Top Ten Dead Video Game IPs

Feature from Brett - Sunday, 27 December 2009 @ 12:24am

Sometimes gamers need to say “enough is enough”. Violence against existing video game IPs is getting out of hand and someone needs to send a strong signal to publishers and developers to let them know that it’s no longer acceptable to inappropriately fondle our childhood memories by continually rolling out our favourite characters in shitty sequels and spin offs. I've decided that this someone to take action needs to be me, so grab yourselves a Nutella Sandwich kids, because for this very special edition of Bretro Retro, I’ll be looking at the Top 10 Video Game IPs that I feel need to die.

10 - FROGGER

I’m going to go out on a limb and say for the record that Frogger was always a rather loose idea for an original character. He’s a frog, who needs to cross the road and that’s about it.

Despite Mr.Frog looking like a green blob on screen, some clever marketing person had the idea of dressing him in a waist coat and tie, and slapping a briefcase in his hand for the advertising posters handed out to arcade owners for the original game, making him look like a business man frog.

Frog is Good...Frog is Right

I’m not exactly sure just who is employing Frogs in a business environment especially considering the current economic climate. What exactly does a frog do at an office job? Surely they can’t type with their big flipper fingers. How many of these frogs do they go through every day?

“Hey Boss, Frog Two just rang, he won’t be into work today because he got hit by a truck crossing the highway, and he’s kind of dead until Frog Three raises 10,000 points and gets a bonus life.”

You would think that most people would accept that Frogger was an ok character and a decent enough game considering the technological limitations of the time and move on, so it might surprise you to hear that since that first fateful road crossing, Frogger has been involved in 18 sequels and spin offs.

Did you ever play Frogger 2: Threedeep? I did and I’ll tell you what, it wasn’t in 3D, that’s for sure. I’ll also tell you something else, frogs don’t eat chickens. That’s some bad fact checking there.

Team Frog

Maybe you played Frogger Helmet Chaos, where Frogger gets all Wolf Pack buff and goes out for revenge against a crocodile army after his froggy friend puts on a mind control helmet and goes bat shit bananas insane? Do you want to know what happens when a frog takes on a crocodile? The crocodile wins, except in Helmet Chaos.

Amazingly, Frogger Number 19 is coming to PS3 and Wii, and according to the ESRB will feature players guiding a frog across the other side of a screen to safety, which will definitely take the franchise in a new direction.

9 - ANYTHING FEATURING TRUCK DRIVING

Hey there publishers! Has your development house made a car racing game but not quite got the handling and physics engine right? Well, no problem, just change all the car models to trucks, draw up a shitty cover, and throw that title in the bargain bin because Truck Racing games are big business in bargain games.

Truck Racing 2 - Blue Truck Edition

If you don’t pay attention in school, you may end up being a truck driver, and with this in mind, why the hell would I want to fantasise about being a truck driver? Even if I did want to be a truck driver, well I’d go get a truck license, take about sixty-seven No Doze and a handful of dexies, and then I’d be a truck driver. I sure as hell wouldn’t go to the local EB Games and dig around in the bargain bin looking for a truck racing game. That’s trucking stupid.

No one wants to pretend to be a truck driver. No one even wants to be a truck driver in real life. Please stop making games where you drive or race a truck. Thank you.

8 - STRIP POKER GAMES

It may be hard for our younger readers to imagine, but just a few decades ago the idea that you could use a computer to view pictures of naked women was unheard of.

But then in 1986, in an event that I consider more important than the Moon Landing, a few great men used a rather expensive machine known as a digitiser to create seven pixelated scans of British Page 3 Model Samantha Fox for a strip poker video game on the Commodore 64.

Pre Internet Pron

For just $29 you could purchase a cassette tape with a lacklustre poker video game and one picture of Samantha topless, along with six other pictures of her getting to the topless stage. I not only purchased the game with a fake ID, but backed it up seventeen times just in case something happened to my other sixteen copies.

There was a flood of poker games during the next few years as digitisers and graphics capabilities improved, but eventually some wise men in Hawaii had the great idea of creating the internet and suddenly the idea of playing a crap poker game in order to see pictures of naked women became a bit pointless.

