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Bad takes (or lies) on old video game magazines
- Thread starter Oscarzx n
- Start date
Lol I believe it. I dug that one out while cleaning my house recently and got a good laugh at that line on the cover.
Really great posts on what happened. Street fighter 3 really didn't have nothing good going for it at the time it came out. Capcom just took way too long to make this game happen.
Also one thing to add to all of this is that by the time this thing came out many of us Arcade goers where already starting to visit arcades less often due to the home consoles getting stronger. I remember having Street fighter Alpha at my home on the Sega Saturn is it was a perfect port of a very strong game so why go at an arcade to play that odd SF game with a bunch of weird characters?
Most of my fighting game crew from around town would just play at home more often since we already had that and a decent port of VF2 on Saturn along with perfect ports of 2d fighting games here and there.
And as far as fighting games when the DC came out with Soulcalibur and a version of MVC2 it was over. I think by the time Soul Calibur came out I had already forgotten that Sf3 existed until people brought it up.
I had a few issues for free from them, been a fan since-that first issue, price is way up there now, wish i still had those..
I love this post. I can imagine a younger version of yourself with Rare posters on your bedroom wall and Donkey Kong patches on your backpack reading this and the lifelong anger it caused. The Rare avatar is just perfect.
But I agree, this is a terrible list. Why in the world did they hate Rare so much?
It's probably because EGM gave all of those games really high scores in the past. They felt they had to "correct those mistakes".
Opinions change, and that's perfectly fair, but there's something really odd, when half the list is Rare.
Based on my own experience of growing up in 90s Britain, Edge always came across as smug, overly pretentious twonks.
the more people reflect inward and discover how mediocre the first DKC is, the better gaming discourse will become.
Speaking of Edge and Gunstar Heroes, here's the review they did waaaaay back when.
It's a pretty bizarre write-up.
Their biggest complaint is that there aren't any secret rooms or levels, as if Edge was expecting "Super Mario World with guns" or something.
It's a pretty bizarre write-up.
Their biggest complaint is that there aren't any secret rooms or levels, as if Edge was expecting "Super Mario World with guns" or something.
Really, it's the same for Banjo Kazooie and Killer Instinct, too. They were flashy games, but they both were much worse than the games they were trying to emulate (and the game that KI was trying to emulate wasn't even good to begin with!).
Perfect Dark is actually still an incredibly solid shooter with just a few minor bad design decisions here and there, so at least its praise was still well earned.
LMAO. This reads like satire and made me LOL for real at work. This thread is great. Made me reminisce my EGM subscription days.
Even in terms of 1997 Fighting Games, Mortal Kombat 4 was probably as much of a disaster as Street Fighter 3.
I'm not sure if we're supposed to be compiling sentiment that was a "bad take" even at the time it was written, or if this is meant to be a list of attitudes/opinions that time has revealed to be a "bad take". Like I won't deny that there was a pretty tepid reaction to Street Fighter 3 at the time, but as the years have worn on I think we can recognize that that reaction was kind of dumb. So much of it was just based on superficial crap like "These new characters are ugly" or "I don't want 2D sprites anymore" or "This isn't the revolutionary title I imagined it would be." Vanilla SF3 wasn't as great as 3rd Strike but it's not exactly the disappointment of the year (particularly in retrospect).
Yeah, comparing Perfect Dark to other MP FPS on the PS1 or Saturn... it is clearly an excellent game (though I never really got into it as I was heavy into PC FPS at the time).
That being said, DKC2 is a very fine, exceptional platformer and I totally get its reception. Can't say the same about any other Rare platformer.
I agree with DKC, but hell naw at Banjo Kazooie. Being able to grab all 10 puzzle pieces in one go (which is actually possible for all but one level!) automatically makes it better than Super Mario 64.
But seriously, I honestly never compared it to SM64 all that much. Yes, they're both platformers, but so are a dozen other games on the N64. Banjo's focus were very obviously different things, but in the end, they're both great examples of their genre.
I recently replayed both and could be bothered with Banjo for much longer than SM64 (in fact, I actually completed it). To do what I just said I don't do that often: Banjo's later levels are quite a bit better than Mario's.
If you think MK4 was anywhere near the ballpark of anticipation that Street Fighter freaking Three was, I don't even know what we're talking about anymore.
First of all, much like Street Fighter Alpha, SF3 remains an underwhelming entry that few people would play today if not for its successive iterations. The reasons go far and beyond "I don't want 2D sprites", and characterizing them as such is just wildly disingenuous.
Second, and most importantly, there's no such thing as "disappointing in retrospect". You don't get to tell people from 1997 that the game wasn't really disappointing, by completely disregarding the expectations of the time; that's the opposite of how disappointment works!
