Arcade sequels that sh*t the bed, especially compared to the original.

[retrorussell]

Hey gang.

What arcade sequels can you think of that sucked mightily while the original was so much better?

Maybe describe why it was so bad, the gaming audience reaction, maybe behind-the-scenes trivia like staff getting sacked over it or something?

 

Have at thee!

[+CyranoJ]

Empire Strikes Back and Return of the Jedi

[Cynicaster]

I remember playing a Double Dragon sequel at a bowling alley and being shocked at how bad it was. I think it was called Rosetta Stone; I can't believe I remember that, as I've never seen it since.

 

Aside from that, there aren't many I can think of where the original was memorable but the sequel "sucked mightily", although the list of sequels that failed to surpass originals is quite extensive. All IMO of course, but I'd count Asteroids Deluxe, Ms. Pac, and Millipede in the latter category.

Edited March 11, 2014 by Cynicaster

[retrorussell]

Good calls on Return of the Jedi and Double Dragon 3. They were both bad, especially DD3.

Others that took a monster dump:

PROFESSOR PAC-MAN

This abomination was quickly rejected by gamers due to it totally turning the series on its head with its departure of the maze theme and making a trivia game! WTF!!!

Some (like me) might also throw BABY PAC-MAN in here too. The pinball/video hybrid just wasn't a good idea IMO and the play mechanics seemed off.

The infamous SPY HUNTER II is also a classic misfire. Sound effect, graphics and gameplay all were tear-your-hair-out bad. Precious little thought put into this one.

[racerx]

No topic of crap sequels can be without Joust 2. Let's take eveything good about the original and literally turn it on its head. Ugh.

 

Dig Dug 2. Blech.
Super Zaxxon. So fast as to be unplayable.

Edited March 12, 2014 by racerx

[retrorussell]

I didn't find Dig Dug II to be a particularly bad sequel but it was certainly not as good as the original.

Joust 2 was definitely bad. The pegasus was a really dumb idea. The damn thing weighs a ton and does pretty much nothing special.

Super Zaxxon is evil. Evil I tells ya! Way too damn fast. A breakfast cereal back in the day called Halfsies (really good) had a contest where you could win either a PENGO or a SUPER ZAXXON cabinet. I bet the folks who 'won' the latter kicked themselves into a bloody stupor.

[retrorussell]

Oh, here's another one:

PAC & PAL

Not released in American arcades, and for a good reason! Pac-Man flips over cards to get the fruits in this game. The "Pal" of the game is a ghost that steals fruits and takes them to the ghost pen where they will be lost forever! Some frickin' pal!

[Austin]

Primal Rage II. Although to be fair, that one never really saw the light of day (outside of some location testing, I think?).

 

Gradius III I found way too hard to be even remotely as enjoyable as the first two. It's a good game (and technically speaking, better than its predecessors), but it's just too damn difficult. No continues, either, heh.

[bomberpunk]

hey i like Pac N' Pal.

 

Snow Bros 2. With New Elves.

yes, that's the whole title. that game BLOWS, and i loved the original (and especially the original gameboy port).

[Rex Dart]

Nothing wrong with Dig Dug II; I used to play that for hours.

Rainbow Islands, however... it was no Bubble Bobble.

[+wongojack]

Well, I liked Return of the Jedi A LOT. I think it was such a big departure from the first game that it kind of disappointed some people. Someone did make a ROTJ game in recent years with vector graphics etc for home PCs. I remember hearing about it on Retro Gaming Roundup.

 

Interesting fact - Empire Strikes Back actually came out after ROTJ.

 

Baby Pac Man is another game most don't seem to like, but I do. I'll admit that a baby is not a very good general idea for a video game, but I like the Pinball combo idea.

 

The space invaders sequel is one that wasn't bad, but I would just rather play the original.

[retrorussell]

I was never a fan of Donkey Kong 3. A gardener instead of Mario? Spraying Donkey Kong in the ass? Wow..

[ledzep]

I liked Empire Strikes Back but could not stomach Return Of The Jedi. Vector graphics, dammit!! I hated Blasteroids for the same reason.

