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Prince Hakeem
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Posted: Sunday March 19th, 2006 17:50 |
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***I'm unable to post threads in the Games section for some reason so decided to post this topic here***
http://www.gamerfeed.com/gf/features/929/
The Worst Decisions in Videogame History
By GameDaily Staff -- GameDaily Staff
Published 12:01 PM CDT, March 16, 2006
The videogame industry is certainly not perfect. There have been a ton of mistakes and we're here to tell you about them.
The video game industry, let's face it, is not a perfect place. As alive as it is with quality software and great system hardware, there are mistakes that are made that leave the competition reeling and gamers fleeing for better pastures. Here now is a list of some of the most significant mistakes to come down the pike in the industry. I'm sure you're likely to reflect with some of these mistakes, and may even have them somewhere in your gaming collection.
Nintendo Dumps the PlayStation, and Creates a Competitor
Year: 1993
In 1993, Sony approached Nintendo of Japan with an idea for an add-on device for the Super Nintendo Entertainment System, still gathering steam in popularity. It was a CD-Rom based add-on that would allow the capability of adding quality music and more content to games. Nintendo was keen on the idea at first, but would eventually drop it, instead opting for some kind of deal involving Philips (which, ironically enough, would lead to the CD-I games we mention later in the article).
But Sony did not stop work on the device. Ken Kutaragi, an employee of Sony at the time, put some further design efforts into the machine and eventually developed it into the PlayStation, a new next-generation game machine that would allow for loading games from CD format for better quality visuals, sound, and processing.
Sony eventually made use of the PlayStation, releasing it onto a worldwide market in 1995. In March '95, it sold phenomenally well in Japan, with such games as Ridge Racer and Battle Arena Toshinden backed behind it. In September '95, a US and European release followed, and the rest is history. The PlayStation remains one of the highest-selling video game platforms in the world, all because Nintendo decided they just weren't up to the CD generation. Imagine if they had kept Sony around.
Atari Decides To Go With a Brand Name
Year: 1982
In 1982, Atari managed to work out the worldwide distribution rights for a video game based on the popular Steven Spielberg film E.T. the Extra Terrestrial, and then gave Howard Scott Warshaw, an experienced 2600 programmer, the task of creating the game. The main problem, however, was that he was only given a five-week time table to put it together, already a formula for disaster.
Warshaw produced the game, and gave it to Atari for publishing. Atari went and published millions of copies, expecting epic sales and a new push for the company. Instead, gamers soon realized that the game was a stinker, working with a clunky interface, lame graphics, and the kind of pit-dropping gameplay that failed to really turn on anyone. As a result, many gamers turned away from it, causing a huge financial windfall for Atari.
This would eventually lead to the great Video Game Crash of 1983, where interest in video games at the time would hit an all-time low, leaving gamers stranded at local arcades for their entertainment. Atari would eventually fold on its 2600 development, leaving them millions of E.T. cartridges left unsold. The carts went to a New Mexico landfill and were dumped there for burial, to get some kind of tax write-off, although the exact location has still yet to be pinpointed. (It'd make quite a tourist attraction, yes?)
EA's Got the Madden Blues
Year: 1995
EA's Madden NFL license may be one of the hottest things going right now, but there was a time that EA Sports had a lot of trouble with their big license. This comes into play with two primary examples, as the rise of the 32-bit video game generation.
The first involved the company's initial release of Madden for the Nintendo 64. The company was looking to push ahead with next-generation football, but a licensing quirk came into play where EA didn't exactly hold the rights to the NFL Players' Union. They still had a finished game on their hands and were itching to release it, and so they did, as Madden 64. However, fans were a little thrown off that the recognizance of the NFL wasn't exactly on hand with the game, and it actually didn't really sell as well as future editions would. EA refused to make the same mistake again, and ever since had the NFL license secured for future Nintendo 64 releases.
The second involved the postponing of their arrival of the Madden license on the Sony PlayStation. The company was prepping Madden NFL '96 for release during the winter season of the PlayStation's first year on the market, but Sony themselves would get the jump on the company by releasing the superior NFL Gameday for the machine. Fans jumped all over the effort and loved it, and EA felt so much pressure from the game's release that they all-out cancelled the Madden '96 release, instead opting to focus on the next year's game. EA would eventually come back and overpower the Gameday franchise, but that one year stood out in infamy.
