Don't judge a game by it's title
 

Ever have a game that one reason or another, whether the namesake, the genre, or something else, makes you think that game is a can't miss? That it's GOT TO BE GOOD? Only to find out it isn't good, and in fact, fairly poor? That is what this thread is about.

Note: This thread focuses more on titles that you thought would be good due to the namesake/genre, and not as much on how much advertising/promoting it received.

Here are a few I can think of:

NES: Mario is Missing

Summary: Years before Luigi's Mansion, the game, Mario is Missing comes out. The basic idea is Mario is missing and as Luigi, you have to find him by...traveling through time!!!! And learning facts. And basically becoming educated. Oh yeah, no fire flowers, goomba's, or anything like that. No, this is all about HISTORY. Suffice to say, after going from such hits as Super Mario World and super Mario 3, this game was very lacking. The fact that you couldn't get powers, couldn't fight (most) enemies, and were limited in even how you moved around the screen (save for Bowser fights) just made me think, "This game isn't what it was cracked out to be".

Defining Moment: I fought Bowser the first time thinking it was a real challenge. However, by the end of the game, due to boredom and frustration, when we fought, I stood there as I awaited Mario to get punked...only to see Bowser run right through him.



SNES: WCW Superbrawl

Summary: As you can probably tell from where a good amount of my posts are at, I'm a wrestling fan. Been so for a long, long time. Around when I first stated to watch it, my brother bought the game WCW Superbrawl. To describe it is to imagine this conversation:
Company Leader: "Alright, we need a game that can beat WWF's RAW. However, we got to make it unique."
Dev Team: "Well, how about humor? I mean, WWF's Raw really is more serious. We could have humorous, barely audible quotes by the wrestlers!"
Company Leader: "Good...but we need more. Something...unique..."
Dev Team: "What about the ref having some sort of corny accent? Or maybe even talking in an old-fashioned southern voice. I mean, he can talk in a way that is quite humorous. Can you imagine a ref counting in a weird way? It would be hilarious!!!"
Company Leader: "True...but I have one concern. We want to make ourselves unique from WWF but darn it, we want WCW to STILL be seen as a serious contender. Is there a way to counter-balance the humor?"
Dev Team: "Well, WWF's difficulty isn't that high. How about for that same ref, he has a insanely fast count? And I mean FAST. That would mean the player has to be very careful because at any moment the computer could win."
Company Leader: "Good, but I still worry about it not being serious enough. Also, Nintendo wants us to help them come up with extra cash due to their hardware. I considered having the game eventually have the system melt down but i am wondering if there is something better?"
Dev Team: "How about for that same ref, we put in some code in which the player has a random chance of kicking out, no matter how hard or fast he or she pushes the buttons? That will wear down controllers AND make the game more difficult. With that, people will definitely take the game seriously, AND it will help Nintendo rake in some extra cash as players need to buy extra controllers."
Company Leader: "Perfect! Alright, onto it then!"

Defining Moment: After wearing my opponent down so he has no health, he managed to get two falls on me even though my guy has nearly all his energy.

SNES: Final Fantasy Mystic Quest
Summary: This was a hard one to put on there. The reason it gets on here is it is compared to the previously released FF2 and FF3 during that video game era. FF2 and FF3 has masterful storylines, wonderful music, a unique and creative battle system, among many other things. I played FF3 until the clock on it stopped at 99:99. FF2 I played quite a bit as well. So after playing through those hearing about another Final Fantasy game, well, I was excited. And then I played it...and was disappointed. The music is decent. I can give it that. However, the battle system, character choice, and storyline truly paled compared to the aforementioned games. The difficulty was also lacking. Don't get me wrong, FF2 and FF3 weren't THAT difficult, but here was a game in which in the first town you could run, get potions, leave, go back, get more potions, and continue until you had 99. It was also missing the depth of the battle system, items, and accessories that truly made Final Fantasy 3 (okay, 6) fun. Don't get me wrong, it's not a horrible game, but compared to the other Final Fantasies, when I see this, I feel disappointed.

Defining Moment:

Sonic. Any game after Sonic & Knuckles.

What. Sonic Adventure is a pretty cool guy. Even Sonic Heroes sounds better than the game itself was.

Oh right, works the other way as well.


Seek & Destroy for me. The name and the cover give a completely wrong impression of this budget priced cute tank RPG.

I'd have to say Jade Cocoon fits this bill for me. The box said it was an rpg where you collected monsters and summoned thim into battle with the added bonus of being able to fuse them to make more powerful and different monsters (I'm a sucker for monster collecting rpgs). Sounds great and after all, that's basically what SMT:Nocturne is and that's one of my all time favourite games but sadly, Jade Cocoon is possibly the most boring game I ever played. The plot is some save the forests bullshit, the guy strolls around the screen like he's got lead boots on and the monsters are really badly designed. When you fuse them you just get the same fucking thing with different stats, maybe in a different colour and the whole thing is just dull and crap and horrible.

Wasn't Mystic Quest one of those games that Squaresoft just tacked the Final Fantasy name on so it would sell here?

Megaman Power Battles isn't really a confusing title, but it's always portrayed as a fighting game. I was expecting more than just a string of Robot Master fights with characters other than Megaman to play as.

