The Best of 1998

I'm an avid fan of the Backloggd website service, where users can upload ratings and reviews of the games that they play. Like many sites, they have a "Game of the Year" (GOTY) contest at the end of every calendar year to let users vote for what they felt was the best title to have released in the year prior. Unlike most sites though, they've also begun having these sorts of contests in the middle of the year focused on particularly noteworthy years past. If you're reading this prior to May 5th, 2026, you too can make an account and select your picks for what you felt was the best games of the year 1998.

1998 has gotten a reputation for being one of the best years in video gaming, perhaps ever. The hayday of the Nintendo 64, PlayStation, Sega Saturn, Game Boy Color, and even seeing the release of the Sega Dreamcast, at least in Japan. It was a stacked year featuring some of the most celebrated and influential titles to this day. The voting is broken down into six categories — a vote for best Gameplay, Narrative, Art Direction, Soundtrack, Multiplayer, and then overall best Game. As I said, they've done these competitions for past years before, such as for 2007 and 2015, but this was the first that I felt had so many possible options that I wanted to document my thoughts about them. Thus, this brief blog post chronicling my thoughts.

There are a few things to note about this though. For one, the website is somewhat strict about what games count as being released in 1998. From what I can tell, they only allow the first release date worldwide — which is typically the Japanese release date in those days — not caring if a game came out in 1998 in other regions. This excludes certain titles that I might have given high rankings to, such as Pokemon Red and Blue, as while it came out in 1998 in North America, it released earlier elsewhere. This does mean the opposite though, and titles that we didn't get until 1999, such as Sonic Adventure are eligible.

The site also penalizes games that are ports or enhancements of other titles. They'll allow you to vote for them, but a label will appear noting that they will be ineligible in the final tally. Pokemon Yellow, being an enhancement of Red/Blue gets this designation, as does the 1998 Japanese-only Sega Saturn port of Castlevania: Symphony of the Nightand the PC port of Final Fantasy VII. I could've used these loopholes to get some of these titles in, but I chose not to, as this was such a star studded year that I didn't want to settle on a vote that would've been discounted.

Finally, I self-imposed a restriction on myself to not duplicate entries in any of the categories, including overall GOTY. This might seem a little odd, as the title that I will label as "best game" won't have won in any individual category, but I want to highlight as many games as possible, acknowledging that the best game would've by default excelled in at least one of those areas, so let's shine the spotlight on some of the other great entires of the year.

With that out of the way, let's begin by going through each of the categories in turn.

Best Multiplayer — SoulCalibur — Sega Dreamcast

Despite me going on about how I had too many choices to choose, there actually wasn't a lot of options for multiplayer for me. Many of the games that immediately popped into my head — GoldenEye 007, Mario Kart 64, Super Smash Bros., Pokemon — all came out either slightly too early or too late to qualify for 1998. Gran Turismo was another title that I debated, but it too had a 1997 release in Japan. I don't have a huge amount of visibility on retro PC games, being a largely console gamer, but Starcraft and Unreal are two that I've seen pop up, but neither have I played. This largely left fighting games as the main targets. Looking at other user's submissions, Tekken 3 and Marvel Vs. Capcom are two quite popular titles. I'm not a big fighting game player, but one that I do have experience with is SoulCalibur for the Dreamcast.

I have more experience with SoulCalibur II for GameCube, but I have played a bit of the original. I find it a vibrant and gorgeous game, with some really cool gameplay mechanics. It has a fun character set and interesting stages. Again, I am not a fighting game player at all, but it has stood out enough in my mind to justify my vote.

Best Soundtrack — R4: Ridge Racer Type 4 — Sony PlayStation

Best Soundtrack is a fun category, and one that I took a few things into account. There's a bit of a difference between "good music" and "good video game music", with only a few games that manage the bridge the gap into being both. Banjo-Kazooie has a really fun musical score as does my original pick, Sonic Adventure. Sonic Adventure is a game I grew up with and am intimately familiar with. I think it's a good sign of a soundtrack when I can immediately recall several of its songs in my head. In a rare showing from the Sega Saturn, I also considered Burning Rangers, mainly due to its main theme.

And yet... I wouldn't say that I listen to the music of Sonic Adventure on my own anymore. As I have grown, so have my musical tastes. Is there no game whose music I would actually consider to be good music, not just good video game music?

Enter Ridge Racer Type 4, one of the most stylish games to ever grace your PlayStation. This game's soundtrack absolutely rocks. I put on the soundtrack just to verify this decision, and almost immediately realized there really couldn't be anything else. No offense to Banjo-Kazooie, but R4 is absolutely something I would just listen to in my daily listening, which I can't say for anything else.

