I was reading an article about how the vertical/horizontal side scroller genre died because of advancement in graphics or something like that. Well, it's certainly not very hard to confirm the side scrolling shooter genre isn't doing very good, since I can't find any of them in the shelves of a typical game store. It is also easy to say well since everything is always looking prettier and shooter games usually aren't very pretty, then that must be why the genre died out. But I think it's just an excuse for people who forgot how to make good shooters, and with the amount of games out there today, people no longer have to put up with a lousy game because there are far too many alternatives. If your game is like Gradius V where you got to die pointlessly for 15 hours before an average person can beat it via unlimited continues, the average player probably isn't going to buy Gradius VI when it comes out only to get burned again.
Another genre I'm interested in, turn-based strategy game, certainly fits the fading away theme well. It'd be easy to blame the death of turn-based game to RTS. Yet KOEI still releases ROTK games, and they're about as hardcore turn-based as it gets. Presumably they also have a good idea of how much it will sell, so it's not going to cost them more money to make one compared to its expected profit. The latest ROTK game, ROTK 11, is a very well polished game, to the point that it is practically unwinnable between two players of equal ability because there are no easy exploits (or rather anything you can do they can do it back to you). Compared to the early ROTK games, ROTK11 certainly has come a long way, and I don't know if KOEI got rewarded financially for ROTK11, but the diehard turn-based fans certainly appreciate the effort. They recently have another ROTK11 spinoff on one of the handheld system, so certainly we can see KOEI was not punished for making a good game.
Now compare this to say, Panzer General 3: Scorched Earth. I think if you're to put the original Panzer General vs PG3 and put them side by side, you honestly cannot say PG3 is better, and that's not just nostaglia speaking. Of course PG3 looks better, but gameplay imbalances render the strategy portion of the game meaningless when bombardment -> tactician -> enveloping virtually guaranteeds the ability to take any hex regardless of how well fortified it is. I think people still do play by email games for Panzer General, even though that'd take a ridiculously amount of time, while the same cannot be said for PG3. Why would you want to play someone if you know their 3 moves will guaranteed to take your objective no matter how well defended it is?
Sometimes I almost think certain genres succeeded due to pure accident. A game like Master of Magic or X-COM seem to only occur by a pure accident stroke of genius, because I sure don't see such brilliance duplicated in sequels or copied. I don't think people were more creative back in the 'good old days', but back then you didn't need as much money to do stuff, so you've more room to create something cool on accident.
What other games do you think are like this? Games that seem to be totally awesome and yet never duplicated and just fade away in history?
Another genre I'm interested in, turn-based strategy game, certainly fits the fading away theme well. It'd be easy to blame the death of turn-based game to RTS. Yet KOEI still releases ROTK games, and they're about as hardcore turn-based as it gets. Presumably they also have a good idea of how much it will sell, so it's not going to cost them more money to make one compared to its expected profit. The latest ROTK game, ROTK 11, is a very well polished game, to the point that it is practically unwinnable between two players of equal ability because there are no easy exploits (or rather anything you can do they can do it back to you). Compared to the early ROTK games, ROTK11 certainly has come a long way, and I don't know if KOEI got rewarded financially for ROTK11, but the diehard turn-based fans certainly appreciate the effort. They recently have another ROTK11 spinoff on one of the handheld system, so certainly we can see KOEI was not punished for making a good game.
Now compare this to say, Panzer General 3: Scorched Earth. I think if you're to put the original Panzer General vs PG3 and put them side by side, you honestly cannot say PG3 is better, and that's not just nostaglia speaking. Of course PG3 looks better, but gameplay imbalances render the strategy portion of the game meaningless when bombardment -> tactician -> enveloping virtually guaranteeds the ability to take any hex regardless of how well fortified it is. I think people still do play by email games for Panzer General, even though that'd take a ridiculously amount of time, while the same cannot be said for PG3. Why would you want to play someone if you know their 3 moves will guaranteed to take your objective no matter how well defended it is?
Sometimes I almost think certain genres succeeded due to pure accident. A game like Master of Magic or X-COM seem to only occur by a pure accident stroke of genius, because I sure don't see such brilliance duplicated in sequels or copied. I don't think people were more creative back in the 'good old days', but back then you didn't need as much money to do stuff, so you've more room to create something cool on accident.
What other games do you think are like this? Games that seem to be totally awesome and yet never duplicated and just fade away in history?
