Which games had the most NEGATIVE influence on the industry?

[xg4bx]

I was being flippant cb...think about it for a minute, can a 2600 'realistically' portray a pr0n game (or any gaming system for that matter from that period , to the extent (as you put it) for someone to 'get off' on it....And anyone who say's that they got off on strip poker by artworx for the a2/a8 and c64 needs help immediately)

 

keep in mind that people once got off to saucy cave paintings and heiroglyphics. if something exists, someone somewhere has gotten off to it.

[kool kitty89]

According to Nolan Bushnell, Grand Theft Auto,all of 'em, but more of a bad influence to kids.

I tend to agree about GTA in general, but in this case the craze for 3D crime sandbox games actually inspired a great game in Simpson's Hit and Run, which is easily the best Simpsons game and one of my favorites. It also spawned smelly turds like 50 Cent Bulletproof. Pew. Morgan

 

Hit and Run is really cool... too bad the multiplayer is super lame. (it would have been so awesome to have split screen competitive race/challenge/demolition derby action, like a Simpsons themed burnout crossed with GTA -in the sense that you could leave your vehicle and get another, or even restricted to a single vehicle would still be good) The multiplayer in there is so poor I really think it was added just to say they had 4-player support on the box.

[uglyclone]

Pokemon.

Now we have a slew of shows (and games) that have the same concept of collecting and dueling creatures. You ruined my cartoons pokemon!

[DickNixonArisen]

I was thinking about this thread in the shower (.. what does that say?) and decided that a game should not be blamed for or judged by imitators of that game. It's the clones that are having the negative impact, not the originator.

[BDW]

Pokemon.

Now we have a slew of shows (and games) that have the same concept of collecting and dueling creatures. You ruined my cartoons pokemon!

BLASPHEMY!

 

Everything was solved with a Pokemon battle when I was younger. Have an argument with your worst enemy? Settle it mano-e-mano, my level 100 Charizard vs your level 100 Blastoise.

 

Enjoy the Fire Spin, Blastoise! How do you like not being able use your beloved Hydro Pump?

[Emehr]

I was thinking about this thread in the shower (.. what does that say?) and decided that a game should not be blamed for or judged by imitators of that game. It's the clones that are having the negative impact, not the originator.

I agree, but the article linked in the original post actually listed good albums that caused the influx of bad music that was inspired by them. The originating games in this thread can certainly take some responsibility for their influence, but that doesn't mean they were bad games.

 

Take, for example, Kaboom! Great game. Didn't spawn many clones until Guitar Hero comes out. Now we have a glut of guitar and band games. (Who do we blame? Kaboom? or Guitar Hero? Personally, I'd blame Guitar Hero because the ridiculous number of sequels and clones are the direct result of its success.) Anyway, both Kaboom and Guitar Hero are good games. But, like anything, too much of a good thing can be bad for you (or an industry).

[roland p]

I hoped 'commandos' was as cool as Syndicate but it was a complete dissapointment

[Chris Leach]

I was let down by that stupid State of Emergency game. i pre ordered it back in the day from gamestop. Not once did they say "Hey, that gmae is gonna suck!"

 

They just wanted my $50.00

[tsgthesportsgamer]

I was going to say FMV - but then again, that "trend" lasted only a few years and we're pretty much done with it now (at least the way it was employed then, en masse, with loads of c-movie "talent"). Seriously though, I booted up The Need for Speed the other day, do I really need some Don Johnson wannabe telling me to keep my gaming experiences between me and him after each race?

 

My answer here is going to be music games, esp. anything branded Rock Band or Guitar Hero. Why? Simply overkill and oversaturation. That's generally what killed gaming in the early 80s. Look at the clearance racks, there always the first and last games to get price slashed. Meanwhile overpriced band setups crowd up stores for months on end. Nothing really against the games personally, I had my fill of Guitar Hero (especially II) and toyed with Rock Band for a little. I can't see that genre being anymore than drawn out fad though. 5-10 years down the road, if they are still adding songs to the Rock Band catalog, I'd be quite shocked.

 

I'm also a little worried about the constant stream of Wii shovelware too. Will typical wal-mart minded consumers learn to avoid this stuff, or will eager cash strapped publishers keep knocking these titles out. Same can really be said of Facebook games too. I don't even want to get into the Farmville debate.

[Emehr]

The funny thing about FMV is that it's still in use today. Although the onscreen actors are represented by 3D rendered characters now and the whole breaking of the fourth wall has pretty much died, the spirit of FMV (as we knew it from the SegaCD era) is still here. We still have non-interactive cut-scenes interrupting gameplay.

