y2k aesthetics


everything is chrome in the future

essentially a blanket term for anything from the late 90s/early 00s that tried to look cutting-edge or futuristic/utopian despite being from an era when people still used pagers. usually involves a lot of primitive cg, and especially spacey/aquatic/icy imagery.

see these pages as well:
https://twitter.com/y2k_aesthetic - a great twitter account
https://skins.webamp.org/ - an archive containing tons of winamp skins (an old media player)

this definitely isn't everything out there. just what i know about. would love additional suggestions! (feel free to suggest removing things as well)

Ace Combat 3: Electrosphere
Ace Combat 3: Electrosphere
Æon Flux
Æon Flux
Alice in Cyberland
Alice in Cyberland
Ar tonelico: Melody of Elemia
Ar tonelico: Melody of Elemia
Battle Engine Aquila
Battle Engine Aquila
Bejeweled 2
Bejeweled 2
Burning Rangers
Burning Rangers
Chaos Field
Chaos Field
Chrono Cross
Chrono Cross
ChuChu Rocket!
ChuChu Rocket!
Cool Cool Toon
Cool Cool Toon
Cosmic Smash
Cosmic Smash
Crossniq+
Crossniq+
Cy Girls
Cy Girls
Dance Dance Revolution
Dance Dance Revolution
Dead or Alive 2
Dead or Alive 2
Dengen Tenshi Taisen Mahjong Shangri-La
Dengen Tenshi Taisen Mahjong Shangri-La
Shin Megami Tensei: Devil Summoner - Soul Hackers
Shin Megami Tensei: Devil Summoner - Soul Hackers
.Hack//Infection
.Hack//Infection
Einhänder
Einhänder
Exception
Exception
the actual game is not on backloggd. "exception" is an arcade shmup by success
Extreme-G
Extreme-G
Final Fantasy VIII
Final Fantasy VIII
Final Fantasy XI Online
Final Fantasy XI Online
playonline viewer
Fluid
Fluid
Frequency
Frequency
Front Mission 3
Front Mission 3
Fuzion Frenzy
Fuzion Frenzy
F-Zero X
F-Zero X
Gaball Screen
Gaball Screen
Galaxy Angel
Galaxy Angel
Galerians
Galerians
G-Darius
G-Darius
Ghost in the Shell
Ghost in the Shell
Halo: Combat Evolved
Halo: Combat Evolved
HellSinker
HellSinker
Hypnospace Outlaw
Hypnospace Outlaw
Iggy's Reckin' Balls
Iggy's Reckin' Balls
Intelligent Qube
Intelligent Qube
iS: internal section
iS: internal section
I Spy Fantasy
I Spy Fantasy
Jet Set Radio Future
Jet Set Radio Future
Jumping Flash!
Jumping Flash!
Kid Pix Deluxe
Kid Pix Deluxe
Kinetica
Kinetica
LEGO Island
LEGO Island
L.O.L.: Lack of Love
L.O.L.: Lack of Love
Lifeline
Lifeline
Love & Destroy
Love & Destroy
Lumines
Lumines
Maken X
Maken X
Metal Gear Solid 2: Substance
Metal Gear Solid 2: Substance
Metroid Prime
Metroid Prime
Moon: Remix RPG Adventure
Moon: Remix RPG Adventure
Motor Raid
Motor Raid
MTV Music Generator
MTV Music Generator
Music 2000
Music 2000
N2O: Nitrous Oxide
N2O: Nitrous Oxide
Never 7: The End of Infinity
Never 7: The End of Infinity
Nights Into Dreams...
Nights Into Dreams...
Noel: Not Digital
Noel: Not Digital
N.U.D.E.@ Natural Ultimate Digital Experiment
N.U.D.E.@ Natural Ultimate Digital Experiment
OutRun 2
OutRun 2
Pac-Man World 2
Pac-Man World 2
Parasite Eve
Parasite Eve
Pax Corpus
Pax Corpus
Pepsiman
Pepsiman
Perfect Dark Zero
Perfect Dark Zero
Phantasy Star Online Blue Burst
Phantasy Star Online Blue Burst
Phase Paradox
Phase Paradox
P.N.03
P.N.03
Pop'n music 3
Pop'n music 3
Primal Image Vol.1
Primal Image Vol.1
Puyo Puyo Da!
Puyo Puyo Da!
Racing Lagoon
Racing Lagoon
Radirgy
Radirgy
Revive... Sosei
Revive... Sosei
Rez Infinite
Rez Infinite
Ridge Racer Type 4
Ridge Racer Type 4
Rise of the Robots
Rise of the Robots
Roll Away
Roll Away
Rollcage Stage II
Rollcage Stage II
Roommania #203
Roommania #203
R-Type Delta
R-Type Delta
Running High
Running High
Segagaga
Segagaga
Serial Experiments Lain
Serial Experiments Lain
Sin and Punishment
Sin and Punishment
SingStar
SingStar
Sonic Riders
Sonic Riders
Space Channel 5
Space Channel 5
SSX Tricky
SSX Tricky
Sanvein
Sanvein
Soulbaby: Remastered
Soulbaby: Remastered
Super Galdelic Hour
Super Galdelic Hour
Super Magnetic Neo
Super Magnetic Neo
Super Mario Sunshine
Super Mario Sunshine
Super Monkey Ball Deluxe
Super Monkey Ball Deluxe
Sega Tetris
Sega Tetris
Star Ocean: Till the End of Time
Star Ocean: Till the End of Time

