Vindicated By History / Video Games

Consoles

Consoles

• The Internet has been helping classic game consoles to get more recognition:
  • For years, the Nintendo Entertainment System was the oldest system that is still remotely greatly remembered. Consoles such as the Sega Master System and any game console that came before the NES were fading away into obscurity. However, as the Internet became more and more accessible, there was a lot more information on older games. Some may say that retro gaming is still relatively niche, but the Internet has definitely made learning about them a whole lot easier.
  • The NES and Sega Master System started to get more popular in the UK throughout the 21st century, particularly in the late 2000s and beyond. Earlier in their lifespan, they were dropped in favor of microcomputers (like the Commodore 64 and Sinclair ZX Spectrum) because many consumers thought they had primitive graphics compared to microcomputers. As the Internet started to become more and more available, many people in the UK realised that the assumption that their microcomputers had better graphics was wrong, making the NES and Sega Master System more popular as a result.
  • The emulation community has been instrumental in resurrecting games and consoles that would have been popular had they not failed to gain an audience due to poor marketing, were squashed by competition, or otherwise failed to find their stride. People being one Google search away from playing any game on any older console has given a lot of these older works a fair shot at winning over a crowd and finding a fanbase.
• While vindication wasn't needed in most of the world, the TurboGrafx-16 went almost completely unnoticed in North America. At first this was mostly due to the loud Console Wars between the Super Nintendo Entertainment System and Sega Genesis in the region drowning it out, but it later effectively buried itself with its "Johnny Turbo" advertising campaign, which tried to adopt the same attitude as Sega but backfired with its especially hostile attitude. Then through a combination of the Wii Virtual Console bringing a large chunk of its library to modern audiences, and the growing Internet connecting North American gamers to regions where the PC Engine was popular, it finally started to develop a decently-sized local following. Shoot 'Em Up fans in particular love this console now for having official autofire buttons baked into the OEM controllers (as opposed to having to seek out specialized controllers for this purpose), greatly saving wear-and-tear on the player's thumbs in an era where game-long Button Mashing isn't looked up so brightly anymore.
• The Sega Saturn never really caught on in the West, but word of mouth through the Internet captured the interest of hardcore gamers looking to indulge in its arcade perfect Shoot 'Em Up and fighting game library. (In some cases, like Twinkle Star Sprites and Street Fighter Alpha 3, the Saturn versions are considered superior to the Dreamcast versions. Radiant Silvergun, an arcade game ported to Saturn, infamously had its PlayStation port cancelled because the PS1 couldn't handle its Sprite/Polygon Mix.) The internet also resulted in greater awareness of various exclusives like Panzer Dragoon Saga, Burning Rangers, and other notable titles that still can't be had on any other platform without emulation. As a result, it's seen as much less of a failure and more of a must-have for any hardcore gamer these days, especially those who like arcade games. The Japanese marketing campaign (which had a narrative arc featuring mascot Segata Sanshiro) was also discovered in North America years after the system died out, and was considered to be one of the most effective video game system campaigns of all time. When all the specs are put together, the Saturn may very well have been the greatest 2D graphics console of its time; alas, this was during a period when 3D graphics were being heavily pushed to the forefront by the industry and consumers alike — regardless as to how much better the Saturn performed in the prior category.
• The Nintendo GameCube. It was in third place in the sixth generation (only a couple million units behind the original Xbox), with gamers deriding it as a "kiddie" console (granted, compared to the other consoles of its generation, it did look like a toy). It also suffered from few third-party exclusives, divisive first-party titles, and many best-selling T and M-rated titles such as Grand Theft Auto releasing on the other consoles but not the GameCube. In fact, it cost a lot for Capcom, as the only way they recouped their losses was by porting some of their games, most famously most of the supposed-to-be-exclusive "Capcom 5" like Resident Evil 4, to PS2. However, several games have become Cult Classics, or have simply been revisited and given the accolades they deserve. It helps that the original model of the much more successful Wii was fully compatible with GameCube games, making it easier for people to play games for the latter without actually having to buy one. Its incredible durability means that operational GameCubes are still available, and its inherently portable nature (encouraged by the little carry handle on its back) and library of popular local multiplayer games means that a GameCube can easily show up at a party on short notice and be enjoyed casually, further increasing its popularity.
• The Play Station Vita was the worst-selling PlayStation device thanks to numerous issues, but it maintained a cult following during its run that only grew following its discontinuation, thanks to piracy on the system with homebrew games, like Mario Kart Vita and the Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas port.
• Zig-zagged with the Philips CD-i. Nobody would consider it to be a decent gaming console in the present, but people are a bit more understanding of the system itself. It wasn't really a gaming system first - it was an "All in one" device that would have the functionalities of a home computer, media player, and interactive software - in The '90s. (Consoles didn't embrace the "All-in-one" format until the Turn of the Millennium) Perception on the CD-i has shifted largely from it being one of the worst gaming systems ever made, to walking so the PlayStation could run... and having some So Bad, It's Good titles in the form of Hotel Mario and The Legend Of Zelda C Di Games.

Video Games

The Legend of Zelda

The Legend of Zelda series suffers from a perpetually Broken Base, making the application of this type of reaction problematic due to the lack of clear consensus at any given time. There is an interesting phenomenon known as the "Zelda Cycle": Whenever a new Zelda game is released on a home console, the fanbase almost universally hates it, while the previous game (which was hated just as much up until this point) is now suddenly praised as a masterpiece. In September 2013, series producer Eiji Aonuma and Nintendo president Satoru Iwata expressed their awareness of this phenomenon.

• Zelda II: The Adventure of Link is maybe the premier Oddball in the Series for Zelda, being a sidescroller with RPG like elements instead of a top-down adventure game (besides its overworld maps), overworld "battles" that would draw you into sidescrolling combat segments and a clunky life system that kept your progress, but kicked you back to the starting point on every game over, forcing a backtrack which was all the more noticeable since the game was Nintendo Hard. Even Shigeru Miyamoto himself considers it to be the least favorite game he's ever helped to create ^note albeit this is less an Old Shame and more because the team was so busy just making the NES/Famicom hardware work for the game they couldn't really get creatively crazy or invested in it, they just had to stick to what they put on the paper. While people didn't hate it at the time of its initial release, it quickly fell out of favor when Link to the Past came out and really locked in what Zelda as a series would be, as well as the unfavorable comparisons to the Zelda CD-i games which were also 2D sidescrollers, turned public opinion against it in the 90s and early 2000s. Since then, however, people have warmed up to the game's unique gameplay style and appreciate it being the origin of many Zelda staples (towns, sidequests, and magic were all introduced in this game), even though they'll still admit it's a game you want a guide for that will break you over its knee. Notably, there's a non-dismissable number of indie games that follows Zelda II's lead, and many fans are warm to the idea of present-day Nintendo taking another shot at a game with similar mechanics and presentation as Zelda II.
• The Legend of Zelda: Majora's Mask had the poor luck of being a follow-up to Ocarina of Time, one of the most critically beloved games of all time. Its reception was mostly lukewarm, with the chief complaints about the game being that it recycled graphics from its predecessor and its shortness, with a mere four dungeons, and for a long time it was mostly known as "the weird Zelda." A decade or so later, and the fanbase for Majora's Mask had grown considerably, with many people loving the bleak, sinister atmosphere, the creative (if somewhat difficult) dungeon design, and the massive amount of sidequests.^note A certain frightening Alternate Reality Game hasn't hurt matters either. It now isn't rare to hear people call it one of their favourite installments in the franchise.
• The Legend of Zelda: Oracle Games reviewed well critically, but few fans played them since they released right at the end of the Game Boy Color's lifespan — so late that they had special features if played on a Game Boy Advance. Plus, the fact that they were direct follow-ups to The Legend of Zelda: Link's Awakening in terms of gameplay meant they were somewhat doomed to live in their big brother's shadow. As time went on and emulation became more accessible (including Nintendo's own Virtual Console), more people gave the Oracle games a shot and discovered their more unique features, like the animal companions, a focus on changing the seasons or time period to access new areas, and a two-part story that spans both games. Fans now view them as solid 2D entries in the series.
• The Legend of Zelda: The Wind Waker was near-universally derided by Western fans before and shortly after release. While two dungeons having been cut from the second half of the game in order to get it on shelves in a timely manner and the sailing system, which many found tedious, certainly didn't help matters, most of the hatred was aimed towards the art style. Due to a tech demo for the GameCube setting expectations and fans disliking the "kiddy stigma" that Nintendo was getting, the reveal of cel-shaded look was seen as a betrayal. The game's initial disappointment is a huge reason why Twilight Princess opted for a more dramatic and mature story combined a dark atmosphere and realistic visuals. However, the game's stylized nature has aged well compared to the more realistically styled games of the time, which came to include Twilight Princess (whose art style was a response to the criticism The Wind Waker received), and its story gradually saw increased recognition as an adept deconstruction of the franchise's premise. Nowadays, the game is generally remembered as a niche favorite, a critical darling, and an overall flawed but more than worthy entry in the series. Aonuma himself has even said that this reaction is the reason why The Wind Waker specifically was chosen to get an HD remaster on the Wii U.
• The Legend of Zelda: Phantom Hourglass was criticized for several aspects such as the Temple of the Ocean King, the touch controls and especially the way the overworld was structured. Eventually, this game, while not widely considered one of the best in the series, got a lot of retroactive praise for its creative items, puzzles, and characters.
• The Legend of Zelda: Spirit Tracks: It was praised for improving on and addressing complaints with Phantom Hourglass (like the repetitive, time-limited central dungeon), but was also criticized by some for elements like the train mechanics, implementation of the Spirit Flute, and for being too similar to its predecessor. However, several factors have come to bring it into fans' good graces. So much so that the game would later get its own stage in the Super Smash Bros. series
  • A stronger presence of Zelda herself, who is considered a more interesting and helpful companion character who was even Promoted to Playable.
  • A narrative that is lighthearted and tongue-in-cheek, which actually provides a resolving conclusion as a sequel to Wind Waker and Phantom Hourglass (in contrast to much of the rest of the series, which is largely convoluted and contradictory).
  • A killer soundtrack, considered by many fans to be one of the best in the franchise.

Super Mario Bros.

Super Mario Bros., while a popular franchise, has a few examples which took a longer-than-normal time to become popular with the fandom at large;

• In 2012, Shigeru Miyamoto shocked many by dubbing Super Mario Bros. 2 as his favorite Mario game, tied with the first Super Mario Bros. This surprise was because, while the game itself was popular during the first few years following its original release on the NES, bad word of mouth regarding its origins as a Dolled-Up Installment (especially during the Turn of the Millennium) battered its reputation considerably. General audience reaction has been kinder towards the game in the following years, partly because it is a game that breaks the formula in many ways and introduced numerous defining gameplay mechanics. In particular, modern-era games like Super Mario 3D World and Donkey Kong Country: Tropical Freeze were inspired by it, which has been noticed positively. Plus, the fact that it's the game that introduced Birdo, as well as other mainstays such as Shy Guys, Bob-ombs, Pokeys and Ninjis, certainly helps its reputation.
• Super Mario World 2: Yoshi's Island was critically acclaimed upon release but largely overshadowed by the more hyped-up Donkey Kong Country 2: Diddy's Kong Quest. It's now considered to be one of the greatest games of the 16-bit era.
• The Super Mario Land games were acclaimed and sold well in their day, but fell into disfavor due to their non-contemporary settings and being overall weird games that also lacked the involvement of series mastermind Shigeru Miyamoto. In 2015, when Nintendo celebrated the 30th anniversary of Super Mario Bros., both Land games were included among the more iconic traditional games in the timeline. Fans have also become more appreciative of both games' creativity, atypical plotlines and settings (no Mushroom Kingdom, no Bowser, no Luigi or even Princess Peach; The first Land introduced Daisy, while Land 2 doesn't even have a Save the Princess plot, and was also the game to introduce Wario), while still staying true (for the most part) to the traditional fun gameplay of the franchise. The Broken Base surrounding the modern New Super Mario Bros. titles contributes to this as well.
• Yoshi's Story on the Nintendo 64, which was the sequel to Yoshi's Island, got a ton of criticism when released. Lots of people made fun of it or bashed it for being a 2D game when 3D was the big fad, derided it for being too easy, too kiddie, and too unlike Yoshi's Island, which people were already holding up as one of the best Mario games ever made. Nowadays, Yoshi's Story is more fondly remembered for its graphics, music, Self-Imposed Challenge potential, and the gamers who were actually in its target demographic when it came out, with many of them having happy memories of it.
• When it originally released, many gamers disliked Super Mario Sunshine due to the voice-acted cutscenes and gameplay that was based more on the use of a water jetpack instead of traditional jumping. Years later, Mario fans have come to embrace the title. It's still not the most popular Mario title around, but its reception is much better, with some even going so far as to consider it a better game than Super Mario 64. While the game was criticized when it first came out for "not looking like a Mario game" due to lacking certain aspects of the series' iconography (such as the Goombas and Koopas), Sunshine's unique aesthetics are now a point of praise for the game after later Mario games (the New Super Mario Bros. sub-series in particular) were criticized for recycling the same look and feel over and over again.
• The original Paper Mario, while critically acclaimed, had the bad luck of being near the end of a console generation, with people anticipating the Nintendo GameCube, and for not being Super Mario RPG, of which fans were waiting for a sequel since the previous generation. Its popularity didn't take off until well into the GameCube era when used copies started popping up and people decided to try it with the lower price. It became a big enough success (audience-wise, though not sales until the Wii's Virtual Console) to be the first Mario RPG to get a sequel. Paper Mario also launched Nate Bihldorff from a freelance writer who barely got hired for anything to Nintendo's current primary localization writer, now well known enough that he was a host at Nintendo's booth at E3 2012. The Super Mario RPG fans have also since learned to accept it and put Paper Mario on equal standing with it.
• Super Paper Mario caused a Broken Base due to using real-time battles (aside from one RPG battle during Chapter 7, and even then, the presentation of said battle is a departure from the prior games) and being quite a bit easier than the previous two games. The hate has mostly died down since, in part due to the following game in the series quickly becoming almost unanimously derided by fans instead. SPM is now viewed as being a very different but still enjoyable Mario RPG experience and has especially become appreciated for its darker story filled with meta jokes, commentary, and gameplay mechanics. The Broken Base is definitely still there, though; few will argue against the game's solid story, but many fans still dislike the game for having several examples of That One Level and the gameplay, though unique, for being tedious and often very easy to break.
• Luigi's Mansion, when first released, was criticized by fans for not being a platformer, and for being very, very short, and was overall seen as a weak title for that reason alone. While even fans of the game still criticize its short length, which is not without reason or merit, it is more universally praised nowadays for being a great game that took the Super Mario franchise in an unexpected direction compared even to other spin-offs at the time. The game eventually received a sequel on the Nintendo 3DS in 2013 (which received an Updated Re-release on the Switch in 2023), a 3DS remake in 2018, and another sequel for the Nintendo Switch in 2019.
• The GameCube Mario Parties (4-7) caught a ton of fire in their day for being very repetitive sequels with a notorious amount of lazily reused assets that did little to spice or change up the formula. They have become to be more loved, however, when the series returned after a hiatus with 9, which drastically changed the formula from its frantic free-for-all style, which many fans actually did not like. Which each new Mario Party released that drifts away from the classic formula, the more and more the GameCube parties became vindicated, with some considering them now to be right up there with the Nintendo 64 titles. The release of Super Mario Party vindicated the games further, being heralded as a slight return to form for the series by going back to the classic formula (mostly), with Superstars proving to be an Even Better Sequel to Super by re-imagining a few classic boards from the N64 games.
• Mario Party DS was mostly ignored at launch, with the general consensus being that it was a game that is So Okay, It's Average. Then came the 2020 Creepypasta video series Mario Party DS Anti Piracy, which went viral and drew attention back to the game, this time receiving praise for its unique minigames and boards as well as having an exceptionally interesting story mode for a Mario Party game. Another strong point of the game is that it actually feels like a true Mario Party experience in comparison to the other portable installments in the series.
• Super Mario 3D World arrived at a time when fans were clamoring for a new sandbox 3D adventure akin to 64, Sunshine, and (to a lesser extent) Galaxy; they felt that the newer game felt too similar to the presentation of the 2D New Super Mario Bros. games, and thus the game's reveal garnered it some backlash as not being a "true" 3D Mario in the vein of the previous titles (while Super Mario 3D Land showed similar characteristics, it being released on a handheld system and its novel 3D effects lessened the criticism). While it managed to Win Back the Crowd with later previews, being released on the failing Wii U console limited its reach. This was demonstrated on its opening week in the UK, where it was handily outsold by Knack, a dueling 3D platformer that doubled as a launch title for the PS4 that had less-than-stellar reviews; resulting in much mockery online. When it was re-released on the Switch after Super Mario Odyssey, which finally filled the void of sandbox gameplay and original worlds, fans were much more receptive towards what it did provide — a surprisingly inventive campaign that offered and played with plenty of new and old ideas in its level design, game mechanics, and characters; bolstered by the addition of four player cooperative play (a rarity for the 3D platformer genre).
• Super Princess Peach, despite reviewing good and selling quite well, was subjected to controversy for its "Vibe" mechanic and causing Sweetness Aversion. Fans have grown to appreciate it a little more after over a decade, being a very unique title with fun mechanics, controversial aspects aside. Plus, being able to play as Princess Peach on her own adventure was a really cool novelty for some. The game also received praise for its mechanics by doing away with Video-Game Lives, and finding a practical use for the coins by offering a shop with purchasable items, well before Super Mario Odyssey did it over a decade later. Super Princess Peach's uniqueness has let the game stand out favorably among its contemporaries, being viewed as a worthy follow-up to the lineage of classic Mario platformers, especially in light of the controversial New Super Mario Bros. series. Several fans are hoping for a sequel, if not for it to become a Peach-centric series like Wario, Donkey Kong, Yoshi, and Luigi before her. Sure enough, in June 2023, interest in Super Princess Peach was re-invigorated when Princess Peach: Showtime!, a second Peach solo title, was announced for the Nintendo Switch.

