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First Installment Wins / Video Games

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First Installment Wins in Video Games.

  • Aerobiz: Quite a few players can remember seeing the game on the shelves of video rental stores, but few ever saw the sequel, Aerobiz Supersonic, and less saw the Japan-only released Air Management '96.
  • Alone in the Dark: The 1992 original is the most critically well-regarded of the series and had the most definite impact on shaping the Survival Horror genre. Its Denser and Wackier direct sequels and numerous Darker and Edgier actionised reboots that tried and failed to be Resident Evil are remembered solely for being that.
  • Ape Escape is generally considered to be one of the PS1's indisputable classics. Ask fans how they felt about the follow-up games (two Numbered Sequels and the Darker and Edgier Million Monkeys, the latter of which never made it out of Japan), and most of the time the response you'll get will be somewhere along the lines of "They made sequels?" This is to say nothing of a not-insubstantial number of spin-offs, such as Pumped & Primed. Those who are aware of the sequels will usually deem Ape Escape 2 as an Even Better Sequel, but it is the original that is better-known among gamers in general (not unlike Sonic the Hedgehog below). Interestingly, Spike's appearance in PlayStation All-Stars Battle Royale uses his Million Monkeys design despite its relative obscurity among Westerners.
  • Battletoads has had a lot of ports over the years, sequels for the arcade and Super NES, and a crossover with Double Dragon. But odds are very good that if you mention the name to anyone, the original NES game will come to mind. Interestingly, this is the case despite most of its successors improving on the original in various ways (like rebalancing the absurd difficulty).
  • Bayonetta is remembered for being a sensational Stylish Action game released on the PlayStation 3 and Xbox 360 that blew everyone's socks off. Its two sequels are far more divisive, however. Bayonetta 2 has heaps of fans, has an arguably more engaging story, and gave Bayonetta and Jeanne new and very widely approved designs but isn't as quite as challenging as the first gameplay-wise and got a lot of ill will for being exclusive to the unpopular Wii U at the time (it's been ported to the much more beloved Switch since and fans are generally appreciative of how Nintendo saved the IP by licensing it from Sega and publishing the sequels). Bayonetta 3 had an even rougher go of it, as — on top of being Overshadowed by Controversy regarding the former voice actor of Bayo herself — the game has gameplay, mini-game, and level issues along with a story that ended up splintering the fandom. Suffice to say, the most unambiguously good entry (or, at worst, least debated entry) in the series is the original.
  • Blaster Master:
    • "Hey, Blaster Master was a great NES game, wasn't it?... What's that? There's a second game on the Genesis? And a couple of Game Boy titles? Huh, never heard of 'em..." This trope was largely reinforced when Blasting Again was released for the original PlayStation as a budget title ($7.88 brand new!), and then the later WiiWare release of Overdrive.
    • The second game is mostly forgotten by fans (and for good reason). Blaster Master Boy was a Dolled-Up Installment of the sequel to the game Bomber King, called RoboWarrior internationally. Enemy Below was a Mission-Pack Sequel of the first game with new maps, bosses and weapons.
    • Thoroughly averted with the reboot installment Blaster Master Zero, whose own popularity grew big enough to eclipse the first game. There's still a little of this trope present in gameplay mechanics, though, as it's aesthetically based off of the NES original.
  • Bubble Bobble. Whenever the series is mentioned, it is almost always in reference to the first game and not its four official sequels.
  • Choplifter! had two sequels. The first, entitled Choplifter 2, is a Game Boy game that is considered in the Game Boy crowd to be the original Choplifter! and is about as well-known as the Apple ][ original. The third, Choplifter 3, is a SNES game that most people have never heard of due to its rarity.
  • Chrono Cross was doomed from the beginning not to be as popular as Chrono Trigger, one of the most beloved games ever made. While successful in its own right, it didn't even come close to the popularity of the original. Few people even know about Radical Dreamers, a Visual Novel follow-up to Trigger released in 1996 that laid the groundwork for Cross (which is no surprise since it spent two decades exclusive to the Satellaview, an obscure Japan-only add-on for the Super Famicom).