Still, just occasionally, when nobody is home, I’ll grab some cream cheese, take off my pants and fire up the Commodore 64 so as to spend some alone time with Samantha and my Quickshot Pro. It’s just a shame that for everyone else in the world, Strip Poker can now be considered a dead IP.

7 - WONDER BOY

You’re a naked baby running around a wonderful land, and you may even get to ride a skateboard. Awesome. Not.

Arcade Adventure Baby Action

This is the sort of thing I had to deal with growing up. Back when I was a boy we didn’t have space marines with big guns in our games. Hell no, we had babies in nappies running around next to lollypop trees. There are some retro games that I’m fond of, but personally, I’m glad that after six official titles and 36 various cross platform abortions, the Wonderboy baby finally seems to be dead.

Phil Collins

For the record, I’d also like to say, that at no stage whilst playing Wonderboy do you slice an enemy knight’s neck with your sword whilst smiling like Patrick Bateman. Even if this sort of action was on offer, I still doubt it would make up for the nappy wearing. I’ve got some weird fetishes, but wearing a nappy is not one of them. The worst part of the Wonderboy franchise? In 36 games I’ve never seen the little guy change his nappy. That’s nasty.

6 - CRAZY TAXI

Let’s go make some craaaaaazy money!

Five Fucking Times.

Take Me To The Pizza Hut...Again

Come on, the original game was pretty lacking in lasting appeal, how the hell was this thing milked for four more versions (not to mention countless cross platform conversions). There were even movie options, but these weren’t exercised by Goodman-Rosen due to an “absence of plot elements”. I’m not sure what the problem was; You’re a craaaazy dude, picking up craaaazy people, in your craaaazy taxi to make craaaazy money, surely that’s enough plot for 90 minutes once you get Michael Bay involved.

In recent years, Crazy Taxi has been ported to pretty much anything with a screen; I heard that there was going to be a version for the Fisher Price Learning Centre. “A” is for Craaaaaaaaaaaaazy Taaaaaaaaaaaxi Baaaaaaaaaaaaby!”.

5 - JAMES POND

Sometimes sharing is caring. I asked my friend Matty B if he knew of any IP’s that he felt were dead and buried. After he finished sprouting controversial rubbish like “Halo” and “Doom”, we settled on the compromise of James Pond.

James Pond - Spy Fish

Matt was right when he said “It’s a fish with a joke name”, and personally I’m amazed that the original game was made, let alone two more sequels and a sports game spinoff.

James Pond Fish Spy In Olympic Action

Seriously, what the fuck is going on here? A joke name spy fish starring in a sports game? How the fuck does this even happen? No wonder everyone thought Rare created awesome characters in the 90’s, because compared to this shit, Battletoads is War and Peace. Next time you’re invited to a “come as your favourite dead IP video game character party”, then I suggest going as James Pond, because this crap is dead and buried.

4 - MORTAL KOMBAT

Remember in high school when you had those fights over which game was going to be a timeless classic, Street Fighter or Mortal Kombat? Unlike myself, if you said Street Fighter, then you were correct.

I’d like to spend some time with Mortal Kombat and perhaps ask it what it was like to spend the last seventeen years locked in a basement getting raped by greedy publishers. I’d imagine that it would say, “Brett, my arse is sore, can we please make them stop the sequels and the spinoffs?”

Just how sore is Mortal Kombat’s Kavity? Check out this amazing list of releases;

Mortal Kombat, Mortal Kombat 2, Mortal Kombat 3, Ultimate Mortal Kombat 3, Mortal Kombat 4, Mortal Kombat Trilogy, Mortal Kombat Gold, Mortal Kombat Deadly Alliance, Mortal Kombat Deception, Mortal Kombat Advance, Mortal Kombat TE, Mortal Kombat Unchained, Ultimate Mortal Kombat, Mortal Kombat Armageeon, Mortal Kombat vs DC Universe, Mortal Kombat 9, Mortal Kombat Mythologies, Mortal Kombat Special Forces, Mortal Kombat Shaolin Monks.