 

So who do we blame for that? Maniac Mansion had cut scenes but I doubt it inspired their widespread use. I remember Nintendo Power making a big deal out of the cut scenes in Ninja Gaiden for NES. EGM was guilty of it too. To me, it seems that game alone inspired the whole cut scene trend. As ROM sizes got bigger, the cut scenes got more animated. From there they became spooled video. As CPU speeds got faster they became prerendered 3D graphics. When CPU speeds got faster still, they became 3D rendered on the fly. Bottom line is, they're still here.

[kool kitty89]

Pokemon.

Now we have a slew of shows (and games) that have the same concept of collecting and dueling creatures. You ruined my cartoons pokemon!

 

They may have been the first to really push it in video games, but certainly not the first... To some extent RPGs had already been doing that somewhat (especially real life board type RPGs), but more so with some other things, namely Magic the Gathering comes to mind -starting in 1993. (and that ties into the variety of card related monster games too -Pokemon, Digimon, Yu-Gi-Oh, Chaotic, etc) Then there's monster Rancher which came out immediately after Pokemon in Japan.

 

I doubt they ruined cartoons either, there's plenty of other shows that just turned to crap to, especially as network kids programming declined (it pretty much died completely in 2007).

As for the Anime shift, Dragon Ball Z was another mass market one, and there are others, but that's totally unrelated to the whole monster battling thing...

(best related animated series would be Monster Rancher and Digimon Season 3, the only ones with really decent plots -and decent dub voice acting too, pokemon gets old fast and the other Digimon seasons are rather generic, except season 5 which is just weird and dumb; actually I kind of like Metabots...)

 

 

So who do we blame for that? Maniac Mansion had cut scenes but I doubt it inspired their widespread use. I remember Nintendo Power making a big deal out of the cut scenes in Ninja Gaiden for NES. EGM was guilty of it too. To me, it seems that game alone inspired the whole cut scene trend. As ROM sizes got bigger, the cut scenes got more animated. From there they became spooled video. As CPU speeds got faster they became prerendered 3D graphics. When CPU speeds got faster still, they became 3D rendered on the fly. Bottom line is, they're still here.

Heh, Pac Man has cutscenes.

Edited June 17, 2010 by kool kitty89

[Emehr]

Heh, Pac Man has cutscenes.

Nah, those were intermissions. Big difference

[Herbarius]

Take, for example, Kaboom! Great game. Didn't spawn many clones until Guitar Hero comes out.

 

I have to disagree - kinda...

 

While there maybe weren't many Kaboom clones, the Kaboom! gameplay was often included as minigames in other types of games, e.g. Adventure games or educational games (especially those seemed to like it).

 

Then again, wasn't Kaboom! itself a clone of an already existing concept from the arcades? I think it was called "Avalanche"? And weren't there even other clones of that before Kaboom! came out? Like the one where it's eggs that you have to catch?

 

EDIT: Yes, it would seem so, indeed: Avalanche (video game)... 1978, Activision didn't even exist. It even has those "multiple paddles on top of each other to represent your lives" that most later clones don't have.

 

 

 

Heh, Pac Man has cutscenes.

Nah, those were intermissions. Big difference

I thought Ms.Pac-Man introduced the intermissions to the franchise?

Edited June 18, 2010 by Herbarius

[Jifremok]

I'm sure Pac Man did it before his wifey.

 

As for most negative influence, I have this feeling that Halo's somehow to blame for making standard so many things that suck in today's shooters. Especially vehicle controls. *shiver*

Also, The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time for making famous the lock-on targeting system. Why bother to do anything with skill when you can just hold a button and let a magic fairy do all the work for you? (And on developer's end, why bother making workable controls when you can just slap on targeting and be done with it?) I can't be hard on Zelda for this though, as some other game would have done it instead.

Edited June 18, 2010 by Jifremok

[Herbarius]

I'm sure Pac Man did it before his wifey.

 

Oh well, than that documentary about the history of video games I once watched got it wrong. I'm positive they said Ms.Pac-Man was the first game (of the Pac-Man series) to feature intermissions.

 

Obviously I never played it in the Arcades, I was simply born too late for that. But strangely, not a single home-version of Pac-Man I've ever played had intermissions, but every home-version of Ms.Pac-Man seems to have them.

Are you thinking of the intro (Pac-Man running from ghosts, then blue ghosts running from Pac-Man), maybe? I'd say that's not an intermission, because you see it before gameplay even starts.

