Post

headfallsoff
@headfallsoff.com

what's everyone else's fab examples of once massively popular and influential landmark titles in especially western games from back in the day that have just been forgotten and abandoned completely now. mine is black and white

77 reposts1.3K likes

headfallsoff
@headfallsoff.com

the fact that roller coaster tycoon has avoided being this with an active and popular scene to this day and multiple spiritual successors is genuinely crazy. feel like its textbook for being One Of These. but no

ivory
@ioletsgo.gay

honestly, a lot of the spiritual successors are based on the Frontier Rollercoaster Tycoon games, which are great in their own light but they don't necessarily have the same charm as the Chris Sawyer classics. The only game I've seen that comes close is Car Park Capital

store.steampowered.comCar Park Capital on SteamThe car industry needs you to design and build the greatest car parks that simple town life hasn't seen before. Introduce the need for car commuting and turn neighborhoods into car parks! Use propagan...
Bean J. Bunny
@beanjbunny.bsky.social

Popcap Games. Back in the day everyone had a favorite. Mine was Insane Aquarium, I actually grabbed it on Steam. My mom loved Zumba so much she bought it, in an era where buying digital products was considered insane

Simpsman
@duckmer.bsky.social

Nintendogs was one of the first major catalysts to sell people on the concept of the DS, second highest selling title under NSMB, and they only ever tried capitalizing on it once with +Cats on 3DS, and besides some Smash cameos it has pretty much vanished

arrath.bsky.social
@arrath.bsky.social

With all the extra computer horsepower we have these days a big open world superhero beat em up Prototype style, with massive destruction ala RF:G should be eminently in our reach. And yet...

dennis
@direbee.bsky.social

Anything by Popcap. They were getting people's mom's into PC gaming back in like 2003! And then EA just decided to ruin them for nothing. Many such cases

Dunc The Everything App
@alwaysbetondunc.bsky.social

For obvious reasons it's a good reason this doesn't really come up anymore but the Harry Potter 1 movie game was the 6th best selling PS1 game of all time, more people bought that than MGS, RE2, Any Tomb Raider game. It's only remaining cultural sticking point is a low poly hagrid model

Jon Gregory
@rocketpunches.cc

Resistance wasn't that bit, but it's been so completely abandoned that Sony won't even remaster it. Like... that was a tentpole franchise. Their answer to Halo and Gears, and they just do not give a fuck. You can badly stream the Vita game and the first one, and that's the only place it exists.

Jon Gregory
@rocketpunches.cc

Hard to think of anything from a studio as big as Insomniac positioned as front and center of a console lifespan that got ditched as hard. Insomniac doesn't even list it on their website. Everyone just decided that a PlayStation marquee title functionally never existed.

Joaquín Padilla Rivero 🀄️
@logseman.bsky.social

Syndicate also comes to mind. In general the notion of having a squad of loosely controlled characters like you do in an RTS was very restricted because of the need to cater to console gaming for which that specific operation was impossible.

Joaquín Padilla Rivero 🀄️
@logseman.bsky.social

X-Com is turn-based, and turn-based tactics have always been relatively healthy. Maybe Final Fantasy Tactics and Fire Emblem can scratch that itch so there hasn’t been that much of a push from Western developers for tactical games? I suspect in real-time action squad AIs simply weren’t good enough.

Ettin
@ettin.itch.io

For me this is the Creatures series. Nobody's making games where you have to download community-made genomes off the net because the one that shipped with the game gives your creatures terminal Gamer Brain any more

Ryusui
@theryusui.bsky.social

is it weird i feel like they hit it out of the park with the Banana and Pixie Norns in the very first game and everything afterwards was just meh to bleh

Ryusui
@theryusui.bsky.social

like it doesn't help that the C3 Norns all have those dead ping pong ball eyes instead of the big expressive egg-shaped eyes like in the first two games

JK-47
@razortongue.bsky.social

Remember Actraiser? The one where you basically played as a god, built your civilization up, and would go jump into side-scrolling action to clear more land for your civilization? That game fueled a lot of my early-onset megalomania

God Emperor Paul
@ovid9.bsky.social

Master of Orion? I've put...idk how many thousands of hours into 2. 3 was probably really damn good, but it added so many layers i wasn't ready for. But i'm a sucker for turn based games so......i'm always biased. (I did love Black & white)

Friendly Pumpkin
@pumpkinpal.bsky.social

My boring answer is the entire Real Time Strategy genre. A whole gaming powerhouse, responsible for a huge amount of early growth in PC gaming, just... Instantly consigned to the retro/remake/mobile bin, all at once. Sure, we still remember Command & Conquer and the Crafts, but the genre died.

