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Sequel Displacement / Video Games

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A No Recent Examples rule applies to this trope. Examples shouldn't be added until six months after the sequel is released, to avoid any knee-jerk reactions. For the same reason, any existing examples shouldn't be updated due to a new, more successful, sequel until six months after its release.

  • 1001 Spikes is far more known than its predecessor 1000 Spikes that faded into obscurity.
  • The ZX Spectrum game Abu Simbel Profanation was Dinamic Software's first really successful release. It was preceded by two lesser-known Maze Games with the same protagonist, Saimazoom and Babaliba.
  • Due to the original game being unrefined at best, other Artix Entertainment games have eclipsed the original AdventureQuest in popularity. However, many of the characters prevalent in the other games stem from the original game.
  • After Burner II is more of an Updated Re-release than a sequel to the original After Burner, and so displaced it quite easily in Japan.
  • The Age of Empires game with the most acclaim and popularity is Age of Empires II, which is still being actively updated and receiving new Expansion Packs to this day. The original Age of Empires I is generally seen as a less-polished first attempt by comparison. This also applies to further sequels in the series; while Age of Mythology, Age of Empires III and Age of Empires IV all aren't as big as II, they still maintain dedicated playerbases over the first entry.
  • Animal Crossing on the Nintendo GameCube is a very well-known game, but few people know it's an Updated Re-release of a Japanese-only Nintendo 64 title.
  • Arm Champs: the first game from 1988 saw only a limited release outside Japan and is quite obscure, while it's 1992 sequel had a wider release worldwide and is thus far better known than its predecessor.
  • Assassin's Creed: The Ezio trilogy are the most popular and iconic games in the series, and much better known than the first game. It helps that while the first game was well received, the second game addressed the couple issues people had with the first. Furthermore, the fact Ezio got a whopping three games to himself makes him the most fleshed out protagonist in the series, explaining his popularity.
  • BioShock for System Shock, although it is more of a Spiritual Sequel Displacement. For that matter, System Shock 2 to the original System Shock.
  • The original Borderlands is also a downplayed example. Yes, most people are aware that there was a first installment, but most people see the true start of the series to be the second game. So much so, in fact, that when they ported the series over to the PS4/Xbox One generation of consoles, they named the re-released bundle after the overarching villain they introduced in the second title and left out the first game.
  • The developers of BoxxyQuest: The Gathering Storm endorse this officially, encouraging new players to skip the highly dated original game (which never saw the light of day beyond Catie Wayne's fan forum) and jump straight into the sequel instead.
  • The Burnout series had a cult following thanks to the well-received Burnout 2: Point of Impact. However, Burnout 3: Takedown, the first game in the series published by EA, was immediately hailed as one of the greatest racing games of all time (only being beaten by the Gran Turismo series on Metacritic) and became a massive mainstream hit, meaning that the first two games in the series have been largely forgotten.
  • While the Call of Duty FPS series was fairly well-known (perhaps even very well-known) and acclaimed from the start, it didn't turn into the household name we know today until Call of Duty 4: Modern Warfare. It came to the point where developer Infinity Ward simply titled their next sequel Modern Warfare 2 and considered it a new intellectual property. Activision added Call of Duty back into the title, however, for name recognition. An alarming number of people seem to think the series started with Call of Duty 4, despite it having "4" in the title. This is thanks in part to the shift in primary fanbase from PCs to consoles; before Modern Warfare, the only main-line game by Infinity Ward to come to consoles in its original form was 2 (1 never even got a console release until the "Classic" version on PSN and XBLA alongside Modern Warfare 2's release; its expansion United Offensive is still PC-exclusive), while most other console games in the series were spinoffs from other developers (Finest Hour, Big Red One, Roads to Victory, etc), and even the last main-line game in the series before 4 being rather obscure.
  • id Software's Catacomb 3-D is far better-known than its 2D predecessors, Catacomb and Catacomb II, due to being a pioneering first-person shooter and setting the groundwork for Wolfenstein 3-D.
  • The first Clock Tower was only released in Japan, so most Westerners have only heard of the 5th and 6th-gen games.
  • The original Cool Boarders was released very early in the PlayStation's lifespan, and was essentially a glorified tech demo that had a handful of tracks, five boards, no competition mode (or anything besides time trial) and next-to-no replayability. Cool Boarders 2 was essentially a remake of the first game, with some of the original levels appearing as well as many more levels, multiple characters/boards and several different modes. Notably, the original Cool Boarders is the only one of the first four games not to sell over a million copies.
  • Conker's Bad Fur Day: While there are many who know that the squirrel's first appearance was in Diddy Kong Racing, and that Bad Fur Day was originally meant to be a kid-friendly 3D platformer, very few are aware that Bad Fur Day is actually the second game that has him in the lead role. The first was the E-rated Conker's Pocket Tales came out on the Game Boy Color a few years before Bad Fur Day, which was actually well-regarded as one of the best games for the system upon release.
  • Crash Bandicoot 3: Warped is more well-known than the original game and its sequel; while both games were well-received and received a cult following, the original has unique platforming but suffers from Early-Installment Weirdness, whereas Cortex Strikes Back improved on everything but still suffered from some Early-Installment Weirdness. Warped, however, is seen as the point where Naughty Dog perfected the formula while also making Crash's kid sister Coco playable in select stages and introducing driving stages into the mix. The third game, alongside Crash Team Racing, is considered the best in the Naughty Dog trilogy (being the last games Naughty Dog ever developed for the series before they moving on to work on the Jak and Daxter series and later The Last of Us), whereas many of the post-Naughty Dog titles received mixed-to-negative reception.
  • Crusader Kings: While Crusader Kings II is one of the most successful Paradox Interactive titles (along with Cities: Skylines and Stellaris), with 15 expansions released as of March 2020, the original Crusader Kings is so obscure, people talking about it on forums and in chat usually need to specify they mean Crusader Kings 1, or else people think they mean CK2. Generally, don't expect anyone who wasn't a Paradox fan before 2012 to have played (or often, even heard of) it.
  • Crystal Quest thoroughly displaced Crystal Raider, a shareware prototype so primitive that it didn't even have a Quit command. (You have to physically reboot the computer to escape it.)
  • The Curse of Monkey Island managed to fool quite a few younger fans into believing it was the first entry in its series due to the lack of association with its predecessor, evidenced in both the name and the storyline. What few references to past events there are can be interpreted as previous adventures of Guybrush the player didn't get to see. Part of this may be deliberate, as the ending of Monkey Island 2: LeChuck's Revenge was very controversial and the devs deliberately wanted to distance the next game from it.
