Examples of Condemned by History in Video Games.
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Game Platforms and Peripherals
- When the Kinect launched for the Xbox 360 in 2010, it was highly acclaimed for its revolutionary motion-tracking technology which gave potential for new immersive gameplay experiences far beyond what the Nintendo Wii or PlayStation Move could offer. It also sold exceptionally well with its pack-in game, Kinect Adventures!, becoming the 360's best-selling game. However, the novelty wore off as consumers began to notice that the devices' capabilities were far below what had been initially advertised, severely limiting its gameplay potential beyond mini-game collections and dancing games. Microsoft would attempt to salvage the Kinect's reputation by announcing that a newer version of the peripheral with a better camera and mic would be bundled with the Xbox One when it launched in 2013, with no plans to release a version of the console without it. This backfired, as consumers saw this as Microsoft admitting they had been dishonest about the Kinect's capabilities, making nobody too eager to spend five hundred dollars for the device they were promised three years prior, among other reasons. As a result of the bad press, Microsoft reversed their decision in late 2013 and announced they would patch out the Kinect requirements for the Xbox One. In 2014, Microsoft would offer a cheaper version of the Xbox One without the Kinect in an effort to bolster system sales to compete with the PS4. It didn't work; the PS4 would end up selling more than twice as many consoles as the Xbox One did
, even after the Kinect was gone. This, combined with the continued lack of any software beyond mini-game collections and dance simulators, lead to the peripheral being discontinued altogether in 2017. These days, the Kinect is seen as an interesting experiment that only had limited utility at best, and a useless gimmick that heralded an Audience-Alienating Era for the Xbox brand at worst. As such, the chances of the Kinect returning to the marketplace and making waves once more are so slim that it would be nothing short of a miracle.
Genres and Trends
- Full-motion video games/Interactive Movies. When Dragon's Lair emerged in arcades in the early 1980s, a game with movie-like animation done by Hollywood director Don Bluth really stood out among game cabinets with 8-bit graphics. When CD-based consoles like the 3DO Interactive Multiplayer and Sega CD first hit the shelves, a deluge of FMV games followed because of the increased memory space. After the novelty wore off, gamers caught on that the "gameplay" offered by FMV games was shallow, with their interactivity being a series of quick time events or clicking through menus. Since FMV games were expensive to create, developers were stuck with awful acting, poor video quality, and excessive use of Stock Footage. In general, FMV was only executed well when it was wholly segregated from the actual gameplay in cutscenes, as in the Command & Conquer and Wing Commander series, which remain fondly remembered today.
The genre was dead by the late 1990s, as the one selling point of FMV games was their "graphical edge" and that was gone when other games could look great while offering actual gameplay. That didn't stop developers from trying to revive the genre during the Turn of the Millennium with the advent of the DVD: Love Story (written as "0 Story" in the cover) was a FMV game by the now-defunct General Entertainment (which made another FMV-based videogame Combat Queen but published by Taito two years after for the same system, as their last ever developed game) and published by Enix made to demonstrate DVD-ROM technology which was heavily promoted by Sony for the Japanese launch of the PlayStation 2, but drew unfavorable comparisons to the FMV games of the '90s and never left its home country. Four years later, The Guy Game (a softcore porn FMV party game) bombed upon release and was pulled from shelves when one of its models turned out to be underage, sinking the genre for good. Certain FMV games like Dragon's Lair and Road Blaster are still well-remembered for their graphical prowess, but most examples of the genre are seen as a failed experiment. The only other FMV title people remember is Night Trap, and that's mostly remembered for its infamous trial that contributed to the creation of the ESRB.
