Early Installment Weirdness / Video Games (N to Z)

Early-Installment Weirdness: Video Games
# to M | N to Z

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N

• Nancy Drew: The first game, Secrets Can Kill, bears almost no resemblance to the later installments.
  • Its characters are hand-drawn cartoons, dialogue exchanges are rudimentary and not always in-character, Nancy's phone contacts (Bess, George, and Ned) only give hints rather than show character development, and plot-essential clues crop up on bulletin boards for no reason. Plus, the fact that Nancy's investigating a cold-blooded murder and has to point a handgun at someone to win pushes its storyline into What Do You Mean, It's Not for Kids? territory by comparison with subsequent games.
  • Secrets Can Kill has since been re-released, in an updated version that sheds most of the original's Early-Installment Weirdness. The fact that Nancy's investigating a murder instead of a robbery, haunting, or other non-lethal mystery is still rather jarring, but that probably couldn't be changed considering the game's title.
  • The culprit also doesn't talk to Nancy - making it the only game (Until the remaster) in which none of the people you talk to are the culprit.
• Naruto: Ultimate Ninja: The first game has various differences from the other games:
  • The story mode consists of short Sagas involving most of the playable characters. The Sagas are non-canon and some feature alternate endings (such as Haku surviving or Neji beating Naruto). The cutscenes aren't animated, instead using portraits.
  • The English translation and voice acting is rockier than in future games (for example, the Byakugan is translated as the "Piercing Eye" in one line). Itachi also uses his original voice and Naruto overuses his catchphrase "Believe It" (which became an Abandoned Catchphrase by the second arc).
  • As the first game was released before the Search for Tsunade arc was adapted in the anime^noteOctober 23, 2003 in Japan; the Search for Tsunade arc wouldn't air until the following spring, in 2004., Naruto doesn't use his Signature Move, the Rasengan. This was also the case for most Naruto games around the time.
• Need for Speed: The first game, The Need for Speed (1994), was the only game in that series to have an endorsement from Road & Track Magazine. Furthermore, the first five games were the only games to have detailed showrooms of the cars featured in-game.
• Neptunia: The first game, Hyperdimension Neptunia (2010), used a lot of elements that were either improved upon or discarded entirely in later iterations of the series:
  • All NPCs other than Neptune's gang, the CPUs, and the Big Bad are represented by silhouettes in conversation, even if they had a significant role in the plot. In later games, NPCs who aren't important to the plot are hidden from view.
  • Characters can't sell or otherwise discard unwanted items, which left most inventories cluttered with useless weaponry later in the game.
  • Consumable items were absent; each character had to rely on "Item Skills," which gave them a chance to use specific items by combining four different alchemical components under certain conditions, and even then they were only usable during battle.
  • The Share system isn't introduced until you get a specific character in your party, and how it works isn't explained at all in the game. Neptunia mk2 does a better job of integrating the Share system into the story from the start.
  • Rather than having a single regular battle theme, the battle music is simply a slightly sped-up version of the dungeon theme your characters are in at the moment.
  • Players were graded based on how quickly they could complete each sidequest dungeon, and faster times rewarded the player with more Credits.
  • Instead of a single, overarching plotline, each of the four different worlds had its own story running almost simultaneously. Events in one world wouldn't start until you'd completed events in another world, leaving your party vastly overleveled for a few long stretches of the game.
  • The first game only had six playable characters (DLC added four more), with three of these only joining the party near the end of the game. Later games would add a lot more characters.
  • The first game opens with the goddesses being in open conflict with each other, only becoming allies at the end to combat a common enemy. The other games have them be friends from the start.
  • The first game has a more basic plot that focuses on the Muggles of the world and their trials and tribulations with the various political factions vying for power in the world. The plot also included "heretics", Muggles who didn't believe in the goddess of the land they lived on and were shunned as a result. Heretics were a major plot point, especially since one of the main characters was one. Later games would have more outlandish plots featuring powerful villains trying to bring about The End of the World as We Know It and Alternate Universes. Heretics and the politics of Muggles were never mentioned again, since later games show the goddesses to be the supreme authority of their nations.
  • The first game doesn't imply that the goddesses are much stronger than Muggles when outside Celestia, with several scenes showing Muggle weapons and regular monsters being a credible threat to them. Later games would elevate the goddesses to One-Man Army status and would go out of their way to show that NPCs are laughably ineffectual at combating even the weakest of monsters.
  • Characters Breaking the Fourth Wall was rare, and reserved for comedic scenes. Later games simply have No Fourth Wall.
  • The tone was noticably more grim and somber, with characters casually discussing topics like war and death. As such, it was rare for characters to even smile. Later games would go for a considerably Lighter and Softer tone, prioritizing comedy over drama. This was also reflected in the music, even during casual dialogue scenes. Compare Lastation's theme, from the first game, to its new one from the second.
  • The characters had far less fleshed out personalities:
    • Neptune was more serious, calm, and responsible, instead of being a ditzy Brilliant, but Lazy Genki Girl Attention Whore.
    • Noire was less of a workaholic Tsundere, and more open about being a Cosplay Otaku Girl. Her arc also culminates in her wanting to retire from her post as a CPU due to her self-percieved weakness and failure, when later games would portray being a borderline Determinator who takes great pride in her status as a CPU as one of her defining characteristics.
    • Blanc still had her foul mouth, but she was also a Perpetual Frowner with a Hair-Trigger Temper, instead of just having an A-Cup Angst Berserk Button, but otherwise being friendly and sociable. She also had to be tricked into joining the party, with Histoire's advice on how to do so mentioning that she's similar to Arfoire.
    • Vert was also more serious, calm, and responsible, instead of being a teasing Love Freak. Her Covert Pervert side was relegated to one or two side events, rather than her being an open Lovable Sex Maniac Memetic Molester who wouldn't think twice about showing porn to prepubescents or having them dress up in revealing clothing for her ogling pleasure. And while her being a Gamer Chick was part of her character, her learning not to prioritize her gaming over her goddess duties was a major part of her Character Development arc. Later games would portray her as a borderline NEET and play it for laughs.
    • IF was noticably more rude and hostile, going through a Took a Level in Kindness Character Development arc throughut the game, instead of the otherwise friendly Deadpan Snarker Only Sane Man she would become. She also shows no sign of her later Chuunibyou tendencies. She was initially reluctant to join the party, too, at first only being a part of it because you aren't allowed to leave one.
    • Compa is merely naïve with occasional bouts of wisdom and even a few Little Miss Snarker moments, instead of the ditzy Nice Girl All-Loving Hero she would become. She also has a tendency to bring up her grandpa, who is never mentioned again in later games.
    • Ho Yay was rare, only happening a few times, and a few scenes even had the girls imply an interest in males. Later games would turn the Ho Yay up to eleven, making it seem like the series has a Cast Full of Gay. As such, there is little to no Ship Tease for what would become the popular pairings that would get lots of Ho Yay Ship Tease in later games, such as Neptune/Noire and IF/Compa or IF/Vert. If anything, what little Ho Yay there is in the game seems to tease Neptune with either Compa or Vert, and IF with either 5pb. or RED.
• Nintendo Wars:
  • The very first game, Famicom Wars, in the series only had two armies (Red Star and Blue Moon) and featured a simple "one army versus another" Excuse Plot. It also lacked proper COs, meaning that the two armies were nothing more than Palette Swaps of each other. There was also no campaign, instead featuring a simple list of maps to complete. In addition, several units functioned very differently from their later incarnations (for example, while Advance Wars and beyond have the APC, which can carry footsoldiers and supply adjacent units with fuel and ammo, the APC in the original Famicom Wars could only do the former, with the latter function being delegated to a separate unit, the Supply Truck). Finally, damage and counterattack damage were calculated simultaneously during fights, meaning that two identical units on identical terrain would come out of a battle with exactly the same amount of damage inflicted on each other (in later games, the attacker would have the advantage as counterattack damage was based on the attacked unit's strength after the initial attack).
  • Super Famicom Wars, in addition to introducing Yellow Comet and Green Earth (and, thus, four-faction maps), would feature distinct COs. However, of the seven in that game, only three had any gameplay differences, all of which were severe Game Breakers as they typically gave that CO's army a massive advantage with absolutely no downside (COs in the Advance series usually have weaknesses to offset any strengths they may have). There were still no CO Powers, though, and all of the other weirdness of the original Famicom Wars remained.
  • The first Advance Wars is vastly different from later games in the series in several respects:
    • Every CO has only one CO Power, and there's a severe imbalance between each one, with weaker ones like Olaf's Blizzard and massive Game-Breaker like Eagle's Lightning Strike. Powers don't cause a BGM Override either.
    • The tutorial is separate from the main Campaign rather than integrated into it.
    • Most missions in Campaign mode are pre-deploy, and you don't get to see the map before you choose COs.
    • Only Orange Star is playable in Campaign, and all other nations are enemies.
    • There are several places where the campaign splits into two distinct paths, as well as certain missions where the entire map changes depending on the chosen CO (particularly the missions against Drake), rendering it impossible to play every single mission in one go. In addition, certain bonus missions can only be opened up by completing specific in-game tasks, such as completing certain missions within a specified number of turns or choosing a specific CO for a certain string of missions (none of which is ever conveyed to the player).
    • There are no ranking points at the end of each mission, with Speed, Power, and Technique scores represented by vague bars instead. As a result of this, maps and additional COs are not purchased with ranking points but instead using coins earned based on your letter grade.
    • The player is prompted to enter their name and takes a direct role in the campaign as Orange Star's "strategic advisor" (similar to the Tactician in Fire Emblem: The Blazing Blade). This was dropped from all future games.
    • The overall art style is much more cartoonish than in later games. In particular, Olaf and Kanbei in this game bear only a scant resemblance to their Black Hole Rising and Dual Strike counterparts.
    • The Black Hole army uses Palette Swaps of Orange Star troops as opposed to their own sprites. (There is an in-story reason for this, though.)

O

• Oddworld: The first game, Oddworld: Abe's Oddysee, has a few quirks compared to the later games and its remake. You could only have one Mudokon following you at a time (meaning, if there were multiple Mudokons in an area, you would have to keep going back and forth in order to rescue them all), there was no Quicksave option (instead the game had checkpoints that Abe would return to upon dying), Mudokons didn't have emotions, and Paramites and Scrabs couldn't be possessed. Also, all the cutscenes were narrated by Abe (in rhyme, no less) and, with the exception of the endings, featured no dialogue other than Abe's narration. The remaster, Oddworld: New 'n' Tasty!, added the Quicksave option and the ability to have multiple Mudokons following you at once.
• Onechanbara: Anyone who played Z: Kagura & Z2: Chaos first may find the earlier entries weird:
  • The first game, Simple 2000 Series Vol. 61: The Oneechanbara, was actually titled "THE Oneechanbara", as part of the theme naming of the larger series it belonged to. Needless to say, this naming convention has since fallen into disuse once it became a series in its own right. Not only that, but the first two games were also released in Europe only, named Zombie Hunters. When Bikini Zombie Slayers made it to US & EU, the Zombie Zone /Zombie Hunters name was dropped.
  • Aya is the only playable characters in the first game. An Updated Re-release of 1 and the sequels would bring additional unlockable characters. There is no stance system either.
  • Saki is a villain for the first game of series, and does not join Aya's side until second game. She does not get her signature gauntlets until Bikini Zombie Slayers.
  • The series itself owed to Dynasty Warriors and Devil May Cry, while appealing more to the former early on. The games were known for having big open environments with additions to locked rooms. By the time of the Z series, the combat and stages became more DMC/Bayonettaesque, had smaller arenas,^note Still has a lot of enemies, though not as much from older titles. and allowed you to juggle enemies or do air combos.
  • The old entries have no ranking system. They did have a gameplay grading when doing combos similar to DMC, but those did not amount to much. Later games do away with that style of gameplay grading and just go for a standard combo counter and kill combos.
  • With the exception of some bosses, all of the cannon fodder you fight are mainly zombies. It is not until the Z games that the player fights werewolves, vampires, and other supernatural creatures.
• Osu! Tatakae! Ouendan: The first game lacks a lot of the features from its successors, Elite Beat Agents and Osu Tatakae Ouendan 2. There's no bonus stages, which means that levelling up has no purpose, the final stage is just one song instead of two, the art style is a lot cruder than the later games in the series, the records menu is just a scrolling list of your score and rank rather than allowing you to see the rank of any stage you want, it's also the only way to view your rankings, as they don't appear on the song selection screen, the song's difficulty also doesn't appear on that screen, and you are unable to skip the intros to levels, only able to skip the Manga part of the intro.