Others

A-L

• While Age of Empires III still remains a Contested Sequel within the franchise, especially with its substantial deviation from its predecessors, it's seen something of a reappraisal following the release of its Definitive Edition. That it's also the only entry in the series to go beyond the timeframe of Age of Empires II (covering the Age of Exploration up to the Victorian Era) with its own distinct features, has also fostered renewed interest among fans.
• Several games based on the Alien franchise have been positively reevaluated over time.
  • Alien: Resurrection for the PlayStation 1 introduced the modern dual stick analog controls for FPS console games. This control scheme was one of many heavily criticized aspects of the game, which reviwers at the time found clunky and unintuitive. Dual stick analog controls would later be popularized by Halo: Combat Evolved a year later, and become the standard control scheme for console FPS.
  • When Aliens vs. Predator (2010) by Rebellion first released on consoles, it got disappointingly mediocre mixed to average reviews and was considered much inferior to the beloved Alien vs. Predator (Capcom) Beat 'em Up, as well as the 1999 AVP game, thanks to the clunky combat, less than stellar boss encounters and the Marine campaign (a bog standard FPS) being much longer than the Alien and Predator campaigns. Years later however, thanks to the critical and commercial failure of Aliens: Colonial Marines, more people have reevaluated AVP 2010 on Steam and given it very positive reviews, admitting it’s actually pretty fun, and effectively frightening in parts. The unique gameplay for the Alien and Predator as well as the multiplayer death matches were all praised along with the story (which has Lance Henriksen reprising his role as Weyland). Some fans even consider it one of the best modern Alien games alongside Isolation.
  • While Alien: Isolation received moderately positive reviews on its initial release in 2014, it was still polarizing and outright trashed by some of the bigger review sites in the industry due to its Nintendo Hard difficulty, slow pace, and padded length. The game has gotten a much better reception as the years have gone by thanks to its brilliant A.I. for the titular creature, production value, and stellar level design, along with its outstanding and faithful representation of its source franchise. Its slow pace and high difficulty have also gotten more praise in connection with the above. Even several sites that initially trashed the game on release have praised it as one of the best and scariest survival horror games ever made.
• Assassin's Creed:
  • Assassin's Creed III was the very definition of a Contested Sequel when it launched because of its story and gameplay direction. Not only was Conor initially divisive for being a radically different protagonist compared to Ezio, but the game introduced many gameplay mechanics that were rather contested. Over time though, many fans grew to appreciate III for trying to differentiate itself from its predecessors and trying to make meaningful innovations. Fans grew to appreciate Connor for his unique and original personality whereas subsequent protagonists were derided as generic or discount versions of Ezio. Furthermore, many noted that this game was the last truly innovative title in the franchise. Subsequent games either polished or built on its assets (such as naval warfare in Black Flag) or the side mission mechanics (the Frontiersman missions and the clue mechanic used in Paris Side Stories and London's missions), as well as combat (using pistols, cover in any crowd, whistling). Many people note that later games even if they might have built or modified or polished the gameplay in some respects have generally not been as ambitious, especially as entries starting with Origins and Odyssey went for a more looter/hack and slash style of gameplay.
  • Assassin's Creed: Unity was met with pretty poor reception when it launched. First of all, it had the unenviable task of following up Assassin's Creed IV: Black Flag, one of the most well-received games in the history of the franchise. On top of that, the game was very glitchy when it came out and needed serious patches before it worked properly. It was also criticized for the lack of any major female characters in the story. Finally, it stuck to the then-very tired Assassin's Creed formula pretty closely, after Black Flag had done a lot to shake up the formula. As a result, the game was widely panned by both critics and audiences. However, in the years that followed, reception to the game softened. Part of this was due to the game getting patched and fixed on a technical level, but it's also due to the changes made to the Assassin's Creed formula over time. After Assassin's Creed Origins took the franchise in a more RPG-like direction, which some of the fanbase is not happy with. Narratively speaking, the game is often looked back on fondly for the way it presented the Assassin/Templar conflict as something other than a black-and-white, good-vs-evil battle, introducing a lot of Grey-and-Gray Morality into the conflict. And gameplay-wide, it's seen as the last good Classic Assassin's Creed game before Origins heavily revamped the formula, with particular praise being directed at the game for having the most refined parkour mechanics in the series before later entries in the franchise heavily simplified them.
• When Asura's Wrath was initially released in early 2012, the game didn't sell well, and while the Japanese gaming press nearly unanimously praised the game, the critical response across the rest of the world was mixed at best. In spite of controversy concerning the DLC final part of the game, the game has gone on to become one of the most underrated games of the year, and has cult following to the point that it's considered to be one of the best games Capcom has ever made or published since the disbandment of Clover Studios, which is saying a lot.
• Azure Striker Gunvolt was initially viewed as an average at best Mega Man-like run-and-gun platformer by the majority of players and Mega Man fans at a time where the Mega Man franchise was collecting dust while putting their hopes on the then-upcoming Mighty No. 9 to carry the franchise's torch. Unfortunately, after a myriad of questionable decisions inside and outside of the Mighty No. 9 Kickstarter project, three delays, an alienating marketing campaign by Deep Silver, and the final product being lambasted with poor critical reception from critics, players, and most backers alike, many Azure Striker Gunvolt fans suddenly changed their opinions about the game and began clamoring to it as "the only true" successor to Mega Man while being condescending and antagonistic towards Mighty No. 9. It helps that Azure Striker Gunvolt 2 was released not long afterwards, which is seen as improving on everything the first game did right while fixing what it did poorly.
• A lot of Backyard Sports fans reacted very negatively to the new art style that debuted with Backyard Hockey, as it ditched the cartoony looks for more realistic designs. And once again when Baseball 2005 introduced new Leitmotifs for the characters replacing the classic ones they have had for almost eight years at that point. The fanbase has warmed up to these changes over time, given that behind these minor aesthetic changes were solid and authentic Backyard games, and that was a lot better than cutting several characters and drastically Retooling the franchise like they did in later games.
• Banjo-Kazooie: Nuts & Bolts was exactly the kind of crazy, technically inventive game that Rare's fans had clamored for. However, the angry backlash against its change of style and low sales led to Microsoft cancelling sequels to Conker and Killer Instinct to restructuring Rare to focus solely on creating mini-game compilations for Kinect. Today the game is gaining a following for its excellent creation tools and standing apart in an era of grey-brown FPS games; and is now regarded as the last "traditional" Rare game from the company prior to its restructuring at the end of the decade. It's generally regarded that if the game did not try to sell itself on the Banjo-Kazooie branding, the game would have been far better received and perhaps Rare's traditional development wouldn't have been shut down. Noticeably more and more fans are eager to defend the game today and the initial backlash the game got is considered less and less justified.
• When Batman: Arkham Origins was released, opinions on the game were...varied to say the least. Most critics gave it positive reviews, although it didn't quite receive the acclaim that Batman: Arkham Asylum and Batman: Arkham City got. Many players, however, said it was horrible due it being developed by Warner Bros. Games Montreal instead of Rocksteady Studios, full of glitches on ports ^note though most of the really bad ones were patched, being nearly identical to Arkham City in terms of gameplay, for being a prequel instead of a sequel, and containing some contradictions regarding events in the previous titles, leading these fans to say it wasn't canon to the previous titles. Many felt that its only redeeming qualities were that it had better and more realistic boss battles and a well-written narrative. Once Arkham City's true sequel, Batman: Arkham Knight, was released two years later, it too was praised overall by critics, but many players were either disappointed or dissatisfied with the game due to a combination of the insane hype it generated, overuse of the Batmobile, a broken PC port, overpriced and underdeveloped DLC, inferior boss battles, and dumbed-down challenges. While it still has its detractors, Arkham Origins is generally looked at far more favorably now than it was when it launched, with some even considering it to be better than Arkham Knight in comparison, especially when it comes to story and boss battles.
• Battlefield 4 suffered a disastrous launch, its Obvious Beta status upon release rendering parts of the game (particularly online multiplayer, the game's main selling point) so unplayable that Electronic Arts faced multiple class-action lawsuits. Then Dice's Los Angeles team got around to patching the game up, and those who stuck around realized that there was actually a phenomenal multiplayer shooter buried in there beneath all of the bugs. Combine that with a long train of robust (and free) DLC support, partly as an apology to fans for the broken state of the game initially, and Battlefield 4 has managed to retain and expand its player base years after launch, such that it managed to successfully compete with its own successors in the Battlefield franchise, Battlefield Hardline and Battlefield 1 — a nearly unheard-of feat in the modern online multiplayer world. Nowadays, it's considered to be one of the best modern military shooters ever made, and one of the best games in the series. This video by Tyler J. of Cleanprincegaming goes into more detail.
• Beyond Good & Evil released quietly and was usually seen as a "hidden gem" that a lot of gamers found in the bargain bins of their local game store. Ubisoft started to tease it, but a lot of people gave it a second look and it has since become a Cult Classic.
• Bioshock 2: The game was released to generally positive reviews, but still mixed fan reception, many of which considered it an unworthy sequel to the highly acclaimed first game with less interesting villain and themes. Come the third game in the franchise, Bioshock Infinite, Bioshock 2 seemed to be quietly forgotten and possibly Retconned (though that is still debated). In the years since, Bioshock 2 became more and more praised for some genuinely heartfelt moments in the relationship between Delta and Eleanor and the very interesting exploration of the exact opposite philosophy explored on the first game.
• The Blinx series was heavily disliked by both gamers and critics back when it was first released due to the slippery controls (which were mostly fixed in the second game), the first game being too hard, and the second one being too easy. Nowadays however, the games are looked back more fondly upon by gamers, and are somewhat of a Cult Classic.
• Call of Duty:
  • While Call of Duty: World at War was a massive commercial success out of the gate, its reception at the time was more mixed. Professional reviews, though positive, were universally inferior to the previous year's Modern Warfare, with critics bemoaning the return to the then thoroughly-saturated setting of World War II and the lack of massive changes to the formula, with some outlets dismissing the game as a WWII expansion pack of Modern Warfare rather than a true sequel. Newbies brought on by the mega-success of Modern Wafare generally didn't care for the WWII setting either, and old-school fans dismissed the game out of hand as it was developed by Treyarch (whose previous title was the mediocre Call of Duty 3) rather than series creator Infinity Ward. As time went on, however, the game saw a reevaluation (something helped by the backlash against the shift to a futuristic theme the series took), with many praising World at War for its campaign design, its uncompromising depiction of the atrocities of war, and it introducing the popular Zombies mode that would become a fixture of the series. Nowadays the game ranks high in popularity poll with many citing it as the best game in the series, something unheard of at release.
  • Call of Duty: Black Ops was sandwiched between two Modern Warfare games, which along with being developed by Treyarch meant it was occasionally seen as a B-entry in spite of continuing the trend of the franchise's commercial success. Not helping was that Black Ops didn't use the new engine of Modern Warfare 2, meaning in a straight graphical comparison it lost out. Today however, it is often viewed alongside World at War as one of the best games in the series. Its campaign is praised for its incredibly unique Cold War setting and its fun Conspiracy Thriller story, without losing out on a wide range of settings and scenarios to play through. Its multiplayer, meanwhile, was criticised on-launch for being much slower compared to what came before. As the pacing of Call of Duty became faster and faster in the upcoming years as a direct result of those complaints, however, Black Ops is viewed as being much fairer compared to the ever quickening time-to-kill and large number of gimmicks that future games would indulge in.
  • Call Of Duty Infinite Warfare had the misfortune of being the third future-based entry in a row following Call of Duty: Advanced Warfare and Call of Duty: Black Ops III, leading to a huge backlash to its announcement from fans who had grown tired of the setting. Notably, its reveal trailer was at one point the most disliked video on Youtube, and the competing WWI shooter Battlefield 1 being shown off just a few days later only made the snark even more venomous, with many using that game's setting as further flames for the fire. Upon IW's release, the multiplayer being at best So Okay, It's Average didn't do it any more favors, and the game was often passed over in favor of the aforemention Battlefield 1 or other more different shooters like Doom (2016). However, as the years have passed, and Call of Duty having since gone back to the WWII and modern day settings to mixed results, fans have since given it another look, and alongside it, more appreciation. In particular, it is seen as having boasted one of the best campaigns in the entire series thanks to its strong character writing (with robot sidekick ETH.3n becoming a fan-favorite), and taking advantage of the future setting far better than Advanced Warfare and Black Ops III, with aspects like the zero-gravity shootouts and Jackal fighter jet battles being especially thrilling. Nowadays, while it is still divisive in the fandom, many agree that the game received far too much pre-release hate, and it's not uncommon to find fans who hold it up as the most underrated in the series.