JuniperTheory
@bimbo.city

there's a lot of great really old answers here so I think I'll go a little newer and say that I knew some ppl who played PC games, some people who had consoles but EVERYBODY played shitty flash games on the school computer or whatnot and that shit is fuckin GONE.

JuniperTheory
@bimbo.city

So, so many people got their start with games from weird shit they tried on coolmathgames don't come or the Nickelodeon website or whatever and none of those things survived. You can't even go back and check which ones were worthwhile because the very structure of the sites is gone.

coolmathgames.comCool Math Games - Free Online Games for Learning and FunCoolmath Games is a brain-training site for everyone, where logic & thinking & math meets fun & games. These games have no violence, no empty action, just a lot of challenges that will make you forget...
RAWRonoa zOwO
@rawronoa-zowo.bsky.social

Newgrounds is still a thing! You can still play the flash games and movies on there easily, too! It uses an emulator called Ruffle now for flash content, and it's worked great in my experience.

JuniperTheory
@bimbo.city

Yeah! I've used flashpoint a bit it's an astonishing thing. it's not just that though, half the time people's memories of this stuff is "oh that game I played on that one site that had the stick figures and" and there's no sources to find this stuff! All the old places are mostly gone

Xenobrina
@xenobrina.bsky.social

Mobile games from like 2009 - 2012. They created a whole new platform for developers with huge reach, but the market shifted so hard towards timers and gacha that games like Doodle Jump or Where's My Water feel like a whole different era.

Mike Crassweller
@zoomba.bsky.social

I ran a campus computer lab 2000 - 2002 and that game was the absolute bane of my existence! Kids kept figuring out how to get around the security software and installed the game. Instructors had me clearing that off machines every single day.

Eeeek!
@aaaac.bsky.social

Monkey Island, and to a lesser extent the LucasArts puzzle games. Used to be everyone knew them, and there was a whole genre of imitators. Now since they are so "cheap" to make, the genre is so flooded nothing stands out.

ctg867
@ctg867.bsky.social

Gotta be Unreal, right? There's still the engine ofc but that series was hugely importantly to the growth of competitive MP and online shooters before Epic killed it. And i guess Quake would count for the same reason. Am i allowed to say Half Life? Lol

ctg867
@ctg867.bsky.social

And i guess Portal is a more serious answer than Half Life would be. Left 4 Dead too tbh. EA managed to kill both Burnout *and* Need for Speed, somehow. Rock Band and Guitar Hero? They just did the those 2 remasters but it seems Tony Hawk is dead again, as well.

ctg867
@ctg867.bsky.social

Just realized that Thief and Deus Ex both count for this, and that really hurts 😭 Ubi says they're doing a new Splinter Cell but I'm doubtful. If you know ball, Riddick was super important in terms of its design and engine work. Socom was *huge* for the early console online space.

Chris Klinske
@cklinske.bsky.social

The fact that Sid Meier's Pirates doesn't have a meaningful successor is bonkers. There are multiplayer pirating games, and a few games featuring pirates without it being the specific purpose of the game (Black Flag is included here) but nothing really takes up the same niche.

nikki 🐁
@nikkimvee.bsky.social

Oddworld went from trying to make a pentology of mainline stories and an entire gaming cinematic universe to Soulstorm being one of the most mid rated games the year it came out despite having a 5+ year development after a very successful reboot/remake

A Bluesky Name
@movskyusc.bsky.social

The ubiquity of flight sims until at least the late 90s. Stuff like Falcon 3.0 going from "Despite being several years old, it's still in the top 5 games of all time" in the late 90s to not even being in the discussion 10 years later. (Related to that: the Microprose Grand Prix series.)