P

• PAYDAY 2: In its infancy, the game was quite weird since it tried to be more like a Hollywood styled action game. The game was fairly grounded by having the players rob sensible locations like jewelry stores, small banks, nightclubs, and so on. The game also had a web series that were small live action sequences made to generate hype for the game. Compare this to the game's later patch updates that introduced far crazier things - the crew now includes several Guest Fighters to let, say, John Wick and Tony Montana heist together with Ethan and Hila from H3h 3 Productions; the heists have far sillier and less sensical objectives, like rescuing goats that are packed with cocaine, and several bank jobs that have required larger and larger drills; and the weapon and mask selection has grown to the point where it's possible to complete a heist while wearing a mask that is literally on fire and mowing down the police with an honest-to-God minigun.
• Persona:
  • The first and second Persona games have almost no resemblance whatsoever to the far better known later games. Besides certain very broad ideas (teenagers fight monsters with Anthropomorphic Personifications of their psyches, Carl Jung thematics, etc.) and a certain character and his home base (Igor and the Velvet Room), they might as well be two different series:
    • The lead artist for 1 and 2 was Kazuma Kaneko, who was also the head artist for the mainline SMT games from Shin Megami Tensei I to Shin Megami Tensei: Strange Journey; as such, P1 and P2's art styles have striking similarities to that of their parent franchise (with 2's official character art even sharing the "porcelain doll" look of later Kaneko-designed games). From Persona 3 onward, the lead Persona artist has been Shigenori Soejima (who did the in-game portraits for 2), whose art style is more "anime" and has a much brighter color palette.
    • The first two are far more combat-focused, revolving around the sophisticated "speak to demons while fighting them" system, while subsequent games are hybrid social sim/dungeon-crawling JRPGs with a far greater emphasis on the tarot card theme than the previous games (though Persona 5 brought back the negotiation system).
    • Unlike in subsequent games, Persona and Persona 2 portrayed the ability to summon Personas as a widely held trait and generally accepted as real, if slightly disregarded regardless. You could actually interact with NPC shop and restaurant patrons that would discuss Personas openly, and one of your team members would actually grouse that she was disappointed to find the power less unique than she imagined. Party members started out with a Persona of a specific Arcana related to their personality and worked best with that one or one of a few "related Arcanas"; while the "Persona related to personality" part still applies in later games, most party members can no longer switch their Personas, with the main character being the only one capable of doing so. Dungeons were actual places in the world, rather than pan-dimensional televisions, schools, etc.
    • The first game plays far more like the mainline Shin Megami Tensei series, with first-person dungeon exploration and the series staple attack Megido having an element that isn't Almighty-type (which at that point had only previously appeared in one other SMT game). It's also the only Persona game to have a grid-based battle system.
    • The battle music in the earlier games are far more standard for what you'd expect from the genre, whereas Genre Mashup pop songs such as "Mass Destruction", "Reach Out To The Truth" and "Last Surprise" would become iconic for their respective games.
    • In general, Persona 1 and 2 have much stronger story connections to non-Persona SMT games than their successors; the female protagonist of Shin Megami Tensei if... is a recurring NPC in 1 and 2, and Kyouji Kuzunoha from Devil Summoner makes an implied appearance in Persona 2.
    • 1 completely lacks the concept of Shadow Selves. The closest equivalent would be Mai, Aki, Pandora, and the Ideal Maki on your team, none of which are the singular "true self" of the character in question. Much like how a person puts on different 'masks' in everyday life, they're all facets of the real Maki's personality, and they have to fuse together to get the full picture. When the 2 duology finally introduced them to the setting, this was cut down to one character representing what's Beneath the Mask.
    • 1 has two characters change arcanas when they get their Ultimate Personas: Kei goes from Hierophant to Judgement and Reiji goes from Devil to Death. From 2 onwards, a character's primary arcana is set in stone outside of one extreme storyline event in 3, and Kei's Ultimate Persona Yamaoka is actually retconned from Judgement to Hierophant.
    • Games starting from 4 onward have at least one member of the team from the congitive world, but these characters are either independent of any real-world person (such as Teddie) or are mental constructs made from another's memories (such as Akechi in Persona 5 Royal). In 1, the cognitive party member is not only revealed to be directly connected to a real-world person, but is one of several split aspects of them, some of whom you fight.
  • Persona 3, with its drastic changes to the formulas of 1 and 2, can be viewed as a reboot to the series. While it laid the Wake Up, Go to School & Save the World groundwork that Persona 4 and Persona 5 would follow, it still has a number of design elements that 4 and 5 don't. The PSP Updated Re Release of 3, released after 4 and before 5, and especially the remake Persona 3 Reload released 7 years after 5 change a number of these elements to make them more consistent with later games.
    • The most drastic difference is that 3 lacks full party control - the player can only control the protagonist and give general orders for the AI teammates to follow. 4 and 5 keep the tactics system, but also allow the player to take manual, direct control. The PSP version of 3 added full party control, but as the game was never properly balanced around this, it becomes significantly easier. Reload keeps the full party control, but tweaks the battles to account for it.
    • There's no guard command in battle, unlike 4 and 5. The PSP version adds it.
    • If you use a multi-target attack and it doesn't knock down all of the targets, then you won't get a 1 more. 4 and 5 make it so that knocking down at least one enemy will always get you a 1 more.
    • Going out dungeon crawling in 3 is a nighttime activity - the player can do something after school, head back to the dorm, and then head out. In 4 and 5, choosing to visit dungeons is an all-day affair - the player has to go immediately after school, and won't get a chance to perform any other activities that day, though one Confidante in 5 did unlock the ability to go out at night after entering a dungeon during the day.
    • Dungeon progress in 3 is gated by a fatigue system, wherein exploring too much in one sitting will tire characters out and make them practically useless in combat. The only way to quell this fatigue is by leaving the dungeon. Tiredness can persist for a few days, preventing the player from making any meaningful dungeon progress while it lingers. In 4 and 5, progress is instead indirectly gated by the party's Spirit Points - Magic Is Rare, Health Is Cheap is in full effect here, and the easiest way to restore party health is by spending SP to cast healing spells. SP is extremely important for defeating enemies, especially bosses, but there are very few ways to easily restore it besides packing up and leaving the dungeon for the day. By contrast, restoring both SP and HP in 3 is very easy - the player simply has to head back to the dungeon's hub area for a free refill. Changed in the PSP version - restoring HP and SP in the hub area now costs money, just like 4, and the fatigue system has been changed so that it no longer immediately gates off progress. Reload completely ditches the fatigue system and now fully uses Magic Is Rare, Health Is Cheap, and the full heal in the hub area now costs 7 rare Twilight Fragments to use, making it more of a last-ditch resource.
    • 3 has no Social Links for the party aside from the romanceable girls, and the girls are treated the same as every other Social Link. In 4 and 5, the entire party has Social Links, and following these specific Social Links will grant the party unique bonuses when dungeon crawling. The female route in the PSP version adds Social Links for the entire party. While Reload doesn't have links for the male party members, it does add social events similar to Elizabeth's dates which help to flesh out their characters more.
    • In 3, Social Links have no effect other than how much bonus XP they grant to Persona fusions of their Arcana and unlocking the ability to fuse the ultimate Persona for that Arcana. Starting in 4, Social Links with party members would also grant those party members additional special abilities, like having a chance of instantly healing someone affected by a negative status effect, or being able to survive what would have been a fatal attack at 1 HP. This was continued in 5, where all Confidants unlocked various abilities to empower the party as their routes were completed.
    • In 3, the growth and development of the party members is closely connected to the main plot and thus happens over a long period of time, with the cast receiving their second Personas as part of the main storyline. In 4 and 5, the main cast's plot-related character development mostly happens in their introductory arcs that lead to them obtaining their initial Personas in the first place, while their optional Social Links (or Confidants), unlocked after they receive their Persona, is where most of their growth and development happens, with the pace of such determined by how quickly the player can progress through their Social Links. Secondary Personas are obtained only on completing a character's Social Link, and are not part of the main story.
    • Related to the above, the nature of the protagonist's own evolved Personas is vastly different in the games after 3. In Persona 4 and 5, the protagonist's second Persona shows up in the finale as a story event, and can only be used in regular gameplay in New Game Plus as an Infinity +1 Sword. In 3, by contrast, the protagonist's canonical evolved Persona, Thanatos, is completely optional, significantly less overpowered, and can instead be acquired just after the Disc-One Final Boss (incidentally, just around the time the rest of the party is acquiring their own evolved Personas) by fusing him like any other regular Persona. Not only that, the protagonist has a third-tier Persona, Messiah, who can be acquired near the tail end of the game by fusing Orpheus (his first Persona) and Thanatos together. The concept of the protagonist having a third-tier Persona that can be used in regular gameplay would later be revisted in Persona 5 Royal, albeit as DLC.
    • The protagonist of 3 isn't the head honcho of the party. While his unique Wild Card power leads to him becoming the group's "field leader" (which serves an in-game justification for why the player can give the rest of the party fighting orders), the actual logistics and mission planning are handled mostly by Mitsuru and Ikutsuki. He also joins the party after it's already been formed, and there are already a few members before him- Mitsuru, Akihiko, Yukari and (formerly) Shinjiro. The 4 and 5 protagonists are both one of the founders of their respective groups in the first place and the leaders from the get-go.
    • In 3, there are some times when party members may not be able to go to Tartarus even if they aren't tired, such as if they're studying or troubled by a plot development concerning them. Related to the above, if Mitsuru and Akihiko can't go, you won't be allowed to go to Tartarus at all.
    • In 3 and FES, the protagonist can use almost every weapon type the other party members can, and has no unique weapon type just for himself, while party members are locked into their own single type. In 4 and 5, the protagonist is locked into a single weapon type like the rest of the party. The PSP remake changed this - the protagonist can now only use their designated weapon type.
    • With the exception of Aigis, who instead has some extremely heavy romance subtext, all of the female Social Links in 3 that are around the protagonist's age will eventually culminate in a romance. In 4 and 5, romances are optional. Changed in the female protagonist route of the PSP remake - the newly-added romances with male party members are optional, although the subtext of the Aigis Social Link remains, with some additional Gayngst from Aigis.
    • In 3, neglecting Social Links, reneging on plans with them, or making bad dialogue choices can lead to them becoming reversed or even broken, preventing you from progressing in said Social Link. In 4, reversing and breaking are restricted to a couple of bad dialogue choices for two specific links (Ai and Naoto, and only the former can break^ExplanationIf you ask Ai out midway through, then refuse to stay friends after she breaks up with you), and in 5 said system is removed entirely. Reload removes breaks, while generally limiting reversals to only occuring after making obviously bad dialogue choices.
    • 3 also had a few instances in which progressing on Social Links unlocked other Social Links. The mechanic is less present in 4- Ai is introduced midway through the Strength Social Link, while Hisano shows up midway through the Devil Social Link. It's completely absent in 5; most of the Confidants are met during the story or mentioned in IM conversations.
    • 3 does not have a Social Link for your Velvet Room attendant; just some sidequests, Persona fusion requests, and optional events.
  • The non-game adaptations of 1 gave the protagonist an entirely new character arc, and introduced various Canon Foreigners to expand on his characterization (for instance Kazuya Toudou from the manga). 1 and 2's protagonists also had a definite personality, made more evident by the fact that they weren't of the Fool Arcana, and spoke full lines in games where they weren't protagonists (like the Boy With Earring and Tatsuya in Eternal Punishment and Maya in Innocent Sin), and even in manga or anime where they were the main characters. This was later averted from 3 onwards, where the adaptations are Truer to the Text and the protagonists have very little characterization added to them. Joker from 5 even had some of his (very few) personality traits from the game taken away in the anime.
• Phantasy Star Online 2:
  • EPISODE ONE has a heavy leaning towards Quna as the lead heroine with Matoi being the Mysterious Waif you rescued and keep checking up on. By EPISODE TWO, Matoi gets bigger billing and Quna gets pushed into the background until she's just there for concerts.
  • When the game began, weapons only reached 12 Stars with 9-11 star weapons being relegated to Infinity -1 Sword status. 13 Stars would join by EPISODE 3.
• Pikmin:
  • Pikmin (2001) features three Pikmin types: Red, Blue and Yellow. Red and Blue Pikmin work the same as they do throughout the series, but Yellow Pikmin function completely differently: they lack their trademark electricity immunity (there were no electrical hazards in the first game), and their unique traits were being lightweight and thus able to be thrown higher than the other types, as well as being able to handle Bomb Rocks. The lightness was kept for subsequent games, but when Bomb Rocks returned in Pikmin 2, they could not be handled at all, and Pikmin 3 allowed any Pikmin type to handle them.
  • Idle Pikmin in the first game turned pale, a trait not seen in any of the other games.
  • In the second game's 2-player battle mode, Player 1 only uses Red Pikmin (with their extra damage being removed for balance) while Player 2 only uses Blue Pikmin. The 2-player modes for 3 and 4 instead differentiate the player's Pikmin by having cyan leaves for Player 1 and magenta leaves for Player 2, as well as allowing multiple types to be used.
• Portal: The first game, Portal (2007), has a drastically different tone than its sequel and subsequent spinoffs:
  • The test chambers themselves are far bleaker, with sterile concrete and metal walls making up the vast majority of the scenery. The rest of the games have a much more dynamic atmosphere with a distinctly futuristic look.
  • Similarly, the "behind the scenes" areas in the original games were claustrophobic, labyrinthine, rusting, and quite literally falling apart. Contrast this to later installments, where these areas mostly consist of vast, sprawling chasms filled with intricate mechanisms powering everything in the facility.
  • The soundtrack of the original game consisted mostly of brooding, ambient tracks that were designed to evoke a feeling of tension and isolation. The sequel is positively upbeat in comparison, with light synthesizers and orchestral instruments forming the backbone of the soundtrack.
  • The original game relied heavily on subtle Black Comedy, to drive the point home further that all was not what it seemed at Aperture. While there's still plenty of Black Comedy to go around in the sequels/spinoffs, their overall sense of humor is far more overt.^*To paraphrase Yahtzee, it's more "custard pie in the face" humor than the original's "snooker cue to the bollocks" humor.
  • GLaDOS originally had a much rounder, more static design, only moving to dodge attacks during her boss fight. The sequel (and, by extension, every spinoff that's since followed) gave her a more squared and much more expressive design.
  • The original game had a much tighter storyline: it basically amounted to you solving a bunch of tests put forth by a noticeably malfunctioning AI and then escaping the facility when said AI tries to kill you. Later games would go much deeper into Aperture Science's history, as well as take a much closer look at the inner machinations of the company itself.
• Postal: The first game is about the player character going on a horrific rampage in order to "cleanse" the Earth of what he perceives as the corruption, i.e. human beings. None of it is played for comedy at all — the menu screen, dark music, violence, and sounds are all meant to be 100% disturbing. The sequels, Postal 2 and 3, are darkly comedic games that revel in Crossing The Line Twice... and then maybe 3 or 4 more times after that just for safe measure. And then repainting the line in blood and urine. Also, Postal is an isometric game, while Postal 2 and 3 are respectively first- and third-person shooters.
• Prehistorik: The first game was a slow-paced platformer with the caveman having to fill a hunger bar by eating fallen enemies and food items scattered everywhere. All subsequent games retained the basic gameplay but got rid of the hunger bar, got rid of the Wonder Boy-esque secret wizard character and made the caveman much more agile (e.g. being able to run on all fours and jump higher) plus the special ability to kill everything on-screen with his screams. Also, he looks more unhinged, having replaced his neatly-trimmed hairdo and beard from the first game with a wild mane of hair and a lolling tongue.
• Prince of Persia: The first game in the "Sands of Time" trilogy, Prince of Persia: The Sands of Time, was originally designed to be a vague prequel to the original game rather than set in its own continuity. The Prince mentions that his home city is Siraf, when the sequels established it to be Babylon. The game is also set in medieval Islamic Persia due to the Arabic inscriptions everywhere. The other games seem to be set in pre-Islamic Persia, since Babylon is the capital of the empire and The Forgotten Sands takes place in Israel, which was controlled by Achaemenid Persia but no later dynasties. Furthermore, the first game has a series of wall paintings depicting the origins of the Sands of Time, which contradict the backstory given in Warrior Within.
• Professor Layton: The first game, Professor Layton and the Curious Village, is a bit different from other games. The characters aren't as zoomed in during dialogue exchanges, the red exclamation mark symbol appears when you do any examination instead of just appearing when you've activated a puzzle, and there's very little voice acting outside of the Anime cutscenes and the victory/failure quotes after puzzles. There was also no Memo function at this point (though a handful of puzzles did let you draw directly on them), meaning that any note-taking and calculating had to be done on a separate sheet of paper. Furthermore, the optional side puzzles are much simpler than they'd be in later games (one consists entirely of clicking parts to assemble a robot dog - there isn't even the challenge of figuring out where the parts go - while another is little more than a jigsaw puzzle). Finally, in terms of characterization, Layton is unusually baffled at people's obsession with puzzles, when in later games (even those placed chronologically before this one) he's not only okay with it, he himself is a veritable puzzle chewer.
• Progressbar 95: Playing v0.21 and other early versions can feel surreal. Segments are shorter, windows look different, there's only a "Like game" button when it comes to social media integration, and perhaps the weirdest of all, progress isn't given in increments of 5%.
• Putt-Putt: The first game, Putt-Putt Joins the Parade, has very little resemblance to any later HE game. The game is much smaller and the puzzles are very simplistic; also, you are sent down one of three streets to mow lawns in order to make money, and solving the puzzles to make it across the other two streets will be entirely unnecessary unless you also decide to deliver groceries, and only one of the three requires an item to solve it (another one also can be solved with an item, but you can also solve it by honking your horn). The mini-games are much more like toys rather than arcade styled, as they have no objective (one of them is a cube where you just mix everything up to make crazy pictures, for instance). The characters are usually one-off characters created for small scenes, and are not given much development. It's also the only game in the entire series that actually makes use of the gas gauge, as it slowly drains while you play, although Take Your Time is in full effect as you cannot actually run out; later games would simply make the gas gauge a decoration. Finally, bar Putt-Putt Travels Through Time, this is the only game that doesn't give you a checklist of the items that you need to finish the game.
• Puyo Puyo:
  • When the original game was first released for the MSX and Famicom, it was a simple Falling Blocks game with a single field and the top of the screen as the only opponent; Madou Monogatari characters were limited to the Puyos and token appearances by Arle and Carbuncle. It was the arcade version released a year later that would start the focus on the multiplayer and cast of characters the series is known for. More subtly, the original game has six colors of Puyo—red, blue, light green (replaced with purple), dark green, gray (removed entirely), and yellow—as opposed to the five that later games would settle on.
  • While Puyo Puyo 2 keeps the Madou Monogatari characters from the first arcade game, it abandons the iconic banter/manzai sequences in favor of short character bios before each round. It's a rather surprising omission, considering the character interactions later became one of the series' biggest selling points. The Super Famicom port added them back in.
  • SEGA's first original Puyo Puyo game, Puyo Pop (2001), was basically SEGA trying to copy Compile's older games. This includes recycling voice clips from Puyo Puyo Sun, strictly using the rules from Puyo Puyo Tsu, and exclusively using the former Madou Monogatari characters. This is very different from Puyo Puyo Fever and every game since, due to the series going through a Soft Reboot with a new cast of characters and setting, a far more saccharine art style, becoming even Lighter and Softer, and the larger emphasis on Comeback Mechanics.
  • A lot of the Fever-era characters, such as Amitie, Raffina, and Klug, started off as straighter expies of Arle and her friends and enemies before going through some Divergent Character Evolution later on and becoming more unique in their own right in terms of personality. Amitie in particular was a lot more tomboyish, a result of her being the expy of the similarly tomboyish Arle.
  • In Puyo Puyo Fever 2, Sig, who makes his debut in this game, is barely ever mentioned to have an obsession with bugs and Bug Catching, a character trait that would become one of his defining factors later on.
  • Yu is a solo character in her debut in Fever. Once Fever 2 rolled around, she would be accompanied by her brother Rei.
  • The DS games have portraits of the characters that appear on one of the screens that react to events during the game, such as being close to losing or close to winning, while another screen is dedicated to the Puyo gameplay. In Fever and Fever 2, the Puyo gameplay is on the top screen while the characters are on the bottom screen; in 15th Anniversary and it successors, their placement is inverted.