  • Cyberpunk 2077 is a Sequel in Another Medium example: While the tabletop originals were well-received back in the day, and even jumpstarted the Cyberpunk trend to the mainstream attention, they're strongly eclipsed by their rivals in their department. 2077, on other hand, is one of the most concurrently played video games in existence, with over 1 million individuals playing it on launch day.
  • Devil May Cry 3: Dante's Awakening is very much this, being far better-known and liked than the first two Devil May Cry games (especially since it was essentially made as an Author's Saving Throw for how poorly received the second game was). It also helps that the series' most well-liked conventions — Dante being a jokey party dude who wants to have fun while slaying demons and his Red Oni, Blue Oni Sibling Rivalry with his very popular brother Vergil — all originated from the third game. The fact that Dante's Awakening is actually a prequel to the first two games is often lost on new-time players to the series as well.
  • Digimon Story: Cyber Sleuth is one of the most popular and iconic pieces of media in the entire Digimon franchise, but the previous four Digimon Story games are still very obscure. This is, among other things, because the first and second installments were erroneously localized in English as Digimon World titles (so people may not realize they're actually Digimon Story games), while the third and fourth have never been released outside Japan.
  • Dragon Age is another example of a Spiritual Successor eclipsing the originator in popularity, which followed in the footsteps of BioWare's own Baldur's Gate saga. Of course, a lot of gamers became acquainted with BioWare following their console debut and Star Wars based megahit, Knights of the Old Republic. And most fans of the original videogame aren't aware that it's a sequel to the comic book Tales of the Jedi, the game's title being the name of the comic's first two arcs.
  • Try telling fans that Duke Nukem was originally a pink sweater-wearing fan of Oprah before he became the ultra-macho FPS protagonist we now know him as. They would probably just laugh at you. From another angle, most people think of Duke Nukem as being a First-Person Shooter hero, which is a shame, given how he shines in the side-scrolling Platform Games where he has his roots.
  • Dune II is known as the Trope Codifier for the Real-Time Strategy game, making it an extremely important and influential part of gaming history. By comparison, very few people have heard of, much less played, Dune (1992), which was not a pure RTS. This isn't a pure example, though; the two games are completely unrelated save for sharing a publisher (Virgin Games) and a basis in the Dune IP, with Westwood Studios' game numbered as a sequel solely because it came out after the one by Cryo Interactive.
  • The full title of Dwarf Fortress is Slaves to Armok: God of Blood Chapter II: Dwarf Fortress. The original Slaves to Armok is an actual game, and is more like an adventure game. In turn, the older 2D version has mostly been displaced by the later 3D one. Except, perhaps, for the handful of popular Let's Plays like Boatmurdered.
  • The first Dynasty Warriors was a standard fighting game for the PlayStation called Sangoku Musou in Japan. When Dynasty Warriors 2 was released and introduced the Hack and Slash formula the series is now known for, it was reintroduced as Shin Sangoku Musou while the West just called it Dynasty Warriors 2; as such, each installment in the series is now one number ahead of its Japanese counterpart, even though it's the same game.
  • Few people have heard of Earth 2140, an uninspired 1997 RTS about two robots and cyborgs duking it out After the End. Then, three years later, Earth 2150 came out, continuing the storyline but revamping the gameplay to introduce three unique sides, day/night change, full 3D, and a timed campaign. Many RTS fans have at least heard of Earth 2150, and the unique naming scheme hides the fact that Earth 2140 even existed. 2150 was followed by two Expansion Packs and another sequel in 2005, Earth 2160, which largely failed to impress fans.
  • EarthBound (aka MOTHER 2 in Japan) is a cult classic JRPG, and those who know of it also speak highly of its Japan-only sequel Mother 3. EarthBound Beginnings (aka MOTHER 1) gets no such love however, due to being host to Forced Level-Grinding that makes playing it such a frustrating experience that it was half the reason the completed Western localization of the game was stuck in the Nintendo vault until 2015.
  • The runaway success of Euro Truck Simulator 2 means that its humble predecessors (Euro Truck Simulator, German Truck Simulator, and UK Truck Simulator) are rarely mentioned, nor is the 18 Wheels of Steel series that it is a direct Spiritual Successor to.
  • The Elder Scrolls:
    • Morrowind was the game that brought the series to the mainstream and started its massive popularity, with later games being based on its formula. By contrast, Arena and Daggerfall were relatively obscure; the former didn't even sell well, and the latter was a bug-plagued Obvious Beta. Each is also rife with Early-Installment Weirdness, to the point where they are missing key elements of what the later games have established as "Elder Scrolls" essentials.
    • Each subsequent Elder Scrolls game tends to do this to previous games in the series. A major contributing factor is the long (4-6 years on average) Sequel Gap, meaning each game introduces a massive Newbie Boom that tends to quickly crowd out returning fans.
    • Skyrim is easily the biggest example of this. While Morrowind and Oblivion were by no means unpopular (especially the former), Skyrim skyrocketed the franchise well into the mainstream audience and is likely going to be the game most casual gamers think of when asked about the series. It also helps Skyrim has been ported fifteen times onto ten different systems, so you'll be hard pressed to find anyone who isn't at least familiar with it.
  • A double example: This wiki has a page for Elemental — War of Magic, but if anyone remembers it at all, it'd probably just be for it being almost completely unplayable on launch. Far better known is the 2012 sequel, Elemental: Fallen Enchantress, which promptly dropped the Elemental from the title altogether when the original was pulled from sale... or at least it would be better known if it wasn't for the the release of its expansion/expanded rerelease Fallen Enchantress: Legendary Heroes half a year later. You could easily be forgiven for believing Legendary Heroes is a standalone game, especially since the original Fallen Enchantress was also retired from sale in 2017, while Legendary Heroes has continued to receive support for years afterwards.
  • E.V.O.: Search for Eden is much better known than its Japan-exclusive PC-98 predecessor, 46 Okunen Monogatari: The Theory of Evolution.
  • While the Fallout series of PC games is still critically acclaimed and has a loyal following, Fallout 3 is a far more mainstream success, and the majority of modern fans were probably introduced to the series through it. Fallout: New Vegas was referred to as "the second Fallout" a lot more often that it should have been, considering its predecessor had the number "3" in its title.
  • Final Fantasy:
    • Although the series was already somewhat popular prior to 1997, Final Fantasy VII brought in an overwhelming wave of new fans, making a rather large amount of people think that it was the first title in the series despite the number "VII" in the title. In fairness to Europeans, it was the first Final Fantasy to be released there. And even before VII, there was still IV and VI, released in America as "II" and "III".