The Saturn Launches Early...and Dies Early
Year: 1995
Sega was looking to get a jump on their looming competition during 1995, and they had a plan that went into effect almost immediately. During their inaugural E3 speech in Los Angeles, Sega's president at the time, Tom Kalinske, informed the public that the Sega Saturn would in fact not be available in September at the same time as the PlayStation. Instead, the system was in stores THAT DAY. A surprise launch took place that saw the 32-bit powerhouse machine on shelves, complete with five games, for the budget price of...$399.99.
Initial sales were a hit, but soon gamers realized that the early launch had thrown off many who were expecting the system months later. New games would barely trickle out a little bit at a time, and retailers weren't too excited with the notion that they were advertising the same five games over and over for a couple of months. Worse yet, the surprise launch tactic failed, with the PlayStation coming in as expected in September and dominating the competition.
The Saturn would see a push for the Christmas season the following year with faithful arcade ports of Virtua Cop, Virtua Fighter 2, and Sega Rally Championship, but PlayStation continued to steal the thunder. The system would eventually be done in during 1998, to make room for the Sega Dreamcast console. However, the system went out with a bang, with such releases as Panzer Dragoon Saga and Shining the Holy Ark still drawing in top dollar on Ebay.
Sweatin' To the Kombat
Year: 1993
Mortal Kombat was at an all-time high in popularity in the arcades, despite the controversy over its bloodshed and violence. Acclaim managed to strike a deal with the folks at Midway to produce the home versions, which would no doubt be big sellers. However, a little stumble got in the way of the SNES version that would eventually lead more attention to the Genesis one.
Nintendo basically didn't feel right releasing the bloody arcade version of Mortal Kombat on their SNES machine, so Acclaim was forced to release a cleaned-up version of the game for the fall season. The Genesis version also managed to be a bit "cleaned-up", but gamers would be able to unlock the blood and fatalities from the arcade version with the assistance of a blood code (DULLARD, to be precise). The SNES version contained no such code, and, as a result, had modified fatalities and tons of "sweat".
The result? The SNES version looked and sounded better, but seemed to offer nothing in the way of the exciting gameplay the original game had, with its toned-down attitude. This resulted in higher sales of the Genesis version, despite its lower quality. Nintendo would eventually cave in with development on the sequel, allowing Midway to include the blood and fatalities in the SNES version of Mortal Kombat II, and it turned out to be the bigger seller, despite early releases having a few bugs included.
The Bad, the Pricey, and the Ugly Systems
Year: Early 90's
Why should Nintendo and Sega have all the fun? At least, that's what a few people were thinking with their system releases in the early 90's. Atari, looking to make some kind of comeback on the gaming scene, released the next-generation Atari Jaguar system, complete with a multi-button interface on its controller and a number of promising games, including Alien Vs. Predator and Tempest 2000, both favorites to this day. However, the system also received many epically bad games, including Trevor McFur In the Crescent Galaxy and Fight For Life, and would eventually succumb to high-end cartridge prices (around $60). Atari tried to liven the system up by adding a CD add-on for $150, packed in with a new version of the Atari Lynx favorite Blue Lightning, but the add-on failed not only because of a lack of support, but also for its design. It literally looked like a black toilet that sat on top of the Jaguar.
Trip Hawkins, a former mastermind of Electronic Arts, had an agenda of his own. He was preparing a new game system with the folks at Panasonic called the 3DO, promising to push gaming technology in a new direction before the PlayStation ever could. However, despite the release of several quality games such as Road Rash and an outstanding port of Super Street Fighter II Turbo, the system ran into many hitches. A few developers couldn't see the potential that lied beyond multimedia; the controllers were uncomfortable; a lot of the games were susceptible to high loading times; and then there was the unit price itself, running along the lines of $700. And you thought the PS3 price rumors were bad. The system would eventually fade out in the face of the PlayStation/Saturn wars.
Philips had a great idea all their own, with the release of their own "multimedia" system, the CD-I. They were so psyched about the release of the system that they even released an infamously bad infomercial advertising it (working along the same lines as Atari did, although theirs had decent acting a woman called Help). However, the system failed to really grab many users, due to the lack of real quality games and too many movies running at a high-end price. And, of course, there's those licensed pieces of dreck that were the Zelda and Mario games from Nintendo (we'll talk more about them in their own place in this article, I'm sure).