Edited June 18, 2010 by Herbarius

[Nukey Shay]

Nope. Space Invaders preceded Pac-Man.

 

Now whether an "intermission" counts as a "cut-scene"...I suppose that there is not much difference between them. Cut-scenes are usually giving you useful information, tho. Intermissions are always just eye candy.

[Nukey Shay]

BTW Pac-Man always had intermissions. Sometimes these were omitted in ports of the game for home computers or consoles...simply because the rom size can be smaller without them. Keep in mind that Ms.Pac-Man was originally just a hacked version of Pac-Man (called Crazy Otto).

[godslabrat]

I've read this thread and the original music article, and I'm a bit confused as to the purpose of either. Essentially, every example boils down to "This really innovative game/album was released, and it was extremely well-done and successful... but a lot of people tried to copy it and failed miserably." While I can appreciate the cause-effect nature of the argument, I'm not sure that poor imitation is the same as "negative influence". We keep getting references of "taking the industry in a new direction", but if there's a new direction to follow, logically some people have to do the following. What's the criticism here? Would it be better for the industry to be full of Custer's Revenge, Action 52, Big Bumpin', and a host of other games that were so bad no one ever tried to copy them? Would an industry full of bottom-end Jaguar and CDI games be a more "positive" environment?

 

If I were to write this article from scratch, I'd prefer to stick with ideas that were bad from the get-go, not ideas that had a great first try and lousy follow-ups. For example, the following had negative effects on the industry:

 

1) Sony pushing the PSP Go, a console variant that cost more, did less, and essentially tried to bury the used game market.

2) Nintendo not using an optical drive in their first post-SNES console, thus handing the market to Sony, who ultimately lowered the industry's common denominator.

3) Sega for releasing the Genesis add-ons, rather than being more aggressive in developing and marketing the Saturn, proving to be pathetic competition for both Nintendo and Sony.

 

Granted, these aren't GAMES, but I think they're better examples of key moments when the industry took a wrong turn.

[Herbarius]

BTW Pac-Man always had intermissions. Sometimes these were omitted in ports of the game for home computers or consoles...simply because the rom size can be smaller without them. Keep in mind that Ms.Pac-Man was originally just a hacked version of Pac-Man (called Crazy Otto).

 

You seem to be quite sure of that, could you please describe what happened in those intermissions? Obviously it can't be the same as in Ms.Pac-Man.

[Emehr]

I've read this thread and the original music article, and I'm a bit confused as to the purpose of either. Essentially, every example boils down to "This really innovative game/album was released, and it was extremely well-done and successful... but a lot of people tried to copy it and failed miserably." While I can appreciate the cause-effect nature of the argument, I'm not sure that poor imitation is the same as "negative influence".

The main beef is this: instead of innovating and trying new things, the industry "plays it safe" with a certain mechanic and drives it into the ground. Meanwhile, other developers that try something new see little to no sales because, like the industry, players "play it safe" and buy the next iteration of Guitar Hero or Call of Duty because those are the games that get the ad time and mindshare. Personally, the only way I hear about new and interesting games is by visiting the Modern Gaming forum.

 

I guess it all depends on what your definition of a positive influence is. To me, it's innovation: games that bring something new to the table to keep this hobby fresh and interesting. Sequels and knock-offs of Guitar Hero aren't innovative. Yet-another-WWII-shooter isn't innovative. These things are simple monetary maintenance. Something to pay the bills without having to do any work. To me, that is a negative influence.

 

For example, the following had negative effects on the industry:

 

1) Sony pushing the PSP Go, a console variant that cost more, did less, and essentially tried to bury the used game market.

2) Nintendo not using an optical drive in their first post-SNES console, thus handing the market to Sony, who ultimately lowered the industry's common denominator.

3) Sega for releasing the Genesis add-ons, rather than being more aggressive in developing and marketing the Saturn, proving to be pathetic competition for both Nintendo and Sony.

 

Granted, these aren't GAMES, but I think they're better examples of key moments when the industry took a wrong turn.

Those are excellent examples of systems that had the most negative effect on the industry. That would make a good thread to follow this one up on. However, it will always boil down to the games. Games are what bring people to this hobby. Good games keep us here.

[Emehr]

BTW Pac-Man always had intermissions.

 

You seem to be quite sure of that, could you please describe what happened in those intermissions? Obviously it can't be the same as in Ms.Pac-Man.

 

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=v8BT43ZWSTY

[Herbarius]

Thank you.

