Video games are inexorably tied to technology: as processors and, just as importantly, manufacturing processes advance and become cheaper, more becomes possible for the game designers.
Of course, just because you can do something doesn’t mean you should, and the leap from 2D games to 3D games created a wall that a lot of beloved franchises slammed into. In some cases, so hard that it killed the franchise. Here are the five worst cases, all of which are classics because, let’s face it, nobody gave a crap about Bubsy.
#5) Contra
It’s not that Contra’s 3D entries were at all bad: developed by Appaloosa, they were actually pretty good. They just weren’t really “Contra”, and Konami started pretending these had never happened fairly quickly.
#4) Bomberman
Dear Hudson:
Nobody buys “Bomberman” to try out the single player mode. Give us the multiplayer and have done with it.
Sincerely,
Every Gamer on Earth
#3) Final Fight
“Final Fight: Streetwise” and “Final Fight: Revenge” are disastrous for entirely separate reasons. The first because it tried to take what was a silly ’80s action movie of a video game and turn it into a profound, serious meditation on urban rot. Or maybe they were just trying to be “adult”. We’re still not sure. Either way it was stupid and hard to play.
“Revenge”, on the other hand, is a game developed for the Saturn, really only popular in Japan, by an American developer, and it looks like this:
…Yeah.
#2) Earthworm Jim
Here’s how to ruin a franchise: one, leave the creators of the game, Dave Perry and Doug TenNapel, out of the development entirely. Two, throw out pretty much all the characters people loved. Three, make it 3D because that’s what the kids want. Four, base it off a cartoon that lasted one season.
Yeah, there’s a reason Earthworm Jim 3D killed the franchise. And, yes, Rockstar was involved in development.
#1) Sonic
What does it say, after years and years of effort to make Sonic work as a three-dimensional game series, that Sega has given up and started going back to 2D?
We’re not sure. All we’re sure of is that the Sonic series has been, until recently, pretty painful to watch. Granted that some of this has been Sega’s corporate culture, but you’d think the screams and laments of people who actually buy your games would have convinced you that some franchises are better left in 3D.
Photo by dust storm