    • In Japan, this is absolutely the case for the NES version of Final Fantasy III, as it was the first FF title to truly get "huge" — the first two titles aren't obscure by any means, but much like the Distinguished Quompetition, many NES-era gamers in Japan considered this to be the first good Final Fantasy and the first to really show Square's burgeoning graphical flair, Uematsu's soundtrack skill, and had (for the time) a very memorable story. As a result, it sold like hotcakes and lodged itself firmly in the Japanese zeitgeist; if a work outside of the gaming sphere (like a TV show or somesuch) references NES-era Final Fantasy, 99% of the time, it will reference this game specifically (with Cloud of Darkness being particularly iconic).
  • The Fire Emblem series has two major examples:
  • So far, only four Fire Pro Wrestling games have made it outside the Land of The Rising Sun: two for Game Boy Advance (heavily bastardized) and one for PlayStation 2 (known as Fire Pro Wrestling Returns), which is fairly more popular in the U.S. than any other game in the series. Like, about twenty of them, which are also available for such popular consoles as Super Nintendo, PlayStation, Sega Dreamcast and Sega Saturn. The new Fire Pro Wrestling World may get this treatment, as it was released in the US for PC and current gen consoles, and came complete with a New Japan Pro-Wrestling license, and was endorsed by Kenny Omega.
  • FromSoftware:
    • If Dark Souls is an actual sequel or just spiritual successor to Demon's Souls could be argued, but regardless Dark Souls by far the better-known game. Dark Souls was both far more available, being cross-platform rather than a PlayStation 3 exclusive, and implemented several mechanics which made the game considerably easier and more accessible. Yes, that's right, Dark Souls is the EASY version. Somewhat downplayed once Demon's Souls was rereleased on the PlayStation 5, though Dark Souls still remains the more well-known title.
    • Demon's Souls was, itself, a Spiritual Successor to the King's Field series. Although it was reasonably popular in Japan, the series is considerably more obscure in the west. This even contains another example within the example, as the original King's Field was never released in the west since the sequel had already come out in Japan by the time the PlayStation was launching outside of it, so From decided to just skip it. As a result, King's Field II and III were released in the west as simply King's Field and King's Field II, with the PlayStation 2 sequel King's Field IV being renamed King's Field: The Ancient City.
  • Fuga: Melodies of Steel compared to its predecessors of Tail Concerto and Solatorobo: Red the Hunter, and for good reason. The latter two games were restricted to only one system each, had pitiful sales and were horrendously undermarketed, not helped by physical copies becoming harder and more expensive to find with each passing year. Fuga, despite still running into the same marketing issues as prior games, is available on every major system, and being on digital storefronts means the game is far more accessible to buy and play. Especially due to its nature as a prequel, Fuga can also be played standalone without any prior knowledge of the Little Tail Bronx series, preventing Continuity Lock-Out.
  • Galaga surpassed its predecessor Galaxian in popularity.
  • The Ganbare Goemon series originally began with a Japan-only arcade game called Mr. Goemon, which the original Famicom game Ganbare Goemon was loosely based on. Some gamers even assume that the first SNES game in the series, the one that came out in America as Legend of the Mystical Ninja, is the first game in the series period.
  • Glider PRO displaced Glider 4.0 and the original Glider.
  • The Goonies II is a relatively popular NES game, somewhat based on the movie. There was an earlier Goonies game for the Famicom, which wasn't even released outside Japan except for the Vs. System arcade cabinet, which in turn many people never really noticed.
  • Gradius:
    • In a mix of this and First Installment Wins, many less-hardcore fans of the series don't seem to know that Gradius II exists, thinking that the series goes from Life Force (NES) to Gradius III (SNES), and magically becomes Gradius V somehow (Gradius II and IV being nonexistent).
    • Just to make things even more confusing, Salamander (Life Force) received a 1996 sequel in Japan, which, of course, never got an American release and has not been ported to any console.
    • Additionally Parodius Da! for the arcade is actually a sequel to the original Parodius for the MSX.
  • The Grand Theft Auto series, when it leaped into 3D. With the release of III, to be precise, which discarded both the original and Grand Theft Auto 2.
  • Grim Dawn is the Spiritual Successor to Titan Quest, sharing the same engine, gameplay mechanics, and game development staff. Grim Dawn is considered one of the "Big 3" Diablo-clone Action RPGs alongside Diablo III and Torchlight II, while Titan Quest is hardly remembered.
  • The Guardian Legend was originally Guardic Gaiden, a spin-off of the MSX game Guardic.
  • Gundam Battle Assault 2 is far better-known compared to its predecessor, but only a handful of people in the NA and PAL regions know that both games owe their existence to the Japan-exclusive Gundam: The Battle Master series.
  • Half-Life is an undisputed classic, but the massive gap between releases, coupled with fans who found the series through The Orange Box (which included Half-Life 2 and both of its Episodes, but not the original), has created a case of this in newcomers to the fandom.
  • Herzog Zwei for Herzog. The fact that the original Herzog was only released for Japanese computers doesn't help with its recognition. Most people who don't know German probably aren't even aware that it is a sequel. Even Electronic Gaming Monthly didn't realize it was a sequel — on a list of games they felt needed sequels, they referred to a hypothetical Herzog Zwei sequel as Herzog Zwei 2, rather than Herzog Drei.
  • The Hitman series really started getting noticed with its second installment, Hitman 2: Silent Assassin, due to the game getting a wide release on consoles. Several fans falsely believe it to be the first game in the series despite the fact that it clearly has "2" in the title, and are surprised to learn about the original PC-exclusive Hitman: Codename 47.
  • Jetpack Joyride is a third game to star Barry Steakfries, predated by Age of Zombies and Monster Dash. The first one is a Shoot 'Em Up that doesn't even feature any jetpacks, and the second one is an Endless Running Game with enough differences in gameplay comparing to its successor. While both would reach a solid number of downloads and be Un-Cancelled (twice each), as far as mainstream recognition is concerned, people are most likely to have memories about Jetpack Joyride and not so much of its predecessors. The fact that Jetpack was one of the few games from Halfbrick Studios not to be delisted in 2018 after GDPR laws became active, and eventually got a sequel of its own goes to show how much has it surpassed its older brothers in popularity.
  • A selective example with Jet Set Radio. While both the original and Jet Set Radio Future have a cult following among Sega fans, it is Future that is more well-known to the non-Sega crowd. This is because of two reasons: 1) The first game was released when the Dreamcast was losing its popularity in America and Europe, and 2) Future and Sega GT 2002 were put together on one disc and packaged with Xboxes during the holiday season of 2002, so everyone who got an Xbox for Christmas that year had no choice but to play it. When the first JSR got an HD makeover in 2012 for download services, a lot of people who only played Future complained about how different this one was. (And to be fair, the general consensus about Future is that it ironed out a lot of the original's flaws.)
