20 years later, what are your favorite gaming memories from 2001?

2001 was a big year for games. The original Xbox came out in 2001. Halo Combat Evolved set the world ablaze.. GTA 3, MGS 2, Final Fantasy X, Tony Hawk 3, Smash Bros Melee, Shenmue 2, Max Payne, and more.

I remember playing GTA 3 for the first time. It was mind blowing for its time.. kind of sucks that GTA hasn't had the same impact ever since. Another memory I enjoy is getting MGS 2 at launch. That was awesome.

How about you, SW? What would you say are your favorite gaming memories from 2001?

I'm lucky if I can remember what I did 20 minutes ago, never mind 20 years. I think it would probably getting my GameCube while I was in the military.

@hallenbeck77: oh snap! GameCube did come out in 2001!

And you were in the military?!

A lot of great games came out in 2001. Like Max Payne, Return to castle Wolfenstein, AvP 2, C&C:RA 2,

Long time ago; I was in the Air Force fron 2000 til 2003.

@hallenbeck77: wow.. so you don't even need to play MS flight simulator lol

Yeah, pretty good year. Standouts for me at the time were MGS2 and FFX. Stayed up all night on MGS2, finished it in one go. Was so tired by the end, shit with the colonel legit fucked with me lol. You've been playing too long, turn off the console, etc. Damn dude chill. 😂

Plenty of other greats as well. Way too much time spent on THPS3 and GT3. Also stuff like Ico, SH2, Max Payne, Halo, Civ 3, Twisted Metal Black, Melee, etc. etc.

@SolidGame_basic: That's a scary thought--me flying a plane, either in Flight Simulator, or real life. I'd would be like:

"Yo, where do you put the quarters in?"

@hallenbeck77: lol. You're thr top gun of SW.

@ConanTheStoner: it's crazy how good of a year it was. Wow, you beat MGS 2 in one night?! Were you blown away by "Fission Mailed" lol. I remember FFX too man.. I remember not being that big of a fan of ff9. Loved ff7 and ff8.. then ff9 came and it was eh for me.. then FF10 comes out on PS2 and was much better. Still haven't played through Silent Hill 2! Really need to get on that .

I actually missed out on Shenmue 2 until about 2004 when a friend from college had burned me a copy of the EU version with English. Had Sega released it here in America on Dreamcast, I'd have gladly paid for it but they decided to give us the middle finger. I made up for it later by spending $112 on Shenmue 3 during the Kickstarter so Suzuki and many from the original team got their share from me. I also gladly bought the PS4 remasters of the first two games.

As for what I actually did in 2001, I jumped into Gamecube with Smash. I also was playing my PS2 that I got that March. I believe Onimusha was that year and it was fantastic.

@SolidGame_basic:

Game blew me away in general man, was what made me a fan of the series. Played it countless times since.

I was slightly disappointed with FFX at first. Kept waiting for it to "open up", just didn't expect that structure to carry all the way through the game. And the voice acting was so bad lol. Even to this day I still prefer text boxes to va in FF games (not named FFXII), but that shit was the worst of the worst.

Still, was so impressed with everything else about it, ended up being a good time.

FFX, Breath of Fire 4, DQ3 (Gameboy Color version), Baldur's Gate dark alliance, Golden Sun, Megaman Battle Network, Shadow Hearts and Dark Cloud. 2001 and overall PS2 era gave me so much rpg goodness.

@ConanTheStoner: it took me 20 years later to realize I was pronouncing Tidus wrong 😆

Another thing I remember about MGS 2 at the time was the setting since the game takes place in NYC and was released not long after 9/11.

@Telekill: Smash on the Gamecube in the dorms was something else. It went from friendly bets to $25 a player battles--highest score collected the pot. Good times...

I rocked Smash Bros Melee in college. Won my first two matchs at a tournament because my opponents failed to show up lol.

GTA 3 and a lot of Madden 2001.

@SolidGame_basic:

Yeah they actually had to scramble and change the ending, apparently Arsenal Gear barreling through Manhattan was part of the sequence. Would've come off as way distasteful at the time.

Could have been worse too, the initial idea for MGS2 was a game called MGS III. The III symbolizing the Empire State Building and Twin Towers, where Dead Cell would carry out their terrorist plot... 😬

Imagine releasing that in 2001, yikes.

@ConanTheStoner: damn..I read some other things about MGS 2 too like how Kojima decided to go with a new protagonist because he didnt want to have to create beginning tutorials for Snake since he's an established character lol.

Watching the ending credits to MGS 2 recently was something man. They were showing clips of NYC from that time. Super nostalgic for me. The MGS HD collection is fantastic on XSX. I own the PS3 collection but playing it on the XSX was convient and looked great and natural on my TV. I give MS props on that one.

Ugh, got horrible grades then. First half of the year I was addicted to Counter-Strike. At end of the year I got an Xbox for a Christmas and had another bad couple quarters grades-wise. Got my shit together after that.

I think I was trying to buy Diablo II then.

Max Payne and gta 3 was pretty mind blowing at the time and definitely the games that stand out!

What else could it be other than playing Halo CE freshly after my father got me the Xbox which he made me work for like a month😭

In 2001 I bought a Dreamcast. Was $100 and came bundled with Sonic Adventure and Sonic Shuffle. Spent the next year snatching up cheap games like Crazy Taxi, Virtua Tennis, Soul Calibur, Soul Reaver, Power Stone, Ooga Booga. Played some Smash and Halo at friends houses too.