28 Comments


3 years ago

Serial Experiments Lain PS1, Hypnospace Outlaw, Ikaruga, G-Darius, Thunder Force 5/6, Kula World/Roll Away should work

3 years ago

good calls, though idk about ikaruga. feels more like standard mecha to me

3 years ago

everytime i see super galdelic hour i remember that on christmas 2019 i bought a sonehati artbook for less than 20 bucks and that might have been one of my biggest flexes

3 years ago

I think with Ikaruga it's mainly like the menus/sfx for me but yeah that's fair.
I seem to remember Lego Island feeling quite y2ky but that one might be open to interpretation too, idk

3 years ago

thats pretty wild

and yeah, with stuff like ikaruga i feel like you could just as easily put almost any 00s game on a list like this if you're general enough

3 years ago

also i added lego island. idk if it totally fits the bill but it's definitely uncanny and primitive enough to feel right
P.N.03 and Oni !

3 years ago

Sega Dreamcast: The List

3 years ago

good call on both of those. p.n.03 looks utterly bizarre so i'll need to check that out soon as well
side note, it also reminded me to add n.u.d.e.

also yeah sega pretty much dominated this whole spectrum. so much so to the point where i've refrained from putting some of their stuff on because it's already so sega-saturated as is. that's the main reason i'm only doing one per series too

2 years ago

Crime crackers?

2 years ago

eh, crime crackers is more like a 90s anime ova made into a game. its brand of sci-fi isn't really any different from the norm

2 years ago

Hmm I havent played but what about Crimson Tears

2 years ago

i actually learned about that one fairly recently and debated putting it here, but i think it's a little too grey to include (same reason i removed oni). there's def elements in the ui but that's about it

2 years ago

Uh alice in cyberland maybe?

2 years ago

standard vn anime stuff aside the gameplay and ui seems to fit. good call!

2 years ago

Ngl I read this as yiik aesthetic at first

2 years ago

LSD Dream Emulator, Moonlight Syndrome, Love and Destroy.
You could make the entire list 3D PS1 and Saturn games if you wanted to lol

2 years ago

lsd and moonlight syndrome aren't really deceptively high-tech or super glossy. the former's more of a randomly generated fever dream, and the latter just looks really uncanny. love & destroy fits well enough though

2 years ago

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2 years ago

This one's sorta iffy, but LEGO Racers might fit for being roughly 1/3-1/2 new-millennium future stuff including spacey and icy imagery and characters. The rest is medieval/pirate/egyptian fantasy, all of which (particularly the former) made a comeback in the early to mid '00s anyway (but may not suit the purpose of this list).

In another LEGO vein, LEGO Rock Raiders is entirely just weird spacey shit both in setting and in aesthetic. Honestly not sure why I didn't think of this one first since it probably fits better than Racers

2 years ago

eh, i don't really think either of those fit quite as well as lego island. rock raiders is weird but it feels a lot more grungy/industrial than shiny or utopian, and racers has a similarly flat look to island but doesn't come across quite as optimistic or glossy (besides the snow levels)

2 years ago

fair enough on racers but i'd still push for rock raiders considering it released considerably closer to y2k itself than something like island did and still sports both weird futurism and fairly primitive cgi, though i do get what you mean about how it's more of an industrial look (of course, they are miners!).

i suppose bionicle: the legend of mata nui could be another possible lego game here, though it sorta got the star fox 2 treatment so it didn't truly come out in '01 as planned. '01 bionicle is very much steeped in weird fantasy-scifi brushed/shiny metal shit (ex. https://i.ebayimg.com/images/g/WnUAAOSw2MVeleSD/s-l640.jpg ), though since that's bringing a bit of the outside world into it i could see lomn being more contentious or on the cusp like rock raiders instead. in any case, this even being a discussion at all is a testament to how weird and experimental lego was back before lego star wars games. i miss that shit chandler :(

2 years ago

yeah my stance with this list is basically "if it's contentious, it doesn't fit" because there's a lot of half-cases i could make for most games of the literal y2k era, but if i did that the whole theme would become muddied. like, i contemplated adding kingdom hearts because its cg alone turns this kinda shit up to 11, but then the game itself doesn't reflect that in the same way

that's also part of why i've got one per series. it lets me add the most fitting entries without needing to worry about arguments for other ones that might not mesh quite as well

and yeah, i love the whole look and feel up 90s/00s lego. i really miss alpha team especially and how slick the website used to be. shame that the lukewarm reception of bionicle heroes was prolly the straw that broke the camel's back for lego to make nothing but action platformers for three year olds

2 years ago

feeling of*. that's a misfortunate typo

1 year ago

vib-ribbon

1 year ago

Alter Echo.

1 year ago

This comment was deleted

1 year ago


Burn:Cycle
SiN
Tokyo Dungeon
Omikron: The Nomad Soul
FantaVision


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