The Year's Best-Selling Games (cont'd)

Number 10. Starcraft Battlechest

Units sold: 210,834
Gross income: $7,342,535

If you were to fold in Starcraft’s phenomenal and unprecedented success in Korea, God only knows where Starcraft would fall on the charts. But it’s still doing just fine stateside, thank you very much. Starcraft is clever and has a great single player game and skirmish AI. It pioneered the idea of distinct races with unique gameplay mechanics. It's a near miracle that it's as balanced as it is. But 2000 saw at least a half dozen RTSes more advanced than Starcraft, many of which didn't even hit PC Data's charts: Tzar, Earth 2150, Dark Reign 2, and Warlords: Battlecry, for instance. But Blizzard knows how to make games and they know how to keep them moving off the shelves. This Battlechest pack includes the Brood War expansion as well as Prima's strategy guides, but it doesn't include the two third party add-ons for Starcraft that preceded Brood War.

Number 9. Quake III Arena

Units sold: 168,309
Gross income: $7,658,587

Nice engine, shame about the game. The guys at id know their technology, but they've built a game targeted almost solely at hardcore online players. The phrase "pure deathmatch" is often applied to what Quake III does best – translated loosely, this means “casual gamers need not apply”. If Quake III didn't have the strength of id's reputation behind it, it would have been a commercial and critical disaster. As it is, it was a commercial success that received lukewarm reviews and was trounced by Epic's Unreal Tournament. Let's hope the guys at id learned a valuable lesson.