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Forums - Gaming Discussion - What was the Greatest Launch Title of all Time?

 

What was the greatest launch title of all time?

Combat 0 0%
 
Super Mario Bros. 20 12.20%
 
Super Mario World 19 11.59%
 
Virtua Fighter (Saturn) 2 1.22%
 
Twisted Metal 2 1.22%
 
Super Mario 64 32 19.51%
 
Halo Combat Evolved 16 9.76%
 
Twilight Princess 3 1.83%
 
Breath of the Wild 64 39.02%
 
Other 6 3.66%
 
Total:164
Bofferbrauer2 said:
Wyrdness said:

What you've posted here doesn't debunk what I've said in fact it further highlights it as look at the numbers for a start outside of the C64 the home computers were outperformed by the new consoles in Europe and this was a time when they were meant to be on top in fact your WW numbers show that the console numbers in Europe were significantly higher than the HC's WW numbers if we go by WW numbers than it further shows what I've said. This is why Atari tried to realign with consoles because their time had come to an end and it took until the late 90s for PCs to reinstate that side of the market but they were still being dominated by consoles as gaming goes it's only later on in 00s when the market found itself as a mainstay again.

I showed WW numbers because I couldn't find European-only numbers in most cases. The Amiga stands at 4.2M in Europe only, the Amstrad is almost all European numbers, same for the Atari ST. That's already 9M just for those 3 platforms in Europe. While that's less than 14M, they are just a part from the European market. A small part, I might add.

Atari tried to realign to consoles because the Atari ST flopped compared to the main competitor, the Amiga - just look at the sales numbers I provided. Plus, it was very frontloaded (half of it's sales were done by 1988 while the Amiga peaked in 1991). It just couldn't keep up with the competition in the computer field. What's more, the ST was bleeding money. They tried to address this with the Falcon, but when it failed, they axed the entire Computer line in favor of the Jaguar, hoping it would have worldwide appeal, not just in Europe.

Also, if the Consoles would have killed the computers, then why did Atari kill it's 7800 successor, the Atari Panther, planned to release in 1991, early in development, resulting them to leave the console market for 2 years after they pulled the 7800 in 1992?

Your conclusion is just biased and slanted. I could prove just as well that consoles were a flop by comparing Amiga sales in Europe to PC their Engine sales and declare that consoles couldn't catch on in Europe. Out of those 158M

Finally, PC sales exploded in the early 90's. Out of those 158M, over 60 were just from 1993-1994, at a time when most companies already had computers. Why? Well, because some little game called Doom, that's why. Id Software at the time made $100,000 daily just from the sales of the $9 shareware episode unlocks. In other words, they sold over 10k games on a daily basis. The game was played by 10M people within 2 years of it's launch. Other games also put the PC into the frontlight, like the Monkey Island Series, Civilization II

Now tell me, how can a game sell 10M copies if the platform is dead?

You forgot 5mil that ZX Spectrum sold. And that's pretty much all Europe. ;)

But ultimatelly, I would say as well that consoles did kill computers - at least for brief period of time and "gaming" computers of 80s specifically. While early 80s models (C64, ZX and 464 in particular) sold fairly well, what came after those models, although more than good enough to compete with consoles, due to price and rising popularity of consoles eventually couldn't get anywhere near numbers of their predecessors. Actually Amiga was only 16-bit computer that had any decent success vs SNES/SMD...but at much higher cost than say C64 vs NES/SMS.

On the other hand you're right as well. PC started to explode around '85, not as gaming machines though, but they were on constant momentum, rising in sales YoY quite a bit. I loved my Amiga 500, but when 1200 eventually launched in 92, it was too little, too late compared to PCs which were already at their i486 and VGA standard - I remember this vividly, I was kinda curious about A1200, but that year first seeing Wolfenstein 3D and then Commanche Maximum Overkill on my friend's PC showed me everything I needed to know about where the future of computer gaming is.



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HoloDust said:
Bofferbrauer2 said:

I showed WW numbers because I couldn't find European-only numbers in most cases. The Amiga stands at 4.2M in Europe only, the Amstrad is almost all European numbers, same for the Atari ST. That's already 9M just for those 3 platforms in Europe. While that's less than 14M, they are just a part from the European market. A small part, I might add.

Atari tried to realign to consoles because the Atari ST flopped compared to the main competitor, the Amiga - just look at the sales numbers I provided. Plus, it was very frontloaded (half of it's sales were done by 1988 while the Amiga peaked in 1991). It just couldn't keep up with the competition in the computer field. What's more, the ST was bleeding money. They tried to address this with the Falcon, but when it failed, they axed the entire Computer line in favor of the Jaguar, hoping it would have worldwide appeal, not just in Europe.