No, you're thinking of Final Fantasy Adventure (Seiken Densetsu 1) and the three Final Fantasy Legend games (I think they were SaGa games). Basically all the FFs on the original Gameboy.

Harvest Moon: Save the Homeland on PS2 is a perfect example of this thread. I played a crazy amount of Back to Nature on the PSX, and the original on ZSNES before that, so when I heard there was one out for PS2 I asked for it one Christmas without bothering to read any reviews. After all, it's a simple enough formula.

Farming + relationships + festival mini-games = addictive as hell.

How can you screw that up? Easily, apparently. I played it for a few hours and was getting bored kind of fast. The town was big, but there didn't seem to be much to do. I looked up an FAQ to see what kind of stuff there was to look forward to only to discover that Save the Homeland had no festivals or dating. All you did was farm crops to pass the time. I think I played it maybe once after that since I really wanted to like the game, but it seemed like a waste of time with nothing to do.

Killer Instinct on the Gameboy comes to mind to a lesser extent. I was never a fan of Mortal Kombat or Street Fighter, but I loved KI on the SNES so I bought the port. While it wasn't that bad and I played it a lot with friends, I was always irritated by the removal of Cinder and Riptor since they had been my favorite characters. They didn't make it into Killer Instinct Gold either, but this came first.

Yeah, Seiken Densetsu 1/Final Fantasy Adventure (GB) was called Mystic Quest in Europe, but Final Fantasy: Mystic Quest (SNES) was released in Europe as Mystic Quest Legend without the "Final Fantasy" in its title, because the franchise was barely known here (FFVII was the first FF to be released in the old world).

I´d say it´s just the same as with Seiken Densetsu 1 - Square added the "Final Fantasy" just for its popularity (and therefore left it out in Europe). I don´t consider it a Final Fantasy, not even a spinoff.

Btw, FF:MQ was released way before FFIII/VI.

What. Europe didn't even get FFII (4Jap) or FFIII (6Jap)? I find that hard to believe.

Also, Final Fantasy Mystic Quest was released in Japan as "Final Fantasy USA." It was an ill-advised attempt to make a "Learner RPG" to try to expand the market in the US for RPGs by making a simplified one. Would've helped if they didn't make it appear to be designed for 4-year-olds, but what can you do?

Would've helped if you retards actually played it because it's not a bad game.

Yeah, I remember liking Mystic Quest back in the day. It was a lot easier than other FF games, but I don't recall it having any issues aside from that.

Jep, no Final Fantasy before VII. And no Dragon Quest/Warrior before VIII (exept DQ Monsters on GBC that was released druring the Pokémon craze). That´s why they didn´t even bother to call it Dragon Quest VIII. Silly Europeans shouldn´t bother what the hell happened to part I-VII.


I remember MQ being my first RPG and I quite liked it. My major disappointment at the begginning derived from the fact that I expected something like Zelda. And turn-based combat with a 2-people party (with one character played by the computer if you wish so) isn´t too exciting, even if you haven´t played a Final Fantasy before. But as a beginner´s RPG (as it was intended and even advertised here in Europe) it was quite ok, especially its music.

When FFVII came out the only other rpg available at all for the Playstation was Suikoden. Prior to that, it was basically Zelda on the SNES and that was about it for rpgs in Europe. There might have been others released I guess but nobody had ever heard of them or bought them as they got no publicity and were never mentioned in magazines. I owned every single rpg available for the Playstation in PAL format pretty much until the PS2 took over and that only required buying one game every couple of months. Europeans don't dislike rpgs, we were just never given the chance to play any until really recently.

You ought to mention "Breath of Fire II" and "Lufia" (II - Rise of the Sinistrals for the enlighted ones), two fine SNES RPGs that happened to make their way across the sea, but that´s it.

Resident Evil: Outbreak

I'm sure it could be fun in multiplayer, but i was really hoping single player was fun (as it sometimes is) cause i'm a much more single player oriented gamer. Needless to say, the single player game had no work put into it, and was a complete write off for me.

Basically all of the Army Men games after Sarges Heroes

The only one i've liked so far that i've played was the helicopter one (exact title escapes me) I bought Sarges War second hand recently, will play it when i get around to it. It looks kind of like a return to what made Sarges Heroes so good, but i could be wrong. It was $5, so i don't really care in the end. (i realize Sarges Heroes wasn't a fantastic game to begin with, but nostalgia plays heavily into for me, and it had those quirks that appeal to me and no one else apparently)

Windwaker (but only to a certain extent)

I loved Windwaker, but Ocarina was years better. You could say i was significantly disappointed at the lack of temples, and the completely different feel of WW. But again, great game. Just not as great as Ocarina.

Also if you include Sega consoles, the entire Phantasy Star series and the Shining Force games were released in Europe.

I should mention that being disappointed with a game does not necessarily mean it's horrible. If you look at what I said about FFMQ, I said I was disappointed...but I also said it wasn't a bad game.

Don't get me wrong, there are games that are disappointing and suck. WCW Superbrawl in my opinion is one of them. Yet there are others as some members have talked about being OK, maybe even decent, yet disappointing for one reason or another.

What can I say, I was an RPG connoseiur in elementary school! :( Didn't hurt that I played it AFTER IV and VI.

BITCHIN' soundtrack though.

I played it AFTER IV. Well, II. Spoony motherfuckin' bard.