  • While many will be willing to admit to its own flaws, the first ClayFighter game is the most well-regarded of the series, enough for it to be re-released on the Virtual Console, Evercade and Sega Mini 2. The sequels aren't as well-regarded, with Judgement Clay having a massively stripped-down feel, and 63⅓ being plagued by a rather clunky Video Game 3D Leap and several newcomers heavily leaning into racist stereotypes.
  • Corpse Party is widely agreed to have peaked with its first installment, sometimes including its prototype Corpse Party (PC-98) version. The following games, alongside its adaptations, aren't as well-regarded for their rather controversial Hotter and Sexier approach, several out of left field plot twists, and the amount of deaths skyrocketing to the extent that players tuned out over the protagonists' suffering being for naught, with the Development Hell of Corpse Party 2: Dead Patient not helping in the slightest.
  • Crash Bandicoot:
  • The original Crysis is often considered the star of the series, especially with the Warhead Expansion Pack with its gameplay, plot, and performance improvements. Crysis 2 has more compact enviroments, a more complex/confusing plot, far more basic/small scale multiplayer, and in some respects reduced graphical fidelity for the sake of the console ports. Crysis 3 has some of the same contested elements, albeit not as pronounced as Crysis 2.
  • While the whole Dark Souls series is beloved, the first game remains the most universally beloved of its trilogy. While there are contingents who prefer Dark Souls II and/or Dark Souls III, both sequels are rather polarizing among fans for assorted reasons, such as level design, lore, and changes to gameplay. Taking the entirety of the "Soulsborne" series into account, some consider Demon's Souls, the first Dark Souls, Bloodborne, and Elden Ring (with Sekiro: Shadows Die Twice sometimes included) to be the "true Souls series" on account of them technically being the first or only installment in their respective franchises, feeling that FromSoftware's best work is when they create entirely new franchises that take their Signature Style in new directions rather than attempting to build on what was already good.
  • Daytona USA is one of the most iconic arcade racing games in existence, but spinoff Sega Super GT and both versions of Daytona USA 2? Good luck trying to find anyone who remembers or plays these. It's telling that Daytona USA 3 features remastered versions of the original Daytona tracks, but not of the second game's.
  • The original Deus Ex is considered by many fans to be the best in the series and still one of the best PC games ever, with mods still being made for it to this day. While Deus Ex: Human Revolution is also well-liked, many people agree that the first game is still the best in the series. However, they aren't particularly fond of Deus Ex: Invisible War.
  • Dino Crisis. The X Meets Y premise was what grabbed original fans, and few who have played the sequels (or the Light Gun Gaiden Game) think that they are better than the original (2 is generally well-liked, but it being an Actionized Sequel makes it something of an apples-to-oranges comparison with the original, with the "better' installment coming down to which genre you prefer).
  • The cast and story of the first Disgaea are still the most well-regarded even after several additional games in the series. Inverted with the gameplay, however, as subsequent games have improved on the formula and the first game feels very dated and barebones by comparison.
  • Doom: Each game in the series is excellent, but the first two games are among the most successful video games of all time, being pioneers of the First-Person Shooter genre, still sell copies to this day, and have large, prolific and long-lasting modding communities (especially the second game) due to their code being open-sourced. They're also the games most non-fans think of when asked about the series.
  • Everyone knows Donkey Kong, but even casual arcade fans probably haven't heard of Donkey Kong Junior, for instance, and games like Mario vs. Donkey Kong or Donkey Kong '94 have, at best, cult followings.
  • Fable is generally the most well-liked game of the Fable series; the sequels tend to be very divisive for cutting off every possible branch. Both have received a lot of flak for canonically making the Hero of Oakvale Lawful Good. The Hero of Bowerstone was made canonically male and also Lawful Good by the third game, and novels continuing the story after the end of the third game also made the Hero of Brightwall canonically male and Lawful Good once again, which alienated more than a few fans who preferred playing as a woman and/or a not entirely good-aligned Hero.
