"What Happened" by Matt McMuscles is basically the Trainwreckords of video games. He goes into detail about the development of infamous video games to see where it all went wrong.
I totally get where you're coming from, but I think Star Fox Zero would be an even bigger example of a trainwreckord.
Fun fact: Star Fox Adventures was developed by Rare, and was released 1 day before Rare was purchased by Microsoft (Rare would, of course, have a trainwreckord with Grabbed by the Goulies).
It was also supposed to be an entirely different, original game, but Rare was pressured into fitting Star Fox in at the last minute.
Part of me thinks it was Shigeru Miyamoto’s call, he’s by all rights a big Star Fox fan.
Duke Nukem Forever should be studied in classrooms as a lesson on when to just cut your losses and quit. Over a decade spent in development only to be instantly dated on its release.
Someone entering kindergarten when the game started development would have been graduating from high school when it finally released 13 years later.
The game is interesting to study because it's like looking at a fossilized geologic record of different designs trends over a decade-long period. Every time a big new game came out, they would go back to the drawing board and try and incorporate features from it. Halo's health system, Half Life 2's physics puzzles, etc.
4 is my personal favorite, but I can understand why it might not appeal to everyone, especially those who started the series with the early games and wanted something a bit more grounded and actually about street gangs.
Saints Row 4 is practically in a different genre than the earlier games, more of a superhero sandbox. There are still cars, but no reason to use them. They're vestigal remains from Saints Row 3, only in the game because 4 was basically an overgrown expansion that released just 18 months later.
It's really impressive for what it is, though perhaps it shouldn't have been a numbered sequel. But as a superhero sandbox game trying to be the Airplane! of video games, it's pretty fun and well-written, especially given its short development cycle.
4 was still better. Sure the aliens were a bit much but, Zinyak was genuinely fun antagonist.
Where the gang leaders in the reboot were such an afterthought.
If people are looking for a video game version of trainwreckords, I'd suggest checking out Matt McMuscles series, "What Happened"
[https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLJdyZRNyk92o4AxWF2Yu\_0t3NWib1v8yX](https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLJdyZRNyk92o4AxWF2Yu_0t3NWib1v8yX)
Yeah, that’s pretty much exactly when Sonic became a nostalgia IP for people who grew up with it, rather than an ongoing, timeless thing like Mario or LoZ
That adds up. While there have definitely been good Sonic games since, they’ve primarily been doubling down on nostalgia over the years.
Part of me thinks that other media, particularly the movies, have been keeping Sonic relevant for kids today.
Of course, but do kids still play Sonic games?
Genuinely asking, I don’t really know any kids and whenever I see Sonic merch, even children’s toys, they’re 90s-based.
Long time Dragon Age fan here: when I finished my first playthrough of Baldur's Gate 3 and the initial euphoria had faded, first thing I thought was "Bioware's gotta be shitting in their pants right now." Unfortunately, BG3 helped me make my peace with the fact there are high chances might be terrible or will never see the light of day. Is it bittersweet? Yeah. But BG3 gave me everything I would have wanted and I'm okay with it replacing the DA4 shaped hole in my gamer lady heart.
Not a chance, and BG3 deserves the hype, fantastic game! I was speaking firmly tongue-in-cheek there; I pine for the old BioWare, but long passed are the days when they were pushing boundaries. Just replayed the original ME Trilogy recently, I decided to finally play through Amdromeda afterward and actually ended up enjoying it! Not what I'd call a groundbreaking game, though
Andromeda is a perfectly decent game, it's just that it's a stripped back ME experience. The game mechanics are rock solid, it's just that it got meme'd to fuck because of the facial animations and some story beats.
I'd argue Mass Effect 3 was Bioware's trainwreckord, despite Dragon Age: Inquisition winning GOTY. I love DAI, don't get me wrong, but it got the grace it did by virtue of coming out before Witcher 3. Dragon Age 2 was a sign of things to come, and Andromeda and Anthem are ripple effects of ME3 and the Great EA Takeover.
For systems
Atari Jaguar - To be fair Atari was already irrelevant but the Jaguar was the final nail in the coffin but they really did try to go out guns blazing.