Also, if the Consoles would have killed the computers, then why did Atari kill it's 7800 successor, the Atari Panther, planned to release in 1991, early in development, resulting them to leave the console market for 2 years after they pulled the 7800 in 1992?

Your conclusion is just biased and slanted. I could prove just as well that consoles were a flop by comparing Amiga sales in Europe to PC their Engine sales and declare that consoles couldn't catch on in Europe. Out of those 158M

Finally, PC sales exploded in the early 90's. Out of those 158M, over 60 were just from 1993-1994, at a time when most companies already had computers. Why? Well, because some little game called Doom, that's why. Id Software at the time made $100,000 daily just from the sales of the $9 shareware episode unlocks. In other words, they sold over 10k games on a daily basis. The game was played by 10M people within 2 years of it's launch. Other games also put the PC into the frontlight, like the Monkey Island Series, Civilization II

Now tell me, how can a game sell 10M copies if the platform is dead?

You forgot 5mil that ZX Spectrum sold. And that's pretty much all Europe. ;)

But ultimatelly, I would say as well that consoles did kill computers - at least for brief period of time and "gaming" computers of 80s specifically. While early 80s models (C64, ZX and 464 in particular) sold fairly well, what came after those models, although more than good enough to compete with consoles, due to price and rising popularity of consoles eventually couldn't get anywhere near numbers of their predecessors. Actually Amiga was only 16-bit computer that had any decent success vs SNES/SMD...but at much higher cost than say C64 vs NES/SMS.

On the other hand you're right as well. PC started to explode around '85, not as gaming machines though, but they were on constant momentum, rising in sales YoY quite a bit. I loved my Amiga 500, but when 1200 eventually launched in 92, it was too little, too late compared to PCs which were already at their i486 and VGA standard - I remember this vividly, I was kinda curious about A1200, but that year first seeing Wolfenstein 3D and then Commanche Maximum Overkill on my friend's PC showed me everything I needed to know about where the future of computer gaming is.

I thought most ZX sold before 1985, so I didn't include it.

I kinda agree with you on Amiga and Atari ST, as they were in a tough spot. They were cheaper than PC, though not as versatile, and if you equipped them properly for work an actual PC was mostly cheaper. On the other hand, consoles were still cheaper than them, though the games were more expensive. And like I said, the PC got constantly improved, and neither the Amiga or the Atari ST/TT/Falcon could nearly keep up with it, which is also partly due to the Motorola X68000 processors simply reaching their limits, but mostly because Commodore and Atari forgot to upgrade the graphical qualities accordingly. AGA was clearly a lot better than OCS, but in the meanwhile most PCs shipped with VGA graphics cards and SVGA was about to launch, thus having only HAM over PC and the rest was worse than SVGA or what consoles could deliver by then in every way.

So yeah, those got squashed left and right by both PC and consoles. But that didn't kill computer gaming in itself in the slightest.



It's quite clearly between Super Mario 64 and The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild.

I'd give a big edge to Breath of the Wild.



                            

curl-6 said:
Azuren said:

What did it do that was new? 

I've already answered that; an organic and unified system of physics and chemistry allowing for exponential gameplay possibilities.

Ok, pretty sure every survival crafting game on the market had not only already done that, but to a much more detailed degree.



Watch me stream games and hunt trophies on my Twitch channel!

Check out my Twitch Channel!:

www.twitch.tv/AzurenGames

Halo CE. It was the OG Xbox's killer app and its impact can be felt to this day in almost all shooters everywhere...



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d21lewis said:

Mr_No said:
Super Mario World no question. Probably the Nintendo game I love the most and the one I had most fondest memories of still to this day.

I still have warm memories of being a kid watching Family Matters on a Friday night and seeing this commercial: https://youtu.be/EQ3clCcwHFc

At that  moment all was right with the world. 

HylianSwordsman said:

For me, it was this commercial: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8l5KN7x6rS0

I was obsessed with dinosaurs at that age, and the phrase "you've never needed help from a dinosaur before" really stuck with me. It instantly solidified Mario as "cool" in my tiny kid mind. I immediately knew I needed that game. Cut me some slack, I was like, five. I had most certainly not conquered every Mario game at that point, pretty much had only played a few levels of 1 and 3, but Mario had a dinosaur now and I needed it.

See, I haven't seen a commercial prior to playing it. I didn't even had a SNES when I was 4-5 years old. I just went to my mom's cousin house occasionally and she had a SNES with Super Mario All-Stars and SMW, and without any introduction I just sat there and played them until I was stuck at a level. It was the most fun I've had with a Mario game back then and now. I still remember the thrill I got when unlocking a switch palace. It was when I got a SNES by 97 when I could go in depth on the game and actually complete it.



