What are some of the biggest disappointments to come from your favorite game companies?

Deep down many of us are fanboys of certain developers and such ;)
But even though these companies are our personal favorites we can still recognize and acknowledge their not too stellar efforts.


Since SEGA is by far my all-time favorite developer here are some of my disappointments:

Shin Shinobi Den (aka Shinobi Legions / Shinobi X)
Released on the Sega Saturn, the gameplay lacked the spirit of games like the original Shinobi, The Revenge of Shinobi and Shinobi 3. The music was also easily forgettable, although I hear that the lucky Europeans received different music from Richard Jacques.

Shinobi (PS2)
Personally I didn' t care to see Shinobi go 3D, but even with that I still expected more from Sega. It just didn' t feel as if alot of love went into this project. At least I enjoyed Kunoichi(Nightshade) more.

Hang-On GP 1995
This had to be one of the BIGGEST disappointments I came across. I was and still am a huge fan of Super Hang-On and consider it THE greatest motorcycle racing game on the planet. So when Hang-On GP' 95 was being released on the Saturn I was stoked. More Hang-On goodness I figured. Yeah Right! The game had the worst controls I had ever experienced in a game at the time. They were soo damm sensitive, you tap the left or right side of the d-pad and the bike tilted all the way in either direction, sending you into a wall. " WHY OH WHY Has Thou forsaken me?" is what I shouted on numerous occasions!

Planet Harriers
The other Huge disappointment. Since I consider the original Space Harrier to be one of the top 5 greatest games of all time, Planet Harriers had alot to live up to and failed MISERABLY in every department. The game was way too slow paced, the new characters were stupid, the boss battles were uninteresting, the level designs weren' t as cool as those in the original and the overall game just lacked the magic and the feel of the classic game.

Sega Ages: Golden Axe
This remake flat out sucked! Outside of good orchestral music, I can' t think of a single nice thing to say about the game.

Sega Ages: Space Harrier
Nowhere near as bad as Golden Axe but still could have been better. The game moved as too slow a pace compared to the original and they added these stupid tunnel levels that actually detracted from the game instead of adding to it.

Sega Ages: Hokuto No Ken
The origina Black Belt ROCKED! This game did not!

Zombie Revenge
I played this game a few times in the arcade before it was released on the Dreamcast. I really have no idea why I bought the Dreamcast version since I disliked the arcade version so much. I found it highly uninteresting.
Alot of people seem to prefer this game over Dynamite Cop, I totally disagree. I LOVED Dynamite Cop, I hated this game.

Sky Target
This game was NO After Burner 2, a game I totally loved! Sky Target was slow and boring, kinda like the original After Burner.





KONAMI
CY Girls
This game was delayed for so long and when it finally came out it was pure krap! I have no idea why the developers though gamers would want to get inundated by puzzles at EVERY turn.

Gradius Galaxies
Being a huge fan of the Gradius series I was pretty disappointed with the GBA edition. It was SOOO easy and just lacked the magic of its arcade and console predecessors. The problem mainly lied with the fact that the game was farmed out to Mobile 21 instead of being developed by Konami in-house.

Sega is the first of my two disappointments...

Sonic Heroes was touted as this awesome team-based game that the gamer could play and enjoy. I played it, but I sure felt that the game did most of the actually playing...more than half of the time was spent zooming here or there, but not necessarily because that' s what I wanted to do, but more about the pre-determined direction that the bumpers or boosters or whatever sent me in.

Panzer Dragoon Orta is a beautiful game...no argument there. But the game itself hasn' t changed much from the original, except for the extra content. The inclusion of the original Panzer game was a great idea, but you can not save your progress once you start...I don' t have time to complete the game in one sitting, so this is useless. Not to mention that the original allowed a player to save their progress. So, what' s up with this?

My third disappointment has to do with Sega not releasing certain popular franchise titles on the XBOX. These include, but are not limited to any of the Sega Ages titles from the Saturn, but especially Sega Ages - Dragon Force.


Electronic Arts is my second disappointment...

My disappointment with EA is that they just do not try hard enough to make the best sports games anymore. I used to buy and play every year' s version of football, basketball, hockey, and baseball.

Now, I only by Tiger Woods golf...' cause none of the other franchise are worth a dime!

As for EA' s other game types...they seem to put more effort into these types of games than the yearly sports games. What a shame!!!

Videogaming is the contemporary interactive pasttime.

Square

Ergheiz

So...with the FFs, Chrono Cross, Vagrant Story, Einhander, Parasite Eve 1 and 2, Threads of Fate, Legend of Mana, and Front Mission 3 making the PSOne by far your best platform ever, what exactly was the motivation behind this? So we could have our favorite Square characters battle it out in a mediocre fighting game? Do you really think that the fans cared for that? Fans of RPG' s? Right, we didn' t.

Driving Emotion Type-S

Okay, we get it. You started with racers before Final Fantasy saved your ass back in the early 90' s. But maybe you forgot WHY you were going in the tank before you found your true calling...? Yeah, it' s because racing games is so not your forte. Did we HAVE to relive this in the new generation?

