The ZippyGamer Staff chooses their top gaming picks for the year 2003.

Kelsey - Prince of Persia: The Sands of Time

If there’s one year that was a challenge to pick a game for, it was this one. Prince of Persia: The Sands of Time, Beyond Good and Evil, Freedom Fighters, and Mega Man Network Transmission all came out this year. I’ve played through Sands of Time and Beyond Good and Evil several times, Freedom Fighters is actually getting another playthrough at the moment, and Mega Man Network Transmission is an interesting (and in my opinion, well done) attempt to meld two different styles of gameplay into a cohesive experience. For me, Sands of Time is above this tough competition. The voice acting of the Prince is probably one of the larger selling points. The character is strangely enduring, watching him run across walls and vault over enemies never lost its appeal to me, and exploring the castle environments with him was always awe-inspiring. The use of colour both makes environments seem real and fantastic. Sands of Time is not only the best game of 2003, but one of the best games of the past generation.

Jonathan - Viewtiful Joe

Many great games were released in 2003 that I never got around to playing. And apparently this was the case for other gamers as well, because despite the fact so many great games were released, many of them suffered from lackluster sales. I’ll mention a few of them here.

The most obvious in my mind is Beyond Good & Evil, which (from what I hear) is a fantastic game. This action-adventure received great reviews from the press but just didn’t sell very much, partly due to the bad timing of the release among such other Ubisoft hits like Prince of Persia.

Gladius is a game you probably haven’t heard of, but it’s a good one. I always thought of Gladius as a cross between chess and a RPG. There’s a story to follow and you grow stronger like any other RPG, but there’s also the turn-based tactical and strategic battles where most of the time is spent. The game is quite deep and my friends and I used to play against each other for hours.

We also enjoyed the release of Mario Kart: Double Dash for the Nintendo Gamecube. Many were disappointed by the lack of online play, but the bright graphics and new 2-person to a kart concept was a hit and lots of fun.

But in the end, my pick for the game of the year goes to Viewtiful Joe, which revamped and changed how we thought about 2D platformers. The game had an amazing visual style and slowing down time to kill your enemies just never gets old. The game required you to use your special powers and move at extreme speeds or slow everything down to solve puzzles. Another awesome ability was to “zoom in” to the screen and have Viewtiful Joe attack many enemies at once. This game really made you feel like a cartoon bad-ass, and that’s why it gets my #1 pick.

Honorable mentions: WWE WrestleMania XIX (Gamecube), XIII (multi-platform)

Liam – Beyond Good & Evil

Another strong year for video games, we had the unique release of XIII, the FPS game played out in a comic book style, One of the best bargains in video game history; The Legend Of Zelda:Collector’s Edition, which featured the 2 NES games and 2 n64 Zelda games. We even had the highly controversial Postal 2.

However my choice for 2003 would have to be, Beyond Good And Evil. An action-adventure game, many refer to as a Zelda Clone, however Beyond Good And Evil is more than just a clone, it’s a Zelda Beater.

Beyond Good And Evil combines The action elements of a Zelda game along with Stealth elements,The game also gave the player a camera, in which the player had to take photo’s of Key items or point throughout the game, which added a Pokemon Snap kind of gameplay into the mix. Bought to us by the man who made Rayman, Beyond Good And Evil deserves to be played and loved by all, There really isn’t a reason why no one can not fall in love with such a perfect product. The music was intense and it all fitted well, the world whilst small, gave a great feeling of entrapment and impending doom upon it.

Honorable Mentions: F-Zero GX (Gamecube), Tales Of Symphonia (Gamecube), Postal 2 (PC)

Joe – The Legend of Zelda: The Wind Waker

2003 was an easy year for me. There were a lot of great games, but only one really stood out and caused a huge uproar from gamers all over the world. This game still gets talked about today. Some praise it while others curse it. I was very skeptical myself, until I actually played it. Okay, Lewis already mentioned it for 2002, but since it was released in North America in 2003, I’m still going with it.

The Legend of Zelda: The Wind Waker was a bold new approach for Nintendo. The Zelda games for the N64 were very mature for Nintendo games and that’s what a lot of people loved about them. Everyone was expecting a graphical enhancement of a dark Zelda game featuring an adult protagonist on horseback galloping through a graphically enhanced Hyrule. But instead, we got just the opposite.

At first, it really felt like Nintendo had hocked a giant loogie right in my face. The Zelda I had been waiting for was a cartoon-style game with a goofy-looking, big-eyed Link. Instead of Hyrule, the game took place on a giant sea. And we had a talking boat in place of Epona. Was this some kind of joke?  Nope, this was the future of Zelda. After playing The Wind Waker, I soon forgot all about how different it was and completely related it to its predecessors. I still consider this game’s story to be better than any other Zelda story to date. It was deep, interesting, and connected with the previous games. The gameplay was also improved over the N64 games. You could actually rotate the camera with the C-Stick and even perform special moves by pressing the A button at the right time. If you skipped The Wind Waker because of how it looked, you really missed out on one of the greatest adventures in The Legend of Zelda series.

Honorable mentions: Mario & Luigi: Superstar Saga (GBA) Metal Gear Soild 2: Substance, Prince of Persia: The Sands of Time

Lewis - Wario Ware Inc.: Mega Microgame$

Insane. The only true way to describe Wario Ware. The ultimate game for the short attention span, warioware consists of nothing but 5 second “micro-games” that challenge a player to… well figure out what the hell they have to do. Fast, frantic and full of laughs, the surreal humour mixed with simple yet challenging gameplay makes this game a must, and it also spawned a new franchise that has brought us many great games. Despite rebooting Wario in a rather… unpreferable way, taking him away from the treasure hunting games I enjoyed as a kid and into an entrpenuer, Wario Ware still holds a dear place in my heart, and a firm place in my GBA. Also, nose-picking, what a fantastic idea.

Honorable Mentions: War of the Monsters “Damn that was fun.”