Which "crap" game ideas came good?

[Brats]

Being the extremely fickle lot we gamers are, we often seem to forget that some of the best ideas were often despised when they were first announced. I was just thinking what game ideas that seemed daft at the time actually turned out to be for the best:

Zelda OOT: The Auto-jump I have to confess at raising an eyebrow when it was mentioned that Link would jump automatically in the new Zelda game. To be fair, I didn't really appreciate how it would work, but it was a great idea that seperates the platform style of Mario from the puzzle centric Zelda.

Crazy Taxi You ride around picking up passengers and dropping them off. Eh? How crap does that sound?

Celda I coul;dn't really ignore this one could I. All I'll say is that I said it looked good at the beginning .

[Jay]

Sega Bass Fishing - I know there is a history of fishing games on various systems over the years (Jack Charlton Fishing on the Spectrum is one IIRC), none of which have been particularly enthralling in my book. Despite glowing reviews, I really didn;t think I'd enjoy this, but with the fishing controller it is superb. I was genuinely surprised.

Card Fighter's Clash - Oh, a card game. That'll be crap then. Let's give it a go. 100 hours later ....

Xtreme Xpress - You race trains? Hmmm. I left my geek hat at home. Oh hang on, this is excellent fun.

Tokyo Bus Guide - Penalty. Penalty. Penalty. This is crap. You can't race, you have to do every single little thing perfectly. Umpteen hours later ....

Jay

[lordcookie]

Animal Crossing - You live in a village full of animals and you can catch insects, fish and talk to the animals. Hardly sounds the most interesting game yet kept me hooked for several months.

[Corrupt Rose]

Tetris - Didn't Sega turn it down first because they thought it was bit crap?

Oops.



-Corrupt

[Geoff D]

The beloved Metroid moving into 3 dimensions - a shining example if there ever was one

[112]

PONG! nuff said really!

- track and field
- pacman
- mr driller

cant think of any at the mo but i nose there are more!

[?pint]

I was 100% in favour of teh 'Celda' style when announced. I even e-mailed N64 magazine with a letter about how great it should be and that beauty is only skin deep. Then the faggots printed only a couple of sentences making it seem like I said "Link looks like a little girl" when in fact I had said more along the lines of "So what if Link looks like a little girl?".

Stupid misquoting bastards :P

[Burai]

Half, mate, you don't even want to know what they said about your mum...

Densha de Go! - Driving an electric train? How hard and entertaining can that be? Oh, that hard... Just one more go then...

Knights of the Old Republic - Star Wars games are ****, western RPG's always rely on the same old Lord of the Rings cliches. Yet somehow they cancel each other out and create the most compelling "experience" game I've played since Ocarina of Time back in '98.

Serious Sam - So there's no plot? You just shoot stuff? Doesn't that get boring?

Metroid Prime - Metroid... an FPS? What the?

[Che Musashi]

Face legions and legions of warriors and battle your way through them. Nobody will buy that.

Lead around a weak princess to solve puzzles to escape a castle? We're lucky it made it past the pitch part.

Any Japanese mahjong game....

[Ish]

Wario Ware - play really really simple games in 5 second bursts

Any golf game - take a fairly dull sport, remove the only remotely fun elements (being outdoors and holding a big stick), now play.

Tetris - now don't lambast me for this but if someone said you try and stick falling blocks together you wouldn't exactly think whoopee

Championship Manager - fiddle with a spreadsheet. Oh. Wait. This really isn't fun

[Mr Ono]

Shaking a pair of false maracas in time to music.

[eghamninja]

Super Monkey Ball

It's a monkey, in a ball and you collect bananas on the way to the exit.

I just wish I had some of what Nogoshi-san was smoking that day.

[starflashed]

Xtreme Xpress - You race trains? Hmmm. I left my geek hat at home. Oh hang on, this is excellent fun.

Slightly off topic, but are you serious? I once asked about the game and was told it was crap, so didn't get it. I know a train game must be an acquied taste, but it's a genre i've always wanted to play and never had the chance, and hope the people putting it down just didn't get 'it'. So worth a buy then?

[Halo]

Parappa the Rapper - So you press buttons as shown in the bar above in time so a 2D dog raps in time with the music? What the ****?

[C']

Street Fighter 2: The World Warrior - Capcom what are you thinking? Why are you developing a sequel to the lamentable Street Fighter? Sure the pressure sensitive pads were fun until your palms start developing stamata like tendencies, and you're even taking that away. Give us a sequel to Final Fight instead.

13 years later, Capcom showed the world that even from the ****tiest of beginnings, greatness can grow.