  • The first F.E.A.R. game is generally regarded as the best in the series; the second game was also well-received, though there were some complaints that the game had been "dumbed down" for a multi-platform console release (which the developers have admitted to). The third game, which was made by a different developer, had a dramatic shift in art style, and largely abandoned the series' action-horror roots for a co-op focused pure action shooter, was the least well received. Finally, the free-to-play multiplayer F.E.A.R. Online by a Korean developer came out, was widely regarded as a Franchise Zombie, and was quickly discontinued with all the servers shut down forever.
  • Final Fantasy:
  • The original Final Fight has received plenty of nods and references in later games, particularly with the inclusion of Guy, Sodom, Rolento, Cody, and Andore (under the guise of Hugo with Poison as his manager) in many Street Fighter installments and other Capcom fighting games. Its two sequels contributed Maki (from 2) and Lucia (from 3) to Street Fighter canon, and... really, that's it.
  • Fire Emblem, at least among the Japanese fandom, is either a straight example or a subversion in its spin-offs. In Tokyo Mirage Sessions ♯FE and Fire Emblem Heroes, Shadow Dragon and the Blade of Light is the only title that gets even a fraction of the spotlight that Awakening and Fates (and, later, Three Houses) get compared to every other game in the series. In Fire Emblem Heroes, Marth's saga is unquestionably the one that gets the most attention, but the world named after it in Crisis Crossover is titled "World of Mystery", after the third/twelfth game that remained No Export for You even in its remake, rather than something like "World of Shadow" to reflect the first game and its internationally released remake (the eleventh), suggesting that it's actually the first game's lone direct sequel that "wins out". (This might be because Book 1 of Mystery contains the entirety of the first game, with New Mystery additionally including remakes of the Satellaview's BS Fire Emblem: Akaneia Saga games.)
  • While there are six mainline installments, two spinoffs, and countless fan games, and while the sequels have made many gameplay refinements and were well-received in their own right, no game in the Five Nights at Freddy's series has yet to match the ground-breaking impact or the memorability of the first one.
  • While the sequels to The Great Giana Sisters have been better received than the original Commodore 64 game, the original game is still the most iconic in the franchise for infamously being such a blatant rip-off of Super Mario Bros. that Nintendo pressured the developers and publisher to permanently withdraw the game from distribution on the basis that it was obvious copyright infringement.
  • The original Halo trilogy by Bungie is beloved by the fanbase and was easily the most influential FPS series of the 2000's until eventually being eclipsed by Call of Duty. The new games by 343 Industries have all been some degree of Contested Sequel due to various factors such as contested story choices and significantly deviating from the art style and gameplay of the original games. Halo Infinite attempted to Win Back the Crowd by addressing most of these complaints, but itself received heavy criticism for moving the series to a "live service" model in a way which was done with poor competence, such as releasing the game missing basic online multiplayer features and opting not to develop the game's single-player portion after releasing it despite ending it on a massive cliffhanger that seems to be obvious seasonal content bait.
  • Heroes of the Pacific enjoyed a good critical reception and is still is something of a minor Cult Classic in the arcade flight game genre. Its direct sequel, Heroes Over Europe, received a much more mixed reception due to its dearth of content (the result of a troubled development cycle) and massive difficulty spikes, and its remake Damage Inc.: Pacific Squadron WWII sank without a trace and received universally mediocre reviews.
  • While all of the games in the original Jak and Daxter trilogy are generally well-received, Jak and Daxter: The Precursor Legacy sold the best, and there are a large number of fans of it who consider it the best in the series due to preferring the more traditional Collect-a-Thon Platformer gameplay of it over the mission-based sandbox and third-person shooting focus of the sequels, dislike of the Darker and Edgier direction the series took after it, and believing it was the most focused and had the most clear identity out of the games.