This thread is about takes that were either hilariously wrong at the time, or proven hilariously wrong eventually. "SF3 is 1997's disappointment of the year", simply put, is neither. Take the L and move on.
Banjo Kazooie was always great (honestly, it's Tooie that's worse in retrospect); Killer Instinct is dumb fun but was never pretending to be more than that. DK64... yeah, that was an example of the hype ouroboros eating its own tail.
And while DKC1 is overshadowed by the much superior sequel(s), the whole push to retroactively label it "as a mediocre game" (when it's probably in the 90%+ percentile of SNES platformers) that just "fooled people" with prerendered graphics always felt like a push by salty Yoshi's Island and Genesis fans over the fact the first game dominated the end of the 16-bit era, and waited until Rare's fall from grace in the mid-to-late-00s as the opportune time to go back and paint their whole output as "overrated."
And while DKC1 is overshadowed by the much superior sequel(s), the whole push to retroactively label it "as a mediocre game" (when it's probably in the 90%+ percentile of SNES platformers) that just "fooled people" with prerendered graphics always felt like a push by salty Yoshi's Island and Genesis fans over the fact the first game dominated the end of the 16-bit era, and waited until Rare's fall from grace in the mid-to-late-00s as the opportune time to go back and paint their whole output as "overrated."
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lol
Nintendo Power did not want to just flat out call LJN "Shit" so they used terms like "Distinctive LJN style" to describe the games instead.
I have no idea how we're really meant to gauge anticipation and hype of a product from 25 years ago, beyond our own subjective experiences and cloudy sense of what was hot at the time. Or if that's even really supposed to be the metric to measure it by. From a commercial and financial perspective, MK4 essentially put the franchise in the dirt for half a decade, while Street Fighter lived on with the Alpha series, Versus series and Double Impact/Third Strike. MK4's effect on the franchise as a whole was certainly more pronounced. There was not even enough interest in it to garner expansions, let alone sequels.
I think the people of 1997 will get along just fine, whether I think their reactions to SF3 were kinda dumb or not.
I wish the text of the article were still available or archived somewhere, just so we'd have a better sense of where they were coming from. I have a stack of Next Gens in the closet somewhere but I don't think this issue is one of them.
EDIT: for completion's sake, here's the second half of their preview of SFIII a couple months later where they expressed concerns (the subheader was, "In the age of 3D fighting games, is there still room for the classic 2D gameplay of the Street Fighter series?"), and their review a bit after that:
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How about hard numbers?
Arcade cabinets sold:
Street Fighter II': Champion Edition – 140,000 (Japan)[SUP][10][/SUP]
Super Street Fighter II – 100,000[SUP][11][/SUP]
Street Fighter II: The World Warrior – 60,000[SUP][12][/SUP]
Mortal Kombat II – 27,000[SUP][13][/SUP]
(I can't find numbers for MKIII).
Home sales:
- Street Fighter II - 15.5 million
Is this bizarro world? What the fuck? It's Street Fighter, not MK, that didn't get any mainline entries for over a decade, not MK!
Mortal Kombat: Deadly Alliance - Wikipedia
Mortal Kombat: Deception - Wikipedia
Mortal Kombat: Armageddon - Wikipedia
It's clear to me by now that you're just trolling, so I guess this is where I bow out of this nonsense.
There was a UK magazine that had clearly been bribed to give a glowing review to Men in black the game. Iirc the mag might have been "play", had Hwoarang from Tekken 3 on the cover and gave it 90%+, however any part of that may be wrong (definitely wasn't opm).
Can't find a scan of it but would love to see it again.
Can't find a scan of it but would love to see it again.
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"MK4 essentially put the franchise in the dirt for HALF a decade "
There are 5 years in between the release of MK4 and MK5 (Deadly Alliance). Half a decade. During this period there were no expansions to MK4 and no side-games. MK Special Forces was released as a terrible 3rd person action game but that's about it.
SF3, for all its woes, still got two expansions and the side-series continued. The new characters of SF3 were persona non grata, but Capcom was still capable of milking nostalgia from the SF2-era World Warriors in the Alpha, Versus, and EX titles.
EDIT: for completion's sake, here's the second half of their preview of SFIII a couple months later where they expressed concerns (the subheader was, "In the age of 3D fighting games, is there still room for the classic 2D gameplay of the Street Fighter series?"), and their review a bit after that:
Kinda funny that the "Biggest Disappointment of the Year?" headline ultimately turned out to be clickbait -- or in 1997 would it be called "flipbait"? "Browsebait"? "Pagebait"?
The actual article has some very mild hand-wringing about the fact that the game is still 2D, but doesn't take much of a negative tone. Let alone one that justifies proclaiming it the disappointment of the year.
