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Forums - Gaming Discussion - Mediocre to bad series that became good to great in following console generations?

GTA, once it went 3D it became something everyone would play.

Street fighter 2 was better than street fighter 1. I’m assuming the first one sucked as I’ve been a fan of 2 for 30 years and never seen the arcade of 1.



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curl-6 said:
Mario Sunshine to Mario Galaxy; from a game was practically the definition of "meh" to one of the greatest video games ever created.

To each their own. I stand in the minority in this one, I actually had exponentially more fun in Sunshine because I value open world sandboxes the highest. 



The first Metal Gear on the NES was a decent to good game, but they got much better as the went.  Still haven't played a "Trails" game, but the Legend of Heroes series is decades old and the early games weren't that great.  Wonder Boy actually started off as Adventure Island, but I like Wonder Boy in Monster World better.  And while I know plenty of people who loved Tetris back on the NES, I couldn't get into it until it became Puyo Puyo Tetris.  Now it's my favorite multiplayer game on the Switch.



snyps said:
GTA, once it went 3D it became something everyone would play.

Street fighter 2 was better than street fighter 1. I’m assuming the first one sucked as I’ve been a fan of 2 for 30 years and never seen the arcade of 1.

Never played the arcade version, but a port is included in Anniversary collection. The game is basically unplayable. The way moves buffer makes it really impossible to react to anything. 

snyps said:
curl-6 said:
Mario Sunshine to Mario Galaxy; from a game was practically the definition of "meh" to one of the greatest video games ever created.

To each their own. I stand in the minority in this one, I actually had exponentially more fun in Sunshine because I value open world sandboxes the highest. 

Having just finished getting all of the sprites in Sunshine... the game has a lot of flaws and bad design choices. There's a few places where the game is kind of broken, and blue coins are a terrible chore. There are about half as many levels with twice as much stuff crammed into them, so it lacks variety and feels padded. Also the final level/boss are the worst in any Mario game. The difficulty of some shines, combined with the fact that you can't skip many shines that give you a hard time like you could in Mario 64 also throw the difficulty curve out of whack. Overall, it's not that much harder than 64, but weaker players could simply avoid the harder levels if they weren't up for it, whereas in Sunshine if you can't beat those floating platformer sections, you're not beating the game.

That's not to say it's bad as it has some nice things going for it. The core gameplay is fun, FLUDD is fun, and the way the levels progress as you get shines is uniquely satisfying. Has better boss battles, and rewards exploration. But, the lack of variety and poor design choices hold it back.

I get liking sandbox more than linear designs, but it's a good sandbox game vs an amazing linear platformer.



Resident Evil. Yeah I'll say it; it was pretty rubbish on PS1, the fixed camera angles and clunky controls made the 5th gen entries a chore to play.

In the 6th gen however it blossomed, culminating in RE4, the best video game of all time.



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Street Fighter. The first game came out in 1987. Ported to the PC Engine in 1988. This game is terrible. Awful. Capcom knew it. 1991 Street Fighter II. Genesis and SNES were out. What else is there to say? Well maybe this. Both supported online play with X-Band on SNES and Genesis.



Bite my shiny metal cockpit!

The most dramatic example has got to be Grand Theft Auto's transition between GTA2 on PS1 to GTA3 on PS2, both in terms of the game design and the growth in fanbase. Same thing could be said about the leap from Red Dead Revolver, a salvaged project based on an over 20 year old somewhat obscure Capcom arcade game that launched on PS2 and Xbox with mediocre ratings and sales, to Red Dead Redemption, which was an international blockbuster with near universal acclaim on PS3 and 360.

Dragon Quest went from VII, which looked incredibly primitive for the time it was released in and one of the more contested entries in the series though I wouldn't consider it bad, to VIII, which was one of the most amazing games of the sixth gen.

Even though they're not strictly speaking the same series, I'm also going to say that we went from Xenogears, which was a flawed but awesome PS1 RPG that was unfortunately rushed at the end because they knew they weren't going to be able to finish, then a big step down to the Xenosaga trilogy, which took all the wrong cues from Xenogears and ended up as a mediocre RPG series with minimal interaction that again ended up having its ending rushed in the third installment, and then a huge leap up to Xenoblade Chronicles, which was one of the most amazing RPGs ever made, my favorite Wii game and one of my top three 7th generation games, done even better on the Switch.

Last edited by SanAndreasX - on 28 September 2020

The_Liquid_Laser said:

The first Metal Gear on the NES was a decent to good game, but they got much better as the went.  Still haven't played a "Trails" game, but the Legend of Heroes series is decades old and the early games weren't that great.  Wonder Boy actually started off as Adventure Island, but I like Wonder Boy in Monster World better.  And while I know plenty of people who loved Tetris back on the NES, I couldn't get into it until it became Puyo Puyo Tetris.  Now it's my favorite multiplayer game on the Switch.

The first Legend of Heroes game was the sixth Dragon Slayer series game. Earlier Dragon Slayer games included Xanadu (which itself had three spinoffs that released in the US, Faxanadu on NES, Xanadu Next on mobiles and PC, and Tokyo Xanadu on Vita), Legacy of the Wizard (Dragon Slayer IV) on NES, and Sorcerian (Dragon Slayer V) on PC. Dragon Slayer: The Legend of Heroes was localized in English on the TG-16 CD but didn't really make a splash there.

Faxanadu and Legacy of the Wizard actually weren't bad games back in the day. For NES games they had a lot going for them. You can actually get Legacy of the Wizard as part of one of the recent Namco collections on Switch. Can't really say about Sorcerian since I never played that one. 



SanAndreasX said:
The_Liquid_Laser said:

The first Metal Gear on the NES was a decent to good game, but they got much better as the went.  Still haven't played a "Trails" game, but the Legend of Heroes series is decades old and the early games weren't that great.  Wonder Boy actually started off as Adventure Island, but I like Wonder Boy in Monster World better.  And while I know plenty of people who loved Tetris back on the NES, I couldn't get into it until it became Puyo Puyo Tetris.  Now it's my favorite multiplayer game on the Switch.

The first Legend of Heroes game was the sixth Dragon Slayer series game. Earlier Dragon Slayer games included Xanadu (which itself had three spinoffs that released in the US, Faxanadu on NES, Xanadu Next on mobiles and PC, and Tokyo Xanadu on Vita), Legacy of the Wizard (Dragon Slayer IV) on NES, and Sorcerian (Dragon Slayer V) on PC. Dragon Slayer: The Legend of Heroes was localized in English on the TG-16 CD but didn't really make a splash there.

Faxanadu and Legacy of the Wizard actually weren't bad games back in the day. For NES games they had a lot going for them. You can actually get Legacy of the Wizard as part of one of the recent Namco collections on Switch. Can't really say about Sorcerian since I never played that one. 

I remember playing Legacy of the Wizard back in the day, and I didn't really care for it.  Faxanadu...I remember playing, but I don't remember if I liked it or not.  It probably wasn't either terribly good or bad, because I would have remembered it more otherwise.  Neither of these games are anything special.  That much I know.



Some other oldies. The Turtles. The first one on the NES was really rubbish and almost unplayable. The Turtles 2 was really fun and the next adaption on the SNES is supposed to be even better.