  • The King of Fighters:
    • While rivalled by Kyo and co. below in popularity, it is Terry Bogard, protagonist of SNK's first Fighting Game Fatal Fury, along with his allies Andy, Joe, and Mai (the latter especially) who ultimately remain all-time favourites and consistently appear in almost all KOF games (despite their original franchise having gone on hiatus for decades before Fatal Fury: City of the Wolves was announced in The New '20s), with most of the transplants from other SNK series to KOF also hailing from Fatal Fury. To exemplify this, Terry would be the one to represent SNK in Super Smash Bros. Ultimate and series Big Bad Geese Howard would be a Guest Fighter in Tekken 7.
    • Ask a person on the street to name a character from the franchise and they'll probably reply with someone from the Rugal/Orochi Saga, which ran from 1994 up until 1998, such as Kyo Kusanagi. Even today, Kyo remains not only front and center in advertising, but also the most popular of the series' four protagonists, with K', Ash, and Shun'ei all being unfavorably compared to him. Even the film, despite being released at the tail end of the Tales of Ash, was a loose adaptation of the Rugal/Orochi Saga.
    • For Kyo himself, this even extends to his clothing. Even with Kyo dropping out of school after the events of KOF '97 and adopting new looks since, it is very likely that his school uniform is the first thing that comes to mind when his name comes up. SNK seems to hold this view as well: Kyo has a number of clones and doppelgangers in canon who emulate his original look and moveset (Kyo-1 and Kyo-2 in '99, KUSANAGI in 2002 and 2003), an alternative version of Kyo known as "Kyo Kusanagi Classic" was a Secret Character in Maximum Impact 2, the Color Edit feature in XIII gives him his old gakuran as a Palette Swap, said gakuran was featured as a DLC costume in XIV, and every installment of the SNK vs. Capcom series features Kyo in his school uniform despite the mainline series having moved on to its second and third Story Arcs by then. The official character profile for KUSANAGI even lampshades the circumstances of his second birth in-universe, guessing that Chizuru (who was Brainwashed and Crazy at the time) must've envisioned Kyo as he was in his high school days.
      KOF Successive Characters - Inside Stories for Characters (KUSANAGI): But you can't have Kyo without a school uniform. Maybe in Chizuru's mind Kyo will always be a high school student.
  • There are many games in The Legend of Zelda series, all of them — even the divisive ones — having received heaps of praise for the consistent level of polish, care and dedication put into them. Many even hold an Even Better Sequel status in a lot of minds, but it can't be argued that when most people think of the name Legend of Zelda they think of the very first game. Its sounds, pixel art and quotes are some of the most iconic of the entire series, with the first quote of the game being the most well known of the franchise by far.
    Old Man in cave: It's dangerous to go alone! Take this.
  • Anyone who has played the Lethal Enforcers series probably knows that the first is the best-known of the series. The second game felt more or less like a rehash of the first game but only set in The Wild West rather than the modern day. The third game is actually obscure in the west, at a time when arcades outside of Japan were going into a serious decline. The game also played more like Police 911 and was titled Seigi no Hero in Japan.
  • Many, many people who have played Lunar: Silver Star Story aren't even aware the game has a sequel... or that it's a remake, for that matter.
  • While fans of Mass Effect tend to be heavily divided about the quality of the sequels and spin-off, almost all of them see the original game as fantastic and many (particularly hardcore RPG fans note ) regard it as the best entry in the franchise.
  • MediEvil was ported to a decent number of consoles, included in bundles, remade for the PSP and re-released as an app, and is still somewhat fondly remembered. The sequel MediEvil 2, with its new Victorian setting, received no ports outside of its original PlayStation release and is mostly forgotten today. Even Sir Daniel's appearance in PlayStation All-Stars Battle Royale takes mostly after the original game and its remake. The first remake (MediEvil: Resurrection) itself got mixed reception for playing up the comedy and removing levels from the original. As a result, the PS4 remake was much more faithful to the original game.
  • Especially true when it comes to the Mega Man series. The other series and spinoffs have their fair share of fans, but when people utter the name Mega Man, it's almost always the original version they're referring to. Within the X series, it's generally agreed that the original Mega Man X is the best Mega Man X game, with its epic storytelling and soundtrack, and the only sequels that may come close are X4 and (less commonly) X2 and X5.