  • Just Cause has some good ideas (vehicle stunts, a massive map), but various issues prevent it from being a good game and it was quickly forgotten. Just Cause 2 refines all those ideas, irons out most of the problems, and immediately attracted widespread praise and a large fanbase for its over-the-top gameplay. The only reason the first game is mentioned is to say that it's not very good.
  • When thinking of Kid Icarus, most will think of either the original NES platformer that's infamous for being Nintendo Hard, or its sole sequel, Kid Icarus: Uprising, a third-person shooter which revived the series from a long hiatus, redesigned all the characters, and is famous for its quirky characters and even more tongue-in-cheek humor. Except, Uprising is the third game in the series. The second is the Game Boy title Kid Icarus: Of Myths and Monsters, which not only didn't release in Japan, but has its existence completely ignored by both Uprising and Super Smash Bros., as neither reference the game or its events at all.
  • Few people remember Kingdom Under Fire: A War Of Heroes for PC... despite it being more unique than its sequels. It is one of the first RTS titles to have RPG-style upgradeable hero units — years before Warcraft III — as well as making the odd choice to combine RTS and Diablo-style stages.
  • While Knights of the Old Republic remains well thought of to this day, its MMO successor Star Wars: The Old Republic has overshadowed it to the point where people confuse it for the former.
  • Koudelka, the first game of the Shadow Hearts series that was released on the original PlayStation, tends to be described just as "the prequel to Shadow Hearts."
  • Many fans of Kunio-kun are familiar with either the Nekketsu Sports series or Downtown Nekketsu Monogatari (known Westside as River City Ransom), but the game that started it all, Nekketsu Kouha Kunio-kun (translated as Renegade), is considered a separate game due to it more serious tone and art style. Games like Super Dodge Ball were originally supposed to be the goofy chibi spin-off.
  • Very few Legacy of Kain fans have played Blood Omen and Blood Omen 2. In fact, many assume that Soul Reaver is the first game in the series and don't even know that the SR games are spin-offs of the original Blood Omen.
  • The Legend of Zelda has been subject to this multiple times:
    • While the first game is reasonably popular nowadays thanks to frequent re-releases and retrospectives, A Link to the Past introduced many of the elements and tropes that the series is known for, and it used to be not uncommon for people to consider it the "first" real Zelda game.''
    • After Ocarina of Time's release, thanks to its tremendous success, a few who started with that game called Majora's Mask "Zelda 2" (something that if said, tended to get that person into trouble).
    • Breath of the Wild quickly became the best-selling game in the series, serving as the series' introduction to millions of new players. Combined with the game deliberately abandoning a number of series' staples, including the gameplay itself, it isn't uncommon for repeats of the above "Zelda 2" issue to pop-up when talking about Tears of the Kingdom.
  • LISA: The Painful is technically the second game in the LISA series — LISA: The First was released two years before it (and is notably the only game in the series to feature Lisa herself as a character). However, most fans have only ever heard of The Painful and its sequel LISA: The Joyful.
  • Love Nikki - Dress Up Queen is a small and profitable phenomenon in the global mobile market - but despite the fact that both of its prequels came out in English before, most people outside of China don't even realize that it is the third game in a series, NikkiUp2U. At least part of this is down to the first title, NikkiUp2U having only received a quiet Android release, so the large iOS player base will have never even heard of it. On top of that, the second game, titled Hello Nikki - Let's Beauty Up! in English, shut down its global servers in 2016 (without resolving the story of whether or not Nikki found her father). So by the time Love Nikki - Dress Up Queen launched in English and received both an Android and iOS release with a different international publisher at the helm, there was no way for the many, many new players to even play the better known of the two previous titles. They are so obscure that many fans haven't even realized that the huge "NIKKIUP2U3" logo in the main menu of Love Nikki is referring to this game. That said, the English script still retains many Shout-Outs to the previous game, such as Nikki noticing that the Fantasy Envoy looks familiar, and several Hello Nikki outfits are included in the sequel.
  • Lufia & The Fortress of Doom is a decent enough Eastern RPG with a nice soundtrack and attractive visuals, but it brings little if anything new in the gameplay department. The plot and characters are also quite simple. It would lead to the far improved prequel Lufia II: Rise of the Sinistrals. This goes double in the PAL regions where the original was never released, and the sequel was released simply as Lufia.
  • Magical Vacation is a Japan-exclusive game and is overall highly obscure even within its home country. Its 2006 sequel, Magical Starsign, gets more attention thanks to having an international release.
  • Bungie's Marathon introduced a lot of things to the first person shooter genre and the video game industry as a whole, but everybody just remembers Halo. This might be considered a case of Spiritual Successor Displacement. This is somewhat ironic, as Marathon itself displaced Pathways into Darkness, Bungie's previous game that Marathon is a spiritual (and literal) sequel to.
  • Given the commercial failure of the Virtual Boy, many ignore that Mario Tennis started on that platform and not on the Nintendo 64.
  • How many people remember the 1989 MechWarrior? Or BattleTech before it.
  • The first two Metal Gear games were released on the MSX2, a computer platform that was not widely available. While the first game did get a bit of exposure thanks to actually being localized, as well as having a reworked NES port that saw a much wider release, the second game remained only in Japan and came out at the tailgate of the MSX2's lifespan (an unrelated sequel for the NES was made for the west instead). As a result, the third game, Metal Gear Solid, which was released on the more widely successful PlayStation, served as something of a soft reboot for the series and included in-game plot summaries of the two MSX2 games for players who missed out on those games. Lampshaded in Metal Gear Ac!d, where an in-game commercial reminds audiences that "Metal Gear wasn't always in 3D."
  • For the Metroid series, due to the long release gaps between entries in the mainline 2D games, the 3D Metroid Prime Trilogy sub-series gradually became the main image of the franchise following the critical acclaim and success of 2002's Metroid Prime. This is to the point that you'll still occasionally see people who are unfamiliar with the franchise believe that the 2002 game is actually the first installment in the series, despite Metroid originating on the NES sixteen years prior. In addition, around Prime's release, it was also common for people to think that this "new" series was made to serve as Nintendo's answer to Halo.