• A few examples from the Command & Conquer series.
  • To this day, Command & Conquer: Generals is still played by people worldwide, partly because of its gameplay, which differs a lot from other Command & Conquer titles. Said gameplay and the connections to The War on Terror originally got the game a lot of strong negative criticism. The fact that it now has many popular Game Mods helped a lot.
  • Command & Conquer: Renegade was initially frowned upon for the massive Genre Shift from Real-Time Strategy to First-Person Shooter, a somewhat weak campaign with bad A.I. and more than a few glitches, and an imbalanced multiplayer that generally devolved into tug-of-war with tanks. Nowadays it's often looked upon with nostalgia as one of the best games in the series; that it has a number of popular game mods emulating other games in the series helps.
  • Command & Conquer 4: Tiberian Twilight was so harshly criticized it created two further examples in the series. Command & Conquer 3: Tiberium Wars had a fairly decent reception at release, but it was nonetheless criticized by not being on the same level as Command & Conquer: Tiberian Sun; nowadays it's fondly remembered because it's not on the same level as Tiberian Twilight. Command & Conquer: Red Alert 3 was harshly criticized for its cartoonish graphics style and turning all the Camp from the series up to eleven; today it's appreciated in that it at least still retains the basic Command & Conquer gameplay as well as having a fun co-op campaign and generally being user-friendly, unlike Tiberian Twilight.
• Darkstalkers was not a commercial success, and its underperformance compared to Street Fighter meant Capcom had (and continues to have) little interest in reviving the series. Critically. however, Darkstalkers is beloved among Capcom and fighting game fans for its beautifully intricate and wacky spritework and anime Monster Mash combination. For years, fans have begged for a revival and are delighted whenever Darkstalkers characters show up in crossover titles — especially if it it's someone other than Morrigan, such as Felicia and Hsien-Ko in Marvel vs. Capcom 3 or Jedah in Marvel vs. Capcom: Infinite (despite that game's critical bombing).
• Dark Souls II is an odd case of this, because it actually received glowing reviews when it first came out and even won several Game of the Year Awards in 2014. However, many series fans loathed this entry for its deviation from the previous entry in tone, level design, gameplay, and the fact that series' creator/director Hidetaka Miyazaki was not lead director, rather it was handled by Yui Tanimura. However, as time went on, and information regarding the game's Troubled Production became more known among fans, many Dark Souls fans have taken a more forgiving attitude towards DSII, with many fans appreciating the game because of how it does try to be different from the previous entry. Another thing helping matters is the release of the acclaimed Elden Ring, which was co-directed by both Miyazaki and Tanimura and incorporated several of II's more open-ended designs & elements, and the fact that Miyazaki himself regards the game warmly and as a large source of ideas that they've gone on to explore better in other titles. Nowadays, Dark Souls II is widely regarded as a worthy addition to the series, if still somewhat controversial.
• An in-universe example appears in the Dawn of War series. In Dark Crusade, Governor-General Lukas Alexander was widely regarded as a traitor for his decision to oppose the Blood Ravens' landing on Kronus. However, by the time Dawn Of War II: Retribution rolled around and it became known just how widespread Chaos had sunk its claws into the upper echelons of the Blood Ravens, his actions were seen in a much better light.
• Despite positive reviews in magazines, Demon's Crest didn't sell very well, and generated negative sales at one point. It was unclear why, though some speculate it was either the demonic overtones offending parents or the short length. It didn't help that playing it like a linear platformer meant missing out on over half the content as well as the other endings. Nowadays, it's universally regarded as one of the Super Nintendo's finest games.
• When Dead Rising 3 first came out, it was criticized for a new creative team, and abandoning most of the satire and humor featured by the Dead Rising franchise. After Dead Rising 4 released, which removed a number of features of the series, severely downplayed the freedom of what the player was allowed to do with items, recast Frank West's voice actor T.J. Rotolo, and once again changed creative teams (this time with none of them having worked on a Dead Rising game before), response to 3 became somewhat better due to it trying to keep most of the franchise's core while still trying to do something new.
• Devil May Cry:
  • The series as a whole provides a strange example. During the build-up to the reboot, the original series was raked over coals by journalists and Ninja Theory themselves while putting the then to be released DmC: Devil May Cry on a pedestal, decrying criticism of the reboot as fans of the original series being upset over Dante's hair colour, among other things. ^note While this was a complaint, most people who brought it up did so in the context of a) DmC originally being touted as a prequel to DMC3 despite the Continuity Snarls that would've created, and b) Dante's initial redesign drawing clear parallels to Ninja Theory co-creator Tameem Antoniades, with jokes abounding over the reboot being a Self-Insert Fic. In reality, very few bemoaned DmC!Dante's appearance solely on the basis of him sporting black hair. Despite this mentality that the original series was outdated and needed replacing, the reboot failed to sell anywhere near as much as the previous game, taking over five years to sell 2 million copies. And when Updated Re-releases of both games were distributed in 2015, DMC4: Special Edition handily outsold DmC: Definitive Edition. If that wasn't enough, Devil May Cry 5 managed to match DMC4's numbers in a couple of weeks. Ironically, the scathing attack on the original series helped the games escape obscurity and be held to the same regard as the likes of Resident Evil. The fact that, in the period up to 5's release, many journalists still praised DmC while thrashing the original series and rehashing debunked theories on why the DMC fandom at large rejected the reboot only helped add to its vindication.
  • Further vindicated by the backlash to Bayonetta 3 — given the Bayonetta series was meant to be the hipper and cooler Spiritual Successor to Devil May Cry, being strong in all the areas where its predecessor was weak. Yet in regard to the fans' response to the questionable gameplay and story decisions of the third game (which really brought to light the flaws that were already in the series but could no longer be ignored due to DMC5's immense success) even fans of Bayonetta can admit Devil May Cry is better structured, especially narratively. DMC also successfully, over the course of two games, built a new protagonist in Nero, Passing the Torch in a satisfying way — something Bayonetta 3 attempted to replicate with Viola, resulting in a Broken Base.
  • Devil May Cry 2 has received this to some degree in the decades since its release. It's still largely reviled by the majority of fans for having extremely sluggish combat along with equally dull levels and enemies and for removing the fun, wisecracking side of Dante in favour of making him a generic stoic swordsman. However, a good deal of fans have to come appreciate the positives of the game, the fact it's the entry that introduced Bloody Palace and stylised anime-esque Devil Trigger forms — two of the most beloved conventions of the series — and for featuring a cool, playable demon Action Girl Lucia as the Deuteragonist. (Compare this to fellow female leads Trish and Lady. Neither was playable in their initial appearances, Trish was a non-canon Secret Character in 2, both women — but Lady especially — were Demoted to Extra in the fourth game, and only Promoted to Playable in its Special Edition, and then they were hit with a hefty dose of Chickification in the fifth game.) It's also the game where Hideaki Itsuno, often considered to be the true driving force of the series, came on board late in development and, unsatisfied with the result, swore to helm the franchise from then on, meaning the series likely wouldn't have the polish, popularity and critical acclaim it has today without the trial and error of 2.
  • The reboot itself has been getting some fonder looks as time passes on, with the release of DMC5 and return to the main canon helping to cool heads. While It's story still tends to be controversial, a lot of people do look back on its unique spin on the character action gameplay formula, interesting setpieces, and grim worldbuilding with some degree of enjoyment, with many saying that if it was an original series instead of trying to drastically reinvent an existing one (not getting into the aforementioned hostility between Ninja Theory and the fandom) it likely would have received a much warmer reception to start with.
• Diablo 3 went through multiple stages of vindication that ultimately rehabilitated its image in the eyes of fans. First, patches and updates to the core game fixed parts of the game that bugged players such as the loot system and got rid of some of the most hated aspects of the core game, such as the real-money auction house. Then, Reaper of Souls came out which was well received for addressing criticisms of the core game such as the change in tone from the first two games. Finally, the considerable backlash against Diablo IV within months of its release caused many fans to look back more fondly on the third installment for at least being a more balanced, complete game that did not resort to Fake Longevity and monetization features to nearly the same degree.
• DoDonPachi dai ou jou was met with contentuous reception upon its release in 2002 due to its high difficulty even by the standards of its predecessor DoDonPachi. However, over time it has started to be better-received for refining a lot of DoDonPachi's rougher design and taking less time to get to the game's more challenging elements (the first stage of DoDonPachi is often derided by hardcore shmup players for being a fun warm-up level the first few times but getting tedious when one has to play it every single time). Less positively, the game's improved reception is because its successor, DoDonPachi Resurrection, is an even more divisive sequel due to straying so much from the formula of the previous two games and forced auto-bomb.
• Donkey Kong Country: Tropical Freeze was met, during its announcement and early release, not only a cold reception but even scorn and hatred. The former was due to Nintendo releasing what felt like an overwhelming amount of Platform Games at the time, while the scorn came from Metroid fans who hated that its existence meant Retro Studios hadn't been working on a new Metroid Prime. A few years later, with the game re-released on the Switch, a more varied landscape of games on the console, and Metroid fans calming down after the release of Samus Returns and the confirmation that Prime 4 is in development, people started looking at Tropical Freeze on its own merits... and the game's reputation did a nigh-180° turn, now regarded as one of the most splendid platformers of all time.
• Doom:
  • Doom 64, the Nintendo 64 entry, had the unfortunate luck of being released when first person shooters were moving away from the classic "shoot everything that moves while flipping the occasional switch" style of gameplay in favor of the more sophisticated play mechanics seen in games like Turok and the soon-to-be-released GoldenEye. On top of that, the game's name^note which was originally going to be The Absolution misled people into believing it was another straight-up port of the original Doom at a time where sub-par ports of the game were reaching the level of an epidemic. Thus, the game was written off as "derivative" and "behind the times" by most (a matter not helped by the fact that you still couldn't jump, crouch, or look up and down). Fortunately, thanks in no small part to a 2002 Doom II total conversion mod called Doom 64: Absolution (which was later superseded by Doom 64 EX), the game has gained a second wind and is now seen as one of the best games in the whole franchise (including user-made WADs), to the point where many consider it to be the "real" Doom³. It helps that it stuck with sprites in an era where most other games were jumping onto 3D models that very quickly showed their age, and instead utilized the console's power to achieve some neat 3D-looking effects that the original two games weren't able to pull off. Ultimately, Doom 64's growing reputation probably helped it secure a 2020 Updated Re-release for modern systems. It also probably didn't hurt that the creative director of Doom (2016) and Doom Eternal considers 64 his favorite Doom game, with the new levels in the re-release confirming it as the canonical link between classic and modern Doom.
  • In terms of Game Mods, Assault on Tei Tenga. Released in 1999, shortly after source ports like ZDoom came about, it was the first widely-known mod to make use of some of ZDoom's unique features, particularly using a Hexen-style hub in Doom to let players freely revisit levels to solve inter-level puzzles (e.g. leaving one map and then going back to it through a different exit to bypass a laser fence in the first map) and heavy scripting to include rudimentary cutscenes, giving the mod a story that was at the front and center of the experience rather than completely irrelevant outside the readme file. Its reception was mixed at the time, several players complaining that the scripting constrained gameplay and was completely at odds with what Doom should be (i.e. running and gunning with scores of monsters as almost every other mod for the game had been in the '90s), but as the years have passed more and more players have come to at least appreciate it for its role in demonstrating what ZDoom was capable of.
• Dragon Age II, while still not as beloved as its predecessor, has received something of a reevaluation in the years since its sequel was released. Originally widely derided for its less epic and more linear story, slight reduction of RPG elements and strongly reduced character customization; in later years, more and more people have started to appreciate its more character-driven and socio-political story for breaking the usual mold of BioWare's saving-the-world-from-ancient-threat-plots and its focus on the Player Character's family.
• Drakengard:
  • When NieR first came out, the game was left to rot on store shelves by uninterested gamers and was largely forgotten, which ended up (temporarily) killing Cavia Studios. Nowadays, it is well-known as an amazing game and is considered to be one of Yoko Taro's best games. It's also well-regarded for its incredible soundtrack and for the story being very ahead of its time. For just one example, Joystiq initially slapped the game with a zero, only for them to later acknowledge it as one of the best games of the last decade. A sequel by PlatinumGames, NieR: Automata, was announced out of nowhere at E3 2015 and released in 2017 thanks to this trope — and promptly became a critical and commercial hit surpassing its predecessor thanks to the reputation of the original. When NieR was given the remake treatment in 2021, it had far better sales and reviews than the original, making the vindication rock-solid.
  • The original Drakengard as well, to a lesser extent. It didn't sell hugely well and was only given average-to-good reviews on it original 2003 release. However, it has gained more recognition over the years thanks to its sheer bleakness and what-the-fuck storyline. This trope was eventually why Taro Yoko decided to release Drakengard 3 for the original game's 10th anniversary.
• EarthBound (1994) suffered from a poorly timed American release, a cartoony art style which contrasted sharply with the more detailed and serious fare of some of its RPG contemporaries, a then-offbeat approach to its storytelling and humor, and a marketing strategy that was downright idiotic (the slogan for the game was "This game stinks"). Contemporary reviews were lukewarm at best, and by 1999, mounds of unsold copies of the game could be found in Walmart bargain bins all across the U.S. for $15. Then Super Smash Bros. 64 featured protagonist Ness as a hidden character, prompting people to actually go back and give it a chance, whereupon its reputation did a complete 180. From that point forward, it became a Sacred Cow, one of the standout titles of the SNES era, and it's rare to find even boxless used copies on eBay for less than $100. When the game was finally re-released on the Wii U Virtual Console, it quickly topped the Wii U's digital sale charts and formed a vibrant Miiverse community, leading Nintendo to finally release the first game in the series worldwide. People are still clamoring for an official English release of its sequel Mother 3, and the heavily EarthBound-inspired indie game Undertale is often regarded as one of the best games of The New '10s, with it overtaking the Internet, and its successor Deltarune and the similarly inspired OMORI enjoying similar popularity; indeed, EarthBound is a very popular source of inspiration for indie games in general.
• When Square Enix (Squaresoft at the time) announced they were making a side-scrolling shooter, fans didn't take them seriously. Back then, Square Enix had a track record of making awesome RPGs but mediocre games in other genres. When Einhänder came out, a majority of gamers didn't play it at first. However, years later, word of mouth spread about how really good the game was and soon a cult following happened. Today, Einhänder is considered one of the greatest side-scrolling shooters ever made. It's since had some references or cameos in later games such as World of Final Fantasy, Final Fantasy XIV: A Realm Reborn, and Kingdom Hearts III.
• The Elder Scrolls:
  • Almost every game has a They Changed It, Now It Sucks! vibe from some part of its fanbase. Morrowind had its fair share of criticism from Daggerfall players, Oblivion from Morrowind players, and so forth. However, after the game is no longer the "current" game of the series, those players eventually turn into fans.
  • The Elder Scrolls: Arena missed its Christmas 1993 release date and was eventually released in March 1994, which was at the time one of the worst times of year to release a game. Distributors were concerned about its lurid-looking cover, leading to an initial distribution of less than 10,000 copies. Combine this with the initially poor reviews and the fact that the original, unpatched version of the game was nearly unfinishable due to game breaking bugs, and you've got a disaster of a release. However, the (patched) game's eventually gained a good reputation mainly through word of mouth, and sales continued through the months. Before long, it had gained a cult following. 18 years later and four sequels later, The Elder Scrolls series is one of the most popular WRPG series of all time.
• For years, Atari's infamous video game adaptation of E.T. the Extra-Terrestrial was regarded as the worst video game of all time, and popularly believed to have single-handedly triggered The Great Video Game Crash of 1983. Since about the 2000s, however, gamers and reviewers alike have become much kinder to it, noting that developer Howard Scott Warshaw was given just six weeks to make the whole game from scratch and that he did a remarkable job in such a short time frame. It's now generally considered to be So Okay, It's Average, with gameplay that's tedious and boring rather than downright bad (with most of the frustration stemming from the Guide Dang It! nature of the game, which becomes more tolerable once you figure out what to do - something that wasn’t so easy to look up back in 1982), and to have been merely The Last Straw for a company and industry that was already teetering on the brink, rather than the crash's sole cause.
• F-Zero: GP Legend, upon its release in 2003, gathered mixed reviews due to not being as eye-poppingly lavish as its console-based predecessor F-Zero GX and being tied to the ill-received F-Zero: GP Legend anime. The sequel, F-Zero Climax, was released one year later and similarly sold poorly, to the point where it didn't even leave Japan, resulting in Climax being blamed as a Franchise Killer for the F-Zero series. In the years that followed, series fans have become kinder towards both games, seeing them as refinements of the pseudo-3D F-Zero games with better controls, faster-paced racing (especially when compared to F-Zero: Maximum Velocity, the 2001 entry on the same platform that more closely mimicks the first game in the series), and the diverse cast of characters and their machines, many of which hail from F-Zero X and GX with some new characters for good measure. F-Zero Climax additionally features the most courses of any F-Zero game to date, at a whopping 54 courses — granted, some of them are harder variants of existing courses for Expert and Master difficulties, but it still nonetheless gives players a lot of content to enjoy, and the Level Editor endlessly expands the possibilities of courses to race on, albeit only in Time Attack mode. The success of the next game in the series, F-Zero 99, has led fans to call for rereleases of both of these games (alongside fan-favorite GX)^note The SNES game and X are available on Nintendo Switch Online on modern platforms.
• Fallout:
  • Fallout: New Vegas initially received mixed reviews, thanks to Bethesda rushing the game to release in an unfinished state. Reviews criticized the game for its numerous bugs and for using the same engine as Fallout 3. To this day, New Vegas is now heavily praised for its open-ended choices, its Grey-and-Gray Morality, and its excellent writing. Many RPG fans consider it one of the best modern role-playing game of the 2010s.
  • Fallout 3 while a success, got severely criticised by fans of the first two games who had They Changed It, Now It Sucks! reaction as well other gamers who compared its Unintentional Uncanny Valley aspects to Oblivion. Fans have also compared it unfavourably to the aforementioned New Vegas which had greater freedom and more choices to its story. Since then, however, and thanks to the mixed reviews of Fallout 4 and critical bombing of Fallout 76, fans have gone back to Fallout 3 and appreciated its better qualities. The game's DLCs Operation: Anchorage, The Pitt, Broken Steel (which raises the level cap and fixes the ending), Point Lookout, and Mothership Zeta are also well regarded, perhaps even more so than New Vegas's DLCs which barring Old World Blues are quite divisive.
  • Fallout: Brotherhood of Steel also received mixed critical reception but was savaged by Fallout fans for the contradictions to the lore, the deviation from the established tone and aesthetic, and getting Fallout: Van Buren delayed and canceled, which eventually led to Bethesda Softworks striking it from canon. With the disastrous release of Fallout 76 (as well as some behind-the-scenes drama and shady business tactics), Brotherhood of Steel is no longer universally considered to be the worst Fallout game released to date.
• Far Cry 2 is a rather unique case. It sold well enough on its own and was given positive reviews, but the game was hindered by a large amount of Scrappy Mechanics and it was overshadowed by the massive success of Far Cry 3, which was often called "Far Cry 2 with all the problems fixed" by critics and gamers alike. However, as the Far Cry games have become more formulaic and repeated since then with 4, Primal and 5, the second game has gained a rather passionate cult fanbase thanks to its incredibly grim atmosphere and its Darkest Africa setting, along with its minimalistic story. The fact that it saw release on GOG with the infamous retail DRM removed, and the availability of this mod, which removes most annoying things about the game, helped a lot.
• Fire Emblem:
  • The Sacred Stones: The game had a mixed reception upon release, being the first game since Gaiden to allow level grinding, which meant it was praised from one camp for being more accessible to casual players and players who were new to the series, but derided from the other for being too easy and ruining the series' Nintendo Hard appeal. After the release of Awakening, which added even more casual-friendly features, the hardcore camp started to warm up to Sacred Stones out of a combination of it being harder without relying on Fake Difficulty and general nostalgia. This was especially true when people pointed out that level-grinding in Sacred Stones was always optional. The game's plot as well is pretty much a book report of all Fire Emblem tropes, as well as a lot of JRPG tropes. However, it's remembered more fondly nowadays — in part due to Lyon being seen as one of the best written villains in the series. Back in 2005, he was written off as an Alvis wannabe, but he's seen as much more in the intervening years. His portrayal in Fire Emblem Heroes has also helped.
  • Fire Emblem Gaiden itself has a significantly warmer reception now than it did at release. Many fans at the time disliked the many changes it had from the first game, most of which did not reappear in the series for a long time. However, with later entires like Sacred Stones, Awakening, and Fates including aspects such as easier level grinding (all three), split routes (Sacred Stones and Fates), and Unbreakable Weapons (Fates), Gaiden feels much less out of place now than it did then. Its popularity was also helped significantly by its remake, Echoes: Shadows of Valentia, which is widely regarded as a Polished Port with vastly improved characters and writing.
  • Shadow Dragon, when released in 2009, was one step away from being a Polished Port, with most of the polishes being done with the mechanics rather than bringing things like Character Development or the story up to par with the standard set by the previous four games released in the west. On top of that, the character of Marth suffered a lot of Hype Backlash due to how many members of the Smash Bros. fandom created their own personality independent of what he actually had, so when his personality was "discovered" to be that of a standard 1990s game hero, he was seen as a Vanilla Protagonist and boring. It was even initially labeled a Franchise Killer, something it was seriously Mis-blamed for (Radiant Dawn had a much higher budget and sold significantly worse). However, as time went on, people started to accept all the things it did well — it introduced the concept of reclassing to the series, features a highly customizable level of difficulty from "cakewalk" to "murderous", added some major quality-of-life improvements that the Tellius games had been sorely lacking (most notably, the ability to skip an enemy phase), and involved some incredibly fun characters and mechanics (such as retooling Ballisticians almost completely). The plot, while relatively minimalistic, is also often seen as doing what it needs to do, and the game is perhaps the most fleshed out in terms of "no resets"-style play, since it features multiple methods to help the player get back on their feet if they lose too many units to permadeath — features that, on release, got people angry because they saw the game as forcing them to kill off units. While it's rarely seen as one of the best games in the series, it's gotten a much stronger reception and a good-sized hardcore following.
  • "Casual Mode", introduced in New Mystery and Fire Emblem: Awakening (but outside of Japan) has had some changes in its perception as well. In the contest of 2013 when Awakening released, people took issue with the use of the word "Casual" - like the game was somehow talking down to them by locking one of its most beloved Anti-Frustration Features to a mode labeled "Casual". Which was somewhat of a swear word amongst gamers at the time. Sometimes, people even went so far to flame people for playing Casual mode in hopes it would send Nintendo the message that people only wanted Nintendo Hard games. These days, people generally care far less about whether or not you play it on "Classic" mode or "Casual" mode as constantly resetting the game and being stressed generally invalidates the purpose of a game - which is to have fun. Gatekeeping is seen as far more toxic in The New '20s.
• FreeSpace 2 was at the time of its release the very definition of an Acclaimed Flop to the point where it (more or less) killed the space sim genre. 15 years later, it's frequently seen on "Best Space Combat Sims" lists, with many people considering it to be (at least for now) the pinnacle of the genre in terms of graphics, gameplay and story and has one of the most devoted fan bases and modding communities in all of gaming, with its greatly (fan-)updated engine "FreeSpace Open" being the engine of choice for anyone who wants to make a fan made space sim.
• Late-life PS2 Beat 'em Up God Hand was met with poor sales and mixed reviews at the time of its release, but in the ensuing years has developed a vocal and passionate online fanbase on account of its deep and challenging combat system, some downright crazy awesome moves, and general unrestrained wackiness.
• Grand Theft Auto V's online multiplayer mode, Grand Theft Auto Online, suffered a disastrous launch that saw it unplayable for weeks, and even after the servers were stabilized, many slammed it as suffering from a dearth of features beyond basic deathmatches and races. Features that had been promised before launch, most notably heist missions, were nowhere to be seen. Many wrote it off as a failed experiment and stuck with the single-player story. Rockstar Games, however, never abandoned it, and continued adding content (the long-awaited heists being just the start)... and never stopping. To say that GTA Online made a comeback would be the understatement of the decade, as it would keep GTA V near the top of the sales charts for years after its already record-breaking launch. As of this writing, GTA V is the second-best-selling video game in history with over 195 million copies sold (second only to Minecraft) and annual sales figures remaining above 10 million even a decade after its initial release in 2013, a long tail that owes almost everything to the runaway success of GTA Online. In fact, Grand Theft Auto VI not being announced until 2023 has been attributed to the fact that Rockstar was still making money hand-over-fist off of GTA Online and adding new content to the game to meet demand.
