Phew, what a year, eh? But now it’s time to predict – the Games Of 2001!

It’s a shame, but we love you.

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Despite a gloomy start, the space year 2000 was a surprisingly good one for gaming. At least, it was if you were one of the approximately 27 people who bought a Dreamcast.

From Crazy Taxi onwards, the DC played host to pretty much all of the year’s most innovative and best games, with only Perfect Dark on N64 and Deus Ex on PC making any kind of serious stab at the year’s top 20. The Game Boy offered a few decent titles too, and there was probably a good Playstation game somewhere that I just missed.

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In fact, so many good games came out in 2000 (albeit almost all of them in the last two months) that it’s probably going to take you until next summer to buy and play them all.

Which is just as well, since there’s precious little prospect of much exciting coming out in 2001. Yes, chums, the chances are the best games of 2001 have been released already.

Reckon that’s a little pessimistic? Well, let’s all sit down and think about it for a minute.

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As could be seen in the dismal Christmas charts, 2000 was the year that Sony effectively repositioned the original Playstation as a kids’ toy.

Unfortunately, they also completely failed to come up with a single compelling reason to buy a PS2. (Even in the highly unlikely event that you had the opportunity.)

And the Dreamcast pulled out all the stops to unleash a barrage of fantastic games, but still didn’t get anybody to buy it.

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So what does that leave us to look forward to? The DC has, sadly, probably taken its last shot at the big time. The N64 will finally cough its guts up in the spring when Banjo-Tooie is released here. Almost nobody has been developing PS1 games for the last year.

The only really big games scheduled for PS2 are Gran Turismo "3" and Metal Gear Solid 2, which stands an extremely slim chance of living up to the astonishing levels of hype being heaped onto it like quick-setting concrete, and Xbox isn’t out here until 2002.

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It’s a pretty miserable prognosis, pals. But there’s no need to feel gloomy. Thanks to the games industry’s continuing idiotic practice of releasing three-quarters of the year’s games in one month, there are more great games around right now than anyone could possibly buy and play before, say, next August.

It’s not too late to get yourself a DC (you can buy them new for as little as £99 if you shop around), a second-hand N64 (going rate: about £30) and a big bunch of dirt-cheap games. So do it.

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Because make no mistake, 2000’s DC and N64 games will be more than a match for anything that comes out in 2001 for the more-hyped and more popular formats.

The smart gamer will save their big-money purchasing until 2002, when there might just be a few games that justify the purchase of a fancy new console, while the stupid gamer blows a fortune on mildly prettier versions of games he already owns.