Basically the entirety of Metal Gear Solid 2: Sons of Liberty. The opening theme. The music. the intro itself. the whole tanker mission. the Hal & Snake dialogue. phenomenal game. Got goosebumps just typing that out.

and Final Fantasy X of course. Probably played it for 300+ hours. best RPG ever imo.

I think 2002 was my 2001. That's when I got the GameCube with Metroid Prime and Wind Waker and had the best console experience of my life.

Not sure what the hell I was doing in 2001.. Probably played a bunch of GBA games.

That 2001 was a better year for gaming than 2021 is. 2011 was also great as well.

2001 day one, OG Xbox with Halo:CE, Ghost Recon, Project Gotham Racing, Dead or Alive 3 and Fusion Frenzy.

Just wowzerz right there, best launch in history, I tell you what. :P

Return To Castle Wolfenstein stands out foremost.

Superb SP and MP played for about a year at least.

I agree with everyone - lots of good memories.

But nobody mentioned Baldur's Gate II yet!?!? Wtf. Lol. Also slapping my poor creature around in Black and White

*edit* nvm - 2001 was the expansion pack for BG2. Well still :-p

Wouldn't be surprised if a good chunk of people played BG2, but years later.

So man great games during that time. I miss the days of new IP releases every month. I remember playing Golden Sun and Advance Wars on the game boy, and Conker's bad fur day on the N64. Devil May Cry, GTA3, onimusha, and Zone of the Enders, Final Fantasy X, bloody roar 3 and Max Payne on PS2. PC had Black and White, Command and Conquer Yuri's revenge, Civ 3, bauldur's gate 2, and diablo 2 expansion. Dark Age of Camelot was my first MMO that year. So many games but I'd have to say as far as my favorite memories that year, Final Fantasy X wins. I loved that game so much I even have the soundtrack on vinyl record. it was mind blowing playing it for the first time.

To be honest, the 5th gen had the biggest impact on me. Every thing felt new, amazing and iconic.

The 6th gen was good. But I loved the 7th gen. Then after that things are more like incremental small evolutions.

Like the 8th and 9th gens don't feel hugely different to me.

What I did remember that 2001 was the year that I returned to console gaming after years playing PC games. I just graduated from Rutgers University in May of that year and have entered graduate school in late August only to drop out a few weeks latter because it quickly turned out it was not for me. The GameCube was released in late 2001 after the 9/11 attacks and I wanted to buy it, but was unable to get one in stores during that year. It will be until early 2002 that I was able to buy it from a seller at eBay.

Likely playing Banjo Kazooie or Ocarina of Time still. I was a wee lad.

20 years ago? I was still in high school or rather a freshman to say the least. But if we're gonna go back 20, than my favorite gaming memories is picking up Xbox just to play this game that started it all: Halo CE.

Edit: It should be noted that owning an Xbox felt like I had a super PC as I wasn't into PC gaming at the time, Xbox really was a beast for its time whatever PC was doing at the time but Xbox really gave console gamers a truly beast of a console at the time and boy, Doom 3 was freaking awesome too.

You guys remember 2001? 😆

Looking at games listed here, would be playing three player Halo all night long.

So much happened that year. I graduated high school, moved in with my first roommates, almost went to jail...it was pretty exciting, and the games were great! Halo CE, GTA 3, GT 3, Red Faction, Max Payne, SSX Tricky, Tribes 2...I was happy. I started my second run of Diablo 2, learned how to build maps in Duke Nukem 3D, played way too much of the Return to Castle Wolfenstein beach demo. But the thing that stands out the most was playing Rogue Spear til 3 or 4 in the morning, only to have my roommate wake me up in time to see the second plane hit. But you can't have good without bad.

Still, I had a lot of f'ing fun. Not to mention everything else; Iowa by Slipknot, Gorillaz, Toxicity, Harry Potter, Lord of the Rings..an that was a good time.

Halo lan and splitscreen sleepovers with friends.

Max Payne 1 turn out to be masterpiece like no other game in past and it blew me away as kid.

Halo was nothing compare to max payne.

Back in 2001, I was still playing games on the PS1, MS1 Gran Turismo series, Crash Bandicoot just to name a few but I did get my first NextGen system in 2002 the Xbox and Halo 1 was such an amazing experience.

Grand theft auto III was huge and all my friends were playing it on PS2.

Everyone I knew that was into PC gaming was playing Return to Castle Wolfenstein at the time.

20 years later and that game is still getting new content, though unofficially.

Lol

That was the year I got my Ps2 I think, I loved playing ratchet and clank and jak and daxter on it along with all the demo discs I used to get with the PlayStation magazine. Good times.

Had Xbox reserved and read to go day 1. Halo was great. Then again this year had Unreal Tournament though, which had me playing far more. 2001 was great overall.

Playing WWF No Mercy in the Winter of 2001. I did get a PS2 in the fall of that year and remember renting GTA3 and eventually bought it. It's the first and only game I ever played so much that I literally wore out the DVD and had to get a new copy within months I was addicted I was going through one of the worst moments in my life and GTA 3 kept me somewhat sane. I wouldn't even call GTA 3 my favorite moment of gaming that year it was more of a escape. For me playing WWF No Mercy the winter of that year was a better memory.

Pretty much the same as me... Gamecube and Xbox came out in 2002 for us in Aus. Probably still the generation I get most nostalgic about.

I was playing Devil May Cry, SSX and 007: Agent Under Fire.

@SolidGame_basic: Playing Halo for the first time - especially when you first meet the flood.

Halo was big. It basically introduced me to FPS multiplayer online.