• The Guardian Legend for the NES. Although it did get nominated for a few awards in Nintendo Power, most other professional reviews of the game at the time of its release were negative, with Electronic Gaming Monthly in particular calling it "only average at best", and the highest rating it ever got was almost an 8 out of 10. Fast forward to the 21st century and you find it on a lot of lists of best NES games, with IGN calling it "one of the most influential games in the history of the gaming industry" in 2009 and Gamasutra calling it "one of the best games ever released." Most of the credit for this rests with the game's complicated, 32-character long Password Saves which were a huge downside at the time, but not so much anymore since most NES gaming these days is done with computer-based emulator programs, where save states remove the need to worry about those obnoxious passwords.
• Halo:
  • Upon release, Halo 4 was often derided on a technical level, with focus being especially given to its multiplayer. The shift to a more casual style of play, along with quick cancellation of the clumsily handled Spartan Ops made it one of the least popular games in the Halo series. As time went on however, many people began to recognise its campaign as among the best in the series thanks to its surprising amount of emotional depth given to previously stoic characters, as well as the fun and varied missions themselves. Especially after Halo 5: Guardians suffered over its campaign, many began to look far more fondly over its predecessor.
  • Halo 3: ODST, while praised by many, still received mixed reviews upon release, with a lot of critics considering it a mere "expansion" of Halo 3 and not worth buying. Since then, and thanks to being rereleased with the Master Chief Collection on Steam, many people have since come around to ODST, praising its unique atmosphere, characters (including three Firefly actors), and story as well as its Firefight mode. Nowadays, it's considered one of the best titles in the series alongside the main trilogy and Halo: Reach.
• Haunting Ground, though it was meant to be a continuation of the Clock Tower franchise, was struck with average reviews upon its release. Many critics wrote it off as an off-brand Resident Evil without combat, but as years went by survival horror fans eventually began to see and appreciate Haunting Ground's merits, particularly its atmosphere and truly disturbing Psychological Horror elements. The game also gives a meta-commentary on the intentional sexualisation and victimisation of female characters in video games which in some ways makes Haunting Ground ahead of its time. It's generally considered one of the most underrated survivor horror games of the PS2 generation. YouTube game critic The Sphere Hunter goes into more detail about it in this video.
• Herzog Zwei was released to bad reviews from professional video game critics, with Electronic Gaming Monthly giving it some of the lowest scores they've ever given to a Sega Genesis game while calling it a "flawed shooter game." Half a decade or so later, and those same video game critics would be including the game in their Top 100 best games of all time lists and considering it an important part of video game history, being one of the first, if not the first, modern Real-Time Strategy games ever created, directly influencing Genre Popularizer Dune II.
• The Hyperdimension Neptunia series was always popular in Japan, but struggled to find an audience in the west due to being unabashed, Fanservice-y (in more than one sense of the word) otaku bait. The first game took a critical pounding (the presence of several gameplay mechanics that bogged down the game certainly didn't help), with Eurogamer going so far as to call it a "a sexist, senseless, and ultimately stupid cultural curio." By the time Victory was released, the series finally got over its issues with wonky gameplay, and once the Updated Re-release of the first game made it onto Steam it quickly reached Overwhelmingly Positive ratings and got far more favorable coverage, and though the original version was derided as a janky mess in comparison, people eventually warmed back up to it due to major differences between the two releases.
• I, Robot was considered too complicated for players when it came out in 1983 accompanied with hardware problems of arcade cabinets. However, retrospective reviews are very positive, praising its graphics and overall presentation with innovative gameplay.
• Kid Icarus (1986). Back in its day, it got a lukewarm reception and was considered a poor man's Metroid in the rare instance it was ever brought up. Nowadays, the original Kid Icarus and its Western-only sequel Kid Icarus: Of Myths and Monsters are regarded as Cult Classics due to their surprising difficulty. The inclusion of Pit in Super Smash Bros. Brawl sparked a new interest in the franchise which led to Kid Icarus: Uprising, the first new game in the series in 21 years, which would go on to be praised for its varied gameplay, vibrant cast of characters, and tongue-in-cheek, fourth wall-breaking humor.
• Killer7. Sales were very poor, advertising was nonexistent, and critical opinion was quite mixed. But over the years, due to positive word-of-mouth from the very few that had played it, and Suda51's further works becoming more well-known, the game has experienced a huge surge in popularity, and now it's one of the most sought-after games on the GameCube. This would culminate in the game receiving a remastered version for Steam in 2018.
• Kingdom Hearts:
  • When Kingdom Hearts II first came out, a lot of players (and reviewers) complained that the combat was too button-mashy and that you could just spam X (and occasionally Triangle) to win most fights, which made the gameplay monotonous and too easy. After years (and years) of analysis, however, it turns out the combat system is actually pretty complex under-the-hood, and high-level play has much more to do with moves and counter-moves against the enemy's A.I. Final Mix made this much more apparent with the additions of the Cavern of Remembrance (which lets you fight Organization XIII again) and Critical Mode (especially Lv1 Critical), all of which do a great job of encouraging smarter play and experimentation with the game's numerous combat options, as mindless button mashing will simply get you killed. KHIIFM would eventually become the gold standard of the series' gameplay to many fans. The game's plot was also a point of contention upon its initial release, some fans criticizing the game for having a stronger emphasis on its original story as opposed to Disney, the introduction of Roxas and Organization XIII being met with mixed results (the former due to his Prolonged Prologue and the latter for bordering Wangst territory), and having a more mature and intricate plot, a stark contrast to the mostly light-hearted first game. These days, KHII is praised for having one of the strongest stories in the franchise, certainly helped by the plot answering all of its questions by the end, unlike future installments that may go several sequels before properly answering questions, and having a legitimate (if not open-ended) Happy Ending, whereas later installments would often go for a more somber ending or end on a cliffhanger.
  • Kingdom Hearts coded was near-universally considered the worst entry in the series for its "fluff" plot that did little to advance the overarching story, a number of unexpected changes to gameplay added, reusing many environments from the first game, and for being another weirdly titled handheld game. However, many fans have begun taking a more critical eye to the franchise and have pointed out Re:coded's strengths, such as a much more balanced Command Deck pool that isn't dominated by a handful of commands like some other games, a unique leveling system that allows for much more customization, the gameplay changes actually being fun and unique twists that break up the basic formula nicely, and having a plot that (while not incredibly important in the grand scheme of things) delves into some actually very dark and heavy subjects with some real depth and maturity. So while many still consider it the weakest and most unnecessary addition to the series, many others have started defending it as an underrated gem that deserves more respect.
• The western releases of the King's Field series garnered mediocre sales and a decent, but not great critical reception in great part due to their unimpressive graphics and high difficulty level. The release of Demon's Souls and Dark Souls by the same developer (with the director of both games citing King's Field as a key inspiration) has led to a notable resurgence of interest in the series.
• Kirby:
  • Kirby's Dream Land 3 was one due to coming after the Tough Act to Follow Kirby Super Star, and undoing many of the new mechanics from that game, such as multi-attack abilities, minigames, and a more elaborate Boss Rush. Instead, the slow-paced gameplay and Animal Friends from Kirby's Dream Land 2 made a comeback. This was because the games were made by different development teams (for one thing, Dream Land 2, Dream Land 3, and The Crystal Shards were directed by Shinichi Shimomura instead of series creator Masahiro Sakurai). It also was overshadowed by the release of the Nintendo 64, and the "coloring book" art style. Now, it's seen as much of a classic as that game, especially due to it improving the Kirby series' Minimalist Cast with Gooey and the Animal Friends, and being surprisingly Darker and Edgier to most games in the series.
  • Super Star itself suffered, at least in the West, due to the proximity of its release to the launch of the Nintendo 64 (less than a month, in America's case). Today, its status as one of, if not THE best, Kirby games is firm, even getting a Nintendo DS remake in 2008 entitled Kirby Super Star Ultra.
  • Kirby 64: The Crystal Shards was disliked by many on release for continuing many of the controversial gameplay trends seen in Dream Land 3. Now, it's enjoyed for giving Kirby an Implied Love Interest, and, once again, being surprisingly creepy. However, the Kirby series switched back to Super Star-style after that due to the initial poor reception of these two games. Many fans are eager to see another game like them.
  • Kirby Air Ride met a lukewarm reception due to being sandwiched between F-Zero GX and Mario Kart: Double Dash!!, and its Troubled Production (which led to Masahiro Sakurai leaving HAL Laboratory) further damaged its reputation for a while. Nowadays, it is considered a Cult Classic and one of the highlights of the GameCube library, particularly for the City Trial mode. In fact, the Smash Run mode in Super Smash Bros. for Nintendo 3DS was directly stated by Sakurai to be a Spiritual Successor to said mode. It was also the game to introduce Sakurai's signature achievement grid system, enhancing its replay value.
• When Knack came out as a launch title for the PlayStation 4, it was quickly dismissed by gaming critics as a boring, bare-bones action-adventure game with a gimmicky character meant to show off the system's particle effects. However, the game slowly grew a cult following over the years, to the point that many demanded Knack as a free PlayStation Plus game. Part of this is because, as fans have discovered, playing the game on Hard Mode takes away the boredom and makes the gameplay a lot more intense and exciting, to the point that fans started calling it "Knack Souls." As a result, Knack 2 was announced at the 2016 PlayStation Experience event.
• Despite favorable sales and reviews, Knights of the Old Republic II: The Sith Lords was infamously divisive among fans for being a gigantic Deconstructor Fleet, which challenges almost every part of Star Wars and role-playing games as a genre. It didn't help that it was incredibly rushed in order to meet a holiday release date, with numerous bugs and about a third of the game being cut out in order to meet the release. Years later, fans would come to love the game for its unique perspective and narrative which questioned the perceived nature of the Force, and the ever fighting Jedi and Sith. Its reputation was further helped by The Sith Lords Restored Content Mod, which finished almost all of the game's missing content. The game has since been picked up by Steam with full Workshop mod support, which includes the restored content mod, bringing it to the attention of many new players more than a decade after its initial launch.
• The LithTech Game Engine saw this; initially powering a pair of rushed and lackluster games (the extremely rushed Shogo: Mobile Armor Division and a sequel to Blood they didn't even initially want to make), after which it was licensed out to other developers, whereupon it, being a cheaper option over the typical Unreal or Quake III engine, became the domain of zero-effort budget titles from cheap developers and publishers, to the point there's a Something Awful review of a game on the engine wherein the reviewer sincerely asks Monolith to never allow anyone else to use the engine ever again. Monolith, however, learned from the mistakes of Shogo and Blood II, particularly coming to the conclusion that presentation trumped innovation, and got back to work on new games to put this idea into practice. The result was No One Lives Forever, a game where they started with comparatively humble aspirations and then polished what they came up with to a mirror sheen, resulting in it becoming the highest-rated game they've ever released. The engine still sees some licensed use by budget developers, but nowadays those are vastly overshadowed by Monolith's own work with it like TRON 2.0, First Encounter Assault Recon, and Middle-earth: Shadow of Mordor.
• Live A Live, when released in 1994, was a fairly unique RPG that didn't sell very well in its native country of Japan. When emulation made more games from that era that never received an international release, Live A Live got some attention, but it still was overshadowed by games like Final Fantasy VI, Trials of Mana. and Chrono Trigger from Square Enix (at the time Squaresoft). At best, it became a Cult Classic. As The New '10s waned, however, more people discovered the game thanks in part to Square Enix making occasional nods to it and most notably Toby Fox of Undertale fame citing the game as an influence. In fact, he had wanted to use a remix of "Megalomania" for the final boss of The Halloween Hack instead of an early version of "Megalovania". This caused a lot of people to go onto videos and Let's Plays of Live A Live while pointing out what the inspiration was. Fast forward to 2022 when a remake was announced — and after it released in late July, it received quite the acclaim even amongst the reception of the Sleeper Hit of Stray and its Invisible Advertising.