Mortal Kombat Guitar Hero

What do all these games have in common? I’ll give you a Mortal Kombat energy bar and sports drink if you guessed that none of them are very good. Shit, looking back on it now, even the original Mortal Kombat wasn’t very good. It’s time to open the basement and let Mortal Kombat go free, this IP is dead.

3 - DRIVER

Oh yes. The Driver franchise.

Ten years ago, Driver was one of the best driving games ever made. Not only that, but it was made by Reflections, who had a massive track record of successful titles like Shadow of The Beast on the Amiga and the original Destruction Derby for Playstation. Driver was a burn the roof of your mouth pizza hot IP. How could the sequel possibly fail?

Driver 2 was released to mixed reviews. The game seemed to push the Playstation too hard and while it looked pretty on the screenshots, once the game started moving there were horrible frame rate issues and more pop ups than your local children’s library.

Just how mixed were the reviews then? The Official Playstation Magazine called Driver 2 “One of the best games ever” and Gamespot joined in by saying “Driver 2 is a winner”. IGN however said, “Driver 2 is a disgrace”. What the Hoover was going on? Did these people all play the same game?

All this spooky review score strangeness could kind of be explained away. Driver 1 was a fantastic game, Driver 2 had some issues but some reviewers could look through that and see the original Driver 1 game play that they loved and maybe gave it a slightly inflated score. At the end of the day nobody cared, because Reflections were making Driver 3 for the new Playstation 2, and it was bound to be the greatest game ever made wasn’t it? Driver was still a AAA franchise.

I’m not going to bore you with the Driv3r Scandal Story, short of saying, a magazine and media company perhaps called “Future Publishing” got paid some money to review an unfinished copy of Driv3r that was full of bugs and pretend that the bugs were going to be fixed and that the game was a lot more fun than it really was and gave the game a super duper positive review.

Headless People

But then the bugs weren’t fixed for the retail version and plenty of people bought Driv3r, before promptly returning it to the store, through the window, with a brick tied around it. Driv3r was as bad as it’s name. We all learnt something that day, no matter how good a franchise or IP is, one or two bad games will kill it, and never trust Future Publishing because the company is run by shit heads that take bribes.

Personless Mopeds

Rumours of another Driver game abound on the glorious Internet but I’ll dance in the street wearing Yug’s lacy underwear before I pay money for anything sharing the Driver name. Fool me once, shame on me, fool me twice, well, you won’t fool me twice because I won’t be fooled by you money hungry bitches.

2 - SONIC

If Mortal Kombat’s arse is sore, image how Sonic is feeling. He could audition for a part in the next Gape-Man Porno. The poor bastard probably has a prolapse just thinking about what dumb shit SEGA is going to make him do next.

Clouds In Bluesky Zone

At first it was just bad games, then came the shame, starting with making him carry a gun, and finishing with him losing a running race to Mario. I could go on about how can a hedgehog that can sprint fast enough to turn into an upside down smoking blue ball lose to Mario in a running race, but I’d be ignoring the pivotal fact; Hedgehogs don’t race plumbers in the Olympic games.

I’ll go as far as to say that Sonic was done after Sonic 2. I’ll also go on record saying that I never liked Tails, the little orange turd with a whippy tail who could fly. He was shit, just like every Sonic game made after the first couple.

1 - TOMB RAIDER

Just edging out the Hedgehog for the number one position on today’s list is the perpetually disappointing Tomb Raider series. Publishers and developers have described every single iteration of the franchise as a return to form for the series, but come release day we are all left sucking eggs.

Better Times

That's right, I'm prepared to go on record stating that Tomb Raider sequels are the suckiest sequels in sucky sequelville. The original titles Metacritic average of 91/100 is substantially higher than any score obtained by any of the following games. Meanwhile, another developer has stolen Tomb Raiders thunder with some Metrosexual raiding action of it's own.

Moisturising Is Not Gay

Maybe you disagree with what I've written here? Maybe you drive a KIA and like to eat Hommus, and maybe that's fine. Perhaps you'd like to visit the forum and write nasty spiteful things about my poor spelling and sloppy grammar and I'm also cool with that. Just remember this one fact however; you can make a pizza without cheese, but that thing will be so freaking dry when you eat it that you'll wish you hadn't, and maybe that's what we all need to remember.