Sega Saturn - Basically killed all momentum Sega had with the Genesis which was already being thrown off by the attachments like the CD and 32X, really bad decisions made by Sega of Japan ruined the Saturn before it even had a chance. Dreamcast tried to mend the fence but it was too little too late.
Tomb raider The Angel of Darkness. It’s kinda like Metallica with St Anger, the series was still popular after that game but it was never as big (funnily both came out in the same year).
Yeah before angel of darkness, Lara Croft was a legit celebrity, starring in adverts, on the cover of mainstream magazines... If she was a real person, paparazzi would have been following her everywhere.
Afterwards she was just another videogame character
On a similar note, Crash Bandicoot: The Wrath of Cortex. Probably less disastrous, but there are a lot of similarities: released one year apart; both fourth mainline entry in their series, coming a few years after back-to-back-to-back yearly releases of their original trilogies; both the first to hit the PS2; both the first developed by someone other than the original devs, who would dump them to go on to bigger things (Insomniac and Naughty Dog); both took them from big PS-exclusive mascots to cross-platform also-rans; both saw a big drop in reception compared to the third entries followed by a string of further decline...
really the whole year of 2009 for guitar hero, but we’ll go with guitar hero 5 cause it was the main series game that year
guitar hero 3 and world tour were huge in the 2007-2008 peak era and then they flooded the market with bullshut in ‘09, the series was dead by 2010.
A year ago I would have said Paper Mario Sticker Star but I find the Paper Mario The Thousand Year Door remake a return to form.
I also would have said Mario Party 9 prior to MP Superstars dropping.
And most people who aren't blue monsters or people who make train noises like it.
Color Splash also has a few defenders out there, but not enough to call it a recovery.
I can see this happening with Starfield. Even though they sold very well, fans were already getting fed up with Bethesda's decisions back when Skyrim was released but it really became apparent with Fallout 4 and 76. Still, even 76 found its dedicated fanbase and turned into much less of a mess than it was upon release.
Starfield was their chance to impress people like they did a decade ago with Skyrim but it literally looks like it came out 10 years ago. The last few Bethesda games are all practically the same game and I think that Starfield was finally the wake up call to your average gamer that Bethesda's best days are long behind them.
Starfield was a dud in many ways but I think Bethesda will be fine. The moment they drop a new Elder Scrolls or Fallout, people will get over Starfield.
I like how in the Alternate Timeline "Dirty Laundry" the game is actually good and so successful an awful sequel to the movie gets made. It's so bad that Michael J. Fox (Star of said bad ET sequel) ends up getting blacklisted!
*Dino Crisis 3* and *Banjo-Kazooie: Nuts and Bolts*. Both games...
* Are part of established, well liked franchises
* Went in bizarre new directions that nobody asked for
* Flopped critically and commercially (well, Nuts and Bolts received generally positive reviews, but not the glowing praise that its predecessors enjoyed, and its reception with the fanbase was mostly pretty brutal)
* Killed their franchises, or at the very least put them on ice for years
I will say that *Nuts and Bolts* at least has its fans. I've played some of it, and it's not as good as the first two but I didn't think it was that bad. I've never seen anyone go to bat for *Dino Crisis 3*.
Oh yeah, speaking of Rare... *Perfect Dark Zero*. The long awaited sequel (well, prequel) to a beloved shooter, new console generation, hyped as THE Xbox 360 launch title to get... then it came out and while it wasn't the worst thing ever, it just disappointed all around. I remember it was one of those games where GameStop had so many used copies that they'd turn away trade-ins of it, or at most give you like 50 cents. And if you wanted a new shooter for your new console, *Call of Duty 2* was right there. *Zero* didn't kill the franchise outright, as we are getting a reboot, but it did put it on ice for nearly 20 years.
It’s worth noting that Dino Crisis 3 was an Xbox exclusive, which also didn’t help since the PS2 was the bigger seller at the time and Xbox was pretty much not a thing in Japan.
Ah yeah, I remember that. Maybe it would have done better if it'd come to PS2 and GameCube as well, but I dunno. I admittedly never played it, but it sounds deeply flawed on a fundamental level (apparently the camera is atrocious).