  • The old Minecraft Classic — the one with the unlimited number of blocks, blocks destroyed with a single click, simple shading, no monsters or items, and no day/night cycle — suffers from it when compared to the regular Minecraft. The "unlimited blocks" (and easy block destruction) function in Minecraft Classic appears in a mode of regular Minecraft called Creative Mode, which served to further push Minecraft Classic into obscurity. Eventually Mojang went all the way and took Classic down for good. For an example, see the confused comments on this video, which show that even by 2012 some people weren't even aware of Classic's existence:
    Why do the blocks destroy so easily???
    how do you break the blocks so fast and how do you do the unlimited block thing
  • The second installment of Motor Toon Grand Prix is notably more recognizable than the first one, which is Japan only. In addition, the 2 was dropped from the title of the US release (but not the European release for some reason).
  • How many people know that Namu Amida Butsu! -UTENA- is a remake? Due to this game's bigger success and expanded cast and universe, its presence almost completely eclipses the original Namu Amida Butsu!, and nearly no overseas fan have ever heard of the original game at all.
  • Need for Speed became excessively popular with the release of Need for Speed: Underground in 2003, and spawned an also popular sequel in 2004. Then another in 2005... and another in 2006... and 2007... and 2008... Then after five years, the series became stale, and each game was significantly less well-received, before finally shifting back to its roots with 2010's Hot Pursuit. Due to a split fanbase, EA knew there would be still some of the newer fans who yearned for the Most Wanted 2005/Carbon-style gameplay and customization, hence Need for Speed: World was released alongside Hot Pursuit 2010. A straighter example would be the fact that the game used to be a licensed game for a magazine called Road & Track Presents: The Need for Speed. However, the Hot Pursuit sub-series became more popular with the release of its 2002 sequel for the sixth generation of consoles and the PC.
  • NieR: Automata displaced the original Nier so much that there are some people who aren't even aware it is a sequel to a previous game. It doesn't help that connections between the games are pretty loose (it'd be more accurate to say they share a continuity), nor that Square Enix themselves seem to slip into this a bit at times (such as advertising the Updated Re-release of Nier as a prequel, without indicating that it actually came out first).
  • Of Orcs and Men has had its own story eclipsed almost entirely by the Breakout Character status given to its deuteragonist Styx, a wily and snarky Goblin that helps protagonist Arkhail in his journey. Because Styx became so popular, he received a spin-off game that expanded on his personal history before meeting his Orcish companion. It increased his popularity so much more that a sequel followed soon after, and now the original game is mostly remembered as Styx's debut.
  • The Pokémon Mystery Dungeon fandom used to suffer from this, as some of the many people who started the series with the Explorers games had no idea that the Rescue Team games existed or just ignored them prior to the release of Rescue Team DX.
  • For younger generations, the Sands of Time trilogy from Prince of Persia displaces the previous games in such a way that many of them refer to Prince of Persia: Warrior Within and Prince of Persia: The Two Thrones as Prince of Persia 2 and 3 respectively. When Prince of Persia (2008) was announced, there were many complains about the game not following the Sands of Time trilogy and "not being a true POP", ignoring that those games already were a Continuity Reboot of a series that started in 1989.
  • Punch-Out!! is an iconic NES title, but few are aware that the franchise started out as a series of popular arcade titles (which themselves include an oft-forgotten arm wrestling spin-off game) before hitting Nintendo's home console a few years later. On top of that, even the SNES sequel goes unremembered, resulting in most people assuming the franchise consists solely of the 1987 NES game and its 2009 Wii reboot.
  • Puyo Puyo:
    • When people talk about the "first" Puyo Puyo game, they are almost always referring to the arcade game instead of its MSX/FDS predecessor. In fact, several outlets (including the official 25th Anniversary Book) treat the 8-bit games and the arcade game as a single entity and Sega has referred to it as a "prototype" in at least one interview.
    • As far as most people are concerned, the first English, non-Dolled-Up Installment entry is the GBA Puyo Pop. Nobody talks about the NGPC Puyo Pop, and the English arcade game is so obscure that it was considered a bootleg (or at least an unofficial fan translation) for many years.
  • Quake was a hugely influential game (it almost single-handedly invented Tournament Play, for instance) but was later overshadowed by the multiplayer-oriented Quake III: Arena. It wasn't until Quake IV was released years later that the series got back to its roots with a single-player campaign.
  • Rayman:
    • Rayman: Raving Rabbids (and the Rabbids themselves) has become quite well known, even getting two crossovers with the Mario series. However many, particularly younger, people have no idea the Rayman series dates back to 1995, released for the Atari Jaguar and Sony PlayStation (the PS1 version was one of the best-selling PS1 games ever, especially in Europe). The displacement has died out somewhat, as the classic platforming revival starting with Rayman Origins has had major critical success.
    • Rayman 2 is an example as well, as although it is something of a Cult Classic at this point, it was quite popular at time of release and is generally better known than the original.
  • A lot of fans don't know that Red Dead Redemption wasn't the start of a new series. Red Dead Revolver came out back in 2004, a full six years before Redemption, and calling the then-unannounced sequel "Red Dead Redemption 2" instead of "Red Dead 3" or "Red Dead (insert word starting with R)" became a small Fandom-Enraging Misconception... at least, until Rockstar announced that the sequel actually would be Red Dead Redemption II.
  • Red Faction: Guerrilla has had this effect on the Red Faction series. Not many people know about the first two games, to the point that Armageddon failed in part because it went back to the series' roots as a corridor shooter.
  • Remnant: From the Ashes has done quite well for itself, but few people know that it's actually the sequel to Chronos (which is understandable as Chronos was VR exclusive). Chronos is so unknown that when it was repackaged in non-VR form as the "prequel" Chronos: Before the Ashes, people wondered why it was such a big step backwards from Remnant. The third game in the series is simply called Remnant II, although admittedly it's more of a direct sequel to Remnant (using the same Third-Person Shooter mechanics), which had itself been something of a Genre Shift from Chronos (a Souls-like RPG).
  • Resident Evil:
    • Resident Evil 4, so very much. Despite the "4" in the title, some new fans are surprised to learn that not only were there other Resident Evil games before it, it's not even the fourth game.
    • Resident Evil 2, much like Street Fighter II, has had this effect on poor Resident Evil 1. While the first game was still fairly popular, the Actionized Sequel — which had a much bigger environment, more monsters, more polished graphics with CG cutscenes and voice acting that wasn't terrible — helped put the franchise on the map compared to the first one. Now, when most people think of Resident Evil, they'll likely picture a Zombie Apocalypse in a town rather a monster-filled mansion. It took several more years for RE1 to receive more recognition, thanks to its cast appearing in other games and getting a beautiful remake on the GameCube. Although in a tragic case of history repeating itself, the RE2 remake is now more acclaimed and financially successful than the RE1 remake was.