FMV games are still being made to this day, but only by indie studios, and they are much more story-driven and are designed more like visual novels than the simple point-and-click games they used to be. The Interactive Movie genre also still exists, but features in-game graphics instead of pre-rendered cutscenes allowing for greater flexibility of gameplay. - Capcom Sequel Stagnation in Fighting Games is considered to be an obsolete model. During the golden age of fighting games in the '90s, due to the games being released straight first to arcades before being ported to consoles, it was common for the more popular games to get updated releases featuring rebalancing of the gameplay and new characters. Since they were not wholly new games, they typically got denoted with new subtitles to reflect that they were updated versions of the original games. This method of updating games continued into The Sixth Generation of Console Video Games, but by that point, the trend was growing increasingly unpopular. The arcade scene saw a massive decline in the West while fighting games as a whole saw diminishing returns into their commercial success.
Come the The Seventh Generation of Console Video Games, patch updating and paid Downloadable Content became the new norm for doing upgrades to existing games and new characters would be released this way. Capcom, the namesake of this trend, caught an increasing flack for continuing to rely on the classic "arcade-first" methods of doing a new release rather than rebalancing the game through patches and DLC. They eventually did adapt to this by offering an upgrade path through DLC for Ultra Street Fighter 4.
Finally, by The Eighth Generation of Console Video Games, Capcom Sequel Stagnation got phased almost completely out in favor of fighting games adopting a season pass model, in which each year of the game's duration would be dedicated to a new season of releasing new characters and balance patches for it. This is due to the arcade decline finally catching up to Japan as well. Many fighting games saw their releases made first to Console and PC, and the arcade ports now had an internet connection, meaning that there was completely no excuse to give a game an updated rerelease. Some of the last games to follow the old method were Guilty Gear Xrd, and Under Night In-Birth, which all offered upgrade paths through DLC. Meanwhile, Capcom did release two "upgraded" editions of Street Fighter V, but all of their content was also added to the base version for free (although their new characters had to be unlocked or purchased), so their purpose is just to give newcomers a more cost-effective entry point into the community, rather than something that obsoletes previous editions.
Specific Games
- The 3D Adventures of Sailor Moon was praised by publications in its day for its stunning graphics. As games with more impressive graphics came out over the following years, that appeal faded away, and now it's remembered as a collection of mediocre minigames with low-quality voice acting that struggles to run on newer systems, with only its soundtrack standing out.
- The original Battle Arena Toshinden was immensely successful at release. Being one of the first 3D Fighting Games with texture-mapped graphics and weapon-based combat, it received a considerable amount of hype and glowing reviews from the enthusiast press (Electronic Gaming Monthly would give it a rating of 100%). Console manufacturer Sony would seize on this when they published the games in Western territories, hyping the franchise as a "Sega Saturn killer" and using its female characters as the unofficial mascots of the PlayStation 1 launch in multiple ads. The game would be among the first to be re-released as part of the "Greatest Hits" line, further confirming its success.
However, in hindsight, retrospectives of the PS1 launch and modern reviews (removed from the context of the launch hype) have little nice to say about the game. The consensus is that it had shallow mechanics and clunky controls, which don't even compare favorably to earlier 3D fighters such as the first Virtua Fighter. A belated Saturn port would receive mediocre reviews and sink without a trace, despite being the same game with more content, and none of the sequels came close to replicating the original's success. Even its status as the flagship PlayStation fighting game franchise was quickly usurped by Namco's Tekken, not to mention that their other big 3D fighting game, Soul Edge, pulled off the weapon-based part much better.