  • Metal Gear has two examples that qualify for both this trope and Even Better Sequel:
    • Metal Gear Solid, the first game of the Metal Gear Solid series note  and the first of the Metal Gear games released both outside of Japan and on a widespread console. Everything from the characters, to the stealth gameplay to the codec are landmarks of gaming popculture. While every other game has their share of fans and critical praise, none have managed to reach the touchstone status of the first.
    • Metal Gear Solid 3: Snake Eater, despite being the third Numbered Sequel and the fifth game overall, is both chronologically the first game in the Metal Gear universe, and the first of three prequels (four if we're counting non-Kojima titles) to star Naked Snake/(Big Boss). It's also (arguably) the most beloved game in the entire series for its compelling story and immersive gameplay.
  • The first Metroid Prime is generally considered the best of the Prime Trilogy and is often pitted against Super Metroid for being the definitive Metroid experience for many. The two sequels, Echoes and Corruption, while still well-liked, are generally not thought of as being on the first game's level; the former for its Sequel Difficulty Spike and several mechanics making the game more frustrating for some, the latter for its Sequel Difficulty Drop and being a linear, story-driven Actionized Sequel as opposed to the quiet ambiance of the rest of the series.
  • The Mortal Kombat half of the character roster from Mortal Kombat vs. DC Universe consists entirely of characters from the first and second installments, which is when the series was at the peak of its popularity.
  • A lot of people have heard of Myst — unsurprisingly, since it was the bestselling PC game of all time for nearly ten years before it was displaced by The Sims. Fewer people picked up the sequel, Riven, and fewer completed it, probably because of the dramatically increased difficulty level. Outside of the adventure game niche market, however, most people will be rather surprised to learn that Myst has four direct sequels, three tie-in novels, and a highly ephemeral spinoff online RPG. When you mention Myst to most people, they'll immediately think of the first one only; of the 12 million copies of total franchise games sold as of 2007, 6 million were the original.
  • Anyone who mentions O2Jam is almost certainly talking about the original PC game that was first released in 2002, which was quite revolutionary due to being one of the earliest examples of an MMO Rhythm Game, allowing for a more communal atmosphere than console rhythm games of the time. There have been several spinoffs released for mobile since then, none of which have been as sucessful due to deviating strongly from the original gameplay presentation, no keysounds (where hitting the notes plays song sound effects) making combo-based score multipliers even more unbalanced, having a "rental"-based song purchase model, and lacking the multiplayer system of the original game. When a Steam O2Jam game was released in 2023, many people who downloaded it expressed great disappointment that it was simply a port of one of the mobile games rather than being a remaster of the original PC game or otherwise being designed for PCs from the ground up.
  • If you see anyone outside of dedicated fansites and such talk about Oddworld, it will probably be about the first game, Abe's Oddysee. Most people probably don't even know that the game had two sequels, a spin-off, or even a remake.
  • Pac-Man is a definite example. Plenty of other Pac-Man games have come and gone, but only Ms. Pac-Man and the one that started it all remain firmly in mind among consumers, with Championship Edition and Championship Edition DX sometimes being exceptions.
  • Painkiller is a sad example of a franchise that started getting a colder and colder reception with each new release, starting with the Battle out of Hell, an Expansion Pack consisting near-entirely of levels that were made for Painkiller, but cut out. Since then, each new sequel to the game has been developed by an outsider team, and all of them started out as game mods before being given commercial funding by the publishers. It shows.
  • The first Parasite Eve was an acclaimed PlayStation game that mixed RPG and horror elements. However, the second installment was viewed as a Resident Evil clone that took away features that made the first game well-liked including its controls and battle system. It was also less successful financially, selling about half as many copies. And many fans would rather forget that The 3rd Birthday exists altogether.
  • Plants vs. Zombies: While the PvZ franchise has plenty of sequels, the original game is the most popular and well-regarded (with the Garden Warfare games sometimes being exceptions).
  • Pokémon:
    • Any "Team _____" other than "Rocket" is mostly ignored by those outside of the fanbase (the Terrible Trio from the anime helps this).
