7 Game Franchises They Drove Into the Ground 275
Via the ever-excellent Game|Life, a post on Games Radar that details seven destroyed game franchises, taken from us in their prime by callous game publishers. Running the gamut from the venerable Sonic (of whose decline we've already spoken) to the good-to-crappy-in-two-years Viewtiful Joe, these are all games that just deserved better. I personally lament the decline of the Tomb Raider series (number 7 on the list) the most. Her most recent outing was much better than previous iterations, and I definitely hope that Eidos can keep up the momentum. Are there any series that you feel have fallen from heights that should have made the list?
More have died... (Score:5, Informative)
Remember that several game developers had their funding cut so Daikatana [wikipedia.org] could see the light of day ( at a burn rate of $1,000,000US per month).
My Picks (Score:5, Informative)
Command & Conquer - C&C was good. I mean, darn good. But then Westwood failed to deliver Tiberium Sun as promised, and gave us Red Alert instead. Ok, fine. A lot of people liked Red Alert even though it wasn't as good as the original. So we kept waiting for Tiberium Sun. 4 and a half years later, Westwood just kicked it out the door, merely a shadow of what it was intended to be. From then on out, C&C was nothing more than a "property" in which vaguely related games were released one after another, with no real connection to the gameplay that made the original famous.
Graphical Adventure Series - While not really a game series in of itself, the concept of Graphical Adventures has been mostly dropped by the industry, depsite the fact that it was a great way to tell a story. Nearly all the Lucas Arts games sold well, and never really showed a decline in the market. The concept just... fell into the ether, seemingly in favor of "more adult" gameplay. (Boo! Hiss!)
Star Control (Score:2, Informative)
Masters of Orion (Score:2, Informative)
Re:Mega Man ruined? (Score:1, Informative)
As far as innovation in the series goes...
Mega Man 2: Non-weapon items such as Energy Tanks and Dr. Light's tools like the jet platform which later turned into Rush. Mega Man did have one tool like this, but since you had to have the Guts Man weapon when you went to Elec Man's stage in order to get it, most players missed it. Also, a password system.
Mega Man 3: Rush and Proto Man are introduced, we have some intermediate stages after the robot masters but before Dr. Wily's Castle, and there's a quasi-boss fight with Proto Man between all that. Also, Mega Man can now slide.
Mega Man 4: Mega Buster. Also Fliptop is introduced.
Mega Man 5: Beat is introduced, which is a new versatile tool for Mega Man. Also, Charge Man, while having one of the most pointless weapons in the series, does definitely demonstrate "a new way" to use boss weapons, since his works when you slide.
Mega Man 6: Jet pack.
Mega Man 7: The only SNES game aside from the X-series, so realistically speaking the biggest innovation is the graphics. Introduced a money system (originally done in the 4th and 5th GB games) to buy items or upgrades that could be used at will. This was later employed in Rockman & Forte (AKA Megaman & Bass, unofficially Mega Man 8.5), along with the data discs and branching paths for fighting bosses.
Mega Man X was a departure of course and offered quite a few new ideas into the series. For one thing, Mega Man X was the first Mega Man game to have multi-directional scrolling areas, meaning that rooms could be both taller and wider than a single screen. This was of course originally a system limitation of the NES, but Mega Man non-X has largely stuck with it. Also, Mega Man X had upgradeable components which could boost energy, attack power, defense, or offer new ways to do things. The new attack types translated into chargeable attacks for boss weapons, meaning that single-shot firing of a boss weapon usually had a different action than a charged shot. Also, MMX was the first game with switchable weapons without the need to go in a pause menu to switch them. Also, subtanks introduced, the idea of being able to store excess energy collected in a tank where it could refill your power gauge later. MMX also had a stronger focus on story development and dialogue, and it introduced driveable vehicles.
I never played the PSX/PS2 Mega Man games, so I can't really comment on what was done there, but from what I gather, this was the point where the series really started to suffer. The side games stand reasonably well on their own. The Megaman Legends series, despite being very quirky games, are held by most fans as being a fantastic new direction for the series (at the expense of once again eschewing the old timeline by "destroying and rebuilding civilization"), and the Battle Network games aren't bad if you can look past the dreadful localization (or just laugh at it). The Zero series on the GBA brings back some of the classic gameplay with a significant challenge level. It's probably where most of the old school fans have their attention now, especially with the newest one on the DS.
Re:Blizzard? (Score:5, Informative)
That's right. It's coming back to me now. It wasn't Westwood that was the problem, it was Ultima Online. EA decided that they'd rather sink the money into the Ultima series than into the Wing Commander series, which they felt hadn't been doing so well since they took over Origin. (Gee. Surprise, surprise.) So they killed Privateer Online in favor of doing the sequel (WTF?) Ultima Online 2. In the process, EA made a huge mess of things.