  • Rhythm Heaven's second edition for the Nintendo DS is regarded as the series' first title outside of Japan rather than its Game Boy Advance predecessor.
  • Rocket League is about a billion times more famous than its predecessor, Supersonic Acrobatic Rocket-Powered Battle Cars.
  • Saints Row 2 is a downplayed example. While it is obviously the second game in the Saints Row series, the original game was exclusive to the Xbox 360 (while all of the sequels were multiplatform) and was considered a So Okay, It's Average Grand Theft Auto clone that probably would've faded into obscurity had a Surprisingly Improved Sequel not been made. Even though fans of the series are aware that a Saints Row before 2 exists, the number that have actually played it is in the minority. It was also because of this that Saints Row: The Third didn't continue any of the plotlines from 2, since non-Xbox gamers found it hard to follow the story. Saints Row IV, however, contains references to all the previous games, including the first.
  • Secret of Mana, a.k.a. Seiken Densetsu 2, from the Mana Series. Even in Japan, the first game was released with the subtitle of Final Fantasy Gaiden and was presented as more of a Final Fantasy game than its own entity. In America, it was only released as Final Fantasy Adventure, leaving many Americans unaware that it was even a Mana game at all. In both cases, Secret of Mana greatly overshadowed it and came to define the series worldwide. A Game Boy Advance remake of the first game, Sword of Mana, even redid several key mechanics and the entire aesthetic to look more like Secret of Mana and its sequel. To celebrate the 25th anniversary of the series, another remake of Final Fantasy Adventure was released in 2016 for smartphones and the PlayStation Vita and while it sticks much closer to the original version's formula than Sword of Mana did, it was still renamed Adventures of Mana overseas, though Square Enix still acknowledges that it's a remake of Final Fantasy Adventure.
  • The Sega Genesis is a well-known video game console from the early 90s. The Sega Master System is not.note  More people know the Game Gear, and its ports, better than the actual Master System. The SG-1000 is even more obscure.
  • Shin Megami Tensei:
    • The series suffers terribly from this thanks to the vast majority of the franchise never leaving Japan. Shin Megami Tensei: Nocturne is in fact SMT III, the first two being released only in Japan on the SNES. (Not helping matters is that, when the original game released in North America, the "III" was omitted from the title, whereas its release in PAL regions went by the title Shin Megami Tensei: Lucifer's Call. This is to say nothing of how III isn't even the third mainline SMT entry; that honor goes to Shin Megami Tensei if..., a What If? scenario branching off from SMT I that would go on to spawn the Persona series.) One SMT spin-off, Devil Summoner: Raidou Kuzunoha vs. The Soulless Army, is also in fact the third Devil Summoner game, as the first game never came over to the U.S. and it wasn't until 2013 that any version of the second game, Soul Hackers, left Japan. Add in the fact that events in DS3 reference events in SMT I and II, and that the sequel to DS3 was released as Devil Summoner 2 in the U.S. On top of that, the 3DS port of Soul Hackers, the first version of the game to leave Japan, includes a bonus dungeon with Raidou in it, further cementing his duology as the more well-recognized entries of the series.
    • When a Shin Megami Tensei V trailer was shown off at E3 2021, the stream chat was flooded with people thinking it was Persona. The game then went onto sell a million copies worldwide, falling just short of Persona 5's three million, finally making Shin Megami Tensei into a household name outside of Japan.
    • Not to mention the original Megami Tensei games on the Famicom, the first one being a sequel to the first two novels from the rather obscure Digital Devil Story trilogy (which has nothing to do with the other MegaTen spin-off series called Digital Devil Saga).
    • This happened within one of the sub-series: Persona 3 reworks all of the gameplay mechanics from the first two Persona games, tones down some of the symbolism, and adds a Dating Sim mechanic, with the result being that it and its sequels' popularity have completely eclipsed even its mother franchise. The original Persona is probably a rare case of completely inverting First Installment Wins; it's considered the worst of the series due to its clunky gameplay, with most of its memorability coming from its horrible Americanized translation until a proper one was made for its PSP makeover. note  And while there was later revitalized interest in Persona 2 (it helped that 3 and 4 eventually garnered massive Broken Bases due to all of the spin-offs they'd receive), it's still a cult hit at best, not helped that it was released oddly: Eternal Punishment, the second half of the duology, came to the U.S on the PSX with Innocent Sin never being exported, and no one could play the first half of the story until its PSP re-release eleven years later. (And even then, the re-release of Eternal Punishment was never exported along with it.) Meanwhile, 3's sequels, Persona 4 and Persona 5, became more and more popular, with 5 becoming the highest-selling game in studio Atlus's entire history upon release. This is reflected in the official Persona hub's title chronology page: it starts at the original release of 3, and only acknowledges the first two games when the year gets to their respective PSP remakes.
    • The first Megami Tensei game released in North America was the obscure Jack Bros., for the even more obscure Virtual Boy. Quite ironically, it's considered to be the second-best Virtual Boy game on the handheld (the best game being Virtual Boy Wario Land) and collectors are willing to pay hefty fee for it (around $200, approximately).
  • Postal 2 is considered one of the most popular yet infamous PC games in history, known for it's dark humor, a charming protagonist that quips all the time and is literally called 'Dude' and loads of offensive jokes. Then you have the original Postal: A psychological horror game. While the game wasn't horribly received it has been completely overshadowed by it's sequel, to the point new players are constantly baffled by the absolute Tonal Whiplash between the two games. If that wasn't enough, in a strange two way street kind of way, Postal 2's popularity has short of bled in the entire franchise as a whole. With the outsourced Postal III receiving a reception so negative, it prompted the original developers to straight up go back and make new DLC content for Postal 2, DLC content that actually retcons Postal III into a fever dream by the Dude, right at the start of the story. Postal 4: No Regerts's marketing became mostly about how the game would function as the 'real' sequel to Postal 2, only to also receive mixed to heavily negative reception. For better or for worse, whenever someone references the Postal franchise in popular culture, chances are they are just talking about Postal 2.
  • The Silent Hill franchise now spans eight main games, but the Silent Hill 2 is by far the most famous and acclaimed, with it making the most Call-Backs in later games, with its protagonist showing up in the joke endings of Silent Hill 3, Shattered Memories, and Downpour. The popularity of 2 also influenced the trajectory of the series — the rest of the Team Silent-developed games were more thematically rooted in the occult, with 2 being the exception in hunkering far more on the self-inflicted psychological hell of its protagonist, which the western studios that developed all future games chose to replicate.
  • The Sims 2 is more popular than the original (which was extremely popular in its own right), and can sometimes be this. This is despite the glaring "2" on the box and multiple references to the original game. Nowadays there are The Sims 3 players who are totally unaware of the first two...