[Rybags]

A lot of the Space Invaders and Galaxian "sequels" were pretty lame although a good percentage were just hacks or pirate jobs.

 

One of the Galaga sequels... can't remember which one though.

 

Re the Star Wars sequels - I'd not necessarily count a game based on a movie as a sequel just because the earlier movie also had a game based on it.

[SoulBlazer]

I can't believe no one mentioned the sequel to Time Pilot, Time Pilot 84. The original was SUCH a great game, but the sequel is terrible in every which way.

 

Personaly, I didn't care for Ikari Warriors 2 or 3 compared to the original, either.

[retrorussell]

I thought Time Pilot 84 was okay, just very loud and you fought the same boss each level. Not really different enough from the first TP.

Return Of The Invaders sucked.

Astro Fighter wasn't really any great shakes but Super Astro Fighter was unbelievably awful!

Peter Pepper's Ice Cream Factory sucked too.

Dragon's Lair II wasn't really bad, just far too weird for me to be interested in (and it came out way after the laserdisc phenomena subsided).

Mr. Do's Wild Ride eliminated the monsters altogether and put the famed clown in a theme park! Boo!

[Dauber]

Oh, here's another one:

PAC & PAL

Not released in American arcades, and for a good reason! Pac-Man flips over cards to get the fruits in this game. The "Pal" of the game is a ghost that steals fruits and takes them to the ghost pen where they will be lost forever! Some frickin' pal!

 

 

Actually, it WAS released in American arcades: I personally saw it at Bally's Aladdin's Castle at Lincoln Mall in Matteson, Illinois. Except it was called "Pac-Man and Chomp-Chomp," and the 'Pal" was Chomp-Chomp from the cartoon series. I was (and still am) a big Pac-Man fan, and I didn't even see this game until I had already used up the dollar allowance my dad gave me. I was pissed...a new Pac-Man game (and I thought it VERY odd that they would decide to have him team up with Chomp-Chomp!) but I couldn't play it, and my dad would refuse to give me another quarter to play it, so I just watched other people play it.

 

That was the ONLY time I ever saw that game. Next time I went, it was gone. However, Professor Pac-Man stayed around at that arcade for SURPRISINGLY long, and Baby Pac-Man was there for quite a while too.

 

Only in the last ten years or so did I learn that Pac-Man And Chomp-Chomp was actually a hacked version of Pac'n'Pal, when I saw Pac'n'Pal listed as a MAME ROM and I decided to check it out because I never heard of it! I remembered the game play AND the music very well and thought, "OMG, this is Pac-Man And Chomp-Chomp!"

[Cynicaster]

It's a bit of a tough call when a sequel of a big title is not so much a logical "sequel", but more like a re-skinning of a completely different game with characters from an established IP. Dig Dug II, Hopping Mappy, DK3, SMB2 (on NES), etc. are all good examples of this approach at work.

 

Incidentally, with the exception of DK3, I like all of the aforementioned examples just as much as (or more than) their predecessors.

[+FujiSkunk]

I have to disagree about The Empire Strikes Back, Return of the Jedi, and Baby Pac-Man. Return of the Jedi I thought was a lot of fun, and I pumped a lot of quarters in that game. TESB wasn't as good, but it still held its own, I thought. The biggest issue with TESB is that beyond the Imperial attack on Hoth, there really isn't anything in the movie that lends well to creating a video game. Atari did well enough despite that, though, even if it did become the weak link in the arcade trilogy.

 

Also Baby Pac-Man was a novel spin on the Pac-Man formula. Others may not like having to "earn" energizers by playing pinball, but for those of us who like video games and pinball in equal measure, it was a pleasantly unique experience.

 

Joust 2 I didn't think was that bad, though it definitely didn't quite retain the magic of the original. It's hard to add to perfection and still have perfection. Galaga did it, Ms. Pac-Man did it, but many others have tried and failed.

 

I definitely agree about Spy Hunter II. Sheesh that was bad. Pac 'n' Pal also left me scratching my head.