Originally the launch title of the PS1, Battle Arena Toshinden is largely forgotten and disliked by those that remember it, with the game being held up as a prime example of style over substance. Illustrating the game's fall from grace is EGM's (the authors of the 100% review) statement in its 2005 "most overrated game" feature:[It] was 3D, it was flashy—Battle Arena Toshinden was exciting and new. But later Namco showed us what really could be done with 3D fighting on the PlayStation (Tekken, Soul Blade). (...) But is it actually good? Oh God, no. - Bubsy was rather popular upon his game's initial release, with his first game doing well enough in both sales and reception to kickstart several sequels and a pilot for a cartoon. Even the now-notorious Bubsy 3D received only mixed reviews at the time, likely due to being one of the first 3D platformers. What caused many to turn on the bobcat was hindsight, as numerous internet reviewers (most notably JonTron and Seanbaby) brought attention back to the original games, the cartoon, and Bubsy 3D. These reviews were not at all kind to Bubsy, exposing many of the problems (poor level design, Fake Difficulty, and Bubsy himself being annoying) to a wider audience, which would subsequently cause Bubsy to become a notorious punching bag. Whatever good rep he had from his first game all but disappeared. When Bubsy was briefly brought back during the late-2010s, the common reception from people at the time was "Why?" This new game got torn to shreds by critics, citing that all of the problems that people had complained about for ages still hadn't been addressed, and Bubsy was promptly swept back under the rug. A spin-off was released to somewhat better reviews, but it was nowhere near good enough to save Bubsy's reputation. These days, few people will admit to playing any of Bubsy's games, and even fewer will admit to liking them, even if the first game isn't quite as notorious as the others.
- Castlevania: The Adventure got great reviews at release, critics hailing it as a solid sequel that showed the Game Boy could do NES-style action games just as well. But by the mid-2000s, the game was widely derided as one of the low points of the series, complaints centering around its sluggish pace, frustrating design decisions filled with Fake Difficulty and dumbed-down or missing series staples, such as subweapons, stairs, or the ability to keep your whip upgrades when damaged. About the only aspect that doesn't attract criticism is the game's soundtrack. This change in perception was likely brought about by the advent of better and more faithful Castlevania games on handheld, including its direct sequel as well as a remake that ironed out its flaws and modernized the game.
- Gish was praised when it first came out for its innovative physics based gameplay. It won several indie game awards, including Seamus McNally Grand Prize. However, years haven't been kind to the game. When it was rereleased on Steam, it received mixed reception with the reviews citing clunky controls, dated physics and a few interface issues. It also did not help that the revamped version released in 2020 removed several features (for an example, level editor) and a few game modes in the game.
- While King's Quest V: Absence Makes the Heart Go Yonder! was very popular, and seemingly issued with every CD-ROM drive in the '90s, in hindsight it's one of the least-liked games in the series. Many players still loathe Cedric, there are far too many nonsensical Unwinnable by Design momentsnote , even by the standards Sierra games are known for, and the "multimedia" version is remembered as a glorified tech demo. Even King's Quest fans tell players to avoid this installment.
- Ratchet & Clank: Size Matters received glowing reviews hailing it as a Killer App for the Playstation Portable, being seen as a near-perfect transition of the series to a portable system, and player approval was similarly high. However, in the years that followed, series fans revisiting the game have found Size Matters (along with its sequel Secret Agent Clank) to be something of a nadir for the series. The consensus is that once the novelty of playing a fully-featured Ratchet & Clank game on a handheld wears off, you're left with uninspired level design and weapon selection, a plethora of bugs, control limitations brought about by the lack of buttons of the PSPnote , a stupid, plot hole-filled storyline, immature humor, and a generally poor grasp of the series' tone and characters. These days, it's more likely to be brought up as "the bad Ratchet & Clank game" than as a highlight of the PSP library.
- Despite many ups and downs, Sonic the Hedgehog as a whole is still popular. However, a few particular games were later received more poorly than during the time of release:
- While never a critical darling, Sonic and the Secret Rings was held in higher regard upon release than it would be in later years. Reviewers saw the game as an improvement over recent titles, particularly Sonic the Hedgehog (2006), with several praising it as a return to the faster-paced action that was deemed lacking in the series' console installments following the Video Game 3D Leap. The game was also liked for its use of motion controls, as well as Sonic being the sole playable character, as dislike of the franchise's ever-expanding cast (especially as playable characters) had become a common refrain amongst the fan community. In the years since, however, it would join its sister game Sonic and the Black Knight in being derided by critics and fans. The novelty of motion controls would soon wear off, with the gameplay controls now being seen as clunky and irritating to deal with; the plot was seen as more ridiculous, with Sonic being trapped in One Thousand and One Nights now seeing the same dismissal and skepticism as him becoming a werehog or wielding a sword, with the additional problem of lacking Black Knight's saving graces of Sonic's characterization and its Hard Truth Aesop; and the release of more universally-liked home console entries like Sonic Colors and Sonic Generations meant prior 3D games were now held up to even greater scrutiny.
