Question: Heavy Gear II is a sequel to a game that was released in what year?
Context: Audu Paden (born 20 December 1963) is an American television producer, director, cartoonist and writer.  Born in London to American parents and raised internationally, spending many years in subsaharan Africa he later studied theater at Northwestern University and then animation at the UCLA animation workshop in the 1980s.  He is the showrunner for the Monster High and Ever After High series for Mattel as well as the producer of the Hot Wheels entertainment.  Credits include" Animaniacs", "Pinky and the Brain", "Rugrats", "The Simpsons", "Extreme Ghostbusters", "Godzilla, the Animated series", "Starship Troopers", "MTV Spider-Man", "Stuart Little 3", "Monster High", "Ever After High","Max Steel", "Hot Wheels Battle Force Five", "Polly Pocket", "Heavy Gear", "The Book of Virtues".  He is also a voice director and actor. Standard diving dress (also known as hard-hat or copper hat equipment, or heavy gear) is a type of diving suit that was formerly used for all underwater work which required more than breath-hold duration, and included marine salvage, civil engineering, pearl shell diving and other commercial diving work, and similar naval diving applications, though has largely been superseded by lighter and more comfortable equipment. Mektek Studios is a Canadian video game development studio based in Saint John, New Brunswick.  Their first game, "Heavy Gear Assault", is currently under development.  It will be published by StompyBot Productions. "Guilty Gear X2" (released as "Guilty Gear XX: The Midnight Carnival" in Japan) is a 2D fighting video game developed by Arc System Works, and published by Sammy Studios.  First released on May 23, 2002, for the arcades, in Japan, it was later ported to the PlayStation 2, and published in North America in 2003.  The game received updated versions for several platforms: "Guilty Gear X2 #Reload" (2003), "Guilty Gear XX Slash" (2005), "Guilty Gear XX Accent Core" (2006), "Guilty Gear XX Accent Core Plus" (2008), and "Guilty Gear XX Accent Core Plus R" (2012).  Each update served to the company to perform adjustments comparing to the previous versions and was published in different platforms and regions. Heavy Gear is a game universe published since 1994 by Canadian publisher Dream Pod 9.  It includes a tabletop tactical wargame, a role-playing game and a lesser known combat card game ("Heavy Gear Fighter").  The setting is also known through the PC-game incarnations published by Activision in 1997 and 1999, developed after Activision lost the rights to the "Battletech"/"MechWarrior" series.  It also spawned a 40-episodes, 3D-animated TV series in 2001, which featured a much simplified version of the universe developed in the role-playing game. Ghislain Barbe is a Canadian illustrator and artist.  He is best known for designing the visual aspects of the Heavy Gear science fiction franchise in the 1990s and early 2000s.  He was also responsible for the overall graphics of publisher Dream Pod 9's role-playing game lines "Jovian Chronicles" and "Tribe 8", along with some other works, for which he illustrated nearly a hundred books. Heavy Gear is a 1997 computer game based on the "Heavy Gear" role-playing game.  A sequel, "Heavy Gear II", was released in 1999. Metal Gear Solid 2: Sons of Liberty is an action-adventure stealth game developed and published by Konami for the PlayStation 2 in 2001.  It is the fourth "Metal Gear" game written and directed by Hideo Kojima and serves as the direct sequel to the original "Metal Gear Solid".  An expanded edition, titled Metal Gear Solid 2: Substance, was released the following year for Xbox and Microsoft Windows in addition to the PlayStation 2. Metal Gear 2: Solid Snake is an overhead action-adventure stealth video game, taglined as a "Tactical Espionage Game", that was originally released by Konami in 1990 for the MSX2 computer platform.  The game was designed and written by Hideo Kojima, who also designed the MSX2 version of the original "Metal Gear".  Due to the declining support for the MSX platform by the time of its production, "Metal Gear 2" was initially released only in Japan - instead an earlier produced NES game titled "Snake's Revenge" served as the "Metal Gear" sequel in North America and Europe.  However, Kojima would continue the series years later with "Metal Gear Solid", which follows "Metal Gear 2" and features an in-game plot summary of its events.  An English version of "Metal Gear 2" has since been included in certain releases of "" for the PlayStation 2, as well its "" released for PlayStation 3, Xbox 360 and PlayStation Vita.  The game was also re-released in Japan as a digital download for mobile phones and the Wii Virtual Console. Heavy Gear II is a mecha based first-person shooter video game.  Set in Dream Pod 9's Heavy Gear universe, the game was developed and published by Activision in 1999 for Microsoft Windows, it was ported to Linux in 2000 by Loki Software.  It is a sequel to the 1997 video game "Heavy Gear".
Answer: 1999