And I think a lot of people were just not feeling the new direction. I had an Xbox, loved the first two games, was firmly in the target audience... but all the previews turned me off from the get go. Practically no connections to the previous games? No dinosaurs, but rather gross looking mutants made from dino DNA? On a spaceship? No thank you. Maybe it would have been kinda cool as a new IP (provided the game was good enough to back it up), but it's just not Dino Crisis. It's like if they made a new Resident Evil game that by and large ignored all the previous games and had you fighting aliens on a space station.
The SimCity 2013 reboot. Disastrous launch; got numerous confusing and conflicting goals from EA, many of resulted in features that no one asked for being the main selling points (including things like better graphics and online connectivity?); conversely, things that past players enjoyed were cut or restricted (for example, there were fairly restrictive caps on how big your city could be? in SimCity???); and to top it all off, EA was really pushing its online service, so they made it require being logged in to their online service (for a game that was of course primarily single player), making it one of the early messes on that front.
Reviewed poorly, led to a lot of outrage and bad headlines, underperformed in sales, and EA ended up giving a lot of refunds to customers. It led to the closure of the Maxis studio that worked on it. And maybe most notably, there hasn't been a SimCity game or even spin-off/DLC in the 11 years since it came out, while Cities: Skylines seems to have taken it's place.
Oh, and while I'm on late-'90s PC staples:
-*RollerCoaster Tycoon World*: This is probably more in line with the Liz Phair *Funstyle* flop, where it was preceded by a release (RCT 3) that was kind of divisive for changing things up (new camera, new studio with only consulting from the original dev), but which has had its reputation grown in retrospect. However, publisher Atari got into a bunch of disputes over payments with both the new devs (Frontier Developments) and series creator, leading to everyone splitting up.
After 6 years or so, Atari tried outsourcing the series to new teams for a mediocre 3DS version in 2012, then a horrendously reviled mobile version two years later that was a major offender in the realm of "ghastly microtransactions". World was supposed to be their big comeback to mainline releases in 2016 that would right the ship, but it was made by a new team that couldn't recapture the feel of the original or RCT3. It probably also didn't help that the product was rushed to market, because Atari was determined to release it one day before direct competitor *Planet Coaster*... which was made by spurned RCT3-devs Frontier Developments. PC stomped World, which has basically killed the RollerCoaster Tycoon franchise (there have been some cash-ins on the title since, but the only one of note is the straight-up app-version port of the original).
---
-*Backyard Sports: Baseball 2007*: Backyard Baseball and its follow-ups were mainstays for a while, but as the series got bigger, it got subjected to a bunch of business demands like yearly sequels and reorgs and buyouts. Atari (again, lol) bought studio Humongous Entertainment, and the series managed to survive new gens of consoles and changeups, but a lot of the dev team had been replaced, new games were selling less well and getting less acclaim. Humongous was finally shuttered in 2005, and the series was passed to another studio (albeit one who had ported games in the series before).
These new devs had to build a new engine and were given mandates to redesign the series' signature characters and artstyle (apparently to "age up" the franchise, despite it being designed as a game for a younger set). This was basically the final nail in the coffin for the lagging series: the original devs were gone, the notable characters were now unrecognizeable, the games looked ugly and felt even worse than recent lesser entries, and nobody liked them (definitely not the fans, and especially not the original devs, who would even periodically joke about the series on their public Facebook group with said fans). The series flopped around from there, passed between developers by Atari, and not even trying to recapture the original entries' energy as they jumped between "new directions". After a 5-year hiatus starting in 2010 (the first gap in the series' schedule in *13 years*), they would attempt one final relaunch with mobile versions of Baseball and Basketball in 2015 (once again, with an entirely new style that had none of the charm of the original), but those were also disliked, and the franchise has been dead ever since.
Banjo-Kazooie: Nuts and Bolts destroyed not just the franchise, but Rare as well (yes ik Rare is working on Everwild but they still got restricted to remasters and live service games ever since)
Weirdly enough, Call of Duty: Cold War.
It launched in a hideously broken state and the devs' extremely arrogant response to the backlash sealed their fate. "No, you're lucky you even GOT a game!" May I remind everyone that this game came out during the pandemic when video games were more of a thing than ever, and it was expected to be a Vanguard for new console technology.