R

• Rainbow Six Siege: Most of the base game operators are The Faceless or otherwise have their face heavily obscured, and their armor is almost identical among their special forces branch. This design philosophy feels a little odd compared to the operators added over the years, which feature far more varied and expressive designs. Another oddity is that the base game's CTUs like the SAS or GSG9 have, technically, three Attackers and Defenders each (two unique Operators and a generic "Recruit"), whereas most later CTUs like JTF2 or the SAT only get two Operators each, generally one Attacker and one Defender or two of one and none of the other, with a rare few much later in the game only getting one Operator period. The base game's Operators also have a slightly wider selection of weapons, including those shared between roles, than later Operators, such as all four SAS Operators getting to use the M590 shotgun, while post-release CTUs restrict shotguns to Defenders; or handgun choice being between a smaller, weaker but faster and higher-capacity gun and a larger, stronger but lower-capacity one for the base CTUs and, for the most part, a single pistol per post-release CTU.
• Ratchet & Clank:
  • Ratchet & Clank (2002) is very different to its sequels. Weapons don't upgrade (bar buying them with Gold Bolts), your health increase is bought only, not from leveling it up, and it starts at four health and only goes up to eight. The game initially has an air meter when you're underwater and no fast swimming (though both of these disappear when you get the appropriate gadgets, and the sequels keep them). Weirdest perhaps of all, the only way to strafe is bought through a hover pack upgrade well into the game (along with a mid air jump not present in the sequels), but makes it impossible to jump and you move very slowly. The later games are practically unwinnable without some quick strafe flipping. Also, Ratchet takes longer to run and swing his wrench, and must remain stationary if he throws it. He has a noticeably different voice actor as well.
  • Ratchet is also noticeably different as a character in the original game. In the first game he was characterized as a streetwise and teasingly sarcastic character out for a good romp who becomes arrogant and sour towards Clank for much of the game after Captain Qwark's betrayal (until he realizes the error of his ways and the two work together on common ground), while from the second game onward he is far more mature, warm-hearted and selfless. Notably Ratchet also has strong desires to be a hero, an aspect added into the re-telling of the origin story in Ratchet & Clank (2016).
  • Captain Qwark's characterization can also be quite jarring if you were first introduced to the character in the later installments. In the first two games he's an unrepentantly villainous Fake Ultimate Hero who borders on being sociopathic, and while he gets a handful of humorous moments, the general unlikeability of his personality is quite emphasized. Starting with the third game, he's still a Fake Ultimate Hero, but is portrayed as an incompetent and egotistical, but ultimately well-meaning bumbler who is somewhat consistently on the heroes' side and mostly provides comic relief. This is also addressed in the 2016 remake, where he's still an antagonist, but a considerably grayer and more morally conflicted one.
  • In the second game, Ratchet & Clank: Going Commando, a First Person Mode was added, but it was only available in Challenge Mode after beating the game. Oddly, Ratchet could not swing his wrench in this mode (unless he's on a grind rail), only throw it.
  • Going Commando also has Ratchet encounter Angela Cross, a Lombax, another member of his species. Even though Ratchet was the only Lombax shown up to that point, him finding another one wasn't treated as a big deal, with Ratchet only really being surprised to find out the thief they've been chasing is a girl. In later games, Ratchet being the Last of His Kind is a common recurring plot point, with the stories mostly trying to ignore the fact that he already met another Lombax.
  • There's also a noticeable shift in the games' storytelling starting with Ratchet & Clank Future: Tools of Destruction. Whereas the first five games and Secret Agent Clank are whacky episodic adventures, starting with Tools of Destruction (sans All 4 One and Full Frontal Assault) the series begins to take itself (slightly) more seriously and features explorations of the titular characters' origins and even features an overarching plot as opposed to the largely episodic nature of the PS2 and PSP games.
• Rayman: The first game, Rayman (1995), featured almost an entirely different setting from the later games, with a different cast of characters, a more Wacky Land-style world as opposed to the more dreamlike one of the later games, a different mythos, and even different collectables. It wasn't until the second game that the modern cast of the Rayman series were introduced (most of them being old friends of Rayman's we'd never met before), along with the current version of its backstory. A subtle difference is that many characters are limbless like Rayman himself. This would not be the case in later installments. Rayman Origins tries to fuse the two conflicting storylines, but still skews a bit more heavily towards the Rayman 2: The Great Escape version of things. It does manage to explain the Electoons and Rayman's origin at the hands of Betilla the Fairy. Rayman 1 is also the only game where finding all the cages is required to reach the final boss as opposed to optional 100% completion.
• Red Dead: The first game, Red Dead Revolver, is quite different from its successors, Red Dead Redemption and Red Dead Redemption II. For one thing, it's a linear Third-Person Shooter instead of a Wide-Open Sandbox, though it does have an explorable hub level. Its story and tone are also a lot less gritty than the Redemption games.
• REFLEC BEAT: The first version, REFLEC BEAT (2010), only has two Top markers, even on Hard, and focuses particularly on battle—winning will allow you to clear the song even if you have <70% Achievment Rate, said Achievement Rate is not shown during stages, and the announcer declares "You win!" and "You lose!" rather than "Clear!" and "Failed!". Finally, the menu interface is much darker than its successors and the song selection screen shows two scrollable columns of songs represented by album art rather than grids of album art.
• Resident Evil:
  • The original Resident Evil (1996) featured live-action scenes for its opening and ending sequences, whereas every subsequent installment in the series (including the 2002 remake) until Resident Evil 3 (Remake) used CGI cutscenes instead.
  • The first Resident Evil game also feels very basic compared to the later sequels. The original lacked an auto-aiming function (unless you were playing the Japanese version) and the weapons came as they appeared without any chance to enhance them. The original game had Multiple Endings while the sequels only have a single ending each (except for Resident Evil 3: Nemesis and Resident Evil 5, although one could argue the alternate scenarios in Resident Evil 2 serve a similar purpose). The first game also lacked the limping animation that the player character could suffer if they were hurt, which meant even if your health was in the red, you could run at a brisk pace just fine. There was also 3D object scanning if you chose to inspect an item (which is only used to reveal two Plot Coupons hidden inside of books), something that the later games dropped, but was brought back in Code: Veronica and the remake to use for a few more puzzles. A common reoccurrence established since Resident Evil 2 is having the Big Bads and other characters go One-Winged Angel, mutating in varying, grotesque ways. Quite a number of them also become towering monstrosities. It could be a bit strange looking back at the first game, realizing this never happens at all.
  • Chris, Jill, Barry, and Rebecca in the first game are wildly different in their personalities compared to later installments due to the first game having no budget to hire better voice actors plus the developers directing the vocals despite being Japanese. Jill comes off as both whiny and on the verge of a nervous breakdown, Chris sounds like a complete dweeb, Rebecca is overkly perky for one being caught in a mansion full of zombies, and Barry is known for his Large Ham tendencies mixed with puns.
  • The entire series has made a big Genre Shift from claustrophobic, escape-oriented survival horror to an adrenaline-fueled action series where the protagonists, while still under extreme duress, have more control over the situation; to wit, the first game has a S.W.A.T.-based team trapped in a horror-filled mansion, while Resident Evil 5 is set in Africa with two soldiers freely going gung-ho on infected civilians. With it, a lot of the "survival" aspects have been lost, but even during the early years of the franchise, the second game deviates heavily from the first by giving Claire and Leon far more than enough gun ammo to make it through the game. In the first game, ammo was highly limited, and running out of a particular ammo made certain boss fights near impossible to beat.
  • Another difference that gaps the first few games from later ones is that the undead creatures and monsters are far more resilient and aggressive than they were later on. It can take as many as 9 shots from a handgun to take down a zombie in the first three games.
  • The monsters in the first game were also uninspired, being clear shout outs to different movie monsters and killer animals. Starting with 2, they started becoming more unique.
  • Albert Wesker's apparent death at Tyrant's hands (er, claws) initially was intended to be permanent, as shown by an early novelization and some versions of the game where you can fight his zombified corpse in bonus modes. Subsequent games would develop him into the series Big Bad.
  • Weapons would only come in one of each type. There was one kind of handgun, one shotgun, and so on. 2 would give multiple handguns to Leon and Claire, while Nemesis would start handing out different shotguns.
  • The first two games required a button press to climb stairs. Outside of briefly returning in Code: Veronica, it would never appear again.
  • Sniper rifles didn't start appearing in the games until Code: Veronica thanks to the prerendered backgrounds every game in the series up to that point had been. Once fully 3D backgrounds became the norm, scoped weapons became more common.
  • The level designs was very box-like. Nearly every room or area was a square or rectangle and the environments were flat. Nemesis was the first game to include geometric rooms and areas.
• Rhythm Heaven: The first game, Rhythm Tengoku for the GBA, is pretty different than its two sequels. For starters, the mini-games are arranged in eight columns of six instead of ten columns of five, and the Final Exam Remix is Remix 6 instead of Remix 10. Also, the music for the sequels' mini-games are tailor-made for them while some of the GBA mini-games just have accompanying BGM with the same tempo. And there's the Unexpected Gameplay Change that Quiz brought, while the other games never radically change the rules. The Remixes of the GBA version also doesn't change the artistic theme of the mini-games and one stage actually remixes previous remixes, two things that the sequels don't dabble in. Lastly, some first-time stages have no practice sessions.
• Richman:
  • The map in the original game is a full quadrilateral with some intersections instead of having wierd-shaped maps with lots of sharp turns in later titles.
  • The movements are determined by dices automatically rolling in the first two titles instead of rolled by the characters in most titles.
  • The shop is called the black market in 2 & 3.
  • Some of the cards are labled as items and sold in different shops in 3, and a single shop with cards section and items section in 4.
  • Properties at their base level are represented by colored blocks only in the first three titles instead of having something represent the characters.
• Roblox: The early days were quite a bit different for their weirdness.
  • Character models did not have animation; they simply slid around without moving their limbs.
  • Explosions were first rendered as red spheres that flashed for an instant.
  • In the first few months of the site launching, accounts could be made that had a space in the username. This was changed before the end of 2006 with only a few hundred of those accounts surviving.
  • Robucks were once given out daily without needing to be active in Builder's Club. These were replaced by Tickets, but later on those were removed as well, and players were left without a daily stipend.
  • Blocks lacked bevels in the early days, which made things look much more rigid and connected.
  • The default place was either a simple destructible house with a few extra blocks or a flat featureless 252 square-stud plane.
  • After Builder's Club expired, players could keep the extra place slots provided. Today, they are removed once any form of Builder's Club expires, unless the user had Builder's Club before a certain time.
  • The game initially opted for a nostalgic, blocky, LEGO-esque aesthetic that made the games look like a kids' playset come to life. As the years went on and the platform became more advanced, allowing for greater detail and scripting in games, this aesthetic gradually fell out of favor.
• RuneScape: The game's original incarnation, RuneScape Classic, is massively different from its current version. The player characters and NPCs are low-res sprites; the game lacked dialogue boxes, meaning all dialogue is displayed above characters' heads; there was no indication on your progress in a quest, or if you've even started it in the first place; the camera is more restricted; there is no barrier dividing the Wilderness from the rest of the map; there was no members game in its earliest years (meaning that all skills, features, and areas were open to all players). Jagex has opened this game to members on four occasions before ultimately closing it for good in 2018.

