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10 FORGOTTEN FRANCHISE-STARTERS

1/5/2018

25 Comments

 
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Everything has to start somewhere... even this sentence, which began with the word "everything". And also ended with it. 

However, some of the biggest game franchises in the world are now almost unrecognisable from the games which started them. Here are ten such examples.

​That's right, kids: it's another exciting Digitiser listicle! 
MARIO BROS
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The debut of Luigi. The debut of Mario hitting enemies from below to upend them onto their backs, and punching blocks (or one block in particular anyway). And the debut of the iconic, green, turtle-disgorging, pipes. These are just some of the elements introduced in the first game Mario ever properly headlined - which, lest we forget, was released in 1983, initially in arcades only.

In every other respect, it shares few similarities with his later games. Compare this single-screen nonsense to, say, Super Mario Odyssey, and your trousers will literally fall off, and blow away down the street!

"Come back, my trousers!" 

"What's going on here, sir?"

​"I'm sorry. officer, but my trousers fell off when I compared Mario Bros. to super Mario Odyssey - and now they've blown away!"

"Could you come with me, sir?"


Interestingly, the game wasn't a hit upon its initial release - which coincided with the 1983 games industry crash. It was ported to home systems - the Apple II, Atari's assorted consoles, the Amstrad CPC, Commodore 64, ZX Spectrum and, of course, the NES - but it wasn't until Super Mario Bros. that the character really became an icon, and his future trajectory was locked in.

You know: locked in like a bunch of late-night pub-drunks.
STREET FIGHTER
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Pretty much everyone played Street Fighter 2. Hardly anybody played Street Fighter. In fact, so obscure was Street Fighter that Street Fighter 2 wasn't even considered a sequel by most people, who somehow ignored the very obvious Roman numerals in the title. 

The structure of the original Street Fighter was similar, superficially, to its successor; playing through as Ryu, you had to defeat a sequence of enemies in best-of-three bouts. There were special moves, and six-button controls (though deluxe versions featured two pressure-sensitive attack buttons, which responded to how hard you hit them). In the two-player game, fights took place between Ryu and Ken - with their identical move sets ensuring an evenly-matched "ruckus".

There were also a few enemies who later recurred in the franchise, but in almost every other respect, Street Fighter is now exposed to be exactly what it was; a massive nude (a faltering, tentative, less-good version of Street Fighter 2)!
DUKE NUKEM
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Before Duke Nukem 3D there was Duke Nukem and Duke Nukem 2; a pair of MS-DOS platform shoot 'em ups, which made little impression on anybody. Beyond the main character, and an assortment of weaponry, they bore almost no resemblance to their 3D descendent, with none of the over-the-top humour and now-outdated misogyny.

Duke Nukem: the Roy "Chubby" Brown of video gaming. But less racist.
METAL GEAR
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The original Metal Gear, released long before things got Solid - solid as a rock! - was a top-down stealth shooter for the MSX2.

​Though bearing little graphical resemblance to the more recent entries in the series, there are many elements which carried over to Metal Gear Solid on the PlayStation; the exclamation marks above the enemies' heads when they detect you, the slightly peculiar plot, the weird character names, and moments where the characters break the fourth wall and address the player directly...

It was, of course, later ported to the NES - as well as the Commodore 64. Betcha didn't know that, you knowledge-less freaks.
RED DEAD REVOLVER
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Released in 2004 for the PS2 and Xbox, Red Dead Revolver now feels like the predecessor to Red Dead Redemption... albeit only in sporadic bursts.

The main thing lacking was massive, open-world scale of its sequel, being divided into a more traditional, linear, video game structure, with levels (in several of which you controlled other characters) and boss fights. It was relatively well-received, but not to the degree that anybody was crying out for a sequel. Consequently: not everybody realised that Redemption even was a sequel. 

Check out my cool cowboy song:

Cowboys, cowboys,
Taking Indian land by force!
Why are you even called cowboys,
When you ride around on a horse?
​Yee-hah!
CALL OF DUTY
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Released in 2003, the biggest innovation of Call of Duty was the clever it handled your computer-controlled teammates, and the scale of the battles. Unlike later instalments in the series, it was much more arcade-y in its approach, but its big, set-piece moments - spread across three campaigns which focused on British, American and Soviet forces - are the most memorable element. For the time, the number of enemies it featured on screen was unprecedented.

While it certainly strived for the epic scale that the series would become known for, what it lacked were the later ham-fisted attempts to wring emotion out of its combat. Here you're just dropped into the fight, and everyone you meet is fairly featureless cannon-fodder.