Nintendo Releases the Virtual Boy
Year: 1995
Robert's Take: Nintendo was undaunted, however, and decided to step into a piece of the next generation all their own with the bulky yet innovative Virtual Boy, released upon the public in 1995. The number of games released managed to grab a few gamers, with such titles as Mario Tennis and Wario Land drawing in many. It seems that Gunpei Yokoi, the designer of the Game Boy, had struck again with genius. However, the high price of the system ($180) would turn off many, as would its strange set-up. Worse yet, the red dual displays that the system produced would often cause motion sickness in some people, resulting in a number of complaints directed at Nintendo. Nintendo would eventually fold the system, and Yokoi would eventually leave the company in shame, only to die years later in an auto accident.
Chris' Take: Up until the mid nineties, Nintendo could do no wrong. The SNES had had an excellent life, and sales of the Game Boy remained steady, but the Virtual Boy forever tarnished the company's image. Released to provide consumers with not only a new gameplay experience as well as something to tide them over until the Nintendo 64, the unit was a colossal failure. All of them games are terrible, and in order to actually see them, you need to insert your head into a large and stationary set of goggles, whereupon which you'll be flooded with awkward looking red graphics which, according to some people, caused them to see green spots after they stopped using the device. Yup, the Virtual Boy didn't exactly ruin Nintendo, but it is quite an unsightly blemish.
Sega 32X's It
Year: 1994
Robert's Take: A year before, Sega had tried their hands at the next-generation as well, releasing an add-on device for the Sega Genesis called the Sega 32X. It was a bit pricey ($179), but it did manage to push the machine into a next-generation with such games as Doom and Star Wars Arcade, not to mention a version of Virtua Racing that managed to look closer to the arcade game than the Genesis version. However, there was very little interest in the add-on, and the requirement to purchase it to get higher-end games frustrated many, so it would eventually fade out in the face of the Sega Saturn's arrival. However, the game does have a few collectibles worth getting to this day, including a capable port of Virtua Fighter and Spiderman: Web of Fire, still fetching top-dollar to this day on Ebay.
Chris' Take: Although the Sega CD and its myriad of boring FMV-based games didn't exactly help Sega, its ill-fated 32X add-on is clearly the most infamous of its inventions. Designed as a bridge between Sega CD and Saturn, it's a mushroom-shaped device that, when plugged into a Sega Genesis, beefs up the system's processing power. But unfortunately for Sega, consumers didn't give a damn. The unit's $200 price tag as well as its lackluster launch games ultimately led to its demise, and Sega ultimately pissed off its audience, who were a bit reluctant to jump on the Saturn bandwagon.
Microsoft's Fat-Ass Controller
Year: 2001
Microsoft's Xbox is the epitome of American design, a big ass and heavy box that'll crush your spine if it falls on you. With that being said, the system's developers elected to set up their creation with an equally enormous controller, and thus, the fatty was born. Clearly one of the biggest controllers in videogame history as well as one of the most uncomfortable, the fatty is an absolute beast. Its mammoth grips are so thick that numerous people couldn't get their hands around them, and the awkward button placement, the bizarre location of the white and black buttons, further doomed this controller to the bargain bin. For some strange reason it goes about as well with Halo as a burger and fries, but as for just about any other Xbox game (fighters, especially), the fatty is pretty useless.
Ray Kassar Starts Third Party Revolution By Accident
Year: 1980
The plight of the videogame developer has been well documented, and his or her fight to establish credibility begins with this guy. Good old Ray Kassar, the former CEO of Atari, refused to give the company's developers any recognition, and he didn't exactly make any friends when he referred to them as "high-strung prima donnas" when they complained about not being mentioned in the manuals to their own games.
Unfortunately for Kassar, his ignorance resulted in many employees quitting the company, and some of them went on to found Activision, one of the first companies to widely promote its developers. So if you think about it, a former VP of a textile company is partly responsible for the rise of third party publishers, leading us to believe that perhaps his negativity wasn't so bad after all.
Hot Coffee Spills On the Industry
Year: 2005
Rockstar Games' release of Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas was controversial enough as it is when the game was released in late 2004. But in mid-2005, some playful gamers who were messing around with some third-party devices stumbled upon an unincluded sequence still coded within the game, titled Hot Coffee. This was basically a mini-game made up of sexually oriented activity with one of the female characters in the game. Despite the fact the mini game is not obtainable without the use of cheat devices, parents and higher-ups went into a frenzy with the content. The ESRB immediately re-rated the game AO (Adults Only), and it was pulled from store shelves.
Rockstar attempted to recover by re-editing the game without the malicious content and releasing it as a "Second Version", but the damage had been done. Not only did Rockstar suffer in the wallet as a result from the lack of sales, but a couple of lawsuits have come into play, and even Senator Hilary Rodham Clinton and Joseph Liebermann are getting into the act, launching an investigation into violent and sexual game content. Indeed, the spill of Hot Coffee may be scalding for some time to come.