    • The most recognizable creatures are also from Red/Blue/Yellow. Of all ten of the Super Smash Bros. playable Pokémon (as of Ultimate), just four aren't from those games (and one is a pre-evolution of franchise mascot Pikachu). Plus, the franchise's big return to mainstream popular culture also initially involved only the first generation's 'mons, though newer generation Pokémon have also been slowly joining the game since then.
    • The protagonist everyone thinks of is Rednote , be it his original design, his fanon design, or his remake design. Super Smash Bros. Brawl even modeled the Pokémon Trainer character after him. Pokémon Sun and Moon gave him and his rival Blue updated adult designs, while Wally from Gen III, despite canonically being their age, sadly received nothing aside from having his design less chibi-fied. This trope is largely because Red is the only protagonist to be shown in canon in later installments; he regularly appears as a Trainer and was the Final Boss in Gold and Silver.
    • Unlike most of the other third games, which are generally seen as improvements over the originals and are the "canon" versions, Pokémon Sun and Moon are this to Pokémon Ultra Sun and Ultra Moon. This is largely due to the changes in characterization and plot, especially in relationship to the main villain Lusamine. Most fans prefer the original, more abusive incarnation of Lusamine over US/UM's Well-Intentioned Extremist version. This even appears in adaptations, as Lusamine's animenote  and Adventures counterparts are more based on her Sun and Moon incarnation than the US/UM one.
  • Prince of Persia:
  • Go and ask anyone who has played the Puzzle Quest games what do they think about them. Without a shadow of a doubt, they will tell you that Galactrix and Puzzle Kingdoms suck and that Puzzle Quest 2, while good for the most part, is nowhere near as good as Challenge of the Warlords, the original game in the series.
  • Ragnarok Online is a Korean MMORPG, more or less a Long Runner. You probably never knew there was a Ragnarok Online 2, since few fans played, and among those fans, even fewer were the ones that liked, even among that group, none consider 2 better than the original title. The Creator-Driven Successor, Tree of Savior, was much better received than RO2, but not nearly as well-received as the original game of the company, especially by old-time fans.
  • RayForce is generally regarded as the best game in the RAY Series due to its impressive use of scaling and rotating sprites, making it one of the most 3D-looking sprite-based games in existence. RayStorm and RayCrisis are not as highly-regarded due to 3D graphics that haven't aged well, the isometric perspective creating problems with dodging enemy fire, and same-altitude lock-on and the bonus-point opportunities that go with it discouraging players from using their main shot.
  • Resident Evil:
    • The first four numbered games (RE1, RE2, RE3, and RE4) have all been remade, and while the latter three recreations of the classics are popular (particularly RE2make and RE4make), it's collectively agreed among fans and critics that the GameCube remake of RE1, despite selling less, is the best and "truest" remake of the bunch, managing to update the environment, characters, and monsters to spectacular effect while still having the same layout and fixed prospective gameplay of the original (rather than recreating pretty much everything about the source material as the subsequent remakes would do).
    • For a good deal of franchise purists and speedrunners, the original PlayStation RE trilogy will win out against its successors on future consoles in spite of RE4's near universal acclaim. The smaller scope, simpler controls, Narm Charm visuals, and janky B-Movie camp combined to put the early games in a very special place that later titles cannot match for said fans, despite the obvious vast technical improvements. It also helps that some of the cornier and goofier elements of the original games have long since become So Bad, It's Good for many, e.g. Barry's "YOU WERE ALMOST A JILL SANDWICH!"
  • Ask RollerCoaster Tycoon fans what their favorite game in the series is, and they'll most likely say the first one. The second and third games do have their fans, but the second one is generally not as well remembered due to making almost no substantial changes to the formula and having less memorable scenarios, and the third is only remembered for including a sandbox mode and not much else.
  • Sakura Wars is dominated by the cast of the first game (and the second, since it's the same cast with a couple of extra characters added in), despite the fact that the fifth game was only one of two to get wide Western releases (and have their own pages on this site). The various adaptations tend to focus on them as well. However, Project × Zone has partly rectified this by having a representative character from not just the first game, but the third and fifth ones as well.