S

• Samurai Shodown: The first game, Samurai Shodown (1993), had an interesting aspect that not only could you disarm an opponent, but you could also destroy their weapon with a strong attack.
• Saints Row: The first game, Saints Row (2006), was originally a much more down to earth sandbox action game based on gang violence. Fans of the later entries' over the top, irreverent humor might be shocked to see that the original was playing it much straighter. It also didn't let you select the main character's gender, and - as endlessly lampshaded across the second game - he didn't speak all that much either.
• Shadow Hearts:
  • The differences between Koudelka and the "core" franchise are like night and day, with Koudelka playing as a strange hybrid of RPG and Survival Horror (which it was), and the SH games being straight-up RPGs with a heavy comedic bent.
  • The original game, aside from the focus on horror, is in many ways the most "normal" RPG of the trilogy by the virtue of featuring most staples of the genre such as inns, town shops, acquisition of new abilities by leveling up, plenty of Standard RPG Items to deal with Status Effects, etc. The sequels did most of those away: there's no inns or shops in towns; all the buying and selling is done via a pair of Intrepid Merchants that kept showing up wherever the protagonists go regardless of anything, the abilities of your character are tied to their personal sidequests and there's only one item that deal with Status Effects.
• Shadowverse: All chapters from the Morning Star arc will always put the character against enemies popping out of nowhere, even in the midst of dialogue. This causes even the shortest conversations to be interrupted by monster attacks. By the second half of the arc, we get to know more of the original characters' backstories as they are trapped in the dream world. The second arc named Guild Wars actually has a better plot, leaves equal opportunities for introducing new characters as well as expanding the Character Development of the originals. Some chapters are no longer interrupted by unnecessary monster attacks. That being said, the Guild Wars chapters of each leader are actually longer than their Morning Star chapters. Shadowverse might have taken this trend from another Cygames title, Granblue Fantasy.
• Shantae: The first game, Shantae (2002), is the only installment where Shantae has multiple lives (later games give her just one, with each heart on her health bar accounting for four hits instead of just two), and interaction in towns is limited to Shantae rotating until she finds the building she wants to enter, similarly to Shining in the Darkness. It's also the only one with an active day/night cycle, with tougher monsters coming out at night, and one building in towns only accessible at night. The original also lacks the "skull = death" pits, causing the need for many blind jumps.
• Shin Megami Tensei:
  • The mainline Shin Megami Tensei series itself has undergone several changes since it started out. The first game in the series was an adaptation of Aya Nishitani's Digital Devil Story novels, featuring none of the alignment choices or Multiple Endings that would be characteristic of the series later on. The connection with the Digital Devil Story series was drastically toned down in the sequel, and the Continuity Reboot Shin Megami Tensei I dropped the novel series' plotline entirely. Also, many earlier Megaten games had first-person dungeon crawling as a key mechanic. This has been phased out from Shin Megami Tensei III: Nocturne onward, though you could enter a first-person view in New Game Plus, and limitations with the DS saw the old style updated and temporarily revived with Shin Megami Tensei: Strange Journey.
  • Most SMT games tend to have game mechanics (such as Press Turns, One More, or Demon Co-op) that reward you for hitting an enemy's elemental weakness, and/or penalize you for having your attacks nullified. Older games lack this, so the only effects weaknesses and resistances have is increasing or decreasing the damage of attacks.
  • The early NES, SNES, and PS1 SMT games let you have a whopping six people in your main party, reduced to four with the introduction of the Turn Press system for balancing purposes. Among other things, the older games had the protagonist not be able to use magic at all (he doesn't even get any MP), you had a controllable second human with you who could use magic but not summon (while Shin Megami Tensei IV brought back human partners, they are completely AI-controlled and not part of your main party), and the games in general were a lot more obtuse.
  • Early games in the series also had a far more complex elemental system. From Nocturne on, there tends to be six or seven main elements with the possibility for more in spinoffs, along with ailments and Almighty. In addition, with the exception of a few bosses, resistances and weaknesses cut damage by roughly the same percentage. In older games, due to the separation of demons' skills and magic, there were a boatload of extra elements, mostly physical, that were distinct from the modern elements typically seen in the franchise. Later games would largely merge these into the Physical element and only keep Gun as an alternative. In addition, enemies could resist some elements more than others, with 8/8 being standard resistance and the numerator going lower the more resistance the enemy has.
  • The Compendium, a key franchise-wide mechanic that lets the player register and resummon demons or Personas, was introduced in Nocturne. In older games, once you fused or released one, it was gone, though most of these games didn't have demons level up and had heavy restrictions on inheritance, if it was in the game at all.
  • There was no skill inheritance during fusion in earlier games, meaning demons were stuck with whatever skills they came with, and useful early to mid-game skills were lost if you wanted stronger demons. The ability to pass along skills was added later to enable players to Elite Tweak their demons/Personas, but they were still assigned randomly, forcing players to reroll for the skills they wanted. It wasn't until around the 2010's that the games allowed players to manually pick the skills they wanted to pass on.
• Silent Hill: The first game, Silent Hill (1999), is the only installment of the franchise on the original PlayStation (many of them are for the PlayStation 2). There are also a few oddities here and there, including:
  • Not a lot of puzzles; most of the gameplay is based on survival and combat
  • Harry, the player character, is by far the worst gun user out of any of the game's protagonists. This was because the game actually factored in external elements (perception and distance affected gun accuracy). While each is justified — they're all civilians — the player for the second game is far better.
  • This is the only game where the nurses act the way they do because of an external parasite, plus the only entry in the series to feature a male variation of the nurse/doctor enemy type. From the second game onward it would be female-looking nurse monsters only, with the design from the second game becoming the most iconic and reused (though the third game did use a less sexual design, and those nurses had actual faces like the ones in the first game).
  • The Multiple Endings are based on two decisions only; there's no Karma Meter or mixture of both involved. The endings change whether you have saved or killed your partner, Cybil, from a parasite, and if you were able to find an important item or not in Michael Kaufmann's apartment; naturally, the best ending requires you save Cybil and get the item.
  • The monsters were not representations of any facet of Harry's psyche, but Alessa's likes and dislikes. In fact, much of the plot doesn't focus on Harry at all: he doesn't have any connection or deep-seated flaws, he's just a guy looking for his daughter.
• The Sims:
  • The Sims (2000) is very different from its descendants. It's more like a typical life simulator (many which started out as, or were, clones of said game) than the goofy Sims. Unlike the more recent games, there was no aging other than from baby to child, and the Create-A-Sim page was extremely limited. Simlish was also less expansive and thus more repetitive than in future games.
  • The very first Expansion Pack, Livin' Large, didn't have a theme or focus on a major new gameplay experience and was instead a compilation of various random new items; something later games would probably call a "Stuff Pack". Eventually, both The Sims and Livin' Large were discontinued and replaced with The Sims: Deluxe Edition which bundled the two together, acknowledging the fact that by the standards of later expansions Livin' Large doesn't really stand on its own.
  • The first game didn't track what day of the week it was, so Sims go to school and work every single day. Since Sims can't grow old and retire from their careers, The Sims also features the odd quirk of forcing Sims who reach the top of their career track to move to the mid-level of another career, something that has never been seen again.
  • WooHooing didn't exist, and G-Rated Sex was in full effect. To have a child, two adult Sims simply had to do enough romantic interactions until a pop-up appeared asking if you wanted to give them one. Livin' Large made things more explicit with a "vibrating bed" that Sims could play in and create children by using it, but it wasn't until The Sims 2 properly introduced the ability to WooHoo in a variety of places.
  • The first two games frequently referenced SimCity, but these were phased out as The Sims became a More Popular Spin-Off.
  • Aliens in The Sims 2 are basically regular Sims with green skin, lacking the Psychic Powers they'd get in later games. Also, it's the only time aliens are available in the base game.
  • The Sims 2 was the first game to introduce changing seasons. In this iteration, seasons lasted only five days and had no set events (like equivalents to Christmas, although some holiday-like observances were optional via interactions with certain items), making it more of a weather pack than a true seasonal pack. The Sims 3 and The Sims 4 introduced seven-day seasons to match the length of an in-game week, as well as holidays that take place at a set time in each season (i.e. Winterfest on Wednesday in Winter) to give a sense of progressing through a year.
• Sly Cooper: The first video game, Sly Cooper and the Thievius Raccoonus, has a lot of early-installment weirdness.
  • The game plays much more of a standard platformer of just getting to the end of the level while collecting clue bottles that help you unlock the safe code, unlike the later games where you do missions around the hub to set up a big heist at the climax of the episode.
  • The game's plot is very simple, light hearted and has only one big plot twist near the end. The sequels have a more serious tone, a bigger story and lots of plot twists.
  • You only play as Sly for most of the game. Bentley only has a single hacking mission and Murray is only playable in the two racing levels. You also near the end play as Carmelita in a shooting range like level. Unlike the sequels where you mostly play as Sly, Bentley and Murray.
  • Murray is not the Large Ham Blood Knight "The Murray" character he would be in the sequels and was a Cowardly Sidekick who was there to drive the gang around, and had he a much smaller role.
  • The game has a One-Hit-Point Wonder with extra lives while the rest of the games have a health bar.
  • The game's soundtrack has a techno vibe to it instead of mostly consisting of smooth jazz.
  • New moves are found by reclaiming pages of the title book instead of being bought off Thiefnet with coins.
• Sonic the Hedgehog:
  • Sonic the Hedgehog (16-bit):
    • The game has no spin dashing, no characters other than Sonic and Doctor Eggman, fairly trippy and abstract graphics (particularly in the Special Stages and Spring Yard Zone), fairly slow and mellow music, levels of very varying difficulty and length (seriously, play Labyrinth and then continue on to Star Light), and a relatively slow, platform-based gameplay style. Other oddities include only six Chaos Emeralds instead of the standard seven, the Emeralds only changing the ending instead of granting Super Sonic mode, and three Acts per Zone instead of two (although most modern games have 3 Acts, the third is usually relegated to the boss).
    • The fights against Dr. Eggman in the first game seem incredibly tame compared to the later installments. In the first game, all of the boss fights against Eggman had him just use the Eggmobile with a simple weapon or tool. Nowadays, the mad doctor uses much larger machines with hilariously outlandish weapons.
    • Some of the zone names in the first game were shorter than usual and less creative (e.g. Marble Zone in the original Mega Drive/Genesis release, Bridge Zone in the 8-bit version). Starting with the next game, almost all of the zones have had either two-word names or one long word for a name.
    • In the 8-bit version all of the Chaos Emeralds are white/clear, like diamonds. All of the subsequent 8-bit Sonic games made them a variety of colors.
  • In Tails' first appearance in Sonic the Hedgehog 2, the CPU could make Tails fly, but a player couldn't; it was just used to get the computer to catch back up with Sonic. Sonic 3 & Knuckles would change that. Outside of the Sonic Advance Trilogy, Sonic 3 & Knuckles would be the only game where Tails could also swim until Sonic Mania over 20 years later.
  • It wasn't until Sonic 3 & Knuckles that Sonic could run along the surface of the water at a high enough speed. Prior to that, he simply skimmed along the surface like a stone or immediately sank into the water at the same rate as usual.
  • The original Mega Drive era games were low on lore and plot. This led Sega of America and Sega of Europe to create their own distinctive backstory from the Japanese continuity of the games, as presented in the Sonic the Hedgehog Promo Comic, which the original Sonic Bible did consider to be the series canon backstory by Sega of America of the time. This included differences like there being seven Chaos Emeralds from the beginning, the series taking place on a planet called "Mobius" with no humans (other than Robotnik) in sight, Sonic initially being brown and having regular quills until he ran so fast one day that the heat fused his quills together and changed his color to cobalt blue, Dr. Robotnik starting off as a good man named Ovi Kintobor (who was even a friend to Sonic and built him specialized shoes to protect himself from the heat of the high friction speed he could achieve), until he unwittingly turned himself into the evil Ivo Robotnik via a malfunctioning invention of his. This was eventually nullified once Sega of Japan decided that the US branch of Sonic should share the same canon as the Japanese games, starting with Sonic Adventure and on.
  • In Sonic the Hedgehog CD's North American instruction booklet, Amy Rose is referred to here as "Princess Sally", evidently trying to pass her off as a completely different character from Sonic the Hedgehog (SatAM). All other entries and all re-releases of Sonic CD would revert Amy to being just Amy Rose, though they would make a note of her "original" name. She also lacks her trademark squeaky hammer.
  • Sonic 3D: Flickies' Island is the first game to introduce the Homing Attack known in the game as The Dash Attack, It's a power-up you get from a golden shield instead of a natural ability you get starting out. It's not used for jumping over bottomless pits with a line of enemies but to attack enemies easier and quicker.
  • The first few 3D-era games were heavy on this trope:
    • Sonic Adventure was heavily multi-genred as while it was still a platformer, each character played differently (Sonic was a standard platformer, Tails was racing, Knuckles was treasure hunting, Amy was a chased racer, Big was fishing, and Gamma was a shoot-em-up). The game heavily relied on Once More, with Clarity to understand how one character arrived at a place or even the motivations for an encounter. It was also the first appearance of the Light Speed Dash, which would stay an item until Sonic Heroes, where it would become a standard power set. This would also be the first game where Super Sonic was relegated to an 11th-Hour Superpower.
    • Sonic Adventure 2 would introduce the grinding system, whose movement would be determined by how a character moved. As well, only Sonic and Shadow had the ability to grind. The game would be the last one to involve a Chao Garden.
    • Sonic Heroes had numerous oddities to it. It abandoned the Gameplay Roulette of the Adventure games in favor of all routes having team-based gameplay. As the player controlled a three-man team, they were able to switch between a running type, a flight type and a "strength" type. This game would codify Team Sonic, Dark and Chaotix, but Team Rose would always be in flux. For whatever reason the settings are more fantastic than the 3D titles before and immediately after, harkening back to the sorts of levels in the Genesis era. The futuristic Grand Metropolis and the impossibly giant Casino Park with pinball roads in particular feel different from the "standard" city settings seen in other 3D games. This is also the only entry in the 3D console era to have a Special Stages as well as the only one with hit points for both Eggman and the badniks.
  • Sonic Boom: Rise of Lyric started development as an unrelated Sonic title that was shoehorned into the Sonic Boom IP at the last moment, so there are some bits and pieces that may seem odd to people more familiar with the cartoon. The tone is far more serious and plot-driven than the Gag Series it supposedly is based on, but perhaps more noticeable is the near-complete absence of Sticks the Badger, whose only ingame appearance is as a minor NPC in one of the hub worlds. It's an In Name Only version of Sticks, too; she acts much more childlike, speaks in You No Take Candle instead of proper English, and shows absolutely no signs of being a paranoid Conspiracy Theorist.
• Soul Series: The series began with Soul Edge (and its updated revision Soul Blade), which featured the Weapon Break meter (to prevent constant blocking) and a powerful string of attacks called the "Critical Edge" while it also lacked the 8-Way Run of its successors. The fighters also had high, floaty jumps similar to the early installments of Virtua Fighter (something also true of Tekken), players could use pursuit attacks on downed foes (another element taken from VF), the stages were simplistic in design (it wouldn't be until Soulcalibur that they progressed beyond a simple square ring), Guard Impacts could only repel an opponent's attack (Parries weren't introduced until II), Voldo was actually rather tame in terms of playstyle, and Inferno was known as "SoulEdge" (though this is partially because it's Soul Edge using Cervantes' corpse instead of fighting under its own power).
• Space Quest: Roger's hair is initially brown instead of blonde. In Space Quest I: The Sarien Encounter, Roger obtains a gun to kill enemy guards, and later a gas grenade to get the one who can't be shot; when he foils the Sarien plot, he's hailed as the hero of the galaxy. The other games have Roger never using a weapon and hardly being recognized as a hero.
• Splatoon:
  • Blasters, despite functioning significantly differently from Shooters (the former launches high-damage explosives; the latter rapid-fires normal ink shots), were classified as a type of Shooter until 3. Similarly, Brushes were classified as a type of Roller until 2.
  • Character customisation was limited in the first game; there was only one hairstyle and legwear per gender.
  • The first game has several NES-inspired minigames that didn't make it into the sequels.
  • The first game is the only one in the series to have two noticeably different English translations, similar to a few other Nintendo games at the time.
  • None of the special weapons from the first game return in their original forms in the sequels.
  • Saltspray Rig is the only stage in the entire series that isn't rotationally symmetrical until Skipper Pavilion near the end of 2^note Not counting some variants of Shifty Station, which are only playable during special occasions — or symmetrical at all, for that matter, because the obstacles in the middle of Saltspray Rig are slightly asymmetrical. Unsurprisingly, neither of them ever appeared again.
  • The first game had more of a counterculture look and feel to it, whereas 2 and onward had more of a general urban culture approach. Its soundtrack had a higher emphasis on underground music genres, but after that, the soundtracks were more varied, with a mix of mainstream and non-mainstream genres. In addition, Splatfest events were treated as small, local affairs in the first game, similar to a street takeover of an intersection, whereas Splatfests afterwards are depicted as citywide festivals. It is also only in the first game where the game hints, though it doesn't say directly, that some of the locations used for the Inklings' Ink Battles were not designed for them, and the Inklings just show up without anyone's permission; the sequels, meanwhile, depict Ink Battles as fully sanctioned, and each location was built or renovated specifically to allow Ink Battles to take place there, with full permission from the owners and managers of the premises.