- Sonic Chronicles: The Dark Brotherhood received decent reviews and sold very well for a Sonic spin-off game when it was released. Reviewers praised its story, characters, and vast amounts of gameplay options. Its Dialogue Tree was also highlighted in positive reviews, seen as a way to give Sonic's character more depth and increase replayability. Many called it a bright spot in the Audience-Alienating Era Sonic was suffering during the late 2000s, with any flaws in gameplay and story getting reported in reviews being dismissed as things that could be fixed in a sequel, which the game's ending clearly showed was in the cards. However, said sequel never materialized, as Bioware's handheld division was shut down following their acquisition by Electronic Arts. Any chance of the sequel going to a different developer was quashed when former Sonic the Hedgehog (Archie Comics) writer Ken Penders filed a lawsuit against Sega under the belief that the eponymous Brotherhood plagiarized the Dark Legion, which he had previously created for the comic series. With Chronicles now doomed to be a Stillborn Franchise, what were once seen as minor gameplay and presentation complaints became much bigger issues, with players now deriding its gameplay as severely unbalanced and its combat as too heavily focused on touch screen gimmicks that require perfect or near-perfect execution to have any real effect. While the game's soundtrack and graphics were once seen as passable for the time, they're now seen as laughably bad at best. Furthermore, the game's Dialogue Tree has come to been seen as unfitting for Sonic, as aside from a Romance Sidequest with Amy, the vast majority of choices have no impact on the narrative and are limited to giving Sonic the option to be more of a jerk; this in itself was overlooked at the time as a nod to works where Sonic is an Adaptational Jerkass like Sonic the Hedgehog (SatAM) and Sonic the Comic, but would become a much more common criticism of the character starting in the 2010s. Finally, its lack of a follow-up turning the Sequel Hook into a gigantic Accidental Downer Ending overshadowed any of the story's merits for many, and the game itself was eventually declared non-canon to the series.
- Sonic the Hedgehog 4: Episode I, while never particularly popular with fans, was widely praised by critics at the time for being a console Sonic game that returned to the franchise's 2D roots after years of poorly received 3D Sonic games. Much like Secret Rings, it also received praise for focusing solely on Sonic and Dr. Eggman (something fans tired of the franchise's expansive cast also approved of). As years went on, many of the better-faith fan criticisms, such as the awkward physics and disjointed, setpiece-focused level design, would come to the forefront of discussions of the game. The much better-received Sonic Colors and Sonic Generations would also ensure that Episode II, despite generally being considering a superior follow-up, reviewed noticeably worse than the first. The final nail in the Sonic 4 series' coffin came with the release of Sonic Mania, which succeeded in replicating the Genesis classics in all the ways 4 didn't. note
- Star Control 3 was hailed at its launch by critics as a solid evolution of the gameplay pioneered in its predecessors, giving the player the ability to colonize planets across the Kessari Quadrant (and adding strategic gameplay with it) and boosting the production values across the board with more realistic graphics and some solid voice acting. However, it wasn't made by the original creators, and as time went on, the once-novel animatronics used to depict the alien species showed their age with large amounts of Unintentional Uncanny Valley involved (even humanity and the humanoid Syreen were artificial), Real Is Brown fell out of favor compared to the incredibly colorful art direction of the first two games, and the nonsensical plot abandoned dangling threads from Star Control 2 while making bizarre choices of its own. You'll be hard-pressed to find anyone who admits to liking it as much, let alone more, than the much beloved second game.