Best Art Direction — Grim Fandango — PC

Art Direction is an interesting one. Games that were once powerhouses of visual fidelity no longer seem impressive, meaning that games with clever art styles have actually aged better. Symphony of the Night would've easily won this category, had it qualified, as I think its choice to focus on pixel art rather than 3D has stood the test of time. Banjo-Kazooie again could make the list, as well as games that did focus on realism, such as Resident Evil 2, Metal Gear Solid, or Parasite Eve. As I said though, I'm only going to consider any game for a single category, and some of these might be a better fit for other awards (foreshadowing...).

I haven't mentioned the Game Boy much, but Pokemon Trading Card Game did cross my mind as well, as I think its pixel recreations of real Pokemon cards is really well done. I've used a straight screenshot of a card as my profile picture on several sites even now, as I feel it was so well done. Still, another title quite easily won this award from me, and for that we need to turn our attention to the PC.

As I said, I'm not super familiar with retro PC titles, but one of the exceptions is Lucasart's Grim Fandango, whose remaster I played fairly recently. Pre-rendered backgrounds, my beloved, showcasing an art deco art style with a Dia De Muertos spin. It's a funny and clever game that really utilizes its art style that is still visually interesting today, which I'm happy to nominate as my favorite of an already stacked year.

Best Narrative — Metal Gear Solid — Sony PlayStation

Of all the categories, this one was perhaps the easiest one for me to choose. There was never really any doubt in my mind that Metal Gear Solid deserves this spot. It has a level of narrative realism and plot that no other game even dreamed of. Its voice acting is still fantastic even to this day, let alone when you compare it to its contemporaries like Symphony of the Night, a great game with awful acting. Metal Gear Solid was a truly foundational breakthrough in story-telling, and set the template for basically all games to follow. In a different year, Parasite Eve or Resident Evil 2 could've been contenders, but comparing them side by side with MGS really makes this a no brainer.

Best Gameplay — Resident Evil 2 — Sony PlayStation

Speaking of RE2, after some consideration I chose it as my favorite gameplay of the year. This too was a difficult category, as you are comparing apples with oranges in many cases. MGS could've been a contender here, but I like it more as my Narrative pick than Gameplay (plus I enjoy playing RE2 more than MGC). Poor Banjo-Kazooie again misses out, although this is probably the category it came the closest to winning. Sonic Adventure and Pokemon Trading Card Game too I heavily considered, as I did Pokemon Yellow, which would've been my pick if you had asked me back in 1998. Alas, that one was considered an "enhanced games", and thus not allowed for eligibility under Backloggd's rules.

Despite this, I think RE2 is the right choice for me. A vast improvement over the first game, it really set the standard for the franchise which is still being followed to this day. It also included mechanics that were really innovative and yet never repeated, even in its own remake. The AB/BA system, where the order you played through the two characters' plots affected how the game would play out, is incredibly clever. This means that if you played as Leon then Claire, you would have a different experience than playing as Claire then Leon. It's a fairly simple system on paper, but so clever and really adds to replayability.

Honorable Mentions

I've pretty much covered all of the honorable mentions throughout this article, but I wanted to spell them out. In any other year, games like Sonic Adventure, Parasite Eve, Banjo-Kazooie, and Pokemon Trading Card Game would've easily gotten a place. I haven't even mentioned some of the real heavy hitters that are bound to be seen on other lists, such as the monumental PC entry Half-Life or what I would consider a top 3 Game Boy game Legend of Zelda: Link's Awakening DX. There are other titles that I'm just not familiar with that I've seen show up frequently as well, such as Marvel Vs. Capcom, Street Fighter Alpha 3, and Xenogears.

Having now evaluated the options, I agree with the sentiment that 1998 was the greatest year ever for gaming, it was such a monumental and rapidly evolving time for the industry with genres, gameplay styles, and visual improvements making wide leaps forward. It is a level of evolution that we shall never see again.

If you're looking for Mario Party though, it's not getting an honorable mention, I've never liked it.

Game of the Year — Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time — Nintendo 64

If you're up on your video game history, you'll likely have noticed a very large omission in pretty much every single category. For me, there was only one option for the best game of the entire year, one that I consider to be one of, if not the best, games ever made. The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time took what was already a ground-breaking franchise and made the immaculate leap to 3D. To this day, Zelda titles are leveraging what Ocarina of Time established. Z-targeting, the ability to lock on to enemy characters, debuted here and has become an industry staple.

The world of Hyrule as portrayed here is such a rich and vibrant one, serving as an early example of an open world, with Link traveling not only across the land but across two time periods as well. I recall playing it for the first time, fully expecting that the game would end once I reached the Temple of Time. Instead, the game transported me to a dark future with adult versions of all the friends I had made in more dire straights. It completely floored me, and set the standard from what I expected games to be going forward. It's color, gorgeous, and rich in both plot and characters. For me, there was never any other consideration for what the best game in the best year could possibly be.