as those 2 well...3 games change my perspective in the grand of scheme, here are the other 1998 games that were or still are my favorites:

• Banjo/Kazooie N64
• Turok 2: Seeds of Evil N64 (I replay it on PC)
• Resident Evil 2 PS1
• Oddworld: Abe's Exoddus PS1
• Spyro the Dragon PS1
• Xenogears

Make no mistake, I was a huge gamer playing just about everything I can play.

Sega Saturn games

Panzer Dragoon Saga (easily the best game released in 1998)

Burning Rangers

Shining Force III

House of the dead

Steep Slope Sliders

Winter Heat

N64

Legend of Zelda Ocarina of Time

WCW/NWO Revenge

WCW/NWO World Tour

Brb, googling "best games of 1998" as I don't remember release dates.

Half-Life
Zelda: Ocarina of Time
Banjo-Kazooie

Those.

Gaming was amazing back then. I used to be so excited about this stuff.

OoT and RE2 was amazing. Still play the original RE2 to this day.

Half-life

Metal gear solid

I always have trouble remembering which games exactly were released in a given year. Just looking over some already mentioned some favourites of mine were:

- The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time

- Metal Gear Solid

- Resident Evil 2

- Banjo-Kazooie

- Xenogears

I wasn't even gaming back then😐But after googling the games, i have to go with Banjo.

• Pokemon Red and Blue
• Panzer Dragoon Saga
• Sonic Adventure (JP)
• Ocarina of Time
• Rogue Squadron

@AcidTango:

• Starcraft
• OoT
• Myth II
• Resident Evil 2
• MGS

Metal Gear Solid.

Ahhh, Muth is such an excellent game!

I would pick that MGS and Banjo

Baldur's Gate
Fallout 2
Metal Gear Solid
StarCraft
Street Fighter Alpha 3
Tekken 3

Metal gear solid hadn't played anything like it before.

One of the best years in gaming. So many bangers it's not even funny.

Oh God, no order:

• RE2
• Banjo Kazooie
• Tenchu
• Rainbow Six (played this at my dad's friends on PC)
• Pokemon Red and Blue - this was crack in HS, everyone was going nuts for a GameBoy Colour, and we'd spend break/lunches playing the game.
• MGS
• Crash Bandicoot
• Ocarina of Time

Some of these I didn't play at release, as I was 12.

Lots of good stuff here, but a few that haven't been mentioned yet:

F-Zero X

NFL Blitz

Real Bout Fatal Fury 2

Oh, that's easy. Halflife.

Not even close.

NFL Blitz

1080 snowboarding

Pokémon blue

Banjo Kazooie

Ocarina of Time

(I'd put Half Life in there but I didn't actually play it until 2002)

1998 was a banger of a year looking at the releases

That's a good list of games

Tenchu, Need For Speed Hot Pursuit, Tekken 3, Parasite Eve, Vigilante 8, Street Fighter Alpha 3, NFL Blitz, Caesar III, Turok 2, Mario Party, and South Park.

Dance Dance Revolution and Marvel vs. Capcom on Arcade.

Great year.

Game of the Year:

• Resident Evil 2 (PS1)

Runners-up:

• Alundra (PS1)
• Metal Gear Solid (PS1)
• Street Fighter Alpha 3 (Arcade / PS1)
• The House of the Dead 2 (Arcade)
• The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time (N64)

Honourable mentions:

• Breath of Fire III (PS1)
• Metal Slug 2 (Neo Geo)
• Gran Turismo (PS1)
• Lunar 2: Eternal Blue (Saturn)
• Marvel vs. Capcom (Arcade)
• Pokémon Red / Blue / Yellow (Game Boy)
• Rival Schools (PS1)
• Sonic Adventure (Dreamcast)
• StarCraft (PC)
• Star Ocean: Second Story (PS1)
• Tekken 3 (PS1)
• Xenogears (PS1)

@Jag85: Aren't you a Sega guy?

Resident Evil 3

Tenchu Stealth Assassins

Metal Gear Solid

Resident Evil 2 is '97 people... I get wanting to list it though.

@Sagemode87: RE2 was released in Jan '98.

Don't think I put my guitar down long enough to play a game in 98... Around 2000 I had hit the more comfortable days of college and started digging through the games I missed. OOT was such a groundbreaking game.

@last_lap: I wasn't really a Sega guy back in 1998. I stopped being a Sega fan when the Saturn came along, before the Dreamcast later won me back. So I missed out on most of the Saturn gems back then. I've always heard good things about the Saturn games you listed, but didn't play them... except for House of the Dead, which I almost forgot about! House of the Dead 2, one of my favourite arcade games, came out in 1998. I'll have to edit that into my list.

-Zelda: Ocarina of Time (N64)

-Star Wars: Rogue Squadron (N64)

-Starcraft (PC)

Oh man you missed some bangers on the Saturn, how did the Saturn turn you away?

