Many other important titles saw the light in those twelve months, here is my list, with the usual focus on design and development. Counterstrike is also worth a mention, even though I’m not really sure I would call that a “series”. One noteworthy original franchise debuting in 1999 is Unreal Tournament. At least for genres that weren’t first person shooters… 1999 for PC gaming was a year of sequels: Dungeon Keeper 2, Heroes of Might & Magic 3, Descent 3, etc. 3D accelerated graphics had apparently reached their peak, while developers were still trying to catch on and use the technology to truly revolutionize gaming. On the other side of the pond, PC games enjoyed a pretty good year but signs of stagnation were becoming evident. Sony seemed like it would have no rival in market dominance, since Nintendo wasn’t really breaking new ground with the Gamecube. Meanwhile, Playstation 2, announced in March, was on its way. It was the end of the millennium! Perhaps, people were busy sending heaps of sms to their friends and family and trying to remember to turn off your pc before midnight, otherwise the Y2K bug would destroy their precious data. Hey, we had more important things on our hands. No one was paying attention to the end of the decade that fateful 31st of December 1999.