Specific Ports
- The Nintendo Entertainment System port of Metal Gear was initially well reviewed by critics and sold well enough to receive a direct sequel exclusively aimed for the overseas market. In subsequent years, however, as international gamers became more aware of the original MSX version, the NES port came to be widely lambasted for its extensive cuts to the level and game design (the most infamous of these cuts being the boss battle with the eponymous Metal Gear, making it an Artifact Title) and its dodgy translation. Hideo Kojima publicly disowned the NES version, effectively buried it in favor of the original version in all rereleases of the game, and made his own sequel to the original in order to de-canonize Snake's Revenge, which further damaged the reputation of the NES version. Nowadays, it is regarded as a novelty as best and an outright Porting Disaster at worst. If nothing else, it did help give Nintendo enough of an excuse to put Snake in Super Smash Bros. Brawl, thus paving the way for the many third-party characters the series would embrace, as well as allowing for other M-rated characters to be playable in future installments.
- Sonic the Hedgehog 2 (8-bit) received positive reviews on release for expanding the mechanics and challenge of Sonic the Hedgehog (8-bit), aided by the fact the game released a few weeks before the 16-bit version in certain territories. While the flaws would be highlighted more with the passage of time, the game still has fans... on the Sega Master System that is. While the Game Gear version was once considered an excellent way to play Sonic on the go, it's now seen as a giant Porting Disaster that heightens the flaws of the Master System version. The Game Gear version features Screen Crunch amping up the difficulty significantly and not in a good way, the poor visibility turns even the smallest challenge into Trial-and-Error Gameplay, requiring the player to inch across slowly to have any chance of survival, which defeats the purpose of being a Sonic game. While the Game Gear port of its predecessor was and still is well-received for the numerous changes it made to accommodate the smaller screen size, Sonic 2 did nothing of the sort — in fact, it added elements that clash with the lower resolution, like the iron balls in the first boss fight bouncing at random heights instead of the same fixed level. Even the novelty of the game being released on a handheld no longer matters, as many Sonic games designed specifically for handhelds have come out since, with far better difficulty balance and level design. To make matters worse, while the Game Gear version has received numerous rereleases, the Master System version's only rerelease was on the now-defunct Wii Virtual Console.
In-Universe Examples
- In the world of Disco Elysium, disco was dominant in the '30s, two decades before the beginning of the game. It became emblematic of this time, an economic boom era known as The New in which centrist liberal capitalism had seemingly solved all problems and tacky Conspicuous Consumption was delighted in. Towards the end of the '30s, disco stopped being relevant after the idiotic excesses of The New caused a recession, making the disco lifestyle unaffordable to its largely working-class consumers. Disco singles started to fail to crack the charts, and major local disco star Guillaume le Million died at the height of his fame in an autoerotic asphyxiation accident (or contracting every venereal disease in existence, if Joyce's account is more reliable). By the time the game is set, disco and the associated culture are seen as the height of passé, associated with an embarrassing time and tainted by the misery that followed it. However, significant elements of disco culture have stuck around. Calling something "disco" means that it is exciting, in the same way people in our world might describe something as "rock 'n' roll". Your player character loves disco and identifies heavily with it and with Guillaume le Million, which serves as a symbol of the character's outdated, misjudged commitment to substance-aided hedonistic self-destruction.
- In Flying Red Barrel, a big deal is made out of recently-invented planes and airships taking to the skies. They are seen as something akin to the next step in accomplishing their pilots' dreams. And then the Blue Sky Union attempts to forcefully take control over the skies with a flying castle, leading to an all-out war. Needless to say, this entire shitshow led many folks to drop flying altogether out of sheer disillusionment with what happened in the end. The exception is Marc, who in one ending starts up her own small-scale guild so that she can keep flying her plane.
- Several in-universe examples occur in the Grand Theft Auto series.