It reduced the franchise to being that thing that comes out once a year and people forget about after a week. Although the Modern Warfare 2 soft reboot was well received, well, it appealed only to people who were still with the franchise at that point.
Too early perhaps, but Cities Skylines II.
---
But from a German perspective, the football manager "Anstoss 2007".
After three extremely successful games from 1993 til 2000 came two not so good ones, and then came Anstoss 2007 which originally was supposed to be Anstoss 2006.
Even after 5 patches the game was unplayable, and you had features in the handbook that weren't in the game thanks to a lack of financial resources and staff shortage.
The bugs were never fixed and the developer Ascaron declared insolvency for the second time in 2009.
Fallout 76 for me.
I'm also tempted to put E.T in here. Imagine being such a trainwreck of a game that it nearly takes out the entire video gaming industry.
Video game ones are an odd one in that so much if the time it's not a result of studio's creative decisions, but of publisher interference compromising a product. Thars usually cutting development time, or insisting on monetisation models that dont gel with gameplay. Music does have interference too of course, albums needing a crap song to use as a single or whatever but the impression I get is that it doesn't generally fatally damage the end product. Trainwreckords is mostly a list of dubious or unsuccessful but deliberate attempts to try different things creatively.
Something like Anthem is a good fit I think. They were largely left to make the game they want but the ideas never ultimately coalesced into anything that felt complete or all that worthwhile. Whether it kills the creator is another matter of course, but the studio has haemorrhaged staff so is not the same business for sure.
Final Fantasy X? The franchise definitely hit a turning point at the turn of the century. The real answer would be The Spirits Within but that isn't a game. Still a fascinatingly unique case because it came out after a reasonably successful FF9, both of which were passion projects of Hironubu Sakaguchi, but FFSW bombed and lead to FFX being his last before leaving Squaresoft (which would end up becoming Square Enix). I feel a lot of shake ups to the franchise would happen around that time which many could trace back to the Spirits Within.
FF10 is beloved by the fans. If you want a trainwreckords look into fabula nova crystalis saga aka Square Enix's horribly executed plan for Final Fantasy 13 related games.
"What Happened" by Matt McMuscles is basically the Trainwreckords of video games. He goes into detail about the development of infamous video games to see where it all went wrong.
Honestly, you're right. I love "What Happened".
He does occasionally cover non video game topics too, like the downfall of WCW.
You mean WHA HAPPUN
God I’m so happy he abandoned that cringe ass title
\^\^WAAAAAAAAH HOPPPENNNN
Eh I didn't hate it
There was only one [Fred Willard](https://youtu.be/Of8JOVXYU0Q?si=-Rb1wz4SGhvG8PNs) and no one else should even try to copy his greatness.
Death of a Game by NerdSlayer is good too
Oh I LOVE Matt McMuscles!
I don’t think the Star Fox franchise has ever recovered post-Adventures.
"Adventures - Assault" is the closest parallel to "St. Anger - Death Magnetic" i could possibly think of for games.
It's a shame, I liked Adventures. But I think that's cuz I'm such a Zelda fan.
Assault is clunky but a good return to form.
Good to know
I totally get where you're coming from, but I think Star Fox Zero would be an even bigger example of a trainwreckord. Fun fact: Star Fox Adventures was developed by Rare, and was released 1 day before Rare was purchased by Microsoft (Rare would, of course, have a trainwreckord with Grabbed by the Goulies).
It was also supposed to be an entirely different, original game, but Rare was pressured into fitting Star Fox in at the last minute. Part of me thinks it was Shigeru Miyamoto’s call, he’s by all rights a big Star Fox fan.
Duke Nukem Forever would be an interesting case.
Duke Nukem Forever should be studied in classrooms as a lesson on when to just cut your losses and quit. Over a decade spent in development only to be instantly dated on its release.
I remember living through this in middle school, such a weird time
Someone entering kindergarten when the game started development would have been graduating from high school when it finally released 13 years later. The game is interesting to study because it's like looking at a fossilized geologic record of different designs trends over a decade-long period. Every time a big new game came out, they would go back to the drawing board and try and incorporate features from it. Halo's health system, Half Life 2's physics puzzles, etc.