• Spyro the Dragon:
  • If not for the common title and character design, you'd hardly believe that the first game and latter games are from the same series. While the engine was mostly the same, in Spyro the Dragon (1998) there were no sidequests to collect the Plot Coupons, no Hunter, and the story felt like an Excuse Plot in comparison to the deeper Ripto's Rage! and Year of the Dragon. Oh, and Spyro can't swim, not even on the surface.
  • The first game plays with a somewhat melancholic 'last man alive' feel. You're guided through the levels by the dragons you have to rescue, which also function as save points (you can't save via the pause menu), but there were no other friendly characters to interact with besides the balloonists who transport you to the various homeworlds. Some of the enemies were scarier and more aggressive as well, making Spyro's world feel particularly dangerous and threatening. The second game not only introduces major allies like Hunter who help guide Spyro through his journey, but also many colorful characters who inhabit the various levels, most of which consist of helping said characters and getting rewarded in return. The enemies were also made somewhat more goofy, and both trends continued into the third game, resulting in them feeling much more lively and cartoonish than the first game.
  • Spyro is voiced by Carlos Alazraqui in the first game, and he is characterised as a cheeky little rascal and rather cocky. From the second game onwards he is voiced by Tom Kenny, and he is portrayed as slightly older and more mature, albeit still fond of mocking his adversaries.
  • Bosses did not have to be defeated to progress through the game, Gnasty's minions are other Gnorcs he made out of gems where Ripto and the Sorceress just had an army of mooks that inexplicably followed them, and though a few powerups appear, they're very different than the standard versions in later games.
  • Even the music of the first game is unusual, being more raw, intense and 1970s progressive rock-themed. The music of the later games comprises of multiple, often contrasting genres instead.
  • From the second game on, there are regular cutscenes explaining and advancing the plot as you progress through the game. The first game, on the other hand, has only has three cutscenes: One that opens the game, one after Gnasty Gnorc is defeated, and one after the game is fully completed.
  • In the first game, enemy minions appear in the homeworld hubs as well as the standard level worlds (though in the first homeworld, the minions are merely thieves who don't actually attack Spyro, just run away). Later games turn the homeworlds into safe havens with no enemies.
  • The bosses in the first game (which, as noted above, did not need to be defeated to progress), including even Gnasty Gnorc himself to an extent, took place in the context of levels in their own right, with gems and dragons to be collected - bosses would often run away to a point further on in the level after being wounded, and Spyro would have to follow. From the second game on, boss battles moved to small circular arenas in which fighting the boss was the only thing to do.
  • Even within the first game, there are some oddities early on. In the first three Dragon Realms, there are thieves carrying eggs who must be caught to win back the eggs. They are relatively easy to catch and, in comparison to every other collectible in the original trilogy, relatively few in number - only 12 (by comparison, there are 80 dragons in total). They are only once needed to progress the game (five are required to move on to the fourth Realm from the third), and there are none past that point.
  • The first homeworld boss, Toasty, cannot be fought until at least one other level in that homeworld has been completed. All other homeworlds (except the sixth and final one, which requires the levels to be completed in a specific order) drop this requirement and allow you to play the boss level immediately if you wish.
  • The first game had some elements that were later discarded, such as clams containing extra lives (represented as little silver dragon statues), silver beads which add up to new lives over time and more different types of gem containers.
  • The flying challenges in the first game are called "flights". They would be renamed "speedways" starting with the second game.
• Squaredle: The earliest puzzles have obscure required words, something that is much rarer in later puzzles. The puzzle archive for 2022 warns: "(Word lists are weirder in older puzzles)"
• Star Control: The series is famous these days for its engaging adventures filled with unique aliens and cleverly-written storylines. The first game is a very rudimentary strategy game that only serves to tie ship-to-ship melee matches together without "campaign mode".
• Star Fox:
  • The first game, Star Fox (1993), had the low framerate and polygon count, which are obviously a result of hardware limitations, but the lack of a targeting reticule is a less excusable omission to players who grew up on games like Star Fox 64.
  • In the original game, your wingmates die if their shield gauges are depleted. By comparison, if that happens in 64, they're forced to withdraw for the rest of that mission and all of the next.
• Star Trek Online: Due to the Troubled Production that pestered its start, the early incarnation is a vastly different beast compared to the game now:
  • The game was initially subscriber-only. The game went Free-2-Play just before Legacy of Romulus dropped, but subscriptions lasted until 2019, when they were replaced with the Elite Starter Packs
  • When the game started, there were only two factions, the Federation and the Klingon Empire. However, players could only start as Federation and had to play through the first storyline to unlock the Klingons. The Klingon faction had no starting storyline and leveling up would be hell. This would be rectified in the first expansion.
  • The missions were a hodgepodge of random events that gave it an odd World of Warcraft feel of a continuous war between the two factions.
  • Sector Space was cut up into little blocks of three of four areas, requiring Loads and Loads of Loading. As well, players couldn't enter the other faction's starting area without having special permissions that took loads of grinding. Interestingly, players could initially warp into the Gamma Quadrant to fight the Borg but had little to do with the Dominion
  • The game initially had a heavy focus on the Tank/DPS/Mage trinity, as seen with the Tier 5 Galaxy, Defiant and Intrepid classes. This made the Tier 5 Galaxy a Low-Tier Letdown as it was outgunned by the much older Excelsior class that was released later on.
  • The Galaxy-X class (That's the version of the Galaxy from the TNG episode "All Good Things...") was initially a subscriber bonus should players be able to recruit 5 people to subscribe to the game.
  • Worf and Sela were one of the first previous series characters to show up but suffered heavily from You Don't Look Like You until Denise Crosby and Michael Dorn lent their voices, thus allowing them to use their likeness.
  • Lockboxes initially had secondary prizes being "Mirror Ships", factions ships that bore the skin of one ship but the layout of another and sometimes born hull skins based off of the Terran Empire and related factions. These were done away with with Delta Rising
  • The first two playable Romulan-based ships, the Tal Shiar Adapted Destroyer and Adapted Battlecruiser, are the only two not to have a singularity core nor its power set, instead using a normal warp core with the in-story explanation being that the Borg tech is not compatible with their tech.
  • Special items were obtained through a variety of Marks currencies. They would all be condensed into Dilithium.
  • Reputations started out odd with its first four reputations. Romulan and Nukara were the only reputations (and still are) that do not require a player to have Elite Marks to build items while Omega is the only one who has no Space weapons^note It initially did, but its [Borg] modifier apparently didn't work. The Dyson reputation had an extra mark known as a Dyson Commendation that would let players gain more marks and Dilithium.
  • The Romulan Republic storyline has a Bridge Officer named Tovan Kiev, a fellow Romulan who is meant to be your best friend and part of your story is devoted to also finding his sister. The backlash to the character, including the inability to dismiss him at all, lead to him being the only "major" Bridge Officer.
  • The Jem'Hadar ships first offered with the "Victory is Life" expansion were the first ones to offer a Level 6 Ship Mastery. This only allowed players to play them on all characters instead of being locked to Jem'Hadar. Level 6 Ship Mastery options would later only be used with the "Legendary" ship types.
• Street Fighter:
  • In the very first Street Fighter released in 1987, Ryu and Ken are the only playable characters (with Ryu wearing red slippers for some reason), and Ken is an exact clone of Ryu; their special moves, quite overpowered in this game, are almost impossible to pull off consistently (as they were considered more akin to cheat codes rather than mundane gameplay mechanics); other techniques such as combos, dizzies, and grappling moves are all non-existent; and every opponent has the same winning and losing quote (all spoken with the same crudely digitized Engrish voice clip), and the ground-based player movement seems to consist of repeated fixed-length hops, making precise positioning difficult. The game did feature the same six-button configuration used by Street Fighter II and its sequels, but it was actually added to the game as an afterthought, created as a cheaper alternative to arcade operators who couldn't afford the original cabinet which used two hydraulic punching pads that determined the strength of the player's punches and kicks based on how hard they were pushed down. Additionally, Ryu and Ken's special move yells were dubbed for the overseas versions of the game, resulting in them yelling "Psycho Fire" and "Dragon Punch" instead of "Hadoken" and "Shoryuken."
  • Even the sequels had this. Combos were actually an Ascended Glitch, and as such there was no combo counter. Street Fighter II was also notably violent, with battered, bloodied, bruised character portraits when somebody lost and in the actual fights you had blood coming out when certain attacks hit (like with Vega's claw or when Blanka bit at somebody's neck) and hits to the stomach actually caused a Vomit Indiscretion Shot sometimes. It was also very toned down compared to the sequels, some characters had energy projectiles and the villain had flame engulfed punches but that was it. Later games in the series would make everyone a Street-Level Super Hero, with everyone essentially having Charles Atlas Superpowers at the very least.
• Suikoden:
  • In Suikoden (1995), characters could only use a single Rune at a time, and there were no skills to customize character stats. Suikoden II let characters use up to three Runes (depending on their Magic stats), and Suikoden III introduced skills.
  • Zig-zagged with the army battles. In the original, they were just rock-paper-scissors choices, while most of the later games had war strategy game style battles. Suikoden III used a modification of the regular battling; II, IV, and V all use strategy-type battles, but each are different. II and IV use strategy RPG-style battles, one on foot and one in boats. V uses real-time strategy.
• Summon Night: The first game, Summon Night (2000), has four possible protagonists with similar stat growth to choose from, sort of averts Schrödinger's Player Character, its stat point system resembling that of the first Black/Matrix game, and starts in a world outside Lyndbaum. Later games would have two protagonists with different stat growth to choose from, follow Schrödinger's Player Character, a stat point system similar yet distinct from the Black/Matrix series, and stays in Lyndbaum.
• Super Robot Wars:
  • The first game (on the Game Boy) features an incredibly simple plot (unlike the greatly complex and interwoven stories of later games), only features the "Holy Trinity" of Mazinger Z, Getter Robo, and Gundam; all robots are intelligent beings (not largely non-sentient constructs piloted by humans), and health is in the double digits (while later games give robots thousands of HP). If it weren't for the title, you'd never know it was part of the series.
  • Super Robot Wars 2 had an interesting case of giving characters upgrades - while Amuro Ray would go from the RX-78-2 Gundam to the RX-93 Nu Gundam, Kouji Kabuto would jump from Mazinger Z to Great Mazinger and the original Getter Team (Ryouma Nagare, Hayato Jin, Musashi Tomoe) would go from the classic Getter Robo to Getter Robo G. Super Robot Wars 4 would end up putting the Getter G Team (Ryouma, Hayato and Benkei Kuruma) in the original Getter Robo.
  • In Super Robot Wars 3, despite having a much more robust Gundam line up, all characters use "Gallant Char" as their theme, no matter what era they're from. Similarly, Tetsuya Tsurugi and the Great Mazinger use "Mazinger Z" for their theme, not "Ore wa Great Mazinger". There's a unique villainous unit — the Mass Produced Jagd Doga, which physically resembles Quess Paraya's Jagd Doga, but uses Gyunei Guss' Jagd Doga colors. While this was the first game starring other Super Robots, these series would have finished their series or their first appearance lead to their completion.
  • The Mazinkaiser of Super Robot Wars F Final is vastly different from the later incarnations. In F Final, Mazinkaiser is actually Mazinger Z hopped up on Getter Rays. It would retain using "Mazinger Z" as its theme as it wouldn't gain its legendary theme until Alpha. It also had a few attacks that would disappear by Alpha Gaiden including a map attack version of Fire Blaster, a "Dynamic Tackle" map attack and Jet Boomerang, which was just shooting Kaiser Scrander at his opponent.
  • For the more modern weirdness, the first installments for Super Robot Wars Alpha and Super Robot Wars: Original Generation are pretty bizzare compared to their sequels.
    • Alpha and Alpha Gaiden had a strange mechanic that allowed players to have certain units disengage from their mecha and fly around in component craft, allowing players to fly around in Core Fighters, Jet Pilders and Getter Machines
    • Alpha 2, the first appearance of GaoGaiGar, somehow left out the Power Echoes that the other super robot series had with their pilots. Subsequent games would fix that.
    • Alpha 2 and Destiny, the first usages of the Nightingale, only had three attacks - Mega Beam Rifle, Hidden Arm Beam Saber and Funnels. This was because Nightingale was based off of basic drawings. It wouldn’t be until Super Robot Wars X that it would have more weapons.
    • Alpha 3 and Super Robot Wars Judgment, the first usages of Mobile Suit Gundam SEED made the Phase Shift Armor too overpowered, allowing those using it to tank attacks that weren't Gundam-type beam weaponry yet not actually physical attacks like Breast Fire and Getter Beam.
  • Super Robot Wars Advance was much different compared to its Game Boy Advance sequels — most of its graphics were just yanked from SRW F/F Final, the upgrading system from Shin was in place here, there were a bunch of Guide Dang It! secrets and the final stage was a Nintendo Hard countdown mission that forced you to complete it in X amount of time before everything went up. It was also the only game in the set without a New Game Plus.
  • Super Robot Wars Compact 2's Video Game Remake, Super Robot Wars IMPACT is the first Playstation 2 entry and it shows.
    • The game suffers from Loads and Loads of Loading, thus animation and voice clips suffer terribly from it.
    • Being a combination of all three chapters of Compact 2, the game is massive stage-wise, something that wouldn't be seen again until Super Robot Wars 30.
    • Most of the sprites in the game are ripped from Super Robot Wars Alpha, which clash terribly with the brand new sprites created for the game.
  • Super Robot Wars Reversal had two oddities for series that don't show up in later games. The first is that the Moon mechanic first introduced in Alpha Gaiden is replaced with a turn counter. This meant that the Gundam X and the Double X could use its Satellite Cannons whenever and whereever it wanted to. The other is that the Shin Getter Robo of Shin Getter Robo vs. Neo Getter Robo has the Stoner Sunshine, which it never used in the anime and is never used in subsequent appearances.
  • Super Robot Wars Destiny, being the first game to include Getter Robo Armageddon, has a number of instances that later games wouldn't have:
    • This game and Super Robot Wars Z 2 would be the only games to have the Tower and Stellva as playable units.
    • The original Getter Robo becomes an Ascended Extra, piloted by Benkei, and usable for both Getter Teams. It also has combination attacks with Black Getter Robo.
    • The Armageddon storyline ends with Scenario 17(?!) and backburners Shin Dragon for most of the game, forcing the Shin Getter team to pilot either the classic Getter or Black Getter (or they can take over Shin Getter, but the original Getter Team is usually better in it
  • In many of the original games, whenever Gundam and Mazinger was used, it always seemed to start out with the One Year War and Doctor Hell's attacks. Most entries nowadays jump ahead to either the Gryps Conflict at the very earliest as well as the Mycene Empire's assault.
  • Iconic yet one-off attacks wouldn't become a staple until later games and even then which ones they used were odd. For instance, the Zeta Gundam's initial strongest attack was the Hyper Mega Launcher. Alpha would give the machine the Waverider Crash while Advance would give it the Mega Beam Saber. It wouldn't be until Alpha 3 that the two would be available together.
• Super Smash Bros.:
  • The contrast between Super Smash Bros. 64 and its sequels is astounding.
    • While subsequent games, from Melee onward, are notable for detailed environments and characters, as well as epic orchestral music, the original has Floating Continents in front of a simple background, many more sprites for items, Pokémon, and some attacks, darker, low-key original songs and was promoted with cartoony, comic book-style illustrations of the characters. Additionally, playing in Training mode removed said stage backgrounds, replacing them with a flat texture and the Smash series logo.
    • It lacks a lot of moves and abilities that were introduced later, like air-dodging and a side special move for example.^note Side specials did technically exist in the first game, but only the unplayable Master Hand was given a unique one — everyone else's side special is the exact same as their neutral special move. It also has very few unlockable elements (four characters, one stage, the ability to turn off what items spawn, and the Sound Test), likely due to memory and budget constraints. Lastly, it's the only game that has the platform-boarding minigame, which was scrapped in the later games in favor of Home-Run Contest and the Multi-Man minigames.
    • In the original game, the standard basic stages Battlefield and Final Destination are not available in multiplayer stages, and Battlefield was referred to in Sound Test as "Duel Zone". In fact, they're exclusively used in 1P Game as the stages for the Fighting Polygon Team and Master Hand, respectively. It's only possible to fight against other players in these stages if you use cheat devices (and even then, Final Destination requires a few extra codes to make it a truly viable stage to fight in). Melee is the first game in the series to make these two stages available for other players to fight in, though you need to meet certain conditions in order to play them both (Battlefield requires you to complete All-Star mode for the first time, while Final Destination is unlocked by completing Event Match mode). Starting with Brawl, both stages have been made available without prerequisites.
  • Melee was the only time the series experimented with the formula for beginning a Vs. match. It replaced the original's three-second countdown with the announcer saying "Ready..." and introduction-animations were dropped in favor of the characters being brought to life from trophies. Brawl brought both of those pre-match elements back, and every installment since has continued the tradition.
• S.W.A.T.: Before the series became Tactical First Person Shooters by its third installment SWAT 3, we had Police Quest: SWAT 2, a Real-Time Strategy Game in the vein of XCOM Apocalypse's real-time mode. And before that, we had Police Quest: SWAT, an Interactive Movie that was a sequel/spin-off of an adventure game series, Police Quest.