 

Mortal Kombat 3 wasn't exactly a colossal failure, but it was an obviously incomplete product when it first reached arcades. Midway tried to save face by then releasing Ultimate Mortal Kombat 3, which was mostly what MK3 should have been in the first place. I say "mostly" because even arcade UMK3 still had bits missing. It wasn't until the 16-bit home releases of UMK3 was the third Mortal Kombat game finally available in something resembling a finished product... and no, UMK3 on the Saturn and Mortal Kombat Trilogy don't count!

 

As for sequels that actually didn't get released, when I saw video for what was to become Marble Madness II: Marble Man, I was glad clearer heads at Atari prevailed and that game stayed on the shelf.

[retrorussell]

I totally forgot there was a Pac-Man and Chomp-Chomp. So of course, there's a US version. Doop! Whatever you call it, it's awful.

To a lesser degree of disappointments in the Pac-series, Jr. Pac-Man wasn't all that great. More energizers is really the only positive addition to the game; having the prizes be detrimental (converting dots into ones that slow you down, and destroying energizers) and making the mazes so huge really kinda sucks.

[pablum]

Seems like most have been listed.

 

Mortal Kombat 4 was a huge step back and a disappointment to me. Probably most people.

 

I also admit when I first played Street Fighter III (the original, not Double Impact or Third Strike), I was really disappointed Ken and Ryu were the only returning characters. Although Third Strike eventually won me back over. Never saw it in an arcade though.

 

The spiritual successor to U.N. Squadron, Carrier Air Wing, was a really big step back. After playing U.N. Squadron for so long and being used to the multiple weapon types and varied stages and bosses Carrier Air Wing lacked in almost every way in comparison. Wasn't bad though. It just reminded me I'd rather be playing the previous game.

[Dauber]

Baby Pac-Man -- as a GAME, it's a novel idea and a very interesting challenge. However, the biggest problem is that the video game itself is a complete piece of crap. They didn't even attempt to make the graphics look decent, and the movement of the ghosts doesn't make any sense at all. When I played it back in the '80s I don't think I really noticed, but when I saw it at YesterCades in Red Bank, NJ -- and nearly shat myself -- I certainly noticed...it was INSULTINGLY bad! The graphics, the ghosts....but you know what? I still spent significant time playing it because the annoying factors kind of contributed to my need to see if I could possibly get around them and get a decent score. Played until I got a 6-digit score.

 

Pac'n'Pal -- I really don't think it's a bad game. This was one of the few "official" Namco arcade sequels, and if I'm counting properly, only the second authorized sequel; the previous being Super Pac-Man. Of course, even in 1983 I figured that Pac'n'Pal (or, as I knew it then, Pac-Man and Chomp-Chomp) was a rewritten Super Pac-Man. Notice how the maze structure is similar, and you need to use a button to play. And remember, when Namco put out a sequel, they wanted the game play to be significantly different from prior versions, which is why they didn't like Ms. Pac-Man and why Super Pac-Man was so different; well, this game is another level of different. I think that it's just that if you're so used to the "eat dots in a maze, eat energizers to eat ghosts, gobble up two prizes" formula, then you'll be disappointed with Super Pac-Man, and even more so with Pac'n'Pal.

 

Jr. Pac-Man -- retrorussell, I kind of get what you're saying...Jr. Pac-Man is basically Ms. Pac-Man with a scrolling maze. (Well, technically, it's a crawling maze; the 2600 version has a scrolling maze!) But I do find it to be a worthy follow-up. For one thing, the ghosts' AI is slightly more challenging. Another thing, much like with Pac-Man, once you get to the 5000-point prize, that's the only prize that appears in the maze afterwards, giving you a good shot to rack up a lot of points if you can survive that long. (Happy to say that the arcade I frequent has a "Turbo" variation, meaning you actually have a decent chance of seeing every maze -- gobble up a lot of root beers and you can have a 6-digit score in no time!) Also, you get the bloated dots when the prize moves over them -- they slow Jr. Pac-Man down a LOT (although in the turbo version it's negligible!) but you get 50 points a pop, so that just gives you the impetus to find a strategic balance between allowing the prize to hover over as many dots as possible, and eating the prize before it destroys an energizer. (Oh, btw...some Jr. Pac-Man lore: yeah, everybody says the energizer will destroy your energizer. Truth is, it only destroys the four OUTER energizers; if your maze has the two inner energizers, the prize will safely hover over the inner ones without destroying them.)