M-Z

• Marathon was a moderately popular Mac FPS by a fledgling game studio known as Bungie. However, because it was (almost entirely) a Mac-exclusive series, its player base was limited by the install base of the platform, and it got flack for looking like a "Doom clone" on the surface despite several innovations to the formula. It has since earned many more fans because of Halo referencing it so much. Many Halo fans become Bungie fans, and many Bungie fans try out their older games. The fact that it has since been ported to other OSes has also helped.
• When Marvel vs. Capcom 3 first came out in 2011, there was no shortage of gamers tearing the game to shreds over a lack of content, bizarre roster choices (no Mega Man, really?), and what many felt was taking advantage of the playerbase with Ultimate being released the same year. As time went by, when Disney revoked their license only to later collaborate with Capcom to create Marvel vs. Capcom: Infinite, the reception became far more positive. That's mainly because Infinite is far, far more polarizing than 3 ever was, which seemed to magnify the issues ^note the lack of content, a roster that doesn't have the signature mutants and unexpected characters, the feel of a blatant cash grab/glorified MCU advertisement while creating new ones ^note piss-poor production values, marketing disasters that alienated the fans. Now, 3 is much more praised by fans than it's ever been, who hold it as an example of how good the series was before Disney got involved. The roster in particular is held in high regard — not only are there plenty of characters to choose from, but it actually feels like it draws from the comics, as opposed to making everything a plug for the Marvel Cinematic Universe. The fact that it had a good mixture of characters from different teams instead of more than half of the Marvel roster being mutants and more than half the Capcom roster being Street Fighter characters like its predecessor helped as well.
• Mega Man Legends: Back in 1998, Legends wasn't exactly the most loved iteration of the Mega Man franchise. Its sales (at the very least, the sales of the sequel) did not satisfy Capcom, many veteran fans (who grew up with the Classic and/or X series) were unsupportive of it for being a completely different kind of game and critical reception was mixed-to-negative (ScrewAttack even included it in their "Top Ten Worst 2D to 3D Games" list). With time, though, its fanbase grew strong, especially since Keiji Inafune declared the Legends series to be his favorite part of the Mega Man series, and since the 2010s Legends is now a beloved series with its early open world gameplay, charming characters, and interesting story.
• Metal Gear:
  • Metal Gear Solid 2 is an interesting case. It was originally critically acclaimed by critics and became a 7-million seller, but fans despised it for not having Snake as a main protagonist and having a plot that is very difficult to understand. Because of this fan consensus, the game had a negative backlash for a while after, often popping up on "Most Overrated Games" lists. However as time marched on, the game started doing better after people got over the former alleged fault. The understanding of the themes and structure of the story gives the game a warmer reception than when it was first released, and the rise of more Post Modern games like Spec Ops: The Line and The Stanley Parable made people look back at the game as being ahead of its time. It also helps that the game's Replacement Scrappy Raiden Took a Level in Badass and became more prominent in the franchise which make his role in this game more acceptable. Nowadays most of the hatred and criticisms are aimed at the overabundance of codec-based cutscenes (even characters talking face-to-face call each other on the codec, Hand Waved as "to prevent eavesdropping") for simply being unappealing and clearly signposting points where the devs didn't have the time or simply couldn't be bothered to make/finish a proper cutscene, and the obnoxious Romantic Plot Tumor surrounding Rose.
  • A milder case can be found with some of the other games in the series: Metal Gear Solid 4: Guns of the Patriots was pretty well-received among most fans and especially critics, but many hardcore fans felt that it retroactively ruined some of MGS2's ambiguity and some of MGS3's characters, all while being chock-full of fanservice aimed mostly at MGS1 fans. The heavy reliance on cutscenes (even for the series' standards) was also heavily debated. However, the game gained a lot more appreciation after its complete antithesis, Metal Gear Solid V, was released. Nowadays, many fans remember Guns of the Patriots — along with other previously divisive games like Sons of Liberty and Peace Walker — more fondly because "at least they had a final boss and an ending."
• Metroid:
  • For years, Metroid II: Return of Samus was the bizarre and often overlooked Oddball in the Series, boasting narrow and cramped level design, an emphasis on combat rather than exploration, a long endgame area devoid of any enemies that felt like mere padding, and a soundtrack that attempted to be atmospheric but instead largely ended up as unmemorable and ear-grating. When both a fan-made remake and official remake were released fifteen years later, much of the fanbase now saw Metroid II as completely outdated and replaced. That is, except for a growing subset of fans who started to argue that it is an underappreciated classic where much of its game design (including aspects commonly regarded as flaws) were actually deliberately chosen to serve the greater purpose of atmospheric storytelling. This group believes that while both the fan and official reimagings are good games, they failed to capture what the original Game Boy game was trying to accomplish, with some of the changes even completely undermining the original goal. This written AM2R review and this Game Maker's Toolkit video discuss the 1991 title's merits in more detail.
  • When Metroid Fusion released in 2002, most Metroid fans weren't too kind to it due to the game placing more emphasis on the story and having surprising Nintendo Hard difficulty. It also didn't help that Metroid Prime was released at the same time, with a kinder difficulty curve and making use of Story Breadcrumbs instead. As time passed however, more fans began to warm up to Fusion for giving Samus some much needed characterization, and while the linearity continues to be a source of debate, many fans saw it as a reasonable trade-off for the game's atmosphere of overwhelming dread. The sentiment for Fusion only grew after Metroid: Other M was heavily criticized for not only falling to accomplish a similar balance, but also for poorly handling Samus's character.
• Michael Jordan: Chaos in the Windy City bombed in sales and was reviewed rather harshly for the blatant product placement and wasting Jordan's likeness. Its premise was easy to dunk on, and Nintendo Power rated it among the worst games ever in 1997. The game has gained a lot more respect years down the road, because more people discovered that underneath its cornball premise and all the product placement is a solidly well-made and creative game.
• Monster Hunter Generations was seen as a downgrade from Monster Hunter 4 Ultimate in the west because Generations did not have a "G Rank". Combined with less of a story mode (by series standards, that is), it felt like the game had less content. Some purists hated the addition of Hunting Styles that was the main draw of Generations and felt it was derailing the gameplay. However, since Monster Hunter: World released with not even half of the large monsters present in Generations and 4 Ultimate (combined with new content releasing at a glacial pace, only rectified much later with the Iceborne expansion), some of the games' critics have started to appreciate Generations for the sheer variety of content, including the much-vaunted Prowler mode which lets you play as a Palico. (A feature that has not returned since) It helps that its Updated Re-release, Monster Hunter Generations Ultimate, added back many of the much-missed features from previous games, making it the biggest Monster Hunter game (aside from Monster Hunter Frontier) in terms of content.
• Moonbase Commander suffered from being too far behind its time, and had little to no marketing when it first came out, leading to Humongous Entertainment's bankruptcy. However, once interest in Humongous' older games grew, many fans decided to give Moonbase Commander a second chance, and it's now been seen as a well-designed and simplistic strategy game. It's not the most popular game out there, but the fanbase is certainly much bigger than it was initially.
• Mortal Kombat:
  • Mortal Kombat 4, the first 3D game in the series, got plenty of criticism and poor reviews when it first released, proving to be much less popular than the original trilogy and seen as a sign that the series was running out of steam. Many fans weren't pleased withnew characters like Shinnok (who replaced Shao Khan), Tanya (who replaced the female ninjas), Jarek (who replaced Kano), and Fujin, especially since a lot of the old cast were missing, including even Scorpion in the initial version of the game. Nowadays, however, it's looked back upon far more fondly for expanding the lore and said new characters have become more accepted and celebrated in the years since. Mortal Kombat X, one of the more popular entries of the series' "modern" age, even brought back Shinnok as the villain as well as other characters from MK4 to unambiguous praise. It also helps that MK4's hilariously janky cutscenes cross the line into So Bad, It's Good territory with their voice acting, while modern titles like MK11 are more straight face and therefore far less fun according to some fans.
  • The PS2-era trilogy of Deadly Alliance, Deception, and Armageddon is considered to be another Audience-Alienating Era of the franchise, only selling as decently as it did due to most other mainstream Fighting Game series either being dead, forgotten, or underperforming during the very early 2000s (outliers like Soulcalibur II and Tekken 5 notwithstanding). The DA-D-A trilogy received endless flack for its milquetoast gameplay as well as having a cavalcade of new characters — many of whom were poorly designed and silly (e.g. Hsu Hao). Despite some bright spots among the new additions (like Kenshi, Nitara and Havik), and some fans finding the narrative turn the series took following Liu Kang's death to be an interesting idea in theory, things reached a point where MK9 had to pull a Continuity Reboot to escape from the fallout. Since then, and in the wake of the trajectory taken by Mortal Kombat 11 and its second universe reboot with Mortal Kombat 1, far more people have reconsidered the PS2 games and acknowledged their positives. In particular, MK fans reconsider that they genuinely tried out new ideas and committed to the worldbuilding (even if it was often poorly executed) rather than being a cash crossover vehicle for Warner Bros. with the MK world as set dressing, as a good portion of fans accuse MK11 and MK1 of being. Deception and Armageddon also respectively introduced open world gameplay (via Konquest Mode) and Character Customization to series, both of which even detractors admit were fun and — perhaps more importantly — were ideas direct competitor Street Fighter would effectively utilise in the immensely successful Street Fighter 6.
  • Mortal Kombat Mythologies: Sub-Zero tanked when it released due to poor sidescrolling Beat 'em Up gameplay, broken platforming, and underwhelming combat. Since then, however, it's been looked back upon more fondly, especially for its live-action FMV cutscenes which are packed with Narm Charm. The fact it's also the game that introduced fan favourites like Quan Chi and Sareena while generally expanding on the lore on surrounding the fan favourite mascot ninjas means that it's a very important entry in the franchise, despite the woeful gameplay.
  • Mortal Kombat: Special Forces is a similar but downplayed example of this. It was rightly panned for its appalling gameplay due to being rushed and kicked out the door, coupled with MK co-creator John Tobias leaving for good mid-production. In the years since, with Midway as a company now being left to rot on the shelf by Warner Bros. and Tobias no longer working on the games like he once did, Special Forces is now viewed as more of a tragic mess of wasted potential rather just simply a bad game. With the later Mortal Kombat: Shaolin Monks releasing to much better fanfare, a general sentiment is that the idea of a Special Forces spin-off game featuring Jax and Sonya would be much better accepted today in the right hands. Like the aforementioned Mythologies, the cutscenes and dialogue of Special Forces have plenty of So Bad, It's Good Narm Charm about them, which some fans do find endearing in spite of the gameplay. This game also, curiously enough, introduced another major fandom darkhorse in the rock ninja Tremor... who actually made surprise returns from MK9 onward, including being fully playable as DLC for MKX.
• The NBA 2K series, which became one of Sega's first third-party titles and became so massively popular it defeated EA Sports! The series is now owned by Take-Two Interactive, which bought Sega's Visual Concepts studio and turned it into 2K Games.
• Nightshade (1992): This console adventure game combined a Point-and-Click Game interface with an utterly bizarre sense of humor. While video games like this were common on the PC platforms, it was still rare on consoles — not helped by the fact that it arrived too late on the Nintendo Entertainment System when the next generation consoles were much more popular. As a result, on release, the game was met with lukewarm indifference at best and mockery at worst, and this reputation continued when the game became a common target for retro video game reviewers on YouTube. It wasn't until the 2010s, when people became more accepting of console adventure games, that the game was finally given praise for unique and funny writing that aged surprisingly well. Nowadays, with the PC and Nintendo Switch Online rereleases, Nightshade has gained more respect as a fun, if flawed, classic with legitimately good humor that was ahead of its time.
• No Man's Sky was a widely anticipated game that simply could not live up to the pre-release hype. It was critically panned for its loads of unfinished features, with players going it as far to call it false advertising, and went on to become one of the worst reviewed games of all times at light speed. Hello Games managed to turn this all around by... just continuing working on the game. No Man's Sky gained a stream of big content updates post-release, including the NEXT update which added true multiplayer to the game. Within just two years, these updates enticed people to review the game again with praise, and from that point onwards the game not only added every feature the game was vaunted to have pre-release, but now includes even more content than originally publicized. And as of 2022, it's still getting regular content updates.
• When it was released, ORION: Dino Beatdown was considered one of the worst games ever made — in the words of its own developers no less — due to incredible amounts of bugs and other issues, and was overall regarded as a ripoff. Three years and countless free updates later, the rebrand ORION: Prelude has seen its rating rise up positively. It helps that, as stated, most of the updates that improved everything were free.
• This is a common cycle with plenty of Paradox Interactive games thanks primarily to many of their games having hundreds of dollars worth of expansions and Downloadable Content. When a new game in the series releases, a good portion of the expansion and DLC content has to be removed or toned down in order to prevent hours of load and download times. On top of that, the number of moving parts means they have somewhat of a history of launching in Obvious Beta states — but also some genuinely hilarious patch notes. But as time goes on, people tend to open up more to the games, especially once a few patches, mods, and DLC are added.
• Persona 3 and Persona 4 outside of Japan. Both had the (mis)fortune of releasing very late into the lifespan of the PlayStation 2, hitting shelves between 2007 and 2009. By then, a lot of gamers had moved on to the seventh generation. They were also JRPGs, a genre that (at least in North America at the time) was treated with lack of interest at best or disdain at worst. While both games were received quite well by critics and those who played it alike, they were at best a Cult Classic. When Atlus later released Persona 3 Portable, an animated adaptation of Persona 4, and Persona 4 Golden for the Play Station Vita, the two games received more attention, garnering enough interest for the first two Persona games ^note Persona and Persona 2: Innocent Sin; sadly, Eternal Punishment, the second half of the P2 duology, didn't leave Japan due to font, allegedly to receive an international (re-)release. And that's not getting into all the various P3 and P4 spin-offs such as Q that were released afterward. Persona is now a household word, and has effectively eclipsed its parent series outside of Japan in terms of brand recognition.
• Planescape: Torment may be the most dramatic example of this trope in the history of video games. Though given overwhelmingly positive reviews on release, it sold terribly as it was impossible to market and it came out at the tail end of the Infinity Engine RPG craze. Today it's revered as a Sacred Cow of Role-Playing Games and held as one of the most well-written video game stories ever created. Its popularity has come to the point that when the developers showed off two different Kickstarter spiritual successors, both were fully funded within hours. The modernized port of the game (which can run on modern computers) is also still consistently the highest-selling title on Good Old Games
• Pokémon:
  • Pokémon Colosseum and Pokémon XD: Gale of Darkness. Both games received mixed reception from both critics and fans on release, mostly for not being like the handheld games. But as complaints of It's the Same, Now It Sucks! became more prevalent within the series, the two games are now considered refreshingly different, especially the Shadow Pokémon mechanics. Older Pokémon fans also appreciate their increased difficulty compared to the handheld games, with smarter movesets on A.I. Trainers and tough boss fights, along with understanding the games' Darker and Edgier aspects that flew over their heads as kids.
  • Pokémon Battle Revolution was panned by critics when it was released and sales were a disappointment, the game being criticized for its lack of content compared to the other Stadium games. However, the game's reception has risen in more recent years for having some of the most expressive animations out of any Pokémon game, especially compared to the 3DS titles. It's frequently favorably compared to Pokémon Sword and Shield in terms of animation quality, with people lamenting that a full-fledged home console Pokémon game has worse animations than a spin-off game from multiple generations ago did.
• When it was first released, Psychonauts didn't get a lot of notice, had horrible promotion, and consequently its sales were no great shakes. It's now near-universally recognized as one of the best platformers of its era (getting the Colbert Bump from Yahtzee probably didn't hurt), with a sequel released in 2021.
• Puyo Puyo and Madou Monogatari:
  • Puyo Puyo 7 and the characters it introduced originally garnered a lot of heat from the international fandom, but things have cooled off with time and now the game's cast have gained a following, with the game itself even gaining some respect. It helps that the Scrappy Mechanic Transformation Mode, the inconsistent art, and the game's other flaws are nowhere near as readily apparent as the likes of Puyo Puyo~n.
  • When the English fanbase first discovered the Shin Madou Monogatari timeline, it was laughed off as ridiculous and was completely forgotten. Come the latter 2010s, lore fans rediscovered it and made it one of the most infamous pieces of Compile-era lore. That being said, the Western fanbase discovering that the Japanese fanbase generally doesn't treat the books as canon has put a damper on this trope.