Philips Turns Nintendo's Licenses Into Complete Failures
Year: 1994
Nintendo's licenses were doing just fine on Nintendo systems, but somehow Nintendo found themselves compelled to take part in the Philips CD-I game process and lent a couple of their famous names, Mario and Zelda, to help give the system a push. As a result, however, they ended up being b**tardized over a series of four miserable games that not only made the licenses look bad, but failed to push any sort of next-generation on gamers.
Hotel Mario was a lame excuse of a puzzle game that refused to utilize the best powers of Mario and Luigi. But even worse, Link was trapped in a trilogy of terrible games with unspeakably bad gameplay and horrendous animation that actually made Link look like a reject from the Broadway production of Avenue Q. Link: The Faces of Evil, Zelda's Adventure, and Zelda: The Wand of Gamelon all proved to be pathetic passovers that would eventually be forgotten, like the CD-I itself.
Fortunately, both Mario and Zelda have recovered this blemish, with new games coming out for both franchises later in the year. But who could forget the pain they went through...
Acclaim Tries To Get Dirty With BMX XXX
Year: 2002
Topless women and extreme biking, what could possibly go wrong? Um, everything? In 2002, Acclaim proceeded to release this M-rated extreme sports title, promising some vaults in gameplay while complementing the action with the strippers of the infamous Scores lounge and "comedic dialogue written by top comedian experts". Of course, that gave no indication of how painful the game in general would be, with its lopsided playing style and its nauseating presentation.
Worse yet, the game got completely censored on the PlayStation 2, resulting in the addition of black bars and making the game feel more like BMX Hard R. The Xbox version would include topless riders that could be unlocked, and yet the GameCube edition would have them available right from the beginning. Strange.
Anyway, the worst was yet to come. Dave Mirra, a former licensee with Acclaim, sued the company after the game's release, feeling that his influence was a part of the game that he wanted absolutely no part of. The legal action would eventually be settled out, but the negativity would remain with Acclaim, who shuttered their doors just a couple of years later, another forgotten relic in the gaming revolution.
Disc Read Error?
Year: 2000
In late 2000, Sony released the PlayStation 2 console, meeting crowd demand nicely with a number of games (26, to be exact) for launch and high next-generation quality. However, a nagging problem came into play with the system right off the bat, and that involved a little something called "disc read error".
See, because the PS2 had a reading system capable of reading blue discs, DVD discs, and PS1 games, it often had a problem with the reader locking up inside of the system, thus resulting in said "disc read error". Minor problems would also come into play with the disc tray getting stuck from time to time, depending on how gamers put their discs into the system. Sony offered service on the system, of course, within the 90-day warranty.
Problem is, if you didn't have coverage on the warranty, you were paying a hefty repair fee of $130, almost half the price of the system itself. This didn't even include shipping or the two to three weeks that you would be without your system. Sony eventually had to settle out of court over the system's design flaw and those who paid out the nose for repair, but the problem still haunts older model PS2's to this very day.
Newer model PS2 systems don't nearly suffer as much from disc read errors as older systems, but they have a problem of their own- overheating. The newer systems didn't include a built-in fan, so those who play the games for several hours on end without a break on the machine could be subject to a meltdown of disc or shutdown of the machine. Sigh, guess you can't win them all.
98 Percent's Close Enough, Right?
Year: 1999
Sony's killer app for the Sony PlayStation, Gran Turismo 2, shipped just in time for the Christmas season of 1999, ready to take on Nintendo's Donkey Kong 64 app and the Sega Dreamcast's push into the next generation. But as players went through the game and conquered every turn, a slight nagging problem came into play. The game wasn't entirely complete.
It turns out early versions of the game shipped as a 98 percent build, meaning that if you worked your way through the game in hopes of reaching its end and getting all the cars, you were out of luck. While this didn't affect most gamers (only the most hardcore), it was still a nagging problem that left plenty of complaints over at Sony. The company would eventually fix the problem and ship the game at 100 percent complete, but it leaves a lesson to be learned. Sometimes jumping the gun isn't always the answer.
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Prince Hakeem
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Posted: Tuesday March 28th, 2006 21:51 |
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Posted: Wednesday March 29th, 2006 15:41 |
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Taking too long to release Streetfighter 3. I swear there were 20 versions of streetfighter 2
And then WHEN it was released, it both 'blowed and sucked' !!!!
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