Bofferbrauer2 said:

I showed WW numbers because I couldn't find European-only numbers in most cases. The Amiga stands at 4.2M in Europe only, the Amstrad is almost all European numbers, same for the Atari ST. That's already 9M just for those 3 platforms in Europe. While that's less than 14M, they are just a part from the European market. A small part, I might add.

Atari tried to realign to consoles because the Atari ST flopped compared to the main competitor, the Amiga - just look at the sales numbers I provided. Plus, it was very frontloaded (half of it's sales were done by 1988 while the Amiga peaked in 1991). It just couldn't keep up with the competition in the computer field. What's more, the ST was bleeding money. They tried to address this with the Falcon, but when it failed, they axed the entire Computer line in favor of the Jaguar, hoping it would have worldwide appeal, not just in Europe.

Also, if the Consoles would have killed the computers, then why did Atari kill it's 7800 successor, the Atari Panther, planned to release in 1991, early in development, resulting them to leave the console market for 2 years after they pulled the 7800 in 1992?

Your conclusion is just biased and slanted. I could prove just as well that consoles were a flop by comparing Amiga sales in Europe to PC their Engine sales and declare that consoles couldn't catch on in Europe. Out of those 158M

Finally, PC sales exploded in the early 90's. Out of those 158M, over 60 were just from 1993-1994, at a time when most companies already had computers. Why? Well, because some little game called Doom, that's why. Id Software at the time made $100,000 daily just from the sales of the $9 shareware episode unlocks. In other words, they sold over 10k games on a daily basis. The game was played by 10M people within 2 years of it's launch. Other games also put the PC into the frontlight, like the Monkey Island Series, Civilization II

Now tell me, how can a game sell 10M copies if the platform is dead?

Again this is highlighting my point as NES and SMS came from what was a dead market to outperform and chip away at the HC market which caused their downfall as the SNES and MD took over. Atari flopped because the gaming market shifted from HC to consoles hence why the main competitor the Amiga still couldn't stand against the new consoles competitively that side of the market had ran its course this is why companies like EA who wrote the consoles off were forced to end up developing for them as the business had to shift with the market.

93-94 is when the PS1 and Saturn were arriving with in two years that's 96 pushing into the late 90s era that I mentioned so again this doesn't disprove my point especially as Doom was also ported to consoles like the SNES, PS1, Saturn, Sega 32X etc... which are included in that 10m figure in the years prior to this the HC market had withered away and PCs ended up inheriting it. But lets give your 10m figure the benefit of the doubt and say those are all PC users WiiU was a dead platform and one of the worst modern console performers yet MK8 still sold 8.4m more than many games on other platforms so that point doesn't really reflect the state of the gaming market, PCs sold because their level of utility at that point had risen due to better functions as a gaming platform it was a roller coaster affair for PCs because this was the era of compatibility issues and inconveniences which were the down sides to some of the great games that emerged in the mid to late 90s period and it was like that for another decade until Steam arrived and remedied the problem.



Wyrdness said:
Bofferbrauer2 said:

I showed WW numbers because I couldn't find European-only numbers in most cases. The Amiga stands at 4.2M in Europe only, the Amstrad is almost all European numbers, same for the Atari ST. That's already 9M just for those 3 platforms in Europe. While that's less than 14M, they are just a part from the European market. A small part, I might add.

Atari tried to realign to consoles because the Atari ST flopped compared to the main competitor, the Amiga - just look at the sales numbers I provided. Plus, it was very frontloaded (half of it's sales were done by 1988 while the Amiga peaked in 1991). It just couldn't keep up with the competition in the computer field. What's more, the ST was bleeding money. They tried to address this with the Falcon, but when it failed, they axed the entire Computer line in favor of the Jaguar, hoping it would have worldwide appeal, not just in Europe.

Also, if the Consoles would have killed the computers, then why did Atari kill it's 7800 successor, the Atari Panther, planned to release in 1991, early in development, resulting them to leave the console market for 2 years after they pulled the 7800 in 1992?

Your conclusion is just biased and slanted. I could prove just as well that consoles were a flop by comparing Amiga sales in Europe to PC their Engine sales and declare that consoles couldn't catch on in Europe. Out of those 158M

Finally, PC sales exploded in the early 90's. Out of those 158M, over 60 were just from 1993-1994, at a time when most companies already had computers. Why? Well, because some little game called Doom, that's why. Id Software at the time made $100,000 daily just from the sales of the $9 shareware episode unlocks. In other words, they sold over 10k games on a daily basis. The game was played by 10M people within 2 years of it's launch. Other games also put the PC into the frontlight, like the Monkey Island Series, Civilization II

Now tell me, how can a game sell 10M copies if the platform is dead?