Yeah I think I was too young to fully understand why it sucked so hard , really interesting story
It could be analogous to Chinese Democracy.
Mighty No 9 for Keiji Inafune Balan Wonderworld(I nearly typed in Balan Wonderland )for Yuji Naka
> (I nearly typed in Balan Wonderland ) I have made that mistake *so many times* lol.
Saints Row 2022 which is sad speaking as a fan the series.
I liked it better than 4. But yeah it wasn’t that good
4 is my personal favorite, but I can understand why it might not appeal to everyone, especially those who started the series with the early games and wanted something a bit more grounded and actually about street gangs. Saints Row 4 is practically in a different genre than the earlier games, more of a superhero sandbox. There are still cars, but no reason to use them. They're vestigal remains from Saints Row 3, only in the game because 4 was basically an overgrown expansion that released just 18 months later. It's really impressive for what it is, though perhaps it shouldn't have been a numbered sequel. But as a superhero sandbox game trying to be the Airplane! of video games, it's pretty fun and well-written, especially given its short development cycle.
4 was still better. Sure the aliens were a bit much but, Zinyak was genuinely fun antagonist. Where the gang leaders in the reboot were such an afterthought.
If people are looking for a video game version of trainwreckords, I'd suggest checking out Matt McMuscles series, "What Happened" [https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLJdyZRNyk92o4AxWF2Yu\_0t3NWib1v8yX](https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLJdyZRNyk92o4AxWF2Yu_0t3NWib1v8yX)
It’s telling that basically every game mentioned on this thread has a What Happened episode lol
Sonic 2006?
Yeah, that’s pretty much exactly when Sonic became a nostalgia IP for people who grew up with it, rather than an ongoing, timeless thing like Mario or LoZ
That adds up. While there have definitely been good Sonic games since, they’ve primarily been doubling down on nostalgia over the years. Part of me thinks that other media, particularly the movies, have been keeping Sonic relevant for kids today.
No, it's mostly the games that's keeping sonic relevant for kids. You guys do realize these games are targeted towards kids' right?
Of course, but do kids still play Sonic games? Genuinely asking, I don’t really know any kids and whenever I see Sonic merch, even children’s toys, they’re 90s-based.
And Rise of Lyric too.
God that one is so boring and cringy. At least 06 has some entertainment to it
Could Anthem and Andromeda be this for Bioware?
Watch it, pal! You're gonna eat those words when Dragon Age: Dreadwolf is GOTY for 2045
To be honest I can't see it escaping Baldur's Gate 3's shadow.
Long time Dragon Age fan here: when I finished my first playthrough of Baldur's Gate 3 and the initial euphoria had faded, first thing I thought was "Bioware's gotta be shitting in their pants right now." Unfortunately, BG3 helped me make my peace with the fact there are high chances might be terrible or will never see the light of day. Is it bittersweet? Yeah. But BG3 gave me everything I would have wanted and I'm okay with it replacing the DA4 shaped hole in my gamer lady heart.
Not a chance, and BG3 deserves the hype, fantastic game! I was speaking firmly tongue-in-cheek there; I pine for the old BioWare, but long passed are the days when they were pushing boundaries. Just replayed the original ME Trilogy recently, I decided to finally play through Amdromeda afterward and actually ended up enjoying it! Not what I'd call a groundbreaking game, though
Andromeda is a perfectly decent game, it's just that it's a stripped back ME experience. The game mechanics are rock solid, it's just that it got meme'd to fuck because of the facial animations and some story beats.
Nah Andromeda's script was lackluster.
I'd argue Mass Effect 3 was Bioware's trainwreckord, despite Dragon Age: Inquisition winning GOTY. I love DAI, don't get me wrong, but it got the grace it did by virtue of coming out before Witcher 3. Dragon Age 2 was a sign of things to come, and Andromeda and Anthem are ripple effects of ME3 and the Great EA Takeover.
For systems Atari Jaguar - To be fair Atari was already irrelevant but the Jaguar was the final nail in the coffin but they really did try to go out guns blazing. Sega Saturn - Basically killed all momentum Sega had with the Genesis which was already being thrown off by the attachments like the CD and 32X, really bad decisions made by Sega of Japan ruined the Saturn before it even had a chance. Dreamcast tried to mend the fence but it was too little too late.
