Back in 2006, a JRPG landed on my birthday and I tuned out everything else for the next two months. The game was Final Fantasy 12, and its 20th birthday is nearly here.
Plenty of other titles are hitting that same milestone. No console has outsold the PlayStation 2, and through the 2000s it sat at the top of gaming with a catalogue that can still go toe-to-toe with anything released since. Kingdom Hearts 2, Okami, Bully and Guitar Hero 2 all arrived in that single year. Most of them ended up in my collection. Every one of them eventually got played.
Three still deserve your attention today, and they still score a straight 10/10.
The RPG that made everyone argue about menus
Few 2006 releases matched Final Fantasy 12 for either review scores or sales. Opinion fractured over the Gambits system back then, and it remains divisive now. Even so, this enormous adventure grew into one of the most cherished chapters in the entire Final Fantasy series, and the long-running debate over its combat has turned into praise with time.
Square Enix has 20th anniversary merchandise on sale this year, should you want something physical to commemorate it.
Jumping in is simple, too. Final Fantasy 12: The Zodiac Age is the version to pick up, bundling extra content and a job system that irons out some of the rough edges.
A paintbrush, a wolf and the year’s best-reviewed game
North American PS2 owners got Okami in September 2006, and it finished the year as the highest-rated game of them all.
There was simply no visual comparison. I’d never encountered anything like the paintbrush mechanic, and the action-adventure design sitting beneath it held my attention well after the novelty faded. The animation across that world is gorgeous. The score is astounding.
A run of ports and remasters has since swelled its cult following, and a sequel is currently in development. Every bit of that leads back to this original release. Thanks to an HD remaster, you can boot it up on current systems instead of tracking down vintage hardware.
Rockstar went to boarding school and it worked
October 2006 brought Bully, landing so soon after Final Fantasy 12 that I didn’t touch it for a few months. Nobody was convinced Rockstar’s GTA sensibilities would survive the move to a prep school setting. The translation went just fine.
A handful of the mini-games are forgettable. It hardly registers. Anyone who’s watched Wes Anderson’s Rushmore or the music video for My Chemical Romance’s “I’m Not Okay (I Promise)” will clock the tone straight away.
Controversy followed it out of the gate, and early sales may have been modest. None of that stuck the way its legacy has, and the fanbase is still waiting on Rockstar to deliver a sequel.
The script, the cast, the music. Bully still ranks among the finest games the PlayStation 2 ever hosted, and not merely within its own release year.