Again this is highlighting my point as NES and SMS came from what was a dead market to outperform and chip away at the HC market which caused their downfall as the SNES and MD took over. Atari flopped because the gaming market shifted from HC to consoles hence why the main competitor the Amiga still couldn't stand against the new consoles competitively that side of the market had ran its course this is why companies like EA who wrote the consoles off were forced to end up developing for them as the business had to shift with the market.

93-94 is when the PS1 and Saturn were arriving with in two years that's 96 pushing into the late 90s era that I mentioned so again this doesn't disprove my point especially as Doom was also ported to consoles like the SNES, PS1, Saturn, Sega 32X etc... which are included in that 10m figure in the years prior to this the HC market had withered away and PCs ended up inheriting it. But lets give your 10m figure the benefit of the doubt and say those are all PC users WiiU was a dead platform and one of the worst modern console performers yet MK8 still sold 8.4m more than many games on other platforms so that point doesn't really reflect the state of the gaming market, PCs sold because their level of utility at that point had risen due to better functions as a gaming platform it was a roller coaster affair for PCs because this was the era of compatibility issues and inconveniences which were the down sides to some of the great games that emerged in the mid to late 90s period and it was like that for another decade until Steam arrived and remedied the problem.

Doom was ported to those platforms, sure. I even have a SNES version of the game (pretty horrible port btw). But those sales combined don't even come close to 1M, while those 10M are PC alone. And even if they were included, that would make the PC sales "just" like 9.5M. What non-Mario, Zelda or Tetris game at the time did even come close to those sales?

Compatibility issues were getting rare by that time. Most were from earlier with the soundcards, but by 1989 AdLib and Soundblaster started to become the baseline for every soundcard to follow until this day. As for the 3D graphics that came afterwards, they generally had either both Glide and DirectX, OpenGL and DirectX, all 3 of them, and early on additionally software rendering (meaning rendering by the CPU). there were actually more compatibility problems starting 2006 than before that time, with DirectX10 annulling some of earlier version's features (especially Hardware T&L), the slow rise of 64bit OS (making any 16bit code unusable) and the killing of the integrated DOS (for DOS games, obviously). And guess what? Steam didn't solve any of those problems, or even have any influence on them. It wasn't even the first online Shop or Launcher (look up Stardock Central, for once. Or RealArcade).

You simply fail to acknowledge that everybody who had a computer at home used it to play games. Maybe not exclusively, but anybody who says he didn't play on that computer is a damn liar.

Also, just to come back to those 158M PCs in the 85-94 Timeframe: If consoles killed PC gaming, how come more than half of them are just from 92-94, and almost a quarter of those 158M is just 1994 alone. Even we acknowledge a growth in office use, that alone can't explain the explosion of PC sales in those years. In other words, the market was growing, not shrinking.

As an anecdote, I remember far more PC gamers from that period than console gamers. I remember 14 computer gamers (2 Amiga, 2 C64, 1Mac LC, 1 Amstrad, 8 PC, 9 if you count the fact that I had 2 different ones (a 286 and a 486 DX-40) in that period), yet only 6 consoles (1 NES, 2 Master System, 2 Super Nintendo, 1 Megadrive). Like I said, it's just an anecdote, but console gaming was simply not that popular.

I think you might be under the impression that what happened in the UK would be true for the continent, too. I know the UK has pretty much switched from their tape computers like the BBC Micro and ZX Spectrum straight to consoles in the late 80's, but that's simply not true for mainland Europe except maybe in France (who jumped at the NES and the Guillemot brothers (founders of Ubisoft) imported the PC Engine through a special company just for that).

In fact, this might be the reason why France and UK sell more consoles than Germany despite their smaller population and economy: They jumped at the consoles when they arrived. But the other countries in Europe for the most part did not follow that trend at that time and only really jumped in during PS1 or even PS2 times. Why do you think Europe is Sonyland, after all? Certainly not because of nostalgia for Nintendo...



Bofferbrauer2 said:

Doom was ported to those platforms, sure. I even have a SNES version of the game (pretty horrible port btw). But those sales combined don't even come close to 1M, while those 10M are PC alone. And even if they were included, that would make the PC sales "just" like 9.5M. What non-Mario, Zelda or Tetris game at the time did even come close to those sales?

