Choosing the best games of the year out of all the many hundreds that were released certainly isn't simple - as in previous years, in 2000, the games industry continued to improve on the quality of the average product that was released. More and more games are being published that are of higher and higher quality, and technical issues such as programming bugs and compatibility problems were generally less common in games this year than in previous years.

Yet although the overall quality of games this year was high, the year did get off to a fairly slow start. Many of the best action, adventure, driving, simulation, sports, and strategy games were released toward the end of this year, although at the same time, several noteworthy games were released relatively early, and they remained popular all throughout 2000.

Though every one of our categories has a single winner, all five nominees in each of the categories deserve your notice. If you let these games pass you by originally, we invite you to reconsider them, as we did. After all, these are the games that will commemorate this significant year in computer-gaming history.

After you're finished reading our choices, we encourage you to participate in our fifth annual Readers' Choice Awards, by selecting your favorite games in each category.