A Bluesky Name
@movskyusc.bsky.social

That's just it, they're *niche*. You rarely see generalist game media discussing them at all though, much less rate them amongst the very best games of a particular year. This was much less true until post-2000.

D W the Gutless
@dwoboyle.com

Oh you know what? I just got a Steam Machine and on the desktop mode one of the recommended games to install on the os was Space Cadet pinball. Those folks know what's up.

Amelia Carhartt
@theschwall.bsky.social

Starcraft for sure. Like yes technically there is still a competitive scene for it but it feels like it's completely gone from the wider collective consciousness. And that whole genre has been almost completely subsumed by MOBAs

🏳️‍⚧️ Eve 🏳️‍⚧️
@evethepuppy.bsky.social

Limbo stands out in my brain. I feel like it was the darling indie game for so long. Something I could assume everyone had played for years. It occurred to me recently that I don’t think I've seen anyone talk about it (besides a nod whenever Inside is mentioned) seriously for a few years now.

5uki5en5or
@5uki5en5or.bsky.social

Probably RTS games as a genre, it was such a huge deal on the PC games market for a decade until it melted away to almost nothing besides the people still playing starcraft and AoEII.

herb marselas
@herbmarselas.bsky.social

More than 80% of RTS players only ever play single player. The real decline of big RTS games is due to the intersection of AAA studios pursuing games that are console first and have have higher ROI, and the death of AA developers

5uki5en5or
@5uki5en5or.bsky.social

That said in the spirit of the question it's very fun to look at the 90s magazines 'top games of the format' recs because it'll always be like one timeless classic everyone still remembers, one niche title you saw a youtube retrospective on, and one game nobody thought about once after 1998

5uki5en5or
@5uki5en5or.bsky.social

well let's see,grabbed a rando one from 1999. the cover game is Heavy Gear which is pretty forgotten these days. Everyone knows Homeworld but Giants: Citizen Kabuto is pretty long-gone. They have all their previous ratings so you can go through their highest rated games and see how many you know.

5uki5en5or
@5uki5en5or.bsky.social

I do think there's an argument that genre extinction can be due to newer genres basically providing a similar market appeal, so the people who were fine with either will move to the new one while people who liked the specific quirks of the old one are left frustrated, IE RTS to MOBA.

5uki5en5or
@5uki5en5or.bsky.social

a more spicy version is that "hardcore" sandbox MMOs died out because playing a battle royale can provide the similar player killing, twinking, looting and sometimes world boss experience with like one tenth of the time investment.

Psy Costanza
@ganondalf.bsky.social

yeah, I think that people had different primary reasons for playing RTS games (the campaigns, the clicky tactics, the basebuilding, etc) and in a wider game field a lot of them can get what they're looking for in more focused experiences

arrath.bsky.social
@arrath.bsky.social

In been on an ebb for a while but never truly died, TA-alikes as you mention, Dawn of War, Company of Heroes, the Men of War/Assault Squad/Gates of Hell Series, Eugen's games. Empire at War has a very vibrant modding scene for being 15 years old.

Lord Sparkinari
@sparkcj.bsky.social

Total Annihilation’s spiritual successor, Supreme Commander, has a fan community that keeps it updated on windows. Forged Alliance Forever. Worth a look if you like unrestricted resources (well on the map, still need the structures). Very epic.

VisceralRevolt
@visceralrevolt.com

Syndicate - The original Bullfrog strategy games, not the awful EA FPS. Speaking of Bullfrog, MAGIC CARPET. There's been nothing quite like it ever since. I'd say the original Microprose UFO Defense / XCOMs, but not even counting the official remakes, there have been ample spiritual successors.

Terumimi, Local EVIL Kitsune
@terumimi04.bsky.social

This is kinda a stretch but from my understanding the You Dont Know Jack games were pretty popular, to the point where 2011 was important enough to be a multi-console release and is probably one of the reasons towards jackbox being as big as it is. and now its forgotten in favor of other jackbox-

Terumimi, Local EVIL Kitsune
@terumimi04.bsky.social

trivia games like fibbage and murder party Other than that i have to unfortunately remind myself of how BUTCHERED yo-kai watch was to the point where it went from people saying this was gonna be a pokemon killer (which is admittedly never a good sign) to people not even knowing the 4th game exists

Techbox
@techbox.bsky.social

Would give so many things to see another SSX game, (the soundtrack must be licensed, and contain at least 1-2 ska tracks to really hit the correct Vibes).

