Old Gamer’s Almanac

You made it! You've come a long way traveler, but we have finished our season exploring the year 2001 in video games. It wasn't enough to get all of those games added to our list though. So we sat down and held ourselves an old school awards ceremony. We'll put on our best EGM Editor hat and pretend we're calling the shots to determine the best games of 2001, FROM a 2001 perspective (except for when we also want to talk from a 2023 perspective)

Music by nightcorey. https://soundcloud.com/nightcorey

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2001: A Game Odyssey

Halo: Combat Evolved

Max Payne

Metal Gear Solid 2

Grand Theft Auto III

Ico

Final Fantasy X

Klonoa 2

Silent Hill 2

Pikmin

Super Monkey Ball

Super Smash Bros. Melee

Bangai-O

Sonic Adventure 2

Advance Wars

Aliens vs Predator 2

Anachronox

Black & White

Tony Hawk's Pro Skater 3

We have finally arrived at our final game of 2001: A Game Odyssey and we're going out with a bang. Ico gave one of Sony's most legendary development studios its name and provided Fumito Ueda with a massive boost to his budding career in the game industry. Depending on who you ask Ico is either the overshadowed little brother of Shadow of Colossus, or the cliché video game hipster opportunity to say "I liked it before they were cool." Either way, it's a legendary game with aspects of its design found in many games that have followed it.

Music by nightcorey. https://soundcloud.com/nightcorey

Consider contributing to our show on Patreon. Email us your thoughts on the ongoing list at oldgamersalmanac(at)gmail(dot)com. Or come talk to us on our Discord.

The List So Far

1. Disco Elysium

It's the penultimate entry for 2001 and it's a BIG OL' DOOZY. We've got a long JRPG for this week and Matt is trapped in the dadlands, so we had to call in fellow JRPG lover Sun Sanders to help Hunter make sense of this game's legacy. Where does it rank amongst Final Fantasies? Where does it rank amongst 2001 games? Where does it rank amongst 73 seemingly random games? Well I hope you'll stick around and find out.

Music by nightcorey. https://soundcloud.com/nightcorey

Consider contributing to our show on Patreon. Email us your thoughts on the ongoing list at oldgamersalmanac(at)gmail(dot)com. Or come talk to us on our Discord.

The List So Far

1. Disco Elysium

It's time for the run up to the finale of our 2001: A Game Odyssey season and we kick things off with one of the highest reviewed PC games of 2001 from one of gaming's most infamous creators, Peter Molyneux. Molyneux has been known as a brilliant game designer but also a bit of an over-embellisher and it's time to examine how that legacy looks 20+ years later...

Music by nightcorey. https://soundcloud.com/nightcorey

Consider contributing to our show on Patreon. Email us your thoughts on the ongoing list at oldgamersalmanac(at)gmail(dot)com. Or come talk to us on our Discord.

The List So Far

1. Disco Elysium

Our second spin of The Every Wheel for season 1 gave us Dead_Bob's To the Moon! It's a short, narrative focused independent game about life, love, loss, and like...memories and all this real, human stuff. What are we trying to say over here? That games is art or sumthin?

Music by nightcorey. https://soundcloud.com/nightcorey

Consider contributing to our show on Patreon. Email us your thoughts on the ongoing list at oldgamersalmanac(at)gmail(dot)com. Or come talk to us on our Discord.

The List So Far

1. Disco Elysium

We're continuing two projects at once this week: the continuation of 2001: A Game Odyssey as well as our closer look at Hideo Kojima. That's right, Metal Gear Solid 2 is the best of both worlds! It's a critically important follow up in one of the biggest franchises of all time, and this is the game where the rails really come off. How does "the ending" feel now 22 years later?

Music by nightcorey. https://soundcloud.com/nightcorey

Consider contributing to our show on Patreon. Email us your thoughts on the ongoing list at oldgamersalmanac(at)gmail(dot)com. Or come talk to us on our Discord.

The List So Far

1. Disco Elysium

We pretended like you asked for this. It's like some sort of cruel joke we've played on ourselves. We went to our local Dave & Buster's and played as many games as we could muster and this is the chaotic downward spiral into madness that came about.

This episode was recorded because we reached a goal on our Patreon. You can sign up for our patreon at https://www.patreon.com/oldgamersalmanac. We already owe another bonus episode: Ranking Video Game Publishers, but you can help us reach our next goal, Ranking the Best Music of the Sega Genesis!

Music by nightcorey. https://soundcloud.com/nightcorey

Consider contributing to our show on Patreon. Email us your thoughts on the ongoing list at oldgamersalmanac(at)gmail(dot)com. Or come talk to us on our Discord.

Don't mind the weird American release date on this episode title. This game is 1988 through and through. This is Kojima's adventure game, cyberpunk masterpiece Snatcher and it's been referenced about a million times in every Kojima work since it's release. It's also an interesting peak into a world of more complicated adventure games and hopefully serves as a potential bridge to those older games. Or it would if Konami had any interest in making it accessible to a modern audience.

Music by nightcorey. https://soundcloud.com/nightcorey

Consider contributing to our show on Patreon. Email us your thoughts on the ongoing list at oldgamersalmanac(at)gmail(dot)com. Or come talk to us on our Discord.

The List So Far

1. Disco Elysium

2001: A Game Odyssey continues with our only mobile entry for the year, Advance Wars! This is a beloved classic but at least one of our hosts has never touched it. It also has the issue of being a tactics game in a world where we all have access to Into the Breach...and buddy that's a tough mountain to get over.

Music by nightcorey. https://soundcloud.com/nightcorey

Consider contributing to our show on Patreon. Email us your thoughts on the ongoing list at oldgamersalmanac(at)gmail(dot)com. Or come talk to us on our Discord.

The List So Far

1. Disco Elysium

Today is an introspective trip down memory lane. No game from 2001 has more time spent from both our hosts (together) than Super Smash Bros. Melee and that is a source of great joy and, as always, in Matt's case some skeletons deep in the closet. How will this monolith stand up to the march of time and can we still look at it fondly?

Music by nightcorey. https://soundcloud.com/nightcorey

Consider contributing to our show on Patreon. Email us your thoughts on the ongoing list at oldgamersalmanac(at)gmail(dot)com. Or come talk to us on our Discord.

The List So Far

1. Disco Elysium