The biggest video games, tech news, and apocalyptic anxieties of 1998

We’re heading into the last days of 2018, and by extension, the last days of our look back at 1998 — where the dot-com bubble was steadily inflating, cyberspace was transforming everything from crime to horoscopes, and the end of the internet (or maybe civilization itself) was just a year away with Y2K. And that means one thing in the media world: time for some retrospectives!I’ll be deviating slightly from the normal format by accepting a few pieces from both earlier in December and later in January, so I can offer a spread of analysis looking back at the year.It’s generally acknowledged that 1998 was a fantastic year for video games. In October, GameSpot published a list of the year’s best and most influential titles, ranging from StarCraft to Half-Life to The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time. But what were the top picks at the time?Well, a lot of the things you’d expect, based on IGN’s rankings. On PlayStation, Metal Gear Solid is listed as the console’s “crowning achievement,” with further accolades going to Resident Evil 2, Xenogears, Tenchu, and Gran Turismo. It was “quite a year for PC games,” which is something of an understatement — awards went to Half-Life, Unreal, Baldur’s Gate, Thief: The Dark Project, and the EverQuest beta release, among many others. And it should surprise no one that Ocarina of Time got a lot of attention on the Nintendo side.