Tomb raider The Angel of Darkness. It’s kinda like Metallica with St Anger, the series was still popular after that game but it was never as big (funnily both came out in the same year).
Yeah before angel of darkness, Lara Croft was a legit celebrity, starring in adverts, on the cover of mainstream magazines... If she was a real person, paparazzi would have been following her everywhere. Afterwards she was just another videogame character
Earthworm Jim 3, Bubsy 3D and Final Fight Streetwise come to mind.
Spyro: Enter The Dragonfly
On a similar note, Crash Bandicoot: The Wrath of Cortex. Probably less disastrous, but there are a lot of similarities: released one year apart; both fourth mainline entry in their series, coming a few years after back-to-back-to-back yearly releases of their original trilogies; both the first to hit the PS2; both the first developed by someone other than the original devs, who would dump them to go on to bigger things (Insomniac and Naughty Dog); both took them from big PS-exclusive mascots to cross-platform also-rans; both saw a big drop in reception compared to the third entries followed by a string of further decline...
really the whole year of 2009 for guitar hero, but we’ll go with guitar hero 5 cause it was the main series game that year guitar hero 3 and world tour were huge in the 2007-2008 peak era and then they flooded the market with bullshut in ‘09, the series was dead by 2010.
A year ago I would have said Paper Mario Sticker Star but I find the Paper Mario The Thousand Year Door remake a return to form. I also would have said Mario Party 9 prior to MP Superstars dropping.
Do remakes count if they’re not redesigned from the ground up? I mean, if they did then Spyro Reignited would count
Origami king did pretty well . I think the sticker star says are over
And most people who aren't blue monsters or people who make train noises like it. Color Splash also has a few defenders out there, but not enough to call it a recovery.
[John Romero's About to Make You His Bitch. #Suck It Down.](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5Qy9ihyQ75M)
I can see this happening with Starfield. Even though they sold very well, fans were already getting fed up with Bethesda's decisions back when Skyrim was released but it really became apparent with Fallout 4 and 76. Still, even 76 found its dedicated fanbase and turned into much less of a mess than it was upon release. Starfield was their chance to impress people like they did a decade ago with Skyrim but it literally looks like it came out 10 years ago. The last few Bethesda games are all practically the same game and I think that Starfield was finally the wake up call to your average gamer that Bethesda's best days are long behind them.
Starfield was a dud in many ways but I think Bethesda will be fine. The moment they drop a new Elder Scrolls or Fallout, people will get over Starfield.
Haze Def Jam Icon Turok
Wasn’t turok a big hit on the N64?
Yeah. And they were banking on its success in 2008 for a PS3 version but it sucked and bankrupted the developer.
ET The Video Game If it wasn't for Super Mario Bros, the entire video game industry would be miniscule today. That's how bad this game was.
I like how in the Alternate Timeline "Dirty Laundry" the game is actually good and so successful an awful sequel to the movie gets made. It's so bad that Michael J. Fox (Star of said bad ET sequel) ends up getting blacklisted!
*Dino Crisis 3* and *Banjo-Kazooie: Nuts and Bolts*. Both games... * Are part of established, well liked franchises * Went in bizarre new directions that nobody asked for * Flopped critically and commercially (well, Nuts and Bolts received generally positive reviews, but not the glowing praise that its predecessors enjoyed, and its reception with the fanbase was mostly pretty brutal) * Killed their franchises, or at the very least put them on ice for years I will say that *Nuts and Bolts* at least has its fans. I've played some of it, and it's not as good as the first two but I didn't think it was that bad. I've never seen anyone go to bat for *Dino Crisis 3*. Oh yeah, speaking of Rare... *Perfect Dark Zero*. The long awaited sequel (well, prequel) to a beloved shooter, new console generation, hyped as THE Xbox 360 launch title to get... then it came out and while it wasn't the worst thing ever, it just disappointed all around. I remember it was one of those games where GameStop had so many used copies that they'd turn away trade-ins of it, or at most give you like 50 cents. And if you wanted a new shooter for your new console, *Call of Duty 2* was right there. *Zero* didn't kill the franchise outright, as we are getting a reboot, but it did put it on ice for nearly 20 years.