T

• Tales Series: Early installments were particularly unusual:
  • Tales of Phantasia (SFC version) and Tales of Destiny (PSX) lacked many of the things that became trademarks of the series — for example: cooking, the Dark Wings and especially the skits.
  • The battle system of early 2D entries also comes as a little odd for modern Tales players — Chibisized sprites, a slightly slower-paced battle system, a lack of primary attack combos, and a few other things.
  • From a story perspective, Tales of Phantasia also lacks several of the character tropes almost always found in later games, like a Guest-Star Party Member or a Lovable Traitor. There is also no real Chosen One until Tales of Eternia, and even in that game that aspect was minimal, while in later games the party often revolves around the chosen character. The popularity of many of those character tropes started with Tales Of Destiny. Incidentally, most of those tropes were inserted in the GBA and PSX's Updated Re-release.
  • The art style of first two entries were musty, muted and more realistic. Tales of Destiny even included digitized photographs in some of the picture frames decorating castles and mansions. Tales of Eternia led the series toward more cartoony artwork and Tales of Symphonia solidified this shift.
• Team Fortress 2: The game has changed a lot over its update history from its release in October 2007:
  • The original version lacked custom loadouts completely: you only had access to each class's standard weapons, and the only way to change weapons was by switching to another class entirely. The version of TF2 included in the console versions of The Orange Box was never patched past this point.
  • Major updates in the beginning of the game's life were very small, often focusing on a single class (the "Classless Update", almost two years after the game released, heavily advertised itself on the fact that it was the first to not do so) and including about three items for that class that had basic properties, with a map or two, a couple hats after their introduction, and maybe a new game mode thrown in for good measure. Fast-forward to the present, and major updates will include dozens of cosmetic items and, at least until recent years, a couple of new weapons with wild properties for several classes.
  • For the class-specific updates, the new weapons given to the class in question were locked behind achievements, and gaining certain numbers of the achievements granted milestone achievements that would unlock one of the new weapons in a specific order. This is weird enough on its own simply because, save for the occasional holiday-themed hat, the system was abandoned entirely after each class got an update in this manner by July 2010, but the first such update for the Medic was particularly odd for two reasons: one, you originally had to get all of the new achievements to get all three of his new weapons; and two, in spite of the strict completion requirements, a lot of the achievements were designed under the mindset of what a medic, or other classes while under the effects of a medic's UberCharge, could theoretically do in a game, when the stars were aligned just right and a sacrifice to the deity of your choice was made before you started the game, rather than what the class was actually designed to be doing 99% of the time - a lot of them even encouraged the exact opposite mindset any Team Fortress player, much less a Medic, should have by requiring you to focus on personal goals over helping the team^note UberCharging five people on your friends list wouldn't be too bad depending on what classes they're playing, but killing 50 Scouts with the syringe gun or assisting another Medic in making three kills in one life means you're invariably pulling one or two medics away from healing duty even to the point of sabotaging the team's efforts^note scoring the highest on your team without killing any enemies, which invariably requires leaving better players to die so they don't outscore you by just killing enemies and even cooperating with members of the opposing team^note deploying an UberCharge within 8 seconds of an enemy medic deploying one. Also, while it was a Medic-themed update, it wasn't actually named in reference to anything about the Medic, like most later updates - officially it was the "Gold Rush Update". Every other class-specific update was named after the class(es) in question except for the "WAR!" update for the Demoman and Soldier, which was instead named in reference to its backstory of pitting the two classes against one another in its lead-up.
  • Hats and other cosmetic items did not exist until the Sniper vs. Spy update in May 2009. It's hard to believe that "America's #1 War-Themed Hat Simulator" did not have hats to simulate for a year and a half.
  • The first few unlockable weapons and hats were simply reskins of existing weapons or hats, though the weapons had unique but still downplayed stats. For weapon examples, there's Natasha (default minigun, colored black and with an ammo belt on its side), Scottish Resistance (default stickybomb launcher, yellow-and-black paint on the ammo drum and a device on its barrel), and the Cloak & Dagger (default Invisi-Watch, yellow instead of silver). Many of the early cosmetic items were the default characters' hats with some extra additions, or simply removing their existing hat. Future items became much more diverse, including particularly-spooky top hats, lawyer friendly versions of Futurama's brain slugs, multiple varieties of Cool Shades, Bill's beret and Ellis's trucker cap, and more, to say nothing of entirely new weapon sets that completely change how the class in question plays, including Sniper's focus on shorter-ranged bows or Demoman's Cool Swords and shields, or which don't even fit the game's aesthetic to make a reference, like the Engineer's Widowmaker shotgun or the Soldier straight-up getting Quake's Rocket Launcher.
  • The first set of "Meet the Team" videos were basically animation tests, to the point that the first three (Heavy, Soldier, and Engineer) are included in the public release of Source Filmmaker. They focused on one class, were relatively short, had an extensive mix of animations made for the short and canned ones from gameplay, and didn't have too much of a storyline other than "class in the spotlight kills the other team." Skip to later videos like "Meet the Medic," "Meet the Pyro," and especially "Expiration Date," and you'll find minutes-long videos with high-quality animation, focus on many different classes, epic storylines, and more development and expression of the classes' characters.
  • The First Annual Saxxy Awards took place before Source Fimmaker was officially released to the public, and were instead focused around Team Fortress 2's Replay Tool. This meant most winners of that contest were basically just gameplay videos. If you wanted additional special effects other than slowdown, you had to add them with external video editing software. All future Saxxy Awards shifted focus to Source Filmmaker, which allowed for videos with much greater quality, effects, story, and animation, while replays were limited to a single category in the second and removed entirely by the third. Compare 2011's Best Overall winner "El Muchacho", a 30 second clip of creatively shot and edited gameplay footage, to 2017's Best Overall winner "Agent Gunn: Vulkanite", a 5 minute professional-quality animated short.
  • The game itself, when first released, lacked a lot of features and gamemodes that were later added and have since become more iconic of the game. There was no Payload, King of the Hill, or Arena at first, nor was there a Halloween event, or any kind of event, during the game's first couple of years. You also had to pay for the game; it was not free-to-play until three and a half years after release. Mann Vs. Machine was not added until almost five years after. Considering how much all of these things dominate the metagame and culture these days, it can be pretty jarring to think that there was ever a period, much less a pretty significant one, where these did not exist at all.
  • Some abilities that are vital to classes today weren't around for a while. The Pyro didn't have the projectile-reflecting, foe-pushing, and ally-extinguishing airblast, today seen as the most valuable ability of the Pyro, for close to a year. The Engineer couldn't carry buildings, which greatly limited his range and usefulness, until his update in July 2010, almost three years after release.
  • The first Halloween event was considerably different than later ones. The Halloween map, Harvest Event, featured very little Halloween-themed items and decor aside from its purple-and-orange color scheme, cobwebs, dark areas, pumpkin bombs, Halloween pumpkin pickups, and the ghost. Subsequent Halloween event maps amp up the Halloween themes and designs much more, and tend to focus on green-and-blue color schemes. This map doesn't have any type of boss; those wouldn't start until the next year. Merasmus, who stars in or narrates most of the Halloween events, didn't debut until the fourth event. Finally, subsequent events introduced a deluge of Halloween cosmetics. How many did the first one have? Two.
  • Official Fan-Submitted Content was originally submitted through an official site instead of the Steam Workshop.
• Tekken:
  • The series begins with the eponymous Tekken (1994) which features only two game modes, Arcade and VS, as well as an Options menu. You can't sidestep at all, and the game has no damage scaling whatsoever, which means that you can take out more than half your opponent's health bar with a short juggle. It also features crude graphics (albeit impressive at the time), half the characters that the games would usually have, levels based on world monuments rather than ones which suit the characters, a Galaga opening game, and the bizarre element of having to unlock characters by playing said Galaga game (Heihachi and Devil Kazuya). The music and stages are also very different, the name of the stage appearing on the screen during matches. The boss characters are more powerful clones of the starting characters, albeit with some unique special moves. P. Jack looks far more powerful than some of the later Jack (he has a drill, which he can't use), Yoshimitsu resembles a knight rather than a ninja, Heihachi is the Big Bad, and Kazuya is the lead character despite being pushed into the background in every other appearance he's made. Kunimitsu appears male rather than female (and is not revealed to be female until the next game). It also features the first Jack who, whilst essentially the same as Jack-2, doesn't appear in any other game (it should be noted that none of the Jacks barring P. Jack—who underwent a facelift between the first and second games—reappeared in a subsequent canonical game, instead being replaced by the newest model in their line). Devil Kazuya is essentially Kazuya in a purple suit with wings, but he has all the same moves (meaning he can't fly). Tekken was released at a time when its graphical capabilities and arcade perfect nature was all that was needed to impress people.
  • By the time of Tekken 2, things had changed, and so the series started to become what it is today in its sequel, with all the usual modes such as Time Attack, Team Battle, Survival and Practise added. The Japanese version also features a Theatre Mode. All of these would become standard for the series. However, the characters were still quite crudely rendered, and some of the music, boss characters, and stages were a holdover from Tekken. Kazuya, now the Big Bad of the game, is able to sidestep, albeit not as much as characters later can. You can also use cheats like big head mode, wire frame mode, and sky mode (where kicks launch your opponent much higher than normal), things which were never included in later games.
  • From the first to third games, stages were uniform and consisted entirely of a single plane that went on for infinity in all directions with a simple background. Tekken 4 would introduce more varied stages, with walls and other boundaries, although the series would continue to retain the original boundaryless style of arena for some stages.
• Telepath RPG: The first game was a traditional turn based RPG with only a single playable characters. All following games of the series are tactical RPGs with a variety of playable characters. The first game also had summoning magic which got completely scrapped after that.
• Tetris:
  • No hold, no lock delay (pieces lock into place as soon as they hit the floor or the top of another piece) unless it's a game made by Sega, slower sideways movement (again unless it's by Sega), a completely random randomizer notorious for I-piece droughts and consecutive S- and Z-pieces, and only counterclockwise rotation (in pre-Nintendo versions). So you've cleared 200 lines in Tetris DS, and gotten GM rank in Tetris: The Grand Master; NES and Game Boy Tetris's Level 19 should feel like nothing... right?
  • In the Atari arcade version: separated levels with an end-of-level bonus based on the height of your field, line-raising as a level feature instead of a multiplayer punishment, and having to play on levels whose designs were based on the initials of the top three high-score entries.
  • Sega's 1988 arcade version of Tetris supports up to three buttons...that all rotate counterclockwise.
• Tex Murphy: The first game, Mean Streets, had flight sim and run & gun sequences in addition to the adventure gameplay. The second game drops the flight sim/run and gun gameplay, and the other games from there on (including the Mean Streets remake) are FMV point & click adventures.
• Thunder Force: The first game was a free-roaming overhead-view shooter, the sequel had an equal share of top-down and sidescrolling levels, and the rest of the series only kept the sidescrolling levels. Also in the first two games, you lost all weapons except Twin and Back upon death, whereas in newer games you only lose your current weapon.
• Time Crisis: Unlike its sequels, the first game is single-player only with a Heroic Mime protagonist and doesn't have two protagonists with a dual screen, Wild Dog is the Final Boss and the Big Bad is the second-to-last boss, there's no warning when the enemies' bullets will hit you, the timer doesn't reset to 40 seconds during gameplay transitions, the timer will keep counting down even during action sequences, and this is the only game in the series where you will lose all of your lives if you run out of time. As for playing for score: There's no score at all, you're ranked strictly on time; in fact, there's even a Timed Mode where you can time-attack any of the three stages with infinite lives, a feature not seen in any game since.
• TimeSplitters: The first game is significantly different from the rest of the series:
  • The game's story mode simply placed you in a time period with no cutscenes and barely any story, and all levels simply required you to find an item and bring it to a specific point. Compare this to the decent story of the second and complex, brilliant and humour-filled time-travel epic of the third. The first TimeSplitters does make sense as part of the series plotline in retrospect, but at the time it was a series of disconnected gauntlets at various points in time with only the barest story connected to each one, and no over-arching plot. The only unifying factor was things getting really weird partway through each stage. In retrospect, it chronicles the initial emergence of the Time Splitters as they strike throughout human history and the people who managed to survive and even thwart them, but at the time it just seemed strange.
  • As a side-effect of the above, the first game had all campaign maps available in arcade mode, although a few had some areas locked off. Later games would have separate map selections for campaign and arcade modes due to the objective-based level design being incompatible with the fast-paced multiplayer action, although a few maps are available in both modes (the arcade mode version being shrunken down significantly) and others are clear analogues to campaign levels.
  • The first game only had Challenge mode as extra single-player content, and it had to be unlocked by finishing all campaign levels. Later games would split things between Arcade League and Challenge, both available from the start, with the former consisting of standard matches against the AI with specific rules and the latter having unusual goals such as shooting cardboard cut-outs or destroying windows.