Compatibility issues were getting rare by that time. Most were from earlier with the soundcards, but by 1989 AdLib and Soundblaster started to become the baseline for every soundcard to follow until this day. As for the 3D graphics that came afterwards, they generally had either both Glide and DirectX, OpenGL and DirectX, all 3 of them, and early on additionally software rendering (meaning rendering by the CPU). there were actually more compatibility problems starting 2006 than before that time, with DirectX10 annulling some of earlier version's features (especially Hardware T&L), the slow rise of 64bit OS (making any 16bit code unusable) and the killing of the integrated DOS (for DOS games, obviously). And guess what? Steam didn't solve any of those problems, or even have any influence on them. It wasn't even the first online Shop or Launcher (look up Stardock Central, for once. Or RealArcade).

You simply fail to acknowledge that everybody who had a computer at home used it to play games. Maybe not exclusively, but anybody who says he didn't play on that computer is a damn liar.

Also, just to come back to those 158M PCs in the 85-94 Timeframe: If consoles killed PC gaming, how come more than half of them are just from 92-94, and almost a quarter of those 158M is just 1994 alone. Even we acknowledge a growth in office use, that alone can't explain the explosion of PC sales in those years. In other words, the market was growing, not shrinking.

As an anecdote, I remember far more PC gamers from that period than console gamers. I remember 14 computer gamers (2 Amiga, 2 C64, 1Mac LC, 1 Amstrad, 8 PC, 9 if you count the fact that I had 2 different ones (a 286 and a 486 DX-40) in that period), yet only 6 consoles (1 NES, 2 Master System, 2 Super Nintendo, 1 Megadrive). Like I said, it's just an anecdote, but console gaming was simply not that popular.

I think you might be under the impression that what happened in the UK would be true for the continent, too. I know the UK has pretty much switched from their tape computers like the BBC Micro and ZX Spectrum straight to consoles in the late 80's, but that's simply not true for mainland Europe except maybe in France (who jumped at the NES and the Guillemot brothers (founders of Ubisoft) imported the PC Engine through a special company just for that).

In fact, this might be the reason why France and UK sell more consoles than Germany despite their smaller population and economy: They jumped at the consoles when they arrived. But the other countries in Europe for the most part did not follow that trend at that time and only really jumped in during PS1 or even PS2 times. Why do you think Europe is Sonyland, after all? Certainly not because of nostalgia for Nintendo...

Games like Pokemon, Donkey Kong Country, Street Fighter 2 and such release back then and hit those numbers if not more also the is a discrepency in your claim as 10m people playing the game doesn't mean sold as google searches show it sold 2-3m or so well below the 10m you think and further highlights my point the version you're citing was a shareware version that was free and acted as a sort of demo this would mean the main bulk of console games outsold Doom.

https://doom.fandom.com/wiki/Sales

Compatibility issues were far from rare at that point they were a common issue that put people off it as not as many people back then were as versed in PC usage it wasn't until Steam took off and GPU companies got their act together that these were removed for most part as the platform handled everything for people from patches to updates to not needing to keep CD keys and so on while GPU providers began being more up to date with drivers.

Sure people played on their PCs but playing solitaire or minesweeper and claiming that is equivalent to the gaming we're on about is like claiming snake on old Nokia phones competed with the portable market.

To claim that console gaming wasn't popular during 85-95 is just making a false statement because numbers say a different story you have your anecdote mine is is most of my class mates had a console and only one kid had an Amiga. I'll also call your mainland Europe claim into dispute as well because earlier we had a Link that showed UK sold around 2m or so consoles for both Sega and Nintendo so unless you're trying to say France bought the remaining 10m? I highly doubt that they didn't take off in mainland like you claim.

Europe is Sonyland because Sony was the first company to approach the region the same way as they did Japan and NA this meant better stock allocations and more consistent releases this is a null and void point tbh because Japan now is heavily into Nintendo despite preferring Sony a few Gens ago.



Azuren said:
curl-6 said:

I've already answered that; an organic and unified system of physics and chemistry allowing for exponential gameplay possibilities.

Ok, pretty sure every survival crafting game on the market had not only already done that, but to a much more detailed degree.

Gonna have to disagree there; said games employed such elements in a relatively artificial and compartmentalized way, as opposed to BOTW where everything fit together into an organically interconnected framework; where you could fire a bomb arrow during a fight and not only damage an enemy, but set the grass around them on fire thus igniting and degrading their wooden weapons, and causing an apple tree to topple and kill one baddie, and for the apples to roll into the grass fire (which spreads with the strength and direction of the wind) and become roasted apples, then to use the updraft generated as the fire spread to get airborne and rain more arrows down on the remaining foes.

Last edited by curl-6 - on 12 July 2019