[Nukey Shay]

You seem to be quite sure of that, could you please describe what happened in those intermissions? Obviously it can't be the same as in Ms.Pac-Man.

 

In Pac-Man? The game is supported in MAME, so I thought that virturally everyone was familiar with it by now. But if you don't know, there are 3 intermissions that are played in the same screen order as in Ms. All three are accompanied by music similar to something you'd expect from a Benny Hill chase skit (unlike Ms...which uses a unique tune for each of the 3 intermissions):

 

The first features Pac-Man fleeing from Blinky, the red monster...appearing from offscreen right and moving to offscreen left. The second half of the intermission features Blinky re-appearing on the left being chased by an oversized Pac-Man...both disappearing off the screen right as the music ends.

 

The second is similar to the first animation. Pac-Man being closely followed by Blinky. A small white line is also present in the middle of the screen...and as Blinky passes over it, it "catches" hold of the monster's cloak. As it struggles to follow Pac-Man to the left, the cloak stretches a bit and then rips...revealing the monster's "foot". The monster remains motionless for a moment and the music abruptly ends.

 

The third intermission features the pair running to the left again...except this time, the tear in Blinky's cloak has been "sewn" back on. After they disappear off the left, Blinky re-emerges running toward the right...completely naked and running toward the right as it drags his cloak behind itself.

 

The third intermission is played a couple of more times after four additional boards are cleared, just as what happens in Ms. with the "Junior" intermission.

 

 

If you were referring to Crazy Otto...not much is known about that hack. Namco took possession of it pretty quick, so not many details are known. A picture of the opening to the first board appeared in Time magazine...showing a "cherry" board that is identical to Ms. Pac-Man's. What differed is the shape of the title character and the "ghost monsters"...which are best described as "Pac-Man with legs being chased by apples". O have no idea what the intermissions consisted of in that game.

 

Here's a video of Crazy Otto's first board in action. I don't know if it is legitimate, but the opening screen is identical to what was shown in Time magazine's picture.

 

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GZyctfUeUUA

[kool kitty89]

Oh well, than that documentary about the history of video games I once watched got it wrong. I'm positive they said Ms.Pac-Man was the first game (of the Pac-Man series) to feature intermissions.

 

Obviously I never played it in the Arcades, I was simply born too late for that. But strangely, not a single home-version of Pac-Man I've ever played had intermissions, but every home-version of Ms.Pac-Man seems to have them.

Are you thinking of the intro (Pac-Man running from ghosts, then blue ghosts running from Pac-Man), maybe? I'd say that's not an intermission, because you see it before gameplay even starts.

 

No the Atari 2600 version of Ms. Pac Man is missing the intermissions, and the VCS port of Pac Man too, obviously.

Most, if not all the other official home ports of Pac Man and Ms Pac Man have the intermissions. (Atari 8-bit, C64, 5200, TI-99/4A, VIC 20, MSX, ZX Spectrum, NES, PC, Game Boy, etc)

I think there may be more too, and I think all of those listed except maybe the VIC 20 have the intermissions intact.

They're also in the SNES and Genesis in the mini-game inside Pac Man 2: The New Adventures.

 

I think the first version I played was the early 90s Return of Microsoft Arcade version, though it might have been the arcade machine. First version I owned was for the Game Boy.

 

Nope. Space Invaders preceded Pac-Man.

 

Now whether an "intermission" counts as a "cut-scene"...I suppose that there is not much difference between them. Cut-scenes are usually giving you useful information, tho. Intermissions are always just eye candy.

 

Space Invaders doesn't do much though.. or maybe there's something in the arcades that isn't at home. (the most I recall is a mother ship flying overhead between boards...)

 

Anyway, cutscenes often simply give back story or progress the plot in a manner totally irrelevant to gameplay, but may add to the experience (or detract if you not skipable). I'd say the amusement in Pac Man's intermissions adds to the game, and gettign to see the intermissions can add incentive to get further in the game.

 

Edit: It seems the C64 version is missing the intermissions...

And MSX too, apparently, I'd assume VIC too as Ms Pac Man is missing them.

 

I know for sure the 5200/A8-bit ones have them, and Spectrum, Apple II, NES, Game Boy, SNES/Genesis, and Microsoft Arcade.

Edited June 18, 2010 by kool kitty89

[DickNixonArisen]

It always bothered me as a child that "super huge" pacman wasn't available in-game, but only in the cutscene. I imagined him not only being able to eat the ghosts, but SMASH THROUGH WALLS. Actually, in my world, it is, and he can.