Which games had the most NEGATIVE influence on the industry?

[Rex Dart]

One could argue games like Portal are just Dragon's Lair with more degrees of freedom.

 

Yeah and you could argue that horses can talk too.

[+FujiSkunk]

Okay.

[toiletunes]

Activision's early games for the 2600. Correct me if my information is incorrect, but I think Atari tried to sue Activision to get Activision to stop making games for the Atari. When Atari lost the lawsuit, it opened the floodgates for anyone else to make games for the Atari, which led to a glut of blah games, which led to the crash, which crippled the industry, which led Atari to being overly cautious, which left the field wide open for Nintendo to take over.

 

I don't know exactly when, but at some point, arcades shifted focus from arcade games to ticket games, and that changed things for the worse.

[+FujiSkunk]

That's an interesting perspective. But, considering a lot of people think Atari's own E.T. was responsible for the crash, and considering the actual reality involves a lot of companies making hardware and games nobody wanted, and not just for the Atari 2600, I don't think a lot of people will agree with you that Activision should get any of the blame. If anything, you could point the finger right back at Atari and their shortsightedness that kept them from realizing how lucrative third-party game support could, and eventually did become.

Edited March 19, 2012 by FujiSkunk

[volkanik_destruktor]

Half-Life / Deus Ex - both started 'cinematic fps' era where there's a domination of plot, cut-scenes etc. over the gameplay, it seemed to be natural proggression of genre but they gave it an impact. They've pushed fps games far away from its core, bot being a bad ones but in fact they're partially responsible for shooters becoming some strange hybrid of movie and video game.

 

Goldeneye 007 / Turok / Halo - they 'consolized' (in this case - 'dumbed down') the first person shooter mechanics by introducing (most of all) checkpoint system and health regeneration (Halo), I wouldn't mind that if they didn't affected majority of fps but they did and long-awaited Duke Nukem Forever is their biggest victim :/

 

Street Fighter 2 : CE - it caused a mania of producing the same fighting game over and over again, the number of SF2 updates is ridiculous and there are still 3 SF3 games too similar to each other, 3 Alpha games, bunch of Capcom crossovers... Such endless recycling causes brand's devalution, the same with Mortal Kombat 3 - Ultimate - Trilogy.

[+Gemintronic]

Mario 64. After its success everyone thought 3d action was the way to go - even killing off RPG elements in games that were RPGs.

[+thegoldenband]

I'm surprised more posters haven't cited Final Fantasy VII, which lots of people have blamed for establishing a set of rigid conventions that permanently skewed RPGs towards cutscenes full of whiny androgyny and forced melodrama. Or something like that. But I don't have enough hands-on experience with the game to feel justified in slagging it.

 

So instead, I'll be a little controversial and say: Sonic the Hedgehog.

 

Maybe I'll warm up to it someday, but otherwise I've never liked the game to begin with -- it just isn't my style of gaming, and the emphasis on speed has always seemed shallow to me. And I'm totally creeped out by the furry-fandom turn that the franchise has taken. The whole "mascots with ATTITUDE!" Poochie thing is largely Sonic's fault.

[godslabrat]

The whole "mascots with ATTITUDE!" Poochie thing is largely Sonic's fault.

 

The hilarious thing is, Sonic never really had much of an attitude, Sega's marketing department just told us he did. Looking at any of the games, comics, or cartoons, Sonic was basically just an animal version of a straight-A third grader. Looking back, the whole "attitude" and "way past cool" aspects of the character were insanely exaggerated.

 

It was the mascot equivelant of Blast Processing.

[high voltage]

anything on N64

[cimerians]

Ultima Online. It created a nation of addictive people neglecting their own lives when they can be doing something better.

[volkanik_destruktor]

Mortal Kombat. The 90's were about fighting games (thanks street fighter II). A lot of them were about style and skill, and were pretty fun to play too, but Mortal Kombat was really only about gore.

 

No, it's not only about gore, play some censored ports and you'll find quite good and unique gameplay even without blood and fatalities.

 

It's not so bad to have a franchise go a bit over the top. But it spawned numerous ripoffs that generally copied its style, but with much worse gameplay.

 

Try to catch some pros - MK created new sub-genre in fighting games, call it 'american' (or 'non japanese') fighting game so it introduced much more variety. There are few MK's follow'ups which are at last decent e.g. Primal Rage, Pray For Death, Xenophage or Killer Instinct and compare it to the current state when marked is dominated in 99,9% by japanese-styled games.

 

I have to add Tomb Raider which brought us flood of crappy third person perspective titles with half-naked chicks (Deathrap Dungeon anyone? Really awful).

[dendawg]

anything on N64

 

[Austin]

anything on N64

 

[Rex Dart]

I think a lot of this thread is just people dumping on games they didn't like, rather than games having negative influence on the industry.

[sqoon]

FPS anything. Look at the current glut of military titles and it is apparent that games like Doom, Quake and Wolfenstein led to all this garbage.

[atarilovesyou]

I don't have the time right now to read past page two, but my simple vote (if it hasn't been said already) is STREET FIGHTER 2.

