The Best Year in Gaming: 1985 vs. 2013

Welcome back to our Best Year in Gaming March Madness bracket competition! Yesterday we looked at 1982 - Atari's last big year in the market, plus a phenomenal year for arcade games - and put it up against 2018, one of the best board game and indie game years on record. It was a closer result than the last few, but 2018 won out, in part because any mention of Atari's E.T. - considered one of the worst games ever made - is bound to cause you to lose some votes.

Result: 2018 beats 1982

That wraps up our first round competition in the Southeast conference, where so far the older years have lost three out of four rounds. Tragic, but not entirely unexpected - even if you aren't one of the hoary industry veterans it's hard to expect the likes of Dungeon to go up against more modern games, and 1996 and 1997 are among the strongest in our competition.



Today we're moving on to the Northeast Conference, where we have some decidedly tougher matchups, starting with one of the closest in our competition - 1985 vs. 2013.

VS.

1985 is the source of some truly amazing, all-time classic games, including two of the greatest and most important games of all time. It's a year when Nintendo was building the future of home console gaming, planting the seeds of their 8-bit and 16-bit empire. It's also the year fantasy football became widely accessible, if you're on the sports side of things.

In the other corner 2013 is a bit of a transition year, featuring the launches of the PlayStation 4 and Xbox One game consoles to truly kick off the eighth generation of hardware. Despite that 2013 had a number of big releases, including two of the biggest MMOs of all time.

If you’re interested in voting on the outcome, head over to our Patreon and join our Discord server to vote. Otherwise, check back tomorrow for the winner and the next matchup in the Southeast Conference.

This article is part of a larger series on the best year in gaming. For more years, click this link. Have any questions or feedback? Drop us a note in the comments below or email us at contact@goonhammer.com.