Konami

Castlevania 64

You want to know what' s good? Symphony of the Night. Goddamn classic; maybe the best 2D action/adventure in history. This? Oh...my...God. Die. Just...DIE. And Lament of Innocence for the PS2, while a MUCH better 3D installment, still doesn' t allow you to wash your hands of this previous tragedy. LoI wasn' t THAT good. CV = 2D. Remember that, Konami.

Capcom

Resident Evil: Survivor

RE, RE 2, RE 3, RE: CV...fine. All good. But you dropped the ball with this lame-o idea, Capcom. A clunky action game in first-person view (I refuse to call this piece of trash an FPS), with NO save points, like anywhere, and just about the most boring atmosphere ever found in a RE title. Congratulations.

I' m sure there are plenty more, but these are off the top of my head.

Kikizo Staff Writer

Capcom - Also released that Resident Evil Dead Aim. Like any other Resident Evil game I was so excited and could not wait to get my hands on it. I bought it and I already had the GunCon2 with it and I played it but something about it turned meoff.... I could not bare playing it.... no matter what. I just let me friend play it and he beat it. I was very disapointed in the game. I don' t know why.. I love Resident Evil... oh well I just got a refund and got a GameBoy Player.

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lots of people did not like destruction derby, but i did.

then along came the sequel destruction derby 2, and boy did they ever blew it ! terrible controlls, pop up unbearable, and exept for a better damage model, the races where never as fun as they where on its previous outing.

also daytona usa on the sega saturn made my head explode for the wrong reasons. again terrible popup, the FPS went all over the place, from bearable to almost standstill. also the controlls where oh so sensitive, but after practicing, that whas still the best part of the game. all in all, sega had better not released this first version, becouse the CCE edition made my chin fell on the floor. i could not beleave that it' s running on the same system.

someone else allready mentioned super hangon 95, but this game is SO terrible, that i name it here again. i kid ye not. this game has everything a racing game should NOT have. the graphics where so blocky that i thought i whas racing in lego land, the controlls so twitchy and over sensetive that it would be a miracle if you still sat on your bike after the first corner. the horror and nightmares are still creaping up on me after i think of this game. better forget this one soon

this may sound weird, but the nintendo 64 also whas one of my biggest dissapointments. despite some rather good games (mario 64, pilotwings 64, wave race 64, goldeneye 64 and so on) the system itself, and the prommises nintendo made when they first anounced it, it still gives me a sour taste in my mouth. they prommised silocon graphic state of the art graphics. but exept for a higher resolution, and a blurr effect to hide the blocky textures only made the games feel hazy. like you where playing with your glasses on, while they where fogged up. but like i said, the system had still a few good games, and that made my dissapointment a little more bearable.

Sonic Adventure 2
I LOVED the original Sonic Adventure. The game was definitely a defining moment for me as it helped me embrace and appreciate 3D gaming alot more. The original Sonic Adventure contained a nice variety of awesome music tracks and very solid gameplay despite the camera problems... When Sonic Adventure 2 came around I was stoked! Bought the game on day one but was quite disappointed with the end result... One of the things that rocked about the original Sonic Adventure was that you could pick one of multiple characters to play as and complete their individual quests. If you wanted to complete the game with just certain characters you could do that, and if you wanted to go for full completion, you' d complete each characters' mission and unlock Super Sonic.... Sonic Adventure 2 didn' t let you select individual characters, it forced you to play as them all if you wanted to get anywhere at all in the game. GOD I hated the Knuckles and Rogues scavenger hunting levels.

The original Panzer Dragoon did NOT allow you to save anything of any kind. It wasn' t until Panzer Dragoon Zwei was released that saving was introduced to the series. Also Daytona USA on the Saturn ran at a constant 20fps for me. Never increased or decreased from that amount. Perhaps you had the inferior Japanese version?

Castlevania: Lament of Innocence
Castlevania is one of my favorite series. But they just had to try and take the game into the 3D world again. It failed the first two times. It failed again this time. But this time it had better designers and the musician who did Rocket Knight Adventures, Castlevania Bloodlines, Castlevania Symphony of the Night/Nocturne in the Moonlight, and Castlevania Aria of Sorrow. Boy she sure tripped up on this soundtrack. There are 3 or 4 good tunes, but it doesn' t even begin to approach the magical sounds of Symphony of the Night' s music (but at least she' s kinda hot). Not only that, the gameplay sucked general amounts of ass and was really not any fun at all. I can' t tell you how frustrating crossing chasms by whipping on to subsequent horizontal poles became due to poor depth perception offered by the game and sloppy controls. Unfortunatley Konami no longer seems to make good games (Treasure made Gradius V). Silent Hill is the closest thing you will come to an exception.

There are many others that I can' t think of right now.

can you say terminator? any of those games made me barf. that game series had the most potential from movie to game. beyond terminator 2 movie (including terminator 3 movie) the series kinda made me sad.

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The original Panzer Dragoon did NOT allow you to save anything of any kind. It wasn' t until Panzer Dragoon Zwei was released that saving was introduced to the series.

My apologies, Joe. I must have gotten the two mixed up...it HAS been a very long time, since I played the original Panzer Dragoon...my memory isn' t what is used to be...he**, it' s not what is was yesterday!

I still believe that they could have added it in this version, though.

Thanks for setting me straight, Joe.

Videogaming is the contemporary interactive pasttime.