 

So influential, but ulitimately in a way that changed the way we look at videogaming, and I can't say it was for the better. It was a genre that really should have just been SF2, maybe Tekken...but that's about it. Instead, entire arcades were getting rid of their 'old' machines in favour of this flavour of the week that lasted years.

 

I loved SF2 after I finally figured out how to effectively play it. And then I saw it for what it was: a cash cow that preyed on the most basic of human, one on one competition. It was a fancy Pong. But while Pong led to many other games, SF2 really was the beginning of the end of arcade gaming.

 

My two cents.

[atarilovesyou]

WoW - PC. I've seen people lose their lives to this game.

 

You think?

 

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cq4GUDgVlTg

 

WoW...literally. I wanted to laugh at this guy, but it's one of the saddest things I've seen in a while.

[atarilovesyou]

WoW - PC. I've seen people lose their lives to this game.

 

You think?

 

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cq4GUDgVlTg

 

WoW...literally. I wanted to laugh at this guy, but it's one of the saddest things I've seen in a while.

 

 

Well, now I feel better! Really, though...I'm glad this was all just a joke.

[Underball]

Super Mario Brothers (series). The marketing shift to pandering to the 3-8 year old cutsie kiddie set with Hello Kitty/effeminate mushroom and cartoony bullshit ruined almost the entire 90's decade until Doom and the return to teen and adult themed games made a comeback.

 

But really Nintendos kid-focused strategy and unnecessary editing and neutering if video games to appease political blowhards was the worst.

[godslabrat]

I think I'll sum up every post in this thread:

 

"Every game I liked made the industry better, every game I didn't like made the industry worse."

 

/thread. :-)

[+thegoldenband]

Heh. Well, I can certainly name a few games I really like that probably had a negative effect on the industry. Mortal Kombat is one example; I love MKII in particular, but the series spawned legions of imitators and a stylistic shift that probably wasn't for the better. Donkey Kong Country is another one; it certainly wasn't the first "collect-a-thon" game, but it seems to have been enormously influential in that genre, and later examples extended that gameplay style to the point of absurdity.

 

I also remember being deeply disturbed by the fact that you could shoot innocent bystanders in GoldenEye, a game I otherwise liked. (Actually, being able to wound them, e.g. in the hand, was almost worse.) It's one thing to annihilate Nazis or Martian monsters, but I felt like a bridge had been crossed -- and for all my convictions about how video games shouldn't be regulated and violence shouldn't be veiled, etc. etc., I didn't feel comfortable with that crossing. And of course, now that's the norm: boom, headshot, and so on.

 

(At least it's not as bad as Blackthorne for 32X/SNES, where you can shoot chained, allied prisoners and suffer no penalty whatsoever!)

[Rex Dart]

Super Mario Brothers (series). The marketing shift to pandering to the 3-8 year old cutsie kiddie set with Hello Kitty/effeminate mushroom and cartoony bullshit ruined almost the entire 90's decade until Doom and the return to teen and adult themed games made a comeback.

 

Yeah man, Bubble Bobble was just terrible. What the industry really needed was 20 more years of Galaga & Pac-Man knockoffs.

[Austin]

Super Mario Brothers (series). The marketing shift to pandering to the 3-8 year old cutsie kiddie set with Hello Kitty/effeminate mushroom and cartoony bullshit ruined almost the entire 90's decade until Doom and the return to teen and adult themed games made a comeback.

 

Yeah man, Bubble Bobble was just terrible.

 

Along with Burgertime, Pooyan, Frogger, Bubbles, and Kangaroo. The list goes on.. and on.. and on.

[mbd30]

Super Mario Brothers (series). The marketing shift to pandering to the 3-8 year old cutsie kiddie set with Hello Kitty/effeminate mushroom and cartoony bullshit ruined almost the entire 90's decade until Doom and the return to teen and adult themed games made a comeback.

 

But really Nintendos kid-focused strategy and unnecessary editing and neutering if video games to appease political blowhards was the worst.

Super Mario Brothers (series). The marketing shift to pandering to the 3-8 year old cutsie kiddie set with Hello Kitty/effeminate mushroom and cartoony bullshit ruined almost the entire 90's decade until Doom and the return to teen and adult themed games made a comeback.

 

Yeah man, Bubble Bobble was just terrible.

 

Along with Burgertime, Pooyan, Frogger, Bubbles, and Kangaroo. The list goes on.. and on.. and on.

 

It's not like video games were all aimed at adults and then Nintendo came along and made everything too kiddy. The industry was almost entirely aimed at kids until the violent mature-rated games came along.

 

What's wrong with kiddy and cartoonish anyway? A game has to be all gritty, dark and violent to be fun? You're not a REAL MAN if you play a game with cartoon mushrooms in it? *flexes bicep*

 

The grudge that some posters here harbor against Nintendo is ridiculous. Like Mario and Luigi took turns raping them as a child and now they hate all things Nintendo.

[Brian O]

Has anyone said Pong?