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The 25 Dumbest Moments in Gaming
Gudlyf writes "GameSpy has a multi-part series this week titled The 25 Dumbest Moments in Gaming, highlighting some of the biggest debacles ever to plague our beloved pastime. While only the first part of the series is present, I can already think of a few that the list wouldn't be complete without. Anyone care to offer their own picks?" Predictions for the Top 5 also welcome, we'll run another story at the end of the week to see how people did.
Some mention of the companies "Mystique" or "Playaround" must be in the top 5... these are the companies responsible for the X-rated Atari 2600 games, including Custer's Revenge, a game where you control Custer and rape an indian woman tied to a cactus. Why they even thought a game like this could work is beyond me... How can something even be erotic with such a low resolution?
Although it's not as well known, Atari also made a video game called "I, Robot". In fact, it was the first game to use 3D filled polygons I believe. Unfortunately, the game wasn't accepted very well, and people couldn't figure it out I guess. So, out of the 1,000 machines they made, only 500 even sold. The rest were sitting in a warehouse. In order to get rid of them, Atari sent them to Japan... but none of the machines ever got there, as the crew of the ship were given orders to push the machines overboard on the way! I believe the point was to make sure that stockholders didn't see warehouses of unsold machines. In any case, this deserves at least a part in this list.
And I didn't think the US Saturn pads were that bad... in fact, I like them better than Japanese ones. But then, my favorite controller ever was the enormous Jaguar controller, so what do I know?
-"One machine can do the work of fifty ordinary men. No machine can do the work of one extraordinary man." -EH
Not in any order, but these ones cames to mind quickly...
1) Intellivision II coming out and being non-backwards compatible with some of its own library in an effort to break Coleco's Intellivision releases.
2) John Romero's magazine ad that ran pre-Daikatana that said "John Romero's going to make you his bitch." (I can't find the image, but I know it's kicking around somewhere on the net)
3) Sega's "blast processing" commercial in which they claim Sonic the Hedgehog's fast scrolling is due to some neat-o feature in the Genesis' processor which the SNES lacks.
4) Making a movie that's basically one huge commercial for the NES, the Power Glove, and Super Mario 3 (shamelessly savvy moment?).
Those are about all that come to mind...
Nintendo's Japanese office received a telex from MCA Universal stating that the company had 48 hours to hand all profits earned from Donkey Kong over to MCA and destroy all unsold Donkey Kong inventory. The reason? MCA alleged that Donkey Kong infringed on Universal Studios' "King Kong" copyright.
Unfortunately for MCA, Nintendo had a very good reason for refraining from a settlement: It had discovered that MCA did not own the "King Kong" copyright! Even more shockingly, in a previous lawsuit MCA Universal had actually gone to pains to prove that the "King Kong" property was public domain!
Can someone unmoderate the +1 for the post above -- it isn't that interesting and it doesn't even answer the question it was supposed to. Here's why I believe the X-Box was/is a mistake: It's unimaginative and overpriced. Its promise of easy development because of its PC architecture and directX stuff will in fact be a problem as current PC performance pulls away from the Xbox. No doubt development houses are already finding that a project they're working on for the PC has problems running without major compromises on the Xbox. The same, of course, is true for any console but if you've brought developers in based on low porting costs it's a problem -- one that will only get worse. Sega thought that dual-processors in the 32X, or was it the Saturn, would be a good thing, but they were considered too difficult to develop for. Image what people developing for the latest DirectX 9 stuff are going to think about the amount of time it will take to scale detail back enough to play on the Xbox. And you can't just announce an upgrade for a console and start making games that require it straight away. Most of the current owners will not upgrade, therefore most of the developers won't write for the expansion. Chicken and egg.
Microsoft are having a real problem getting the production costs down. The machine is too complicated. Sure, the hard drive will drop in price, but everything else is custom, yet farmed out to other companies. Who's going to put the time into reducing production costs?
Based on the initial price to market, if it wasn't for Microsoft's pig-headedness, the Xbox would have already gone away. Meanwhile, no doubt people are enjoying it around the world, but I'll bet there are already people high up in Microsoft questioning the decision to produce the Xbox. Really they aren't a games company and they don't know what to do with games. Games Business isn't just another flavour of business. No matter how many successful games companies you swallow, making a good, popular, game is part art.
Most companies in the games game have learnt a bit from the past, but only to the point where failures are in slow motion.