  • Slashers: The Power Battle is an indie Weapon based Fighting Game that some have heralded as a throwback 2D Fighting games, such as Samurai Shodown, The Last Blade (both by SNK), Guilty Gear, and earlier Street Fighter games (the Street Fighter III series in particular), but almost no one is aware that it is a sequel to the obscure Game Boy Advance title Dual Blades released back in 2002. The fact that Stun Games, the successor entity to the makers of Dual Blades, have not made mention of the original game in advertising Slashers when combined with the original games' aforementioned obscurity certainly plays a role in this case.
  • Sonic Robo Blast 2, a popular 3D freeware game based on Sonic the Hedgehog. You want proof? The original Sonic Robo Blast game doesn't even have a TV Tropes page.
  • Soul Series:
    • While many people are aware of Soulcalibur, even though it was the sequel that had greater prominence and sales, there are a handful that have even heard of Soul Edge/Soul Blade, an Arcade/PlayStation game that precedes the first Soulcalibur. It doesn't help that the all the games afterwards took the Soulcalibur title.
      • The PlayStation version sold well at the time of release (garnering a platinum release), but became overlooked upon the release of Tekken 3 (see below).
    • Not only that, but the official name of the series is the Soul series, yet 99% of all video gamers know the series as the "Soulcalibur series."
  • Spec Ops: The Line is known by gamers as a dark Genre Deconstruction of the modern military shooter. Because of this game's breakout nature, few people realize that Spec Ops isn't a new series, but rather a Tactical Shooter series from the late '90s made by future Blacklight Retribution developer Zombie Studios. The series had ended a decade earlier, and had fallen into obscurity despite releasing eight games within 5 years. At the same time, though, Spec Ops: The Line shares nothing with the earlier Spec Ops games other than the name "Spec Ops" — but then again, even when the earlier games were an ongoing series, they changed developers and publishers multiple times.
  • Spectre VR is one of the most well-known games among the niche group of Macintosh gamers. Almost none of them seem to own the original Spectre. Even GameFAQs, who is quite well-known for showing obscure releases, has no page for the Macintosh version, although a page for the SNES version does exist.
  • A large majority of the Story of Seasons fanbase began with either Harvest Moon: A Wonderful Life, Harvest Moon: Friends of Mineral Town, or their female versions. The series began two gens before those titles. The original SNES title was largely forgotten until the Virtual Console re-release, Harvest Moon 64 is a prime example of a game that everyone calls amazing but almost no one has played (though the Virtual Console release helped), Back to Nature is just seen as the 3D version of FoMT, Save the Homeland is often ignored for being a black sheep, and the Game Boy games are seen as too watered down.
  • Street Fighter:
    • Street Fighter, released in 1987, introduced many of the same concepts later used by its sequel Street Fighter II, namely a six-button configuration and command-based special moves, but the game is merely a cult hit due to its stiff controls and lack of any playable character other than Ryu and Ken. The six-button configuration was an afterthought, created as a cheaper alternative for arcade owners who couldn't afford the deluxe cabinet which used two large mechatronic punching pads for each player that determine the strength of the player's attacks based on how hard they're pushed. Street Fighter II refined all the mechanics from the original game, keeping the six-button configuration while adding multiple player characters, essentially giving birth to the fighting game boom of the '90s. Also, everyone knew about the player's special moves in Street Fighter II from the get go because the commands were printed on the instruction card. Because of this, people often forget that Ryu and Ken's three special attacks in the original are secret techniques that the player needed to discover for themselves. The (subsequently unchanged) control sequence was devised so it could be hit on by accident, provoking players to spend lots of time (and credits) trying to find out how the hell they'd done it.
    • Interestingly enough, the exact same thing has happened to II. Ask any hardcore fan for their opinion of The World Warrior, and you'll most likely get a litany of gripes. Horribly unbalanced, tons of cheap tricks (including the infamous "tick throws"), tons of glitches, Guile rules the universe, way too easy to do ridiculous damage, redizzies, infinites, etc. Anyone who just started picking up Street Fighter II would find The World Warrior just about unrecognizable.
    • This was even lampshaded in a gag strip published in the official Street Fighter comic book series, where Joe from the 1987 game argued for his inclusion in Street Fighter V:
      Joe: But you gotta remember me! Joe! I was in the first Street Fighter!
      Interviewer: Oh, you mean Street Fighter II?
      Joe: No! There was one before that!
      Interviewer: Nah... I'm pretty sure SF II was the first one.
    • As proof that history does indeed repeat, the Street Fighter III series ran afoul of this as well. For many gamers, casual and competitive alike, New Generation and 2nd Impact are barely a blip on the radar (if noticed at all), with the majority of the focus instead going to 3rd Strike. There are many reasons for this (the III series as a whole being a Contested Sequel to II and running concurrently with the much more favorably received Alpha, the near complete absence of the II cast, the earlier games lacking some of the polish and mechanical refinements found in the third installment, etc.), not helped by the fact that the tournament scene of 3S provided the Fighting Game Community with the memetically popular "EVO Moment #37" — which became a Signature Scene for the entire FGC and is credited with renewing interest in the genre. It also wouldn't be until 2018's Street Fighter 30th Anniversary Collection that a compilation featured NG and 2I alongside 3S; 3rd Strike was the only game in the III series that saw frequent re-releases while the first two entries only saw home releases on the Dreamcast.
  • Summer Carnival shoot 'em ups have a really weird case of this. First of all, Recca might be mistakenly considered a sequel displacement because there was a game that was released year earlier, Spriggan, which keeps the same Summer Carnival brand name. Moreover, the later games in this series, Alzadick and Nexzr, may also be mistakenly considered follow-ups, but in reality... Not only were Recca and the remaining SC games released on different platforms and developed by different teams, they have absolutely nothing in common, save for the genre, the setting and belonging to the same somewhat forgotten gaming event, which is arguably the real example of this trope. Also, have you ever heard about Alzadick having its own sequel on PlayStation 2?
  • Super Hexagon is particularly well-known, but how many people know about the original Hexagon?
  • The Super Mario series is an unusual example. Most people are cognizant of Mario's adventures in the original Donkey Kong, but the first game where he is billed as a star, Mario Bros. (without the "Super"), is comparatively obscure, though a redone version ended up as "that minigame from Super Mario Bros. 3" and it finds itself often packed in with other games as a minigame. The Mario series didn't take off hard until Super Mario Bros.; this can perhaps best be seen by the fact that "Super Mario" is the default series title, even in games that don't involve Mario growing into his "Super" form.