Wade D McGinnis
@wadedmcginnis.bsky.social

Jade Cocoon Resistance The Darkness Transformers Fall of Cybertron Brutal Legend Oddworld Strangers Wraith Viva Pinata Prey - both versions Dino Crisis Zone of the Enders Kingdoms of Amalur Ghost of a Tale Clay Fighters PowerStone

🐦‍⬛N☰V☰RM0R☰🏴‍☠️🌌
@rvnwings.bsky.social

Off the top of my head, serious Sam, age of empires has cratered and exists only in remakes to my knowledge, starcraft over like 30 years has two games. Half life of course. I never played many dungeon crawl games but feel like those really aren't big anymore Are flight sim games still big at all?

deVriestron
@devriestron.bsky.social

I think you've nailed it with B&W. So innovative, had one sequel and then fucked off into unplayability. Everything else has had tons of revivals and remakes. Quake has been done kinda dirty, since '99 they've had Quake 4 (fine.) and Quake Champions felt forgotten about since day 1

rowan kaiser
@rowan.monster

I was going through all the metacritic scores for several different years for a thing and in the years surrounding 2010 like every Resistance title was in the top 10 consistently

rowan kaiser
@rowan.monster

Black and White I feel like is a complicated situation because it sort of fell off the radar as soon as it was released. The game it was supposed to be was so superior to the game it actually was that it couldn't help but not be influential. I do still hear about it but mostly as a cautionary tale

Ryong
@ryong.bsky.social

In middle school a friend told me about this game and how he was stuck in a hard mission for a week and I had never heard of it. A couple days later I went to his house and tried the mission and got it first try and he got super pissed.

Ryong
@ryong.bsky.social

I remember using some gun or grenade or something that he thought would be bad for it, but it worked out well. This is the first time I'm hearing about the game since then so yeah I don't feel like it was too popular

66ALW99
@66alw99.bsky.social

That was so good. I ripped the vomiting sound files from the "I am your father" scene, stitched them together, and had it as my ringtone. Good times! 😊

Nora! (Lune)
@lunebun.bsky.social

Wild Tangent Games, everyone I seemed to know in the early 2000s had a few WT games preinstalled on their pc, and us poor kiddos used to play all the demos semi religiously. IIRC a lot of pop cap games while not published by them did have WT demo versions too.

Almond
@almondsquirrel.bsky.social

NBA Jam has the triple distinction of a famous franchise being dead due to format (cabinet), developer acquisition (midway/acclaim) AND genre (sports action game)

ForeverAflame
@foreveraflame.bsky.social

FreeSpace and FreeSpace 2 fans sometimes joke that "the reason [FreeSpace 2] killed the genre was because it was so good that there was no point in making any further games; perfection had been achieved."

🌸 Rinienna 🌸Succubussy Dragon Streamer
@rinienna.bsky.social

there's a really cool indie game that i think is inspired by descent that does some really cool stuff, very fun co-op arcadey roguelike! store.steampowered.com/app/1311570/...

store.steampowered.comSave 35% on Desecrators on SteamDesecrators is a retro six-degrees-of-freedom shooter set in a 41st-century galaxy where outlaw hovercraft pilots plunder deep-space installations. Loot destructive weapons and powerful upgrades to ta...
Bigg
@bpbigg.bsky.social

Wing Commander is notable to me because it was THE star-studded FMV space sim and even though we've had some great space-type games in recent years Wing Commander has remained heartbreakingly absent

Dancouga Mellencamp
@yorpalsal.bsky.social

Its very depressing to think that Star Control 2 has been kept alive with more reverence thab a majority of games/series mentioned here. I mean not depressing in that it doesn't deserve it but moreso that it managed to survive as titans vanished around it.