• Quake IV was frequently derided and considered So Okay, It's Average upon release, with a lot of criticism being directed towards its basic campaign and lackluster multiplayer. Quake IV would then become frequently relegated to bargain bins for years, but alongside digital distribution this would actually help the game find a new audience. New players found the game's single-player campaign to be incredibly enjoyable (if not uninspired at worst), and many also latched on to the story and found it amazingly gripping. After this boom in popularity, the game was re-examined and many old reviews were criticized for being unfair to the game and putting it down out of nostalgia for previous games. The multiplayer was the one thing gamers could agree was lackluster, but with the boom of multiplayer shooters going on this was no longer considered an issue. Today the game is now considered one of the best Quake installments and many think it used the Doom³ engine better than Doom 3 did.
• Ratchet: Deadlocked launched to split the fanbase in half, thanks to its darker tone, lighter application of the story, limited selection of weapons, a mission-based structure and maps that were pulling double duty for the multiplayer, with more emphasis on vehicles and very few platforming sequences — the antithesis of what Ratchet & Clank was doing at the time. With several years of reflection, many fans have come around to see that despite all of these, it still has the great gunplay the series is known for, and the expansive mod customization system is unlike anything the series has tried before or since. It also helps that two other titles would come out that would be even more contested due to their experimentation.
• Upon its release, Raiden III didn't get quite a lot of positive reception due to shmups and other 2D action game genres going out of style at the time in favor of games with more cinematic narrative-driven experiences, plus amongst those who did continue to enjoy shmups, it got criticized for its dull-looking 3D graphics, replacing the iconic Bend Plasma weapon with a more generic Photon Laser, and the change of developer from Seibu Kaihatsu to MOSS resulting in a much different-feeling game from the earlier entries, which many argued was for the worse. However, over time the shmup community has been willing to give the game another chance thanks to rereleases across multiple platforms and being able to judge it relative to later games in the series. The reduced difficulty and making the default spread shot much more usable at the lowest levels helps to further ease players into the game, as the Seibu-developed games are known for being relentless from start to end.
• Resident Evil
  • Resident Evil – Code: Veronica was released on the Sega Dreamcast, which had an aforementioned infamous reputation among other console owners. This by extension affected Code: Veronica's own reception despite it selling well on the console, with the game becoming something of a black sheep among the mainline Resident Evil titles. ^note Ironic considering CV was meant to be the direct sequel to RE2 before being swapped out for RE3 as we know it. By the time Capcom released Code: Veronica X on both the PS2 and Dreamcast, it was too late. Since then, players have come around to the game celebrating its European Gothic Horror aesthetic, the revamp of Wesker into a Smug Super Dragon Ascendant-turned-Big Bad, and being the only game with the Redfield siblings Chris and Claire starring together. Fans who were eager to see CV get the remake treatment were actually disappointed when Capcom announced they were remaking RE4 before Code: Veronica. Producer Yoshiaki Hirabayashi, however, did confirm that if the opportunity were occur they would remake CV, even if there are no concrete plans at the moment.
  • Resident Evil: Gun Survivor was generally forgotten and lambasted due to infinite pistol ammo, infinite inventory slots, terrible voice acting, and worse character design than the previous games. The shift to First-Person Shooter, however, was seen as being immersive and it was technically impressive that a late-generation PlayStation game could do a fully polygonal Resident Evil game. Since the mid-end 2010s, especially when Resident Evil 7: Biohazard returned to a first person perspective and featured a dark, desolate atmosphere that was similarly regarded as immersive. Its direct successor, Resident Evil Village, would even take cues from Gun Survivor's plot, such as experiments involving children and BOW soldiers.
  • Resident Evil: Outbreak generally received middling to poor reviews upon release due to subpar voice acting not matching the subtitles and janky, online-centric multiplayer game mechanics. ^note In addition, you had the classic fixed camera gameplay meshed together with some aspects of Code: Veronica. Outbreak is semi-fixed as the environments are largely polygonal and the camera can pan, but the delay between changing camera angles exist. In the years since, many fans revisited the Outbreak duology and found themselves better appreciating it when compared to later multiplayer efforts like Resident Evil: Operation Raccoon City, Umbrella Corps, and Resident Evil Resistance, regarding the games' focus on online co-op play as an ambitious undertaking held back by the technological limitations of the era. Outbreak's cast of mostly normal individuals are well-liked and fans were happy to hear them get referenced with a Easter Egg in the RE3make.
• Richard Burns Rally, while already praised at the time for its realism, had a mixed critical reception upon its release and was a commercial flop. Both its developer and publisher were bought out just a few years later, making the game Abandonware just few years after release. Despite this, the game was kept alive by an extremely dedicated cult following through Game Mods and the Abandonware status allowed new players to easily join the community. Thanks to this, the game has manged to garner more popularity and widespread critical acclaim, being often considered the best rally simulation available until DiRT Rally was able to challenge it for the title.
• While Rival Schools was the highest-selling arcade game of the year in Japan, the franchise still faltered compared to the fighting game juggernaut (and perennial cash cow) that is Street Fighter; despite finding its way to the West, the series eventually faded into obscurity. Like Darkstalkers, fighting game fans came to love the series, praising its Everybody Was Kung-Fu Fighting-High School aesthetic (predating media like My Hero Academia), and were jubilant at the news of fan favourite Akira Kazama being announced as playable in Street Fighter V, marking the first time in over a decade a Rival Schools character was featured in a Capcom fighter.
• In its infancy, Roblox was overshadowed by games like Club Penguin and Toon Town Online, only to later be upstaged by Minecraft. Come the second half of The New '10s and beyond, it is now a huge platform for making your own video games.
• RollerCoaster Tycoon 3 was the first in the series to use fully 3D graphics, and on top of the usual teething problems any established franchise has, it had some serious performance issues, struggling to work on anything but the latest and greatest hardware. Fans of the previous two games, which were noted for being extremely low-footprint and running happily on any PC in existence, were a bit annoyed about this. But a few years down the line, when games that once needed top-of-the-line hardware can now be played on any old beige box from Walmart or PC World, it underwent something of a critical reappraisal and is now seen as a flawed but still good game that lives up to its predecessors. The scathing reception of RollerCoaster Tycoon World in 2016, between its Obvious Beta glitches and shallow gameplay, has only made RCT3 look that much better in hindsight.
• Rule of Rose, much like Haunting Ground, received painfully average reviews for a survival horror game when it was released, mainly thanks to clunky and unpolished combat. Those who were willing to look beyond that have since have applauded the game for its chilling, creepy aesthetic and enemy design as well as a heartbreaking and very disturbing story. It's now generally considered a hidden gem that's only let down by its gameplay.
• SaGa (RPG):
  • Romancing SaGa 2, at least outside of Japan. Even amongst the emulation community, the dedicated fan translation patch was in Development Hell for years due to technical issues ^note the font used made displaying English characters difficult and its somewhat unintuitive and not-fully explained mechanics made it seem somewhat unapproachable. In 2017, the game's remake was released worldwide on virtually every platform except the 3DS — and thus people have been able to appreciate the games' uniqueness (for the time being) since Wide-Open Sandbox games are much more popular now.
  • SaGa Frontier was widely panned upon its release for its Wide-Open Sandbox nature and its use of 2D graphics. It also had the misfortune of being released six months after Final Fantasy VII, a game that revolutionized the genre and made SaGa Frontier look very plain in comparison. Those who played the game, however, found out how deep the game was with its non-linearity, party customization, awesome music by Kenji Ito, quirky characters and more. It became a Cult Classic among fans, and many were overjoyed when a remaster was announced and later released in 2021.
• When Shantae originally came out, most people thought it was yet another shovelware game for the Game Boy Color as it had a wide release with little promotion, a gimmicky-looking and unorthodox protagonist (a protagonist whose design is rather racy for an E rated game, is a girl in an E-rated game?), came at the end of the system's lifespan (the Game Boy Advance released almost a week later), and was from a developer no one had heard of (WayForward, which ironically only made licensed games prior to this). The few people who did buy it were pleasantly surprised to find an incredibly solid Metroidvania game, and WayForward Technologies soon became a well-respected indie developer that's also a shining example of No Problem with Licensed Games. Original copies of this game now sell for hundreds of dollars and Shantae went on to blossom into a cult title, eventually getting a sequel in Risky's Revenge eight years later and other games since, to the point where many regard the series as one of the top indie series. The Nintendo 3DS Virtual Console re-release even explicitly notes how the original release was overlooked despite the positive reception among those who did play it, and how the Virtual Console release would finally give a wide range of players the chance to play it.
• Shining Force III, though for different reasons. It wasn't poorly received at all — at the time it was seen as one of the best games on the system. What held it back was the fact that the Sega Saturn was floundering outside of Japan. By the time Shining Force III released outside of Japan in mid-1998, the system was already discontinued in North America (and possibly even Europe too!). The mismanagement of the Saturn also caused both Scenarios II and III to never leave Japan. The Sega Saturn was also a difficult system to emulate for a while, but emulation of Sega Saturn games as well as fan translation patches for Scenarios II and III in The New '10s and The New '20s have allowed the game to spread to a much wider audience than it did back in The '90s.
• The Sims:
  • The Sims 2 was at launch not really seen as much of a proper "sequel", owing to how much content from the first game's seven expansion packs was removed from the Sims 2 base game in order to keep it from being over twenty discs and hours of load time. But as time went on and a few popular expansion packs (University and Nightlife especially) were added, players warmed up to it, such that many fans will call it the best in the series. It helps that it was the last Sims game that Will Wright personally worked on.
  • The Sims 3 was (and still is) on paper the most complex and customizable Sims game to date. But at launch, it was treated much like The Sims 2 for not having as much content as a four-year-old game with seven expansion packs (and more stuff packs) did. On top of that, the amount of things the game was doing off-camera and behind the scenes meant that it required a very high-performance computer to run (in a series that was never known for such), resulting in crippling load times and a lot of potential bugs — some of which were hilarious, others not so much. But as The New '10s progressed into its later half, mods became more accessible, and computer technology advanced to the point where the game could run properly with fairly normal load times even on a mid-range computer, players warmed up to the game. Even its own suite of expansions were vindicated when it was found out that even the ones "Reselling" features back to players would either combine them with something new, overhaul them in an interesting way, or combine multiple features that were sold in previous expansions (Such as Nightlife containing apartments and vampires in addition to the titular Nightlife). Backlash against the more unpopular design decisions and expansion packs of The Sims 4 also caused some disaffected Sims fans to go back to the third game and give it a second look, many of them liking what they saw. There now exists a very vocal contingent of fans that sees the third game as the best game, when originally the second was seen as the unquestionable king of the franchise. Even those still don't like it often find it is the last decent Sims game, troubled by being too far ahead of its time as well as how EA continued to encroach into the game's development.
  • Back when The Sims 4 first came out, it was loathed by many for the removal of several features (even in comparison to 2 and 3), most notoriously toddlers. Its many glitches didn't help its case either. But as the game started receiving updates that remedied a lot of these (as well as its expansion/game/stuff packs), many players warmed up to the game. It remains a highly contentious game due to the subsequent abundance of the stuff packs and EA's Executive Meddling, but is also still seen in a generally positive light.
• Snatcher was unheard of back in its day due to in no small part being released on the flopped Sega CD add-on, with a limited release on the platform. But because the developer of that game would later work on franchises such as Metal Gear Solid, people who wanted more of Kojima's antics discovered the existence of Snatcher. Those who sought out the game found that it was awesome and ahead of its time. Nowadays, it is remembered as one of the very best games on the Sega CD.
• Sonic the Hedgehog:
  • When Sonic 3 & Knuckles was released on PC with the Sonic & Knuckles Collection, a handful of themes from Sonic 3 were changed — most notably, the themes of Carnival Night, IceCap, and Launch Base — likely because Sega either lacking the rights to include the music in the PC collection, or not being able to modify them to work in MIDI format. In any case, the new themes used to replace the ones removed were not very well received by fans at the time. Things changed over time when the discovery of a beta version of Sonic 3 from before the game was split into two parts revealed that the arrangements used in the PC collection were Older Than They Think: the PC collection songs had originally been composed for the Genesis version of Sonic 3 before Jackson's involvement. Following this revelation, reception of the PC collection's music improved a bit: while most fans argue that the Jackson-made Genesis themes are better (and their replacement with the prototype tracks in the Compilation Re-release Sonic Origins was met with some displeasure), it is now generally agreed that the PC collection themes are better than they were given credit for at the time.
  • Sonic Unleashed was subjected to mixed to negative reception back in 2008, with the non-Soni portions of the game being a strong point of contention, the Werehog in particular catching a ton of heat. The game was considered a 2000s "Dark Age" Sonic title, and was even among the de-listed Sonic games by Sega. A decade later, it isn't uncommon to find a lot more defenders towards Unleashed in particular citing the game's creativity, production values that many took for granted at the time, awesome graphics done by the Hedgehog Engine (that still look great even today, perhaps even better than some 2010s titles), the extremely varied but excellent soundtrack, and a plot that is generally considered very solid. The warming reception is likely what caused Sega to relist and reprint the game after it was delisted in 2010.
  • Sonic Riders: The game was divisive at the time as they came out during what was widely considered to be the series' second Audience-Alienating Era (see here for more details). However, as time went on the first game began to get a lot more love, receiving praise for its unique concept of a racing game that didn't copy Mario Kart like Team Sonic Racing (and Sonic Drift before it) did. There was also praise for having guest characters from other Sega franchises as unlockables. Nowadays, you'll see a lot more fans wanting a HD port of the Riders games with online or a fourth entry that combines all the positive aspects of the Riders trilogy.
• SOS came and went without so much fanfare, but nowadays many find the game to be a somewhat flawed masterpiece thanks to its innovative game design.
• SpongeBob SquarePants: Battle for Bikini Bottom sold well and was seen as a pretty good platformer at the time, but not a particularly memorable one in the face of other sixth-generation games like Super Mario Sunshine, Ratchet & Clank (2002), Jak and Daxter: The Precursor Legacy and Sly Cooper and the Thievius Raccoonus. The fact that it was a licensed game meant that it also had to overcome an image problem, and it went largely ignored. Then speedrunners discovered it and found all manner of Hidden Depths in its gameplay. Nowadays, while it hasn't exactly joined the ranks of the greatest platformers ever made, it is extraordinarily popular within the speedrunning scene, to a greater degree than many of its more conventionally acclaimed contemporaries. In 2020, the game was given a remake, SpongeBob SquarePants: Battle for Bikini Bottom – Rehydrated, a very rare distinction for a licensed property, much less a kid-oriented one.
• Spore is an interesting example of this. While the game wasn't a commercial failure and was received very well, it held the title for being gaming's biggest disappointment in history due the huge amount of hype built up for it and having the dubious honor of one of the most pirated games of the time due to its notorious DRM. Fast forward eight years later where the Hype Backlash no longer held sway and No Man's Sky was released, Spore was suddenly seen in a more positive light; with sales and reviews of the game on Steam skyrocketed as a result. It helps that weeks after No Man's Sky launch, Spore was released on GOG.com with its infamous DRM (except for the mandatory account sign-in to open the deprecated-but-still-online Sporepedia in game) completely removed.
• Spyro the Dragon:
  • When announced in 2010, Skylanders was the bane of the internet. For years it had a loud periphery hatedom of Spyro fans and people who hated its Merchandise-Driven nature. As time has gone on, its reception has changed. Many kids who grew up on the games praise it, which has put Skylanders into more divisive territory.
  • The Legend of Spyro: Many elements of this series can be found in Skylanders. Even classic fans who hated it initially saw it in a new light if only because Spyro wasn't a side character in his own game. Bringing in fan favorite characters like Cynder and Malefor would also help, with many fans even asking they make their debut in the main series.
• S.T.A.L.K.E.R.: Shadow of Chernobyl sold well enough on its release that two sequels were made, but only received rather average reviews for its staggering amounts of bugs from nearly a decade in development hell and extremely high difficulty. Nowadays, the game and its sequels are highly lauded for their grim, depressing atmosphere and for being more "realistic" takes on post-apocalyptic video games. They also have an extremely vibrant modding community thanks to the unique X-Ray Engine, which has given the series significant popularity over the years, and the trilogy eventually gained several spiritual successors in the Metro series and Escape from Tarkov. An official sequel for the series was Saved from Development Hell and officially announced in May 2018 with a 2021 release date.
