Charles McCarter: I have only this to say: SUPER SMASH BROTHERS MELEE. As the owner of a shiny new indigo Game Cube, I have to say that this looks to be one of the most fun games on any system. Sure, ROGUE SQUADRON is great, but with MELEE you can take out your long ago (and not so long ago) gaming frustrations on even more of your favorite cute Nintendo characters. Never finished SUPER MARIO BROS. 2? Pick up a hammer and let Mario have it. Tired of having to guide Link through countless adventures in Hyrule? Grab a bazooka and let him know how you feel....

Keith Rhee: METAL GEAR SOLID 2 is one of those games that you start playing, only to realize at 3AM in the morning that the game pad is glued to your hands. Rarely do cinematics and gameplay action blend seamlessly together to offer such an enjoyable experience as they do in MGS2. While both the U.S. and Japanese versions have great voice acting, Kikuko Inoue fans may want to pick up the import.

For Top Gun wannabes, there's ACE COMBAT 4, perhaps one of the best aerial combat games on a console to date. The pacing is fast, the action furious, and the visuals eerily realistic. It even supports 16:9 TVs for a more dramatic presentation.

Mark Johnson: Certainly the game I'm looking forward to most is Squaresoft's FINAL FANTASY X for the PS2, now due out for release 1 day after Christmas on the 26th in North America.

Tom Larsen: I need another DDR controller. The game just isn't fun unless you can get two friends who have never played before to stomp around and make fools of themselves.

Ken Lee: This holiday season is full of stunning games to pick up. If I had my choice I'd pick at least 3 games: METAL GEAR SOLID 2 (PS2), FINAL FANTASY X (PS2), and DEAD OR ALIVE 3 (XBOX). For now, I'd have to pick the graphical, retina-melting, adrenaline-pumping 3D Fighting Masterpiece otherwise known as DEAD OR ALIVE 3. First off, the graphics are amazing. It's seriously a large step ahead of the previous incarnation, with huge multi-tier levels where you can kick someone through an office building window, send them crashing through neon-signs (below), before having the poor sap get flattened crashing down on the cold, hard concrete of the dirty streets of Hong Kong. Beautiful, stunning male and female fighters, wonderfully rendered, and excellently animated abound in this 3D revolution. The 3D movement is far more conducive and smooth and the fighting is excellent with depth and non-stop action as well. The best 3D fighting game. Ever.

Egan Loo: I died in the trenches of STAR WARS: ROGUE SQUADRON II: ROGUE LEADER's first level, so you're better off not getting game recommendations from me. Still, if I were to ask the folks at Studio XD for recs, they would suggest METAL GEAR SOLID 2: SONS OF LIBERTY (PS2), HALO (XBOX), and SOUL CALIBUR 2 (coming next year in arcades and later for PS2, GameCube, and XBOX).

John Yung: I don't own a PS2, but if I did, METAL GEAR SOLID 2: SONS OF LIBERTY would be the game to get this holiday season. Some of my friends find the story and the controls a bit hokey sometimes, but they keep raving about the mind-blowingly detailed graphics. It's amusing that my friends would have completed the game right away if they weren't distracted by trying to find all the interesting ways Solid Snake can screw up in the game.