  • The first game lacked character stats, so all characters had the same health, speed, and accuracy. The only difference between characters was size, so there was no reason to not pick a smaller and harder to shoot character.
  • The characters of the series tended to change a fair bit from game-to-game, owing to how each game in the series has differing philosophies over how to handle their narrative. Harry Tipper for example went from being a Cowboy Cop in the first game to a James Bond parody in the other two. Sergeant Cortez (who wasn't even in the first game, despite being the main character of the other two) similarly went from being a rather generic Hollywood Action Hero in 2 to a dorky Idiot Hero in Future Perfect.
  • In terms of setting, the first game was happy to indulge in an exaggerated case of I Want My Jetpack when it came to levels set in the future. The game was released in 2000, but "Cyberden" was set in 2005, and the golden age sci-fi inspired "Planet X" and "Spaceways" took place in 2020 and 2035 respectively. By TimeSplitters 2, the "cyberpunk era" had been pushed back to 2019 (and unlike "Cyberden", featured no sign of killer robots), while "Return to Planet X" now takes place in 2280.
  • The first game never saw a release for any platform outside of the Playstation 2. The sequels would be distributed to all three consoles of the sixth generation, but the first game would remain elusive to those who did not own a Playstation 2.
  • There are no monkeys in the game whatsoever, when the next games have them.
• Tomb Raider: The first game, Tomb Raider I (1996), needs time to get used to if you played the other games in the series. Lara Croft doesn't have flares in the first game, nor does she have the ability to duck and crawl, sprint, monkey swing, or even flip herself in a 180 degree turn when she jumps forward or back. Saving was also regulated to checkpoint style save crystals whereas all other games after the first one allowed you to save at any time. Lara also has very few guns compared to her arsenal in the later installments. The Anniversary remake keeps the paltry amount of guns. In the original game, Lara Croft notably lacks her trademark ponytail in gameplay (it's present in FMV cutscenes), due to graphical limitations of the time. Likewise, Lara's breasts in the first game were rendered as triangles/cones (except in the FMVs).
• Tomodachi Life:
  • This is the first game to introduce abnormal hair colors for Miis, albeit it could only be accessed through the hair dye gift. It's not until Miitopia do they become a permanent schematic before fully becoming part of the system on the Nintendo Switch. In addition, the game does not feature abnormal eye colors, as that wasn't introduced until Miitopia.
  • While the Miis are expressive, their faces don't change as much to fit the situation, which makes it jarring when they are sad or annoyed from a fight. By the time of its spinoff Video Game/Miitomo as well as Miitopia, the Miis become much more expressive and now emote more naturally. Miis also didn't have a "scared" expression in the game, which instead makes use of their "sad" expressions in those moments; that expression wasn't introduced until the Wii U.
• Total War: Many elements such as dynasties being more important and a more fluid take on the "Risk"-Style Map were introduced in Rome: Total War; the first two installments (Shogun: Total War and Medieval: Total War) had stricter Risk Style Maps, less application of dynastic mechanics, and the overpowered "jedi general" mechanic. Both of these have been remade now in the style established by Rome. Shogun II also has naval combat, albeit markedly different from the Age Of Sail fights in Empire and Napoleon in focusing more on boarding actions than cannon volleys. Also, the dynasty mechanic was abandoned in Empire and Napoleon, the former actually allowing you to switch governments types through revolution, and brought back in Shogun II.
• Touhou Project:
  • PC-98 games:
    • The first game, Touhou Reiiden ~ Highly Responsive to Prayers, was a strange sort of Breakout/Arkanoid game with gravity and lots of bullet dodging; from the second game onward the series was firmly in the Shoot 'Em Up genre, but the Bullet Hell formula prevalent in the Windows series was not established until the fourth PC-98 game (out of five), and the makings of the "spell card" system that would dominate the Windows Touhou games wasn't present until the fifth game. The overall tone and character designs are still fairly different.
    • While most characters in the Windows games have last names, most PC-98-era characters don't.
    • Most enemies in Windows games are either fairies or balls of energy; in the PC-98 games, various other entities such as ghosts and fairies on the ground join the fray.
    • In Touhou Gensokyo ~ Lotus Land Story and Touhou Kaikidan ~ Mystic Square, you get a bomb back after each stage. Not in the Windows games, unless you play as a specific character pair in Touhou Eiyashou ~ Imperishable Night.
    • Characters who would go on to appear in the Windows games look dramatically different. Reimu has a more traditional-looking miko outfit (no armpit jokes for you) and boasts purple hair. Marisa, in her first incarnation, has a purple outfit and red hair; her signature blond hair doesn't show up until a few games later. Yuuka's hair is longer, curlier, and she wears pants instead of a skirt, and that's only in her second form; when you encounter her initially she's wearing pink pajamas of all things. Alice is a young child, and her outfit is really only similar in that it's heavy on blue.
  • The early Windows games have some oddness of their own:
    • In the sixth and seventh games, nonspells were treated like traditional shmup boss patterns, cycling through a few different attacks that could overlap rather than the highly structured patterns the series is known for, leaving that to the spellcards. By the time the eighth game came out, nonspells followed the same basic design philosphy as spellcards.
    • The setting was initially portrayed as large and full of mystery and danger. There was no indication there's only one human village, travel seems to take a while, and the concept of lost village makes sense. Around the time of Touhou Kaeidzuka ~ Phantasmagoria of Flower View the setting got hammered down fairly well as being small and mostly documented.
    • Youkai tended to have Western names unless they had a good reason not to, the exact opposite of the situation from the 9th game on. Similarly, several were given a generic species of 'youkai' instead of something specific.
    • The seventh game features a "Phantasm Stage" beyond the normal Extra Stage, which hasn't reappeared in any game since, although fans often come up with custom Phantasm stages and bosses for other games. However, given that the boss of said stage is Yukari, it can be inferred that she twisted some boundaries to put herself in the game when there was otherwise no more room.
  • The sixth game in particular, (Touhou Koumakyou ~ the Embodiment of Scarlet Devil) being the first Windows game, can seem very odd compared to the later entries:
    • You can't see your hitbox when focused. Focusing itself simply moves the option closer to the center, with none of the major changes to shot common in later games.
    • No boss markers at the bottom of the screen. Particularly nasty with the high mobility and randomness of boss movement carried over from the PC-98 games (there it was less of an issue with smaller screens and more shot spread).
    • On Easy Mode, you couldn't play the final stage at all; the game simply ended after Stage 5 with no ending (not even the bad one). Later installments would not do this and would let you fight the final boss on any difficulty.
    • It's the only main-series danmaku game to not have a score/power-up gimmick of some sort. Even the PC-98 games had some unique way to increase score (albeit not terribly thematic ones), but here you're stuck with collecting point items and speedkilling bosses.
• TrackMania: The first few TrackMania games lack the Stadium environment entirely. The Stadium environment has became by far the most popular racing environment, to the point where the latest entry, TrackMania (2020) only has Stadium.
• Trauma Center: The first game, Trauma Center: Under the Knife, has a number of quirks that were never repeated in the remainder of the series:
  • Organs and bodies were rendered to look more realistic, rather than bright and colorful like in later installments. On the other side of the spectrum, character artwork was noticeably more shonen-esque, whereas Second Opinion onward would go for a more realistic look provided by Masayuki Doi (an Atlus regular who would go on to be the lead artist for Shin Megami Tensei IV).
  • The game uses a different set of sound effects compared to the standard set used throughout the rest of the series. GUILT also had completely different designs across the board.
  • There were many gameplay mechanics that stand out. You had a "Miss Limit" of 20; if you miss enough times the operation will end in failure. Future games drop the Miss Limit, making losing vitals, running out of time or the occasional Non-Standard Game Over the only ways to fail an operation. Several ailments were also dealt with differently. Triti had to be cut out with the scalpel after removing its pins, while gauze had to be massaged down after applying the gel. Most notable is that you have both the Hand and the Bandage as tools you can select at anytime; the former used for the aforementioned massaging as well as for CPR, while the bandage was used to close up patients. Due to their extremely limited uses, they were removed from the tool selection in future games, only becoming selectable when relevant.
  • The sixth and final story chapter of Under the Knife took the form of a Boss Rush, in which you would deal with each GUILT strain one-by-one. The final chapters of future games tend to feature far more diverse objectives, including Second Opinion, which remade Under the Knife's sixth chapter from scratch. This was likely because the Brutal Bonus Level of each game is also a Boss Rush; finishing Under the Knife only to discover that the bonus chapter was a harder version of what you just accomplished was a bit of a pacing oddity.
• Twisted Metal: The first game, Twisted Metal (1995), in a similar manner to Cool Boarders, plays more like a glorified tech demo with unfinished elements than the games that followed it. The tone and setting are much more down-to-earth and restrained, being confined to Los Angeles instead of being all over the world and having far less humor. The game also retains several elements indicative of a plan to have more live-action aspects — the driver pictures are based on photos of actual people, and the endings consist of scrolling text over a picture of an actor portraying Calypso (a remnant of deleted live-action videos that were later included in the Twisted Metal: Head-On re-release). Much of what defined the series was either not present or utilized elements never seen again — the game began with a glorified tutorial level that had players going one-on-one with another competitor in a small arena, there were no special moves and special attacks were collectable items (instead of regenerating after a set amount of time). The characters weren't worked out, either — Needles Kane lacked his trademark Flaming Hair, Calypso is not such a Jackass Genie, and Minion is the final boss (unlike TM2, where he's a midgame boss and had a Retcon to his origin story).

U

• Ultima: The series had some bizarre quirks throughout the early installments.
  • The first two games, Ultima I and Ultima II, had only a single player character, customizable to some degree; the third game included a party of up to four, all intimately customizable; every game after that allows only small adjustments to the main character (the Avatar) during character creation.
  • The first three games include fantastic races as playable characters and friendly NPCs; from the fourth game onward, no non-human good characters can be found save the occasional monstrous defector in a town or castle. What happened to them during the unification of Britannia?
  • The first two games include space exploration and Schizo Tech. Both also involve Time Travel, although in the first game it's just to get to the end boss, where in the second it's a necessary mechanic.
  • The first game hasn't got magical, mysteriously appearing and disappearing long-distance travel gates; the second has "time gates" which show up at specific places ever X number of steps to travel between different time zones; from the third on these became the Moongates.
  • Ultima I also includes quests to defeat specific monsters found only in the dungeon in order to obtain benefits from various kings.
  • Ultima I and Ultima III take place in "Sosaria"; Ultima II is on Earth (in various times in history). Between the third and fourth installments, Sosaria is united under the rule of Lord British and takes its new name (Britannia) from him.
  • Ultima II is the only game with dungeon-like "Towers" as well as dungeons — and the only installment in the series where the dungeons play no useful part in furthering your quest.
  • Ultima III introduced a starvation mechanic, where characters suffer damage over time if they run out of food. Ultima II just kills you off if the food counter hits zero. This mechanic held on for two more games, until it was retired in Ultima VI, which merely didn't allow you to recover hitpoints or magic while resting if you had no food. The starvation mechanic was omitted from the NES version of Ultima IV.
  • Ultima IV requires the character to not just be virtuous, but to be virtuous in eight specific ways. In Sosaria, the player character(s) were expected to lie, cheat, steal and murder their way to the final showdown; after the fourth installment, the Avatar is just expected to be good, not to be specifically good.
• Uncharted: The first game, Uncharted: Drake's Fortune, has some noticeable changes in the gameplay compared to the sequels. There are a few quick time events, Drake must manually switch to grenades from his current weapon in order to throw them, there is no zoom in feature for automatic weapons, machine gun turrets Drake can commandeer have unlimited ammo as opposed to the sequels where the ammo is limited, and the melee combat system is much more simplistic. And though enemies do improve in gear as the game goes on, the Heavily Armored Mook enemies that otherwise take heavy fire or headshots to finish off are absent. Story-wise, the plot is a bit more simple as well, with the action taking place almost entirely on an island; only 3 out of 22 chapters take place outside the island, as opposed to the vast number of locations and settings the sequels visit. The relationships between some of the characters also hadn’t been nailed down yet and are much different than in the sequels. Nathan and Sully’s relationship being the one that’s the most different. In this one it's more like a somewhat cold business partnership instead of the father/son one of the rest of the franchise. Compare Nate’s pretty non-plussed reaction to Sully’s alleged death in this game to him losing it over the same alleged death in the third game.
• Uncle Albert's Adventures: In the first game, Uncle Albert's Magical Album:
  • The various pages in the game do not follow any theme, unlike in the later games.
  • The English title logo is pale yellow with a black outline rather than black with a white outline like for the original French version. The other English translated games have their logo titles in black and white, just like the French covers.

V

• Valis: While later games, including all of the US releases, had rather linear gameplay, the original version of the first game released on Japanese computers had mazelike levels a naive player could easily get lost in, as did its early remake on the Famicom.
• Virtua Tennis: In the first game, KING (as well as his doubles teammate MASTER) looked like a regular modern asian tennis player and a bearded black tennis coach, respectively. From the second game onwards, King (as well as Queen and Duke, depending on the game) would start looking like stereotypical old British players.