.chantal//RYAN
@thoughtrise.bsky.social

black and white my beloved... installed and played it last year and it holds up 100%. felt fresher than any game i've played in recent years, tbh. my avid gamer kid saw me playing and wanted to try it out... he was immediately hooked and played it for 3 days straight. still brings it up regularly

Gavadon
@gavadon.bsky.social

Killzone always surprised me. I at least assumed someone would steal the way it did big multiplayer matches by making them a best of 7 different FPS match types. Nope, the game and gameplay just dead to the world.

venus as a boy
@venus-as-a-boy.bsky.social

honestly ninja gaiden. team ninja didn't even make the most recent one (it was platinum) and it bastardizes the originals, and DMCified the mechanics. rip ryu hayabusa, you were so good at murder o7

wrangler of level 1 goblins
@machminotaur.bsky.social

worms. wizardry as made by sir-tech. do tribes/deus ex/quake count? descent. starfleet command. unreal, lmao. fallout technically! cortex command wasn't as big as anything on here by miles but it was definitely huge for indies and it crashed and burned hard

headfallsoff
@headfallsoff.com

i think sir-tech wizardry and rtses fit the spirit of this best. for the shooters and rpgs often the original games are abandoned by shitty publishes but their influence lives on in genres that are still very active

ilitarist
@ilitarist.bsky.social

Wizardry would be a good example but it has plenty of remakes, both faithful and variations. It's also kinda is a progenitor of the whole JRPG genre, which makes it double strange it's largerly forgotten in the West. The official series ended with a great game too, somehow.

wrangler of level 1 goblins
@machminotaur.bsky.social

if we count influence then cortex command can't be on the list, because there's no way its dna isn't in noita but arena shooters are dead so unreal stays, and tribes 3 was DoA. actually, put twisted metal on there. a tv show doesn't fucking count.

User
@userplayer89.bsky.social

RPG's that weren't 3D third person just in general for awhile. space that went nearly extinct almost overnight in the 2000's outside of smaller enthusiast games by European devs.

Bruceski
@bruceski.bsky.social

Two weeks ago I had an argument with a friend about the best Lemmings 2 soundtrack and that's how you can tell we're not only both old but also massive dorks. (He prefers the Amiga version, I think DOS, while less "realistic", blends better. We both think SNES is too up-tempo.)

Omelas Failson
@phatscout.bsky.social

Driver 1 and 2 were a massive deals at the time of their releases for its open world driving and cinematic aspirations, to the point that Driv3r bombing was a massive debacle at the time. San Francisco managed to be a "decade later revival"t hat actually managed to breathe new life into the it.

Omelas Failson
@phatscout.bsky.social

Now Driver is just another old thing Ubisoft owns they're never gonna do anything with (or if they do it almost certainly won't be anything good) that's only remembered by most as "that game the PS2 era GTAs made a bunch of pot shots at"

fatalist.bsky.social
@fatalist.bsky.social

Starcraft remaster if you mean one with base-building as part of the main loop. Total War: Warhammer if you allow a 4x layer instead. Dawn of War IV later this year if you want the newest hotness. It’s a moribund genre. There are like hundreds of them on Steam that you and I have never heard of.

chimera aunt
@strangelittlevine.bsky.social

how has nobody tried to bring back King's Quest? it's been so many years. it's been [opening wikipedia to check] okay I had forgotten that someone DID try to bring back King's Quest so I guess it's disqualified from this

All Hallow’s Ben
@kosmologyb.bsky.social

the five part remake is quite good. It has christopher lloyd and zelda williams, and the story is really great, hitting on some beats from the original games if you’ve played them, but it’s very much its own thing

TrashkittenDeluxe
@trashkitten83.at.app.wafrn.net

Descent: Freespace (and the Descent series itself). Absolutely revolutionary space fighter games with amazing combat that actually felt as epic as a small fighter/bomber zipping in between massive capital ships should feel, and it just dropped off a cliff after the second one.

Derek Ledbetter
@derekledbetter.bsky.social

Well, they still make Oregon Trail. Oregon Trail must be the oldest video game still being made, because it debuted in a Minnesota 8th grade history class in 1971. (Though back then, it was a “computer game” but not a “video game”, because it was played on a teletype.)