  • Super Stardust HD and its subsequent sequels on Sony platforms have completely eclipsed the original Amiga games.
  • By four games into the Tales Series, only Tales of Destiny and Tales of Eternia had ever crossed the Pacific, and those were totally under the radar. Then Namco of America trotted out Tales of Symphonia. Now some people don't even realize the series started before the PS2, let alone back when the Super Famicom was middle-aged. This is also Prequel First — Symphonia is a sort of origin story to Tales of Phantasia, the first game in the series.
  • Team Fortress 2 is a perfect example, given that the original game is a Quake mod subsequently tweaked by the creators of Half-Life (see Team Fortress Classic). It also came out many years after the original, it's a complete change of tone from the original (the original has a realistic artstyle and a serious tone), and the classes all look completely different than they did in the original.
  • In the Tekken franchise, the wildly popular third instalment of the series (which was the highest-selling Fighting Game at the time with 8.3 million copies sold) has immensely displaced the first and second Tekken games. Most casual gamers will assume Jin was always the protagonist of the franchise, when the original protagonist was actually his father Kazuya, who was absent in Tekken 3 after being thrown into a volcano by his father Heihachi at the end of the previous game, which took place before Jin was even born. Being mechanically and graphically superior to the 1992 and 1995 entries, a lot of players tend pick up the series with the third game and don't touch the previous titles, considering them too archaic — if they even consider or acknowledge them at all. Notably, there was some outcry over the fact Kazuya was chosen instead of Jin as the Tekken rep for Super Smash Bros. Ultimate, even though Kazuya was introduced first and was essentially the Ryu of the story before Jin took over.
  • Thunder Force II is far more well-known than its predecessor. It doesn't help that the original Thunder Force lacks the Horizontal Scrolling Shooter action the series is best known for, was released in Japan only on some now-obscure computer platforms, and was never ported to any console system.
  • TimeSplitters 2. The first TimeSplitters was not as well-known and only saw a PS2 release, the second game received a multi-platform release and received a cult-following with it considered the best game in the series, and then the third game came with improvements to the story but it was considered Contested Sequel due to the gameplay changed from fast-paced FPS to a standard FPS.
  • Time Crisis II is more well-known than the original game; while the original game had unique cover mechanic and was released for the PlayStation in addition to the arcade with exclusive "Special" mode, it suffers from the lack of 2-player support, lack of power-ups, Nintendo Hard, and the console port suffers from downgraded graphics, but II fixes everything and added a two-player support, with the PlayStation 2 port being a Polished Port with new features and improved graphics and considered the best game in the series.
  • Taiyou no Shinden Asteka II was released Sequel First in America as Tombs & Treasure, but even in Japan only the second Asteka game was remade, and it was remade twice.
  • Tomodachi Life was pretty successful on the Nintendo 3DS, but few people know of Tomodachi Collection for the original Nintendo DS. This is because it never got a release outside of Japan, due to issues involving the game's voice synthisizer.
  • Touhou Project:
    • The first five Touhou games are only available on the long-dead PC-98 machine, making them widely unavailable for many fans, unlike the Windows-based sixth game onwards. It doesn't help that the sixth game itself is when the series found its popularity, and is also a soft reboot of the series story-wise. Many characters introduced in the Windows games would become recurring characters in later works, while the characters from the PC-98 games are all but forgotten. Only four characters are brought over from PC-98 to Windows, two of them being the main characters of the franchise. Barring the occasional Continuity Nod, the only acknowledgement that the first five games exist is that the series keeps its numbering for the games.
    • Some Touhou fan works can fall into this too. Case in point: Touhou Genso Wanderer is actually the third game in the Fushigi no Gensokyo series, but it is, thus far, the only one to get a western release.
  • Tribes is an enormously popular team-based first-person shooter with jetpacks and guns that shoot exploding blue frisbees. The games that Tribes takes its plot and name from are from the Starsiege universe, best known as "that other Real Robot Humongous Mecha game that isn't MechWarrior." It probably doesn't help that the series has one of the most absurd cases of Oddly Named Sequel 2: Electric Boogaloo; starting with the title of Metaltech, moving to Earthsiege, Starsiege, and finally Tribes.
  • While the original Twinbee was released for the arcades in 1985 and had a few straight-to-Famicom sequels, the arcade sequel Detana!! Twinbee is the first one to feature the series' iconic character designs of Shuzilow Ha.
  • The Twisted Tales of Spike McFang is the sequel to an obscure Japan-exclusive PC Engine platformer known as Makai Prince Dorabochan.
  • The Ultima series started with Akalabeth, a game which is remembered mainly because it established many tropes that were made far more famous by its sequels.
  • Unreal Tournament is somewhat better known than Unreal.
  • Of the mainline Warcraft games, the most popular and successful one by far is Warcraft III, which brought the series to worldwide fame. It helps that many of its custom game modes went on to become independently popular in their own right (notably, Defense of the Ancients is the Trope Maker for the entire Multiplayer Online Battle Arena genre). However, it ended up being displaced itself by its More Popular Spin-Off, World of Warcraft.
  • The Korean SRPG The War Of Genesis II not only displaced, but also outright replaces the first game, as it repeats most of the story, embedded into a greater narrative.
  • Wolfenstein 3-D, Return to Castle Wolfenstein,, Wolfenstein (2009) and Wolfenstein: The New Order have numerous fans, few of whom recall (or even know about) the original Castle Wolfenstein and Beyond Castle Wolfenstein games. Furthermore, the sequel to The New Order is called "Wolfenstein II", despite the fact that it's the ninth game in the series (not including spin-offs Enemy Territory and RPG), and even though The New Order was a soft reboot of sorts, it still followed up on story elements from Return to Castle Wolfenstein (albeit loosely) and the 2009 game.
  • Zone of the Enders' success mainly derived from how it drew in fans of Metal Gear Solid with a demo of its highly anticipated sequel it was packaged with, and many consider Zone of the Enders an average game at best. It was successful enough to gain a sequel in 2003, which was a bigger hit with critics and fans of action games alike, so much so that most people forget about the original. This also became the case with the series' HD re-release, with most of the pre-release hype being centered on the second game.
  • Zero Gunner II eclipses the original game in term of recognition, largely because, unlike its predecessor, it actually got an home console release. Tellingly, while the current owners of the Psikyo library bothered to port Zero Gunner II to modern hardware despite lacking the original development ressources, they have expressed no interest in doing likewise with the original game.
  • While the original Super Smash Bros. 64 isn't forgotten, a number of fans who picked up Super Smash Bros. Melee didn't realize that there was a game that came before it, despite the information being in the game.

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