W

• Wangan Midnight: The first game, Wangan Midnight (2001), only lets you drive in the Tokyo area and a small subset of the Wangan Expressway. Furthermore, to change your car's tuning, you don't do so before a race; you can only do so via a menu you can access only after inserting your card, versus races as well as stages 41-60 (the latter 2/3 of the Story Mode) have you race one lap around the course, and after the initial 20 tuning blocks, it takes five stages to get a new tuning block, while in later games the next 10 blocks appear every two stages. It also only takes 8 blocks to go from 600 to 800 HP, as opposed to 10 in later games.
• Warcraft:
  • Warcraft: Orcs and Humans, the first of the series, had a much grittier, more realistic art style, that definitely had color, but seemed more to help distinguish the low resolution sprites. Warcraft II started laying down the foundation for the future art style, but it wasn't until Warcraft III that the style fully embraced cartoony proportions and exaggerated animations. It should be noted that the cinematic trailers lean toward the photo-realistic to this day.
  • The first game allows you to build roads and walls, and buildings must be built next to roads. Once an unit is selected every action it will perform has to be chosen from a menu, including walking. All units need to be sent individually (or at maximum four at once) for a group action. Clicking on your own unit while a soldier is selected leads to Friendly Fire, while clicking "Heal" on an enemy unit does just that.
  • In the first and second games, humans talk about God (instead of The Light), and the lore mentions summoning demons from Hell (instead of the Twisting Nether). Orcs are Always Chaotic Evil because the humans are the Good Guys.
  • Warcraft started out as a fairly Low Fantasy, with a vaguely medieval human kingdom being invaded by orcs, ogres, and other monsters that either came with them or were summoned by them, all of which were treated as essentially demonic. Warcraft II expanded the world by revealing that standard fantasy races such as elves and dwarves simply lived north of the previous lands and the new races took sides with either the humans or orcs to form the now famous Alliance and Horde. The goblins and off-screen gnomes would provide a bit of Schizo Tech, but it was limited to them, canonically unreliable, and rarely acknowledged by the rest of the world in-universe. This remained more or less the status quo all the way through World of Warcraft, until The Burning Crusade.
  • World Of Warcraft initially started with undead basically being Always Chaotic Evil (something the Tabletop Game, which was written inbetween Warcraft III and World Of Warcraft, stated outright) as implied by them having the biggest number of evil-themed quests (such as killing farmers or torturing prisoners). This was gradually phased out over the various expansions, until there was eventually an undead paladin added (granted, he didn't choose undeath, but still remains a good guy despite being so.)
  • At the time, The Burning Crusade's introduction of heavy sci-fi elements was quite controversial. The demons were no longer simply magical monsters from a hellish realm, but a coalition of races collected from various worlds that heavily employed technology. Meanwhile, the Light further changed into a power related in some way to a strange alien race known as the naaru that builds spaceships. Even so, the introduction of a craftable motorcycle in the following expansion was still seen as quite out of place. Regardless, The Burning Crusade marked a turning point from what had become a High Fantasy, into a setting where anything goes and nothing raises an eyebrow anymore. Word of God has gone on record saying that the tech level is still around flintlock level, and the really crazy things aren't entirely canon and are mostly for Rule of Fun and Rule of Cool.
  • On a more low-key note, when Malfurion Stormrage was introduced in the original Warcraft III: Reign of Chaos, he was called simply Furion, but then his name was changed to Malfurion in the expansion The Frozen Throne and remained that way ever since.
  • Another low key example is that prior to Wrath of the Lich King, racial leaders only used unique variants of their race's standard appearance. Starting with Wrath, Blizzard began rolling out custom models for the leaders. While some leaders changed little, many are unrecognizable compared to their early designs.
  • Sylvanas Windrunner had the biggest change in appearance. In the original release she, an undead High Elf, used a reskinned Night Elf model, as Blood and High Elves only used simply placeholder models at the time. In the Wrath beta she was given a reskinned Blood Elf model before that was replaced with the first version of her current unique model.
  • When the Achievement System debuted in Wrath, some bosses had multiple achievements associated with them, some mutually exclusive, although only one achievement per boss(usually the hardest one) counted toward the meta achievements for raids. In later raids, there is only one achievement per boss.
  • Difficulty modes for raids were also different. 25-man raids generally required better gear than their 10-man counterparts, hence the existence of one achievement that was awarded for completing 10-man Ulduar without outgearing it. Some of the "hard modes" for Ulduar had to be activated manually(e.g. the Big Red Button in Mimiron's arena), and Heroic raids didn't debut until Trial of the Crusader. Naturally, this seems quite strange to those who are more familiar with flexible raids and fixed 20-man Mythic raids.
  • A few quests in vanilla-era WoW could be failed, thus forcing players to cancel them and get the quests again. While similar results can happen with some Escort Mission quests, you only need to talk to the NPC in question to try again.
  • The whole Genre Shift of the franchise in general counts: the first two games were pure Real-Time Strategy. Warcraft 3 was the first to add RPG Elements, but it wasn't until World of Warcraft that the game made the shift into a pure RPG.
• Warlight: An indie, free-to-play Risk-like that allows players to generate content, most early-made maps lack elements such as bonus links or connection lines. That does not make them unplayable but it is notable and confusing to the inexperienced player.
• Watch_Dogs:
  • DedSec did appear in the first game, but as a morally ambiguous third party faction with He Who Fights Monsters tendencies. Both 2 and Legion not only have their protagonists work directly for DedSec, but the group is also depicted in a far more positive light; less Well Intentioned Extremists and more La Résistance.
  • Many gameplay elements of the first game are generally less polished than in future installments. To unlock side content, Aiden must infiltrate and tamper with ctOS Towers (the game's version of the then-ubiquitous "Ubisoft Towers"), which 2 would drop. Aiden's movement is much more limited, and he lacks any non-lethal options beyond his baton. The game's story missions are played out in a linear order, and split into multiple acts that gradually escalate the strength of enemies upon completion; later games are much less linear and drop the act structure. Police rarely patrol the streets, and upon gaining a wanted level they will first scan the area before sending backup. Aiden's clothing customisation options mostly amount to reskins of his default outfit, a far cry from Marcus' impressive and varied range of clothing options. Aiden can steal money via hacking in the same way Marcus can, but he must go through the additional step of visiting an ATM to take out the money.
  • Combat itself would be heavily downplayed as the series went on. Aiden had a Hyperspace Arsenal, while Marcus is limited to two weapons alongside his stun gun, and the cast of Legion are limited to two weapons which are strictly character-specific. Aiden also had access to an Item Crafting mechanic, were he could find or buy items scattered around the game world, and choose to turn them into consumables such as grenades and powerful hacks in the midst of battle. 2 abandons this system, and instead turns items into abilities on a cooldown.
  • The first game is also much darker in both narrative and aesthetics than the Lighter and Softer sequels. Even the gloomy London of Legion makes up for the dour tone by invoking more Denser and Wackier gameplay.
• WipEout: The first game, Wipeout (1995), has a different, less minimalistic style for both the GUI and the vehicles. The vehicle is invincible and so weapons only slow you down, and the ability to select between two pilots for each teams, a feature which would only reappear in Wipeout Fusion, itself an oddball.
• Wolfenstein: The third game, Wolfenstein 3-D, and its sequels are one of the most influential first person shooters of all time, creating the genre. Starting with the third game, that is — the first two games, Castle Wolfenstein, were overhead stealth titles. Interestingly, until Wolfenstein II: The New Colossus in 2017, Castle Wolfenstein was also the only game in the series to get a sequel from the same developers - every other dev to get their hands on the property would put out a single game and, at best, one expansion for it before it switched hands again.
• Wonder Boy: The first game, Wonder Boy (1986), is nothing like the rest of the series. Whereas all the games from Wonder Boy in Monster Land and onward are side-scrolling action RPGs (except for Monster Lair, which was an auto-scrolling platformer with shoot'em up segments), the original Wonder Boy was a stage-based platformer similar to Super Mario Bros.. NES players will most likely recognize the game under the title of Adventure Island, a modified port by Hudson Soft that replaced the original main character with Hudson's gaming expert Takahashi-Meijin (aka Master Higgins), which is part of the reason why developer Westone took the Wonder Boy series into a different direction for its sequels.
• Worms: The first game, Worms (1995), doesn't have the more cartoony style that every game in the series after it has.

X

• X: The first game, X: Beyond the Frontier, was rather obviously an immature game. You could only pilot the one ship you started with, the interface was slow and unintuitive and its learning curve was more of a learning mountain of doom, the ships didn't have defenses beyond shields, trade and station building was limited and combat was extremely simplistic. The X-Tension, uh, extension was widely considered "what Beyond the Frontier was meant to be" — and even that was still somewhat unripe, especially concerning combat — which, if anything, was even more simplistic due to the tendency of the AI to fly in a straight line while under attack. It took four years after Beyond the Frontier for X2: the Threat to come out, and that finally gave the game the features and gameplay mechanics it's maintained since then and that we know from X3: Terran Conflict.
• Xenoblade Chronicles: The first game, Xenoblade Chronicles 1, has several distinct differences from later games:
  • Party members have more strictly defined roles, but a wider pallette of combat arts to work with. Later games would introduce a Job System that allows for much greater party customization at the expense of allowing each party member to have four arts equipped at a time.
  • A recurring character's name is localized as "Vangarre" in the first game, and as "Vandham" in all subsequent games.
  • The first game is the only one that doesn't give the term "Blade" special significance In-Universe; in Xenoblade Chronicles X it's the name of the organization the protagonist belongs to, in Xenoblade Chronicles 2 it's used to refer to the Artificial Human characters that make up a sizeable chunk of the cast, and in Xenoblade Chronicles 3 it's the name given to the characters' personal weapons.
  • The first game's party is limited to the six primary characters, with no other recruitable characters outside of two Guest Star Party Members. All the later games have a large number of Optional Party Members to recruit.

Y

• Ys: Ancient Ys Vanished ~ Omen:
  • Adol's artwork in the PC-88 version's manual looks totally different from his usual appearance, being brown-haired and dressed in blue, among other things. All future artwork of Adol, starting with the manual for Ys II, use his more familiar appearance.
  • There's a very basic plot, a small handful of notable characters you go back to repeatedly, and Dogi is just some notable bandit stuck in the Darm Tower that crushes walls. You also have no magic or extra features beyond the Rings that can't be used in boss fights, leaving players with only the classic Bump Combat as their way of fighting. Even its own sequel would expand upon these things, and most subsequent games in the series would add new features or gimmicks on top of the series eventually hitting a ridiculous number of characters.
• Ys II: Ancient Ys Vanished – The Final Chapter: The American TG-16 release of Ys I & II referred to Dogi as "Colin". Subsequent North American releases of the franchise ignored the change.
• Ys III: Wanderers from Ys: The intro of the Turbografx 16 version and a cutscene from the Playstation 2 version shows Genos as a pure human. Starting with the remake, he has been established as a member of the Eldeen.
• Ys VI: The Ark of Napishtim: This is the first Ys game made in the Napishtim Engine and as such, it has a lot of differences compared to Ys: The Oath in Felghana and Ys Origin:
  • There's no fast travel between save points (until it was retroactively patched in the Steam/GOG versions);
  • There's no buff potions or experience multiplier;
  • Healing items are used like any other RPGs by going to a menu instead of being instant pickups (until Catastrophe Mode was added in the Steam/GOG versions);
  • Unlike in the next two games where you have a single weapon and three main skills, this game has Adol using three swords, and all of them must be upgraded with gold and Emelas until they reach their maximum level. The game also lacks any skills, as all three weapons have a special attack that can only be unleashed if their magic meter is full.
  • There's no double jumping or, as mentioned above, skills that allow the player to float midair. Instead there's only dash jumping and that's it;
  • There's no Boost Mode;
• Ys SEVEN: This was the first game in the series to use a party system with Tactical Rock–Paper–Scissors for combat, and it has a few differences from how it would work in later entries. For example, players need to hold down the attack button to use a Charge Attack, but future installments would have it charge automatically. Another example is that attack skills can only be acquired by equipping specific weapons and can only be used independently of said weapons after performing them enough times. In later games, attack skills are automatically learned via level up or using a previous skill enough times and can be used regardless of weaponry.
• Yu-Gi-Oh!:
  • Most video games in the franchise are based on the Duel Monsters anime or the manga and focus on the card game rules, making Yu-Gi-Oh! Monster Capsule Breed and Battle's Toei anime and Capsule Monsters basis stand out.
  • The first "true" Yu-Gi-Oh! game, Duel Monsters for the Game Boy, preceded the actual card game. Consequently, it is very strange to play it in light of what came later, and many of its idiosyncrasies carried over into future titles. Trap Cards do not exist and Spell Cards are much less common, you can only play one card per turn, only one obtainable monster possesses an effect (Petit Moth), attack point gains are percentage-based rather than static values and go by "levels", Levels, Tributes, and Rituals aren't a thing at all, Fusions are accomplished without Polymerization, Burn cards are vastly more powerful (Tremendous Fire did 5000 damage), and a monster left in Attack Position must attack. Also, instead of opponents having preset Decks, their decks were semi-randomized.
  • In general, early Yu-Gi-Oh games tended to bear little resemblance to the card game, and often had their own interpretations of rules from the manga or anime. Yu-Gi-Oh! Dark Duel Stories had an Elemental Rock-Paper-Scissors system that carried into several later games, as well as Deck Cost and Duelist Level placing an artificial cap on the power of your deck. In Yu-Gi-Oh! The Sacred Cards, all Effect Monsters barring Petit Moth are Flip Monsters, and Fusions do not exist. It wasn't until The Eternal Duelist's Soul that they started to actually try to recreate the game's rules.
  • Since the games came out contemporaneously with the manga and anime, quite a bit of lore and characterization established in them is unusual in light of what would come later. Siamun Muran is a major recurring figure and mentor character in many games who shows up as early as Duelist Kingdom, when in the series he's a relatively minor character who doesn't show up until the very last arc, and it doesn't seem like the writers were aware he's a preincarnation of Yugi's grandfather. Ishizu's personality in Forbidden Memories and Duel Monsters II casts her as a menacing villain, when in the series, she's depicted as one of the most moral characters around, suggesting the writers were working off Takahashi's early concepts.
  • The ban list didn't exist in the earliest video games with cards being Limited or Semi-Limited and when the ban list was instituted, many cards weren't banned like they are today.
  • The aforementioned first game and Dark Duel Stories had Tea appearing after a duel and giving you cards for beating the opponent. Later games had you selecting from different booster packs.
  • Many games were outright weird in the early days such as most games having opponents in tiers and you had to beat each opponent in a tier a certain amount of times to move on and Yu-Gi-Oh! The Falsebound Kingdom being an RPG.

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