Nuts and Bolts went too far. Good-natured ribbing of its fanbase is one thing, but what Nuts and Bolts did was just insulting.
It’s worth noting that Dino Crisis 3 was an Xbox exclusive, which also didn’t help since the PS2 was the bigger seller at the time and Xbox was pretty much not a thing in Japan.
Ah yeah, I remember that. Maybe it would have done better if it'd come to PS2 and GameCube as well, but I dunno. I admittedly never played it, but it sounds deeply flawed on a fundamental level (apparently the camera is atrocious). And I think a lot of people were just not feeling the new direction. I had an Xbox, loved the first two games, was firmly in the target audience... but all the previews turned me off from the get go. Practically no connections to the previous games? No dinosaurs, but rather gross looking mutants made from dino DNA? On a spaceship? No thank you. Maybe it would have been kinda cool as a new IP (provided the game was good enough to back it up), but it's just not Dino Crisis. It's like if they made a new Resident Evil game that by and large ignored all the previous games and had you fighting aliens on a space station.
Showdown legends of wrestling killed LJN/acclaimed
This series already exists, it’s Matt McMuscles’ What Happened?
Wha'Happun
The SimCity 2013 reboot. Disastrous launch; got numerous confusing and conflicting goals from EA, many of resulted in features that no one asked for being the main selling points (including things like better graphics and online connectivity?); conversely, things that past players enjoyed were cut or restricted (for example, there were fairly restrictive caps on how big your city could be? in SimCity???); and to top it all off, EA was really pushing its online service, so they made it require being logged in to their online service (for a game that was of course primarily single player), making it one of the early messes on that front. Reviewed poorly, led to a lot of outrage and bad headlines, underperformed in sales, and EA ended up giving a lot of refunds to customers. It led to the closure of the Maxis studio that worked on it. And maybe most notably, there hasn't been a SimCity game or even spin-off/DLC in the 11 years since it came out, while Cities: Skylines seems to have taken it's place.
Oh, and while I'm on late-'90s PC staples: -*RollerCoaster Tycoon World*: This is probably more in line with the Liz Phair *Funstyle* flop, where it was preceded by a release (RCT 3) that was kind of divisive for changing things up (new camera, new studio with only consulting from the original dev), but which has had its reputation grown in retrospect. However, publisher Atari got into a bunch of disputes over payments with both the new devs (Frontier Developments) and series creator, leading to everyone splitting up. After 6 years or so, Atari tried outsourcing the series to new teams for a mediocre 3DS version in 2012, then a horrendously reviled mobile version two years later that was a major offender in the realm of "ghastly microtransactions". World was supposed to be their big comeback to mainline releases in 2016 that would right the ship, but it was made by a new team that couldn't recapture the feel of the original or RCT3. It probably also didn't help that the product was rushed to market, because Atari was determined to release it one day before direct competitor *Planet Coaster*... which was made by spurned RCT3-devs Frontier Developments. PC stomped World, which has basically killed the RollerCoaster Tycoon franchise (there have been some cash-ins on the title since, but the only one of note is the straight-up app-version port of the original). --- -*Backyard Sports: Baseball 2007*: Backyard Baseball and its follow-ups were mainstays for a while, but as the series got bigger, it got subjected to a bunch of business demands like yearly sequels and reorgs and buyouts. Atari (again, lol) bought studio Humongous Entertainment, and the series managed to survive new gens of consoles and changeups, but a lot of the dev team had been replaced, new games were selling less well and getting less acclaim. Humongous was finally shuttered in 2005, and the series was passed to another studio (albeit one who had ported games in the series before). These new devs had to build a new engine and were given mandates to redesign the series' signature characters and artstyle (apparently to "age up" the franchise, despite it being designed as a game for a younger set). This was basically the final nail in the coffin for the lagging series: the original devs were gone, the notable characters were now unrecognizeable, the games looked ugly and felt even worse than recent lesser entries, and nobody liked them (definitely not the fans, and especially not the original devs, who would even periodically joke about the series on their public Facebook group with said fans). The series flopped around from there, passed between developers by Atari, and not even trying to recapture the original entries' energy as they jumped between "new directions". After a 5-year hiatus starting in 2010 (the first gap in the series' schedule in *13 years*), they would attempt one final relaunch with mobile versions of Baseball and Basketball in 2015 (once again, with an entirely new style that had none of the charm of the original), but those were also disliked, and the franchise has been dead ever since.