The 4-star review has more weird gaffes that I associate with that era. There's this idea that everything has already been done in 2D, and that no progression can happen in a series until it moves to 3D. How many franchises did that mentality kill?
fwiw, my personal recollection is that I viewed Street Fighter III as one of the most disappointing games of all-time. I cannot confidently articulate what I had expected, but it certainly wasn't what I felt like was another SF II version.
obvi the game itself is fine.
obvi the game itself is fine.
I played Street Fighter 3 in the arcades, in early 1998. It was okay, very flashy and no lines for the game, not like with MK4 or MVC at the same time. There were only something around 1200 cabinets made
All those games better than SUPER MARIO WORLD lmao
EGM Issue 200 Top 200 games list wyd
Nothing wrong with this though?
A lot are in games still, but with a few exceptions, not in the media. Mostly due to salaries.
Is there an archive of old magazines? I remember an old EGM preview saying you could like, take things off of tables in the REmake and use them as weapons in a pinch, like candlesticks and what not, but I definitely do not have that article around anymore. I'd love to see if I'm remembering that right.
I ended up nostalgically browsing through my old Next Gens because of this thread, and if there is such a site dedicated to archiving old magazines I would be happy to donate a bunch of of scans or even the originals.
Found the issue I think I was thinking of and nope. I must have either seen it somewhere else or misremembered. Ah well, it was like 20 years ago.
I found what I wanted on this site: https://retrocdn.net/Main_Page
Maybe they could use them!
I think the Medal of Honor games on PS1 have some solid two player modes but yeah, console FPS often got rated without factoring in how much better stuff was on PC. I bought Perfect Dark day one and was pretty disappointed that a RAM pack compatible game was even worse for frame rate than Goldeneye. I expected so much more out of that game given that it had stellar reviews, came out years later, and the genre advanced so much. It had some neat gadgets and ideas but other aspects dragged down the experience for me.
EGM's overrated list having NiGHTS on it is a very '00s thing to do. No way is it overrated in 2021 where it barely gets mentioned.
This is one of the main goals of the Video Game History Foundation, although I don't know if they have plans to digitize the magazines. I hope they do one day!
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I know its not a magazine but i still love this line.
That belongs in a museum. What a great quote.
Yeah, i think it's weird too. Game got great reviews when it came out across the board and then everyone sort of forgot about it. In retrospect, gaming journalists comparing it to Mario 64 and Sonic probably hurt it later on down the road.
MK4 arcade came out in 1997. The console ports came out in 1998 and sold well. MK Gold was an expansion that came out in 1999. The MK team released The Grid in 2000. They were working on a version of MK5 that wasn't Deadly Alliance for arcade that got canceled/turned into MKDA.
These situations are different. MK4 was the last arcade game because of the state of the business in America. They then did The Grid and transitioned from making arcade games that would get ported to console to making console games internally. They also had a rough transition going from early 3D graphics to PS2 era technology. This was a small arcade team, less than like 10 guys, with limited experience working on console technology. They had to expand greatly between the development of The Grid and MKDA. If anything going from releasing The Grid in 2000 to having Deadly Alliance ship in 2002 is impressive and quick.
Had Midway stayed in the arcade business longer like Capcom did there is no doubt there'd have been more versions of MK4 going into 1998 and a MK5 before 2002.
This Metal Gear Solid guide i have always seemed pretty amateurish. To be fair the cover says "Completely Unauthorized." Not really a bad take but its still silly non the less.
Gamefan/Dave seemed to attracted controversy. I adored the magazine (even had a subscription to it), and it's special brand of 'gaming hype', but it felt like a sketchy publication at the best of times. I remember EGM (or was it GamePro) accused Gamefan of selling their preview/review copies of games through their store.
And then there was the controversy with one of their issues that had been "hacked" before it went to print. Someone had removed a review for a baseball game, and replaced it with a grammatically-appalling racist rant against Japanese people.
Yup. That's him.
I'd love some sort of Gamefan tell-all from him and other staff members. I'm sure there are some stories.
Theres a famous spanish review of Castlevania Symphony of the Night that gave then a 7 and proclaim that it was a game nobody would remember in a few years lol
Edit: here it is for anyone who understand spanish. Basically they call the 2D graphics "SNES like" and animations "poor" hahaha
Edit: here it is for anyone who understand spanish. Basically they call the 2D graphics "SNES like" and animations "poor" hahaha
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For a second there I thought that yellow "border" was part of the magazine cover, like Edge had suddenly become National Geographic for an issue. :P
Edge gave it a 6/10 btw. Which was pretty fucking generous IMO.
Also yes, pretty much any magazine with "Is _________ the [Zelda/Halo/Pokémon/GTA/etc.] killer???" on the cover has pretty much doomed said game. I can't think of a single such prediction that turned out even remotely true.