On N64: Ocarina of Time, NFL Blitz, and Terisphere, and Rogue Squadron.

Resident Evil 2

Tenka (was released in 1997 but I played it in 1998)

The Saturn was insanely expensive... In the UK, it launched for £499, equivalent to around $750 at the time (or around $1500 adjusted for inflation today).

The Saturn had a great Japanese library though, but most of those games never made it to the West.

Yeah, it was insanely expensive for the time. There were some games that didn't get translated to English, I really wanted to play Shining Force 3 scenario 2 & 3 but they were never translated.

I still feel it had more than enough bangers on it though. Have you ever thought of buying one these days to play what you missed out on?

I still have a Saturn and nearly 90 games for it and i still play it semi regularly.

You weren't gaming before 3D games? What are you, 20? Whippersnapper.

Tekken 3 by far.

followed by the o.g. MGS1.

What can I say about 1998. The greatest year in Gaming over that past 25 years. Some years come close (ie 2004, 2007). But 1998 was a year that from which games I am still playing today (recently Heretic 2, with 25th Anniversary game mods to improve the game with better graphics and other fixes). And recently of course the Quake 2 remaster which had the two expansions that came out in 1998.

Anyways, my favorite would be breaking it down into what I have played from 1998 and may play in the future:

Played:

Unreal: The Crysis of 1998. The 3D GPU benchmark of 1998 which was used to bench all the latest graphics card at the time. My jaws dropped to the floor with the graphics. Coming out the crashed space ship and into the vast amazing world was nothing short of stunning. The beautiful waterfalls, the lens flare, it all had a woo ahh moment. The Castle walk through in the main menu with reflective lighting on the castle bridge was stunning. One of the first if not the first Open World First Person shooter.

Forsaken: Beautiful graphics, another popular 3D graphics benchmark. A good Descent clome but I would argue it's better in some ways at least with the controls.

Half-Life: Revolutionary FPS. From the beginning of the tram ride to it's scripted sequence, to it's AI, to teleporting you to another dimension. Revolution stuff, probably the best FPS form the 90s.

Sin: The last hurrah of the 90s shooters with a bit a Duke Nukem flavor. Diverse levels with great gun play and a sexy antagonist. They don't make games like this anymore. I wonder why? ;)

Playing: Heretic 2, a good overall 3rd person game. Descent graphics for a Quake 2 engine game with community mods to improve the graphics. Better than half the crap we get in 2023 with better level design and Single Player campaign. Look at the recent Call of Duty with it's crap Single Player that only lasts 3-4 hours.

Want to play (maybe in the future):

-Grim Fandango (remastered): Played the demo back in the day. Great art design, and unique story telling with great puzzles.

-Battlezone (98 redux): Remastered 98 version. First person RTS type of game. Played the demo back in the day. Great game set in the Moon (I believe). Where you fight the Soviets for control over the moon.

-Turok 2 (remastered): From what I heard maybe the pinnacle of the Turok series. Great colorful graphics where you shoot Dinosaurs.

Other notable mentions:

-The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time. Some say the best Legend of Zelda game.

-Need For Speed 3: Recently played it with 1080P mod. Pretty good game for it's time. First introduced the cops vs players mode. Great tracks. Although I may not recommended it today but having played it on the PC with patches and 1080P resolution. I can see why people highly rated this game back in the day.

Other Notable Mentions:

Blitz (arcade version)

Starcraft 2.

There's too many others to mention. But it should be noted that's also when Second/Third Generation of GPUs started to hit the market and we started to see huge leaps in Computer Graphics. So, in many ways 1998 left a landmark in gaming.

No, my parents didn't want me to play video games. Instead of gaming, i was into legos and rc cars as a kid.

I'm not really an active gamer anymore, unfortunately. I don't have much time for games nowadays, so usually just play shorter games. If you have any shorter Saturn games to recommend, then I'll add it to my backlog.

For me, it's StarCraft by a mile, but this is a solid list all around.

Remember spending a lot of the back end of 1998 playing wcw/nwo revenge still a legendary game. N64 was the standout multiplayer system.

Street Fighter Alpha 3

Resident Evil 2

Ocarina of Time

MGS

Tekken 3

That was a great year in games

1998 was an absolutely brilliant year in gaming. The top games were probably:

- Grim Fandango

- Half-Life

- Fallout 2

- Thief: The Dark Project

- Zelda: Ocarina of Time

- Banjo-Kazooie

But you could easily add a dozen more good games to that list.

@Jag85: woah.. I didn't know Breath of Fire III released in 98, that's one of my favorite games of all time.

the majority of short games on the Saturn are sports, fighting or arcade racing games. Can't really recommend the platformers as they're mostly hard as nails like both Clockwork Knight games, both Bug games, Sonic 3D etc.

but there are some like the first 2 Panzer Dragoon games, Nights and Guardian Heroes to name a few.