- In the 3D Universe games, Lazlow is one of the hottest DJs and radio hosts in America, starting off as the co-host of V-Rock in Vice City Stories before becoming the sole host in Vice City, and the host of various radio talk shows after 1986. By the events of GTA IV, however, several payola scandals and bizarre personal indiscretions have turned him into a joke, where he resorts to wandering around Liberty City to find people to interview (who view him with contempt). Whilst his career did recover, leading to him hosting a radio show and talent show in GTA V, his jerkass demeanor is cranked up, causing his colleagues to find him insufferable and Michael De Santa to humiliate him for his creepiness towards Tracey in the story missions "Fame or Shame" and "Reuniting the Family".
- In Vice City, set in 1986, Hair Metal band Love Fist is shown to be one of the biggest bands in the world, with two of their songs — "Dangerous Bastard" and "Fist Fury" — playing on V-Rock, the game's rock station, and mentions of a world tour that has been banned in several countries. Six years later, in San Andreas, they appear to have been largely forgotten, with their sole mention on the radio being K-DST DJ Tommy Smith asking "whatever happened to Love Fist?" As a parody of the stereotypes of Hair Metal and the musicians that performed it, their disappearance off the charts by 1992, like many of the bands they parodied, makes perfect sense.
- In GTA IV, set in 2008, MyRoomOnline.net is a parody of MySpace, its users, and the culture that surrounded it. By GTA V, set in 2013, MyRoom is referred to as "the ghost town of the internet", having been driven into irrelevancy by the rise of Facebook parody Lifeinvader and forced to sell its domain name, reflecting MySpace's own real life decline.
- The Great Ace Attorney: Summation examinations were once a popular technique used by defense lawyers in Great Britain in order to get the jurors to change their mind on their guilty votes. However, they eventually stopped being effective as they used to be, causing defense lawyers to ditch the practice entirely and the London judicial system to deem it a cheap gimmick that ultimately wasn't as effective as it was built up to be. That said, summation examinations were never outright abolished, leading Ryunosuke Naruhodo to put it into practice in his trials, with prosecutor Barok van Zieks lampshading that the practice is antiquated by this point in time and that it should've been abolished years ago.
- Hypnospace Outlaw:
- When you first arrive in Hypnospace, Coolpunk is popular enough to have its own dedicated zone (titled Coolpunk Paradise). It also has an active community, full of internal disputes on what does or does not count as Coolpunk. The genre's downfall comes at Coolfest '99, a live music get-together with major corporate sponsors, when one headliner gets caught lip-syncing live and another loses his leg in a helicopter crash that kills a drummer. Shortly thereafter, the community realizes that they have been listening to, and passionately arguing about, a genre focused on sampling soft drink advertisements and Christmas music. Aside from the weirdly good founding tracks by Fre3zer, most of the genre's music is seen as pretty terrible. Later conversations found in M1nx suggest that only through astroturfing by the biggest corporate sponsor and the operators of Hypnospace did the genre ever become anything more than "a few kids being weird online".
- Taurus and Muletta, a comic book about an anthropomorphic bull superhero and his sentient cape sidekick started out as a violent Cult Classic, but then was rebooted in a Lighter and Softer form that became a huge Cash-Cow Franchise. Then animal rights groups pointed out that the comic (and new cartoon) glorified bullfighting, which destroyed the franchise's reputation, not helped by the fact that the original creator lost the rights to the characters, making him powerless to do anything about it.
- In Pokémon Scarlet and Violet, the Scarlet Book and Violet Book were once hailed as great by the people of Paldea for the discoveries of Area Zero recorded in them and could be found in every bookstore in the region. Over time, however, people began to doubt the claims regarding the Pokémon found in Area Zero that the books talked about and they fell out of favor, ultimately ending up in used book bins. Their author, once hailed for his discoveries, is now widely regarded as a fraud whose account of the expedition was greatly exaggerated at best. Although in the present day, Professor Sada and Professor Turo still have a fondness for those books.