Anyhoo...in terms of other sequels:

- Never played Dig Dug II or even saw it in the wild!

- I remember Super Zaxxon, but I haven't seen it in arcades since right when it first came out. I remember reading a letter from a reader in JoyStik just bashing the game to pieces; wondering if the rest of the gaming world felt the same way.

- Asteroids Deluxe -- for some reason, I find it unplayable! I could never last long enough to even clear the first level!

- Donkey Kong 3 - I actually like this variation. After all, Donkey Kong Junior is basically the original Donkey Kong with different graphics. Good to have some different game play.

- Q*Bert's Qubes - never saw this game in an arcade, but I've played it on MAME. I dunno what to make of this game. On one hand, it looks like a good-hearted attempt to bring a different challenge, but on the other hand it seemed to be a desperate attempt to strike gold twice.

- Track and Field II - hate it.

[jaybird3rd]

An earlier post mentioned Peter Pepper's Ice Cream Factory. Of all the arcade sequels I've played, that was the one that I most wanted to be good, as I'm a big fan of BurgerTime. All the necessary ideas seem to be there: the characters and levels look great, and the gameplay is very different from BurgerTime. Some might view the latter as a bad thing, but I've never liked "sequels" that are just the same game over again with a few superficial additions or changes, so I'm all for trying something new.

 

The problem is that these elements just don't seem to come together all that well; in particular, I've never quite figured out the jumping behavior or the movement of the ice cream. It all seems too spastic and unpredictable. I think that Diner, the BurgerTime sequel on the Intellivision, did a much better job of implementing the (very strange) idea of completing a level by rolling chunks of food into place. I'm sure the game has its good points, but getting into it deeply enough to discover them seems like more work than it should be.

 

It would help a lot if the save state feature in MAME actually worked for DECO games, so I wouldn't have to sit through the cassette load countdown every time, but that feature seems to be perpetually broken.

[Tempest]

An earlier post mentioned Peter Pepper's Ice Cream Factory. Of all the arcade sequels I've played, that was the one that I most wanted to be good, as I'm a big fan of BurgerTime. All the necessary ideas seem to be there: the characters and levels look great, and the gameplay is very different from BurgerTime. Some might view the latter as a bad thing, but I've never liked "sequels" that are just the same game over again with a few superficial additions or changes, so I'm all for trying something new.

 

The problem is that these elements just don't seem to come together all that well; in particular, I've never quite figured out the jumping behavior or the movement of the ice cream. It all seems too spastic and unpredictable. I think that Diner, the BurgerTime sequel on the Intellivision, did a much better job of implementing the (very strange) idea of completing a level by rolling chunks of food into place. I'm sure the game has its good points, but getting into it deeply enough to discover them seems like more work than it should be.

 

It would help a lot if the save state feature in MAME actually worked for DECO games, so I wouldn't have to sit through the cassette load countdown every time, but that feature seems to be perpetually broken.

I have PPICF on my DECO cab and I think I've cleared the first level only once or twice. The game is too damn hard! The enemies move at lightning speed and you're too busy trying to figure out where to kick the ice cream balls to have any chance of avoiding them. I seriously wonder who playtested that game.

[Cynicaster]

- Q*Bert's Qubes - never saw this game in an arcade, but I've played it on MAME. I dunno what to make of this game. On one hand, it looks like a good-hearted attempt to bring a different challenge, but on the other hand it seemed to be a desperate attempt to strike gold twice.

I was waiting for this one to come up. I don't know, I really enjoy it. It takes the general hop-through-the-isometric-playfield mechanics of the original and adds in all new mechanics. I do understand why it never caught on, though, as the 3-dimensional visualization required to manage the rotating cubes was probably a bit off-putting for many arcade dwellers of the day.

 

I don't mind that stuff, though. My only complaint with the game is that they replaced Coily with a spread-eagle rat. Why?