NomadiCat
@nomadicat.bsky.social

Where in the World is Carmen Sandiego? The originals, that Brøderbund released in the 80s and 90s. This property spawned a game show, a Netflix show, and other pale imitations of the original. It has legs. Bring it back. Let me learn about other people and places through crime, dammit!

NomadiCat
@nomadicat.bsky.social

They also made Carmen an anti-hero which, I mean, I was always Team Carmen so fine with me. And I did try playing it. But it just wasn't nerdy enough. I crave the experience of low-stakes international villany crossed with Encyclopedia Brittanica-powered logic puzzles.

Peanut 🔞
@hipnt.bsky.social

Space flight stuff. Like Wing Commander, Freespace 2. I think somewhat due to the joystick no longer being the common accessory at the time. The genre is still around as a niche with Elite Dangerous at least.

Peter G
@kingsigy.bsky.social

I’ve always really enjoyed Psi-Ops. I would have to point to Splinter Cell, though. Ubisoft just cannot seem to figure out how to do a new one despite it being a simple idea.

Ryong
@ryong.bsky.social

Transport Tycoon reminds me of the much less successful Trade Empires... Black and White (and Populous) seems to have a spiritual successor being made in masters of albion but uh it doesn't seem to be very good

🌱 Jacen
@jacenat.bsky.social

It is difficult to overstate how dominant C&C was in the mid-late 90s. Its releases were topping the charts here in Germany/Austria for almost a year when they released. It was physically sold out during multiple occasions. I wanted to buy C&C 1 in August of 1996 and could not find it.

🌱 Jacen
@jacenat.bsky.social

The German version was a good 10 momths (through xmas and easter!) old. I ended up buying Warcraft 2 which started its own obsession, with a marketing booklet featuring diablo 1 in the box lol.

Seven [Play Baito Fight!!]
@kingofshibuya.itch.io

One of my best friends growing up didn’t have any consoles until N64, and so before then, these were the games he was always showing me at his house. I just assumed One Must Fall was the kind of game nobody else but us two would know about lol

MikeyT00
@devilmikey.bsky.social

Sierra, just in general. They were at one point one of the largest publishers/developers on the planet and most of their catalog has been completely forgotten despite a ton of their franchises being the biggest things in the world at the time.

haavi 🦐
@shickdits.bsky.social

the way SSX 3 remixes the song on the fly based on in-game context is something i have yet to hear again, too, it's phenomenal. most you get these days is maybe EQ settings getting changed when you crash a car in a racing game or something like that

Valiant Tor Johnson
@theswolenerd.bsky.social

Unreal is probably the big one for me but more because the entire western industry in now in thrall to Epic because of a game series they pretend never existed. Command and Conquer is probably the one I care about the most though

Valiant Tor Johnson
@theswolenerd.bsky.social

Oh actually, Ultima. The foundation of literally every western rpg, it’s spinoffs created imsims, pioneered fps movement and Ultima online spawned WoW and other MMOs. And yet you’ve gotta be pushing 40 to have even heard of it let alone played one.

LuigiXHero
@luigixhero.bsky.social

My grandpa got the whole family into Ultima online in the early 2000s so despite being in my 20s I have played a few of them and hundreds of hours of Ultima online, lol. I'm always raving about 7

Ryong
@ryong.bsky.social

I played ultima online and a bit of ultima 7 on an emulator back in like, 2002 and remember thinking ultima 7 looked like complete ass for a SNES game a couple years later some friends get super hooked on Tibia online and I'm just flabbergasted at why they'd play it instead of ultima online

Sevith
@sevith.bsky.social

Despite the fact that they still get made, do well, and have a constant stream of indie games based on them: Tony Hawk's Pro Skater. This probably has less to do with the games and more to do with skateboarding falling out of The Culture. But Tony Hawk Pro Skater 2 was a monolith. The Monolith.

MikeyT00
@devilmikey.bsky.social

When I was in early high school Pro Skater 2-4 were events man. As big as a Halo or Zelda or Mario or GTA. Then it just kind of fell off the map. Like you said, they still had entries but it just wasn't the same.