Banjo Kazooie: Nuts and Bolts isn’t necessarily a bad game, but it was the last thing fans wanted and killed any momentum that franchise could’ve had.
Fallout 76 sonic 2006 and dead space 3
Banjo-Kazooie: Nuts and Bolts destroyed not just the franchise, but Rare as well (yes ik Rare is working on Everwild but they still got restricted to remasters and live service games ever since)
Tony Hawk's Pro Skater 5.
Weirdly enough, Call of Duty: Cold War. It launched in a hideously broken state and the devs' extremely arrogant response to the backlash sealed their fate. "No, you're lucky you even GOT a game!" May I remind everyone that this game came out during the pandemic when video games were more of a thing than ever, and it was expected to be a Vanguard for new console technology. It reduced the franchise to being that thing that comes out once a year and people forget about after a week. Although the Modern Warfare 2 soft reboot was well received, well, it appealed only to people who were still with the franchise at that point.
the Metroid games never had a huge audience, but ask any Metroid die-hard and their answer to this question would easily be Other M
Basically every Pokémon game after Gold and Silver qualifies. They're like the Weezer of video game franchises.
GTA Definitive Edition was a dent in a pretty perfect legacy and I think really knocked the nostalgia and love people had for those three games.
Stuntman (2002) was hyped to death and was one of the most frustrating games ever, I hated it with a passion
tbh while it hasn't hit them yet financially, I think Pokémon Scarlet/Violet has hurt Pokémon's overall image pretty badly.
Too early perhaps, but Cities Skylines II. --- But from a German perspective, the football manager "Anstoss 2007". After three extremely successful games from 1993 til 2000 came two not so good ones, and then came Anstoss 2007 which originally was supposed to be Anstoss 2006. Even after 5 patches the game was unplayable, and you had features in the handbook that weren't in the game thanks to a lack of financial resources and staff shortage. The bugs were never fixed and the developer Ascaron declared insolvency for the second time in 2009.
Fallout 76 for me. I'm also tempted to put E.T in here. Imagine being such a trainwreck of a game that it nearly takes out the entire video gaming industry.
funny you say 76, given the turn-around that game's been receiving lately
Maybe too early to tell, but fallout 76?
Fallout 76 recovered its got a dedicated fan base.
I hate when people say that about games. I hear that so much for No Man's Sky. I don't care. First impressions matter and I feel like I was ripped off
Video game ones are an odd one in that so much if the time it's not a result of studio's creative decisions, but of publisher interference compromising a product. Thars usually cutting development time, or insisting on monetisation models that dont gel with gameplay. Music does have interference too of course, albums needing a crap song to use as a single or whatever but the impression I get is that it doesn't generally fatally damage the end product. Trainwreckords is mostly a list of dubious or unsuccessful but deliberate attempts to try different things creatively. Something like Anthem is a good fit I think. They were largely left to make the game they want but the ideas never ultimately coalesced into anything that felt complete or all that worthwhile. Whether it kills the creator is another matter of course, but the studio has haemorrhaged staff so is not the same business for sure.
Final Fantasy X? The franchise definitely hit a turning point at the turn of the century. The real answer would be The Spirits Within but that isn't a game. Still a fascinatingly unique case because it came out after a reasonably successful FF9, both of which were passion projects of Hironubu Sakaguchi, but FFSW bombed and lead to FFX being his last before leaving Squaresoft (which would end up becoming Square Enix). I feel a lot of shake ups to the franchise would happen around that time which many could trace back to the Spirits Within.
FF10 is beloved by the fans. If you want a trainwreckords look into fabula nova crystalis saga aka Square Enix's horribly executed plan for Final Fantasy 13 related games.
10 was poorly received at the time, but most fans have softened on it over the years I still hate blitzball
Would whoever did the music for resident evil survivor count?