Guilty pleasure games

[samanosuke]

This lack of an adventurous spirit amongst the Playstation Generation of gamers - is really disheartenting. It means that the games, gamers like me love, are often seen as "Flops" ... therefore sequels don't appear, and an overall air of apathy surrounds them in the publishing community.

Ahhh, Shenmue *sob*

[Leon Retro]

Ahhh, Shenmue *sob*

The Dreamcast died - and Shenmue3 never happened. All because casuals gamers lack an adventurous spirit.

Reason enough to dislike mainstream gamers - and their attitude towards gaming.

The Dreamcast was great - as was Shenmue. Anyone who didn't want the machine in 99-2000 - doesn't deserve to ever play a videogame.

[saturn-gamer]

Well afaik SF2's on the 16-bit consoles were guaranteed smashhits amongst press and public. As were the likes of TC1 and Tekken 2, 3. Old PD probably sold well enough on Saturn to warrant sequels, too.

Shenmue 1 didn't really sell all that bad (I figured it reached 1.5 million on the DC alone), but simply not enough to cover the huge costs at the time.

[sj33]

Last Battle on the Megadrive... I actually really, really enjoyed that.

I actually have fond memories of that, because back in about 1990, my uncle had a Japanese Megadrive with a load of Japanese games, one of which was a Japanese Last Battle. Always reached the same bit in the game, but it was all I played back then.

STC was a flawed port right from the very beginning, the approach of cramming the game with an insane amount of detail (and a rear-view mirror) rather than observing what made the Sega Rally port so well received (prioritising a constant 30fps framerate, and recognising the control differences between arcade and gamepad and adapting them accordingly) was never going to work. That said, it was quite playable if you had an analogue controller and tweaked the handling somewhat... but they really should have focused on what was important about the port.

[Leon Retro]

Well afaik SF2's on the 16-bit consoles were guaranteed smashhits amongst press and public. As were the likes of TC1 and Tekken 2, 3. Old PD probably sold well enough on Saturn to warrant sequels, too.

Shenmue 1 didn't really sell all that bad (I figured it reached 1.5 million on the DC alone), but simply not enough to cover the huge costs at the time.

With SF2, we're talking about an Arcade Phenomenon, hyped to the max, through media and word of mouth, being ported to Nintendo's new Super Machine.

It was promoted just as much as Metal Gear, Resident Evil, Mario Olympics etc... are now. That's when 2D still dominated the gaming scene. SF2 was the pinnacle of 2D fighting.

The same sort of thing happened with the Tekken series. You have great arcade beat 'em ups - ported to the most popular console, and it gets hyped to the max.

Back then... the hardcore gamers, still had a voice and influence in the market. Sadly... that would gradually come to pass.


Publishers demand much more these days. They want to sell 5million. That is what they demand from a strongly marketed title.

I think the industry is far more greedy. That is another reason why we don't get many arcade style games, and original, creative titles. Because publishers want to put all their energy into high budget generic titles, that are heavily marketed.

There is no doubt that publishers usher consumers towards certain big budget titles. With in-ya-face marketing - that is everywhere, publishers focus on a small amount of games.

I think casual/mainstream gamers - see all this advertising, and it does influence them. They buy what is shoved in their faces - and the powerful marketing campaigns, do work.

If the rise of casual gaming hadn't transpired, we'd have a games industry still focused on the hardcore/serious gamers - and selling 1million copies of a game would be seen as a major success.

It's sad that publishers pander to the unadventurous casual market - but who can blame them? ... The industry is primarily about money. It's big business - and a greedy one at that.