  • Savoir-Faire is an Interactive Fiction classic. Not many know that it had two sequels, released in 2006 and 2012. While well-received, they have around half the plays and ratings as the first game on IFDB.
  • The Secret of Monkey Island is the most well-regarded Monkey Island game by reviewers and every sequel has been compared to it. This is despite the fact it doesn't have as much a comedic tone, only allows you to visit two islands, and several of the characters have less cartoony personalities than they do later (Guybrush is less clumsy and LeChuck is less hammy). Monkey Island 2: LeChuck's Revenge is the one that set the tone for the sequels and it and/or the third game The Curse of Monkey Island are usually considered to be the series' highlight by fans.
  • Taomee's Seer and Mole's World have more content and better-known characters than their sequels, causing many people to stick to them instead of shifting to their sequels. Taomee even noticed that Mole's World 2 had less attention and players than the previous game, so the game was eventually shut down. Aries Alliance, the third Seer game, was generally considered a failure and also suffered the same fate as Mole's World 2.
  • Did you know that there were sequels to the classic game Shadowgate? If you did, you probably only know about the Nintendo 64 game Trials of the Four Towers. However, even that was preceded on the Turbo Duo by Beyond Shadowgate.
  • The original series of Sonic the Hedgehog games released for the Mega Drive/Genesis back in the early-to-mid 90s continue to be by far the most well-known games in the still ongoing franchise. Green Hill Zone and its boss the Checkered Wrecker are the most familiar in the franchise. Within the Genesis series, this especially holds true with the first and second games, which are widely more recognized by the general public than Sonic the Hedgehog CD and Sonic 3 & Knuckles. A big reason for this was due to Sega's decision to utilize both games during the year of their release as Mega Drive/Genesis pack-in games during the holiday season (as part of their rivalry with Nintendo's SNES at the time), which resulted in both selling way more copies. This may also be the reason why Sonic 1 and Sonic 2 got higher priority in ports and re-releases in later years.note 
  • When talking about Spyro the Dragon to a non-gamer or outside the fandom, it is likely that the person will have only heard of (and played) the classic trilogy. Even within the fandom, the first three games are regarded as staple classics. As for the other mainline entries - Spyro: Enter the Dragonfly represents the awkward transition to PS2 era that could have been decent were it not for horrendously buggy state the game was shipped it. Spyro A Hero'sTail is better regarded than Enter the Dragonfly, almost matching the classics save for the variety and amount of the levels present along with the overall formula getting somewhat stale. Finally The Legend of Spyro trilogy soared to new heights in terms of storytelling and cinematic presentation while also introducing relatively sophisticated combat, but also abandoning the sprawling open-ended levels in favour of a linear story progression.
  • Like the Mortal Kombat example above, any time Street Fighter is involved in the Capcom vs. series, expect the vast majority of the characters to come from Street Fighter II (with the big exceptions being Ryu and Ken, who originated in its lesser known predecessor). Ryu, Chun-Li, M. Bison, Ken and Akuma are especially prevalent in this regard. In a more general sense, most pop culture references to the franchise will also usually focus on characters people remember from II, rather than any of the sequels or prequels.
  • Super Mario Bros.:
  • When it comes to Supermassive Games, Until Dawn their first title more or less kicks the crap out of its successors The Dark Pictures Anthology and The Quarry (though that has its fans) concerning critical and player reception. Whilst said later games are by no means terrible Until Dawn simply managed to be more compelling and thrilling with its characters, narrative and horror.
  • The first Super Monkey Ball, due to it being a port of an arcade game, had a wide variety of challenging levels and attracted a large Challenge Gamer fanbase as a result. The second game had more gimmicky levels, but still had quite a few Challenge Gamers trying to eke out both No Death Runs through Expert and Master, and single-level runs of TAS quality without the tool assistance. Then the games progressively got significantly easier, and the fanbase lost interest as a result.
  • Tetris: No matter how many different versions are released, the Game Boy music is the most recognizable. In particular "Korobeiniki" (a.k.a. Music A) is "The Tetris Song."