• Star Fox:
  • Star Fox Adventures has become this in the years following its release. Although it received positive reviews back in 2002, it was criticized by many Star Fox fans as being a Zelda clone, but since then it has become much more positively received by fans — especially with the divisiveness of Star Fox Zero.
  • To a lesser extent, Star Fox: Assault. While the general consensus is that the game doesn't live up to the lofty standard set by Star Fox 64 and has a few clunky and poorly implemented mechanics that take away from the Arwing sections, it ultimately tried to do something different with the series and continue the storyline from where Adventures left off — with a Darker and Edgier plot to boot — instead of rehashing 64 (like Zero did). At the same time, Assault came to be lauded for sticking to enough of the series' standard conventions to feel familiar as to opposed to gimmicky (as Command and especially Zero came across to many fans). It also helps that Assault boasts quite a few stunning set pieces; a very excellent soundtrack; an incredibly fun and rich multiplayer experience that, by many accounts, has yet to be topped since; and voice acting that isn't So Bad, It's Good, but actually decent if not legitimately good (though the improved voice work is a point of contention for some).
• Star Wars Battlefront II (2017) is another DICE game that managed a remarkable turnaround. At launch the game was slammed by critics and players thanks to a lackluster campaign, buggy state, and the microtransaction-based progression that many have deemed pay-to-win and akin to gambling. However, the Battlefront II team managed to retool the progression system while also adding free maps and modes. These changes were well-received by the fanbase, and by 2019 its concurrent player count is as high as it was at launch. The success of Battlefront II led to EA releasing an updated Celebration Edition, with several outlets even re-reviewing the game and finding the package to be more fun than it was previously.
• Steam was initially received very negatively by the gaming community, because it was viewed as little more than Valve's own buggy DRM system for Half-Life 2, back in the era where forced online to play a single-player game (and multiplayer games, as online infrastructure at the time was still dominated by LAN) was unheard of and thus extremely controversial, as Ubisoft and Electronic Arts learned later in Assassin's Creed II for Ubisoft, and Securom-equipped games for EA, which includes Mass Effect and Spore. However years later when major publishers started to publish their games on Steam, the platform was praised for providing easy access to a large number of games at all times without the need for game discs, cheap price of games during sales, easily usable modding content through Steam Workshop, its less intrusive DRM system (though publisher can add extra layer of DRM at a whim) compared to its rivals, a universal controller compatibility and customization layer (which now supports almost every Xinput and modern controller on the market), and the Proton OS emulation software introduced in 2018 to make many, many Windows games compatible with Linux. It's now considered the big PC digital distribution system, with the only others considered to have remotely comparable positivity being Good Old Games and Itch.io (for different reasons) — any competitors that come onto the scene with nothing to really distinguish themselves from Steam in terms of features is usually hit with a massive backlash (as shown by EA's Origin platform or the Epic Games Store), to the point where EA actually gave up on Origin exclusivity and brought its full catalogue back to Steam, and Microsoft (through XBOX Game Studios), as of 2019, periodically brought games released from 2018 onwards to Steam apart from their own Windows Store without the UWP dependency.
• The first two Story of Seasons games. The original game was one of the last games to be released for SNES — way back in 1996 — and was overlooked (the "farming sim" premise didn't help). Nowadays it is considered to be one of the best games on the console and is a Cult Classic. Meanwhile, Harvest Moon 64 was originally passed over in favor of the PlayStation installment Back to Nature. In later years, it's commonly nominated as a candidate for best game in the franchise — and one of the best on the Nintendo 64.
• Street Fighter:
  • Street Fighter III, like The King of Fighters '98, was derided as being primitive and having "SNES graphics" when it was first released, thanks to the Dreamcast being able to produce competent 3D graphics and fighting games being a genre on the verge of extinction. The cast of II was almost completely absent and replaced with a bunch of new, frequently scattershot designs, Capcom's attempt to use its chipset on other games was aborted, and the game was considered too hard to learn. For a case study of its original reception, check out a 2008 Gamesradar article of "Worst Street Fighter Characters": eight out of ten are from III. Then people started cracking open the game, and realized that it was actually far deeper than any of its predecessors, with a phenomenal skill ceiling and a well-regarded parry system that added an unusual depth to the combat. "EVO Moment #37", where a tournament player managed to parry a seventeen-hit Super Art, helped build its reputation even more, as it revealed just how much the game could offer a skilled player. And when it was rereleased, people realized that its graphics were anything but primitive; they featured some of the most fluid and energized spritework of the time and had aged like wine next to most Dreamcast-era 3D fighters. Nowadays, fans consider it to be probably the best competitive experience the franchise ever offered, and some claim its revitalization saved the franchise, and perhaps even 2D fighters as a genre.
  • The Street Fighter EX trilogy originally had a very mixed reception when it came out; the decision to move the franchise to 3D was very controversial, and since the games were developed by a third-party company (Arika), they were dismissed as second-rate compared to Capcom's mainstream Street Fighter titles; the sub-series was permanently shelved in 2000. However, after Capcom's own move of the franchise to 3D with Street Fighter IV, fans were willing to give the EX games another look. Today, the games are viewed much more positively than they used to be, with several of Capcom's most iconic fighters being complemented by an enjoyable cast of original characters created by Arika (including a wannabe-superhero in a skeleton suit, an Indian pro-wrestler, a Gadgeteer Genius girl, and a baseball-playing bouncer) that fans have been clamoring to see return to the Street Fighter world after a sixteen-year (and counting) absence. It helps that some of the mechanics in IV, as well as a few "new" special moves given to the returning Street Fighter II vets, originated there, or were at least inspired by aspects of the EX games. The renewed interest in the EX trilogy and its characters did eventually bear some fruit, with Arika releasing a Spiritual Successor to the series (and its rather obscure offshoot Fighting Layer) in 2018 called Fighting EX Layer.
  • The tournament scene in general would save the once-forgotten fighting game genre. When Street Fighter III: Third Strike came out, the tournament players showed how deeply tactical the game was, resulting in epic EVO matches, like the aforementioned famous Daigo comeback video. In fact, EVO tournaments themselves would become more popular and gamers' interest in Street Fighter and fighting games again would result in Street Fighter IV being made, which revived the dying fighting game genre.
• Suikoden II, despite favorable reviews, sold poorly on its initial release in 1998 due to its poor localization and using 2D sprites when 3D graphics were all the rage. A couple of decades later, it was rediscovered and proclamied to be one of the best games ever. Used physical copies now sell for well in the triple digits, but fortunately the game is now available digitally on the PlayStation Network.
• Super Smash Bros. Brawl was one of the highest critically praised games in 2008, but the consensus for the game's Adventure Mode, The Subspace Emissary, was almost overwhelmingly negative, especially in regards to the cutscenes. ^note Not so much for the quality of the cutscenes themselves, but the perception that the time and resource that went into the cutscenes would've been better suited for the gameplay balance and other aspects of Brawl. When it was announced in 2013 that Smash Bros. 4 would not have cutscenes, fans of the Subspace Emissary mode suddenly started crawling out of the woodwork. Back in 2008, you would not find people defending it. It ended up being vindicated again following the release of Super Smash Bros. Ultimate, as the story mode in that game, World of Light, was criticized for lacking the fun interactions between the various characters that Subspace had.
• System Shock 2 was the sequel to a moderately successful cyberpunk First-Person Shooter (that unfairly received comparisons to the original Doom, which was released at the same time). The sequel, which had players step into the role of a hacker trying to stop a viral infection and insane AI on a now-deserted spaceship, was plagued with development problems. Although the game did receive several awards and very positive reviews, it failed to meet sales expectations thanks to being released where there was a tragic event that triggers backlash toward violent video games, particularly first person shooters. Fast forward a decade later, and SS2 is regularly quoted on "best game of all time" and "scariest game of all time" lists, to the point of almost every major gaming website giving it accolades and the game itself creating a Spiritual Successor in the form of Doom³, BioShock, Dead Space, and Prey over the years. Both System Shock and its sequel have also continued to receive significant support from the fan community in the form of mods and graphic upgrades, more so than most other older games. Thanks to this trope, System Shock 3 has officially now gone into development along with a Kickstarter-backed remake of the original game.
• Tales of Legendia had the unfortunate side effect of being the next Tales Series game that released outside of Japan (in North America, that is) after Tales of Symphonia, which was quite a Tough Act to Follow. The general consensus was that the game itself was So Okay, It's Average since the game itself was one of the few Tales games that didn't really try anything new. These days, people are a little nicer to it since at the time it was not known that it was actually a B-Team Sequel.
• Tales of the Tempest, another B-Team Sequel, never left Japan and was received so poorly that it was demoted to an "Escort" title, reserved primarily for spinoffs and, later on, mobile games. However, it wasn't fully disowned, as Caius & Rubia would appear in spinoffs alongside other Tales Series heroes.
• When Sega's 1988 Tetris game was released, it was a hit in arcades in Japan, but it was never exported and the few Western players who did play it wrote it off in favor of Nintendo's versions of Tetris. However, when the online Tetris community began to formulate in the 2000s, this version of Tetris started to gain a small but appreciative player base outside of Japan, due to being the base for the highly-acclaimed Tetris: The Grand Master series; in particular, it's the first Tetris game to be optimized for high-gravity play, with fast horizontal movement and delayed piece locking allowing the game to be playable even at its maximum drop speed.
• For a while, Tekken 4 was seen as the weakest entry of the Tekken series, due to its much heavier and slower gameplay compared to its predecessors, heavy expirementation with walled arenas over the previous game's infinitely scrolling stages, and a Darker and Edgier tone that clashed with some of the lighthearted antics of previous entries while also downplaying the supernatural aspects of the story in a rather convoluted manner. However, as time went on, fans ended up turning down their vitriol to commend Namco for the approach they had taken with the game, praising the darker approach that managed to give even the more comical characters depth, with aesthetics and mechanics that made 4 stick out as more of a unique experiment that was simply the victim of its own overambition. The fact that some fans are tired of Bandai Namco pushing anyone who's not a Mishima out of the limelight in later games (and especially Tekken 7) also adds to 4's growing redemption.
• Tomb Raider: The Angel of Darkness was blasted by fans and critics alike for adding RPG elements (determines whether or not Lara can move certain objects or can jump great lengths), having a secondary playable male protagonist, and massive amounts of glitches. Over time, fans of the franchise began to warm up to the game and appreciated the darker storyline, the characters, and the dialogue system that lets you decide on how to respond to certain characters. The revelation of the cruel treatment of the Core Design team by Eidos, who had ordered them to create and release a new Tomb Raider game every year, also garnered sympathy.
• Total Annihilation: While it was given extremely positive reviews and tons of accolades upon its 1997 release for its then-gorgeous graphics and superb gameplay, it had the misfortune of coming out at the same time as Starcraft and not long after Age of Empires (two classics of the RTS genre). Therefore, it had very poor sales. Nowadays it's not only considered one of the best (if not the best) RTS games ever made, but also one of the most underrated games of all time. It helps that its developers went on to make two popular spiritual successors Supreme Commander and Planetary Annihilation (and other developers with games such as Ashes of the Singularity), which helped the original game shoot up in popularity over the years.
• While The Tower of Druaga still remains an obscurity outside of Japan (unless talking about how legendarily difficult it is), many Western gamers who grew up with Namco Museum DS remember the game more fondly, possibly in no small part due to having a hint system to mitigate some of the obtuseness of finding the items. Even still, some at least credit it for inspiring later RPGs like The Legend of Zelda and Final Fantasy.
• When Um Jammer Lammy was initially released, it got lots of praise from critics, but with the general public, it didn't gather as much attention as its predecessor, PaRappa the Rapper, did. This was mostly due to bad American advertising that had nothing to do with the game, and because people were instead expecting the PaRappa 2 that was promised at the end of the first game. Years later, when PaRappa 2 finally did came out, and Lammy played a supporting role in it, the game received a huge increase in popularity and interest, and it's now considered one of the best games of the first PlayStation. A lot of people agree that it's even better than the two PaRappa games.
• Vampire: The Masquerade - Bloodlines tanked hard despite good reviews on release, to the point where the developer went out of business. The biggest blame is probably its release a day after Half-Life 2 in concert with a rushed, extremely buggy release. As time went on and word of mouth about it spread, the game became increasingly popular after the fact, particularly among RPG fans with fond memories of Deus Ex and bad memories of being let down by Deus Ex: Invisible War. Today, years after release, the game still receives unofficial patches and mods from the community, which have collectively rendered the complaints about bugs a moot point and restored large amounts of content that was Dummied Out. This would eventually lead to the announcement of an official and direct sequel set in Seattle roughly 14 years after the original.
• Vanquish had awful retail sales, because, apart from being too short, it was heavily Screwed by the Network: The game magically popped up on store shelves without any announcement or advertising, and it quickly fell under the radar. Then, in 2013, the game was released on PlayStation Network's Games on Demand (and as a free download for PlayStation Plus subscribers), and proved far more successful there. This positive word of mouth, in turn, helped the game receive a Polished Port on Steam in 2017, mere months after Bayonetta (a higher profile and better selling PlatinumGames title) had the same honor. Come 2020, Vanquish would even get the HD remaster treatment on the PlayStation 4 and Xbox One for its 10th anniversary, being bundled alongside none other than Bayonetta.
• Warcraft: Despite being one of the key figures behind the Warcraft setting and many of the earlier storylines, Chris Metzen's time on World of Warcraft has been initially scrutinized as introducing massive retcons to move the story, perceived use of the Conflict Ball to drive the narrative, supposed treatment of Thrall as a Creator's Pet, and lore directions seen to be detrimental to the overarching storyline. This was also combined with backlash at his handling of the campaign of the Starcraft II trilogy as well, namely the decision to redeem Sarah Kerrigan(in part tied to him having a greater fondness for redemption arcs as time went on) and center the narrative on her romance with Raynor. Yet, following Metzen's departure from Blizzard and the poor reception of both Battle for Azeroth and Shadowlands and the perceived worsening of the storytelling, worldbuilding, and plot direction of Warcraft combined with Blizzard being embroiled in multiple scandals, Metzen's storytelling has been looked upon much more fondly as at least providing emotionally charged moments, drawing on the basic themes of the Warraft franchise, and doing solid worldbuilding on their own right. Meanwhile, many players have at least given some credit to Starcraft II for wrapping that franchise up while it's ahead regardless of the perceived flaws of it's campaign in contrast to the Warcraft narrative. When Metzen's return to Blizzard as Executive Creative Director was announced, many had hopes that this would also indicate a return to form for both Warcraft and Blizzard, with his appearance in Blizzcon 2023 during the announcement of the Worldsoul trilogy being met with huge cheers.
• Watch_Dogs ended up standing the test of time. At launch, the game was mostly considered negatively, especially compared to much-loved shooter Grand Theft Auto V. However, over time the game's reputation increased, its stealth, action movie influences, and hacking mechanics being seen as a welcome variation to what had started to become a stale genre. After Watch_Dogs 2 came out, a lot of people also retro-appreciated that, while its plot wasn't the best, the game feels refreshingly different between the two. Looking at Steam reviews for both games, it becomes quite clear that Watch_Dogs was a solid game, and fans were rewarded. Less flak also came to the game's simple hacking mechanics when critics realized that they'd be much better than providing anything even slightly realistic, which would ruin the pacing.
• Xenoblade Chronicles 2, while a financial success, was very much a Contested Sequel to Xenoblade Chronicles 1. Part of this was that the first game was a rather Tough Act to Follow, but another part was that XC2 was Christmas Rushed and Monolith Soft couldn't devote full attention to the game. While never seen as a bad game so to speak, it was viewed as much more cartoonish yet heavier on the fanservice than the first game. But as time went on, people learned about why its English voice acting was the way it was ^ExplanationThe voice actors were only given a few takes, weren't shown any visuals, and weren't even told much about plot points. This meant that they had to largely figure out how their characters should behave based off of context clues and each other. and did some replays, and thus were more forgiving of it in The New '20s.

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