Welcome back to our Best Year in Gaming March Madness bracket competition! We’ve completed round 2 and are now in the middle of the Sweet Sixteen of our competition, narrowing things down to a final four years for the competition.
Yesterday we looked at some tough matchups in the Northeast conference. As expected, 1998 rolled past its competition, while 1993 narrowly edged out 2019 to advance to the next round.
Results: 1993 and 1998 win
Today we’re returning to the Southwest Conference for our Sweet Sixteen matchups. Our first matchup here has 1989 squaring off against 2011 for the right to move on to the Elite Eight.
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And that takes us to our final Sweet 16 Matchup.
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Despite a tough round of close voting, 1995 managed to squeak past 2017, a year I was certain would best it, if for no other reason than 2017 was an all-timer year for the tabletop. Hell, even one of 1995’s best games – Necromunda – got its improved modern re-release in 2017! Still, it’s a testament to 1995’s other games that it made it this far – and I will readily say that Chrono Trigger may be my favorite game of all time and is powering a lot of good will, though Seiken Densetsu 3 is a strong competitor as well. After that, 1995 is full of powerhouses like Tekken, Panzer Dragoon, Yoshi’s Island, Vectorman, WarCraft, and Command & Conquer, plus it was also the year Settlers of Catan hit.
2023 is a hell of a competitor here – it’s the game which launched this whole series, in fact. Its recency is both a blessing and a curse – a blessing in that it causes recency bias, but a curse in that it means that by definition it can’t be a foundational or “important” year in our competition. Still, those titles do a lot of the heavy lifting – 10th edition Warhammer 40,000, Alan Wake 2, Baldur’s Gate 3, Tears of the Kingdom, Sea of Stars, Hi-Fi Rush, Armoured Core VI, Lorcana, Diablo IV, and Spider-Man 2. I really think 2023 can make a run to the finals, but it’ll have its work cut out for it.