  • ToeJam & Earl, full stop. Its immediate sequel, Panic on Funkotron!, wasn't a bad game, but the fact that it was so different from the first game turned off a lot of fans. The third game, Mission to Earth, however, suffered hard from a poorly-done Video Game 3D Leap to the point of being a Franchise Killer.
  • The original Tomb Raider I is the most impactful of the franchise, and while there are arguments on whether it's the best of the Core Design series, this trope also applies to the other two continuities by Crystal Dynamics that followed, with Tomb Raider: Legend and Tomb Raider (2013) being better-regarded than their respective sequels (Anniversary and Underworld for the former, Rise of the Tomb Raider and Shadow of the Tomb Raider for the latter).
  • Turok will always be remembered for the first two games, in a slight stretch of this trope. Mostly because these two revolutionized first-person-shooters on the consoles (and on the Nintendo 64 at that, bringing gory content and well-designed action to a system that didn't have anything like it at the time). Besides the multiplayer arena shooter Rage Wars, every game that followed either just didn't have what fans considered to be "Turok" in their spirit, or were extremely unfinished and an Obvious Beta. It says everything that of all things to get HD remasters, it was the first two games before any others.
  • Unreal Tournament, the multiplayer side of the Unreal franchise, is also subject to this: Unreal Tournament was released in 1999, UT2003 in 2003, UT2004 in 2004 and UT3 in 2007. UT2003 is considered the worst. There is a Broken Base case between UT3 and UT2004, because UT2004 was very different but very popular, while UT3 tried to get the best out of UT2004 and UT99, resulting in a game which is a sort of middle-ground, had a mixed reception and was never as popular as 2004 and 99. Everyone, however, agrees that UT99 was the single best game.
  • The first Viewtiful Joe game is said to be the best in the series, despite the successful sales and good reviews of the sequel and spin-offs.
  • The Walking Dead (Telltale):
    • Season 1 is a colossal example of this. The first season took everyone by surprise, was absolutely adored, won multiple awards, and is considered to have one of the best narratives in video games. Its sequels? 400 Days, Season 2, Season 3 aka A New Frontier, Season 4, and the Michonne game? Putting it mildly, they aren't as popular. Then there's the comic based on the game set after Season 4, which fans would rather pretend doesn't exist at all, thanks in part to what's widely perceived as character assassination for Clementine.
    • Tragically, when it comes to the era of Telltale Games that spawned from Walking Dead Season 1's runaway success, this also applies. As this chart shows, no game after came close to selling as well as Walking Dead Season 1 — which likely contributed to Telltale's bankruptcy as a company.
  • Though fans generally prefer the sequels, the original Wario Land is by far the best-selling game in the series, accounting for nearly a fifth of the Wario franchise's total sales by itself. To give an idea of the gulf, the first Wario Land sold over 5 million copies worldwide while the next highest-selling Wario game, WarioWare: Touched!, sold 2.47 million units.
  • Wolfenstein: The New Order was widely praised for modernizing and revitalizing old-school FPS shooter gameplay at a time when the market was dominated by games trying to imitate Call of Duty. It's various follow-ups have all been more divisive, whether it be for New Colossus putting a much greater emphasis on cutscenes and cinematic interactions over gameplay as well as raising the difficulty in a way that felt cheap, or for Youngblood adding RPG Elements akin to The Division or Destiny 2, designing the entire game around 2-player co-op in a traditionally single-player series, and switching away from B.J. Blazkowitz to his 2 teenage daughters with divisive "frat boy" personalities.
  • X-COM:
  • The Xenoblade Chronicles series has spawned three sequels as of July 2022, but to most fans, the original title is still the best and most memorable one, even though all three sequels were still very well received, with XC3 in particular often being held up as a marked improvement on the foundation laid down by its predecessors. The fact that XC1 characters have appeared in both Super Smash Bros. and Project × Zone also works in its favor, though Shulk would be joined by Pyra and Mythra from XC2 in Smash Ultimate.

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