At long last, the editorial crew has compiled their thoughts of last year's best and worst of 2002. Next to E3, this is perhaps the most grueling annual project to compose.

This past year was one of the best times to be a gamer. Sony's PlayStation 2 continued to flourish with a string of hits including Virtua Fighter 4, Grand Theft Auto: Vice City, and SOCOM while both the Nintendo GameCube and Microsoft Xbox entered their sophmore years with some high class entrants, most notably Metroid Prime from Retro Studios. And despite being "dead" for well over a year now, Sega's ol' Dreamcast had a couple of surprises left up its sleeve to appease loyal fans. Meanwhile in the handheld market, Nintendo's Game Boy Advance continued to be the market dominator, leaving little behind in its wake. This year also saw many revivals to franchises long thought of as dead, such as Sega's Shinobi, Konami's Contra, and Tecmo's Rygar. It also saw the gaming world change forever with the announcement of Square and Enix merging, as well as a focused effort on online gaming on the behalf of Sony and Microsoft. Sure, Nintendo isn't saying much about onling gaming right now, but there's always 2003 to look forward to, right?

Each editor on The Next Level staff has compiled their very own Top 10 games of 2002. From these selections, we have weighted each #1 and #2 game on their list to determine our Game of the Year for 2002. In addition to their personal Top 10, each editor also voted for two games in several categories that are found in the Best and Worst of 2002 section. Like our Top 5 Games of the Year, the Best and Worst of 2002 was also based on a weighted count system to ensure that everyone's opinion mattered. So, after burning the midnight oil, it is with great pleasure that we present the 2002 TNL Editor's Choice Awards.

TNL Editor's Choice Awards 2002 Directory