Well, here we are. As most of us prepare for upcoming New Year’s parties, we should take a moment to look back at how far we’ve come. No, no, no, not in 2009! If you’re looking for our favorite titles of the past year, we’ve already got that covered. No, I’m talking about the end of the decade.
I could spend my entire night writing up a post detailing all of the things that happened between the year 2000 and now in anime, manga, and video games, but let’s be honest: it’s New Year’s Eve, and I’m going out to celebrate. Instead, I’m going to take a look back at one year in particular – 2000.
In the year 2000, we were playing our brand new Playstation 2’s, enjoying the N64 sequel to Banjo-Kazooie (remember when Kazooie turned into a DRAGON?), and marveling over some new sim game from a dude named Will Wright. We were playing the second generation of Pokémon games (Gold and Silver) on our Gameboy Colors and the best Zelda game ever (fo real!), Majora’s Mask (for the N64).
In anime, we were freaking out about Boogiepop Phantom and laughing at world-changing card games in Yu-Gi-Oh, all while FLCL was quickly melting our minds to sludge.
And in 2000, we probably weren’t reading very much manga, since the American manga industry as we know it barely existed! I know that, a decade ago, I was still nearly unaware of the wide world of Japanese comics out there.
Naturally, we’ve all got different memories of the decade gone by. What do you guys remember from the year 2000 onward? What nuggets of geekdom surprise you the most when looking at how far we’ve come in the past ten years?
Oh, and lest I forget: Happy New Year to everybody! Thanks to all of our readers for sticking with us this year, and thanks to all of our writers, who keep the river of Ani-Gamers content flowing day after day. Have a safe and happy 2010!