"Oh, boo-hoo... isn't war sad?"

Not here it isn't. It's well wicked, guy!
FALLOUT
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1997's Fallout clearly links to its later, more visually grand, sequels, being set in an alternate, mid-20th Century post-apocalypse. You played a Vault-dweller - just like the later games - and could recruit team members, tackle quests and side-quests in multiple ways, while radiation and mutants were a constant cause for concern. 

Obviously, its isometric viewpoint is starkly old-school in comparison to the lush, 3D, open world of the later games, but you don't need a geneticist to tell you that the series' DNA is all-too apparent.
FIFA INTERNATIONAL SOCCER
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Developed on the Mega Drive under the name EA Soccer, before Electronic Arts acquired the rights to use the FIFA brand for the rest of forever, FIFA International Soccer bears little resemblance to the later games in the series. Apart from being, y'know, a football game.

There was no 3D here, but an isometric viewpoint, which made it markedly different to most other football games. Furthermore, the license didn't extend to local teams and players. Even the international teams featured players with made-up names (such as Ken Trifle, Ben-Bob Danube, and Trenchington Campus). Foreshadowing what a cash cow the series was to become for EA, FIFA International Soccer was the best selling game of 1993, shifting half a million copies - 200,000 more than EA had estimated. 

Get this: did you know that "soccer" is actually a British word? It's a contraction of the term "association football". We should all be thankful they didn't shorten it to "asso".
GRAND THEFT AUTO
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You wouldn't have expected 1997's Grand Theft Auto to spawn one of the biggest-selling game franchise of all time, but the free-roaming nature of the ultra-violent gameplay - here depicted from above - was irresistible. It was only a step towards the unbridled freedom the series would go on to offer, still being tied to such old-fashioned conceits as lives and levels, but it pointed the way like a helpful local.

The graphics were basic, even for the time, but the game's sound - it boasted multiple radio stations, just like its successors - was singled out by reviewers for being well good, brah.
BATTLEFIELD 1942
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2002's Battlefield 1942 - at least, visually - was a long way from the games which followed it, but it multiplayer focus, and co-operative, team-based, gameplay, were a signpost towards the future of online shooters. Notably, whereas later instalments in the series have strived for some sort of vague realism, 1942 was unashamedly bold and tongue-in-cheek. 

No plots here, sir!
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25 Comments
Adam
1/5/2018 09:56:33 am

Nice and safe today :)

Reply
Ian
1/5/2018 10:00:42 am

Regards GTA, we'll always have The Ballad Of Chapped Lips Calhoun by Sideways Hank O'Malley & The Alabama Bottle Boys. So good.

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wariospeedwagon
1/5/2018 10:36:26 am

Truly the highlight of GTA's soundtrack!

There's a hip hop song I used to love on the soundtrack too, apparently called Gangster Friday, that featured a weird, seemingly lazy, acrostic section, made from the letters GTA

The G = Grand Theft Auto, which is accurate I suppose
The T = Theft, which is also accurate but has already been covered in the previous line. Guess it is used more generally in this line.
The A = "A, hey, what do you say" They seem to be saying, stuff it, this experiment has run it's coarse lets get back to the violent lyrics

Reply
Bent titty link
1/5/2018 10:08:06 am

Awesome! only recently saw the special buttons for Street Fighter - Effing HUGE.

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CJJC
1/5/2018 10:59:58 am

Always got time for Complications from Ye Olde Originale GTA.

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Adam
1/5/2018 11:26:00 am

I love the fact that in the original street fighter you could hit 'enemy' once and then sit in the corner and block your way to victory.

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Guru Larry link
1/5/2018 11:27:36 am

I'd also add Wolfenstein, Soul Blade/Edge, Bomberman and even Assassins' Creed

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Jocular Jeremy the Joking Jeep
1/5/2018 11:42:17 am

I enjoyed this half list, half article. Have you considered comprising a half test, half article?

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DEAN
1/5/2018 11:42:26 am

Sunspot Amusements in Ilfracombe had the original Street Fighter Coinop and it was awesome!

I loved that Ninja - he looked so great!

I can't remember Ryu wearing those pretty little ruby slippers... Look fab on, though.

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Mrtankthreat
1/5/2018 11:56:52 am

Who's forgetting about the original GTA and Fifa? Weren't they pretty big hits? And even Call of Duty to some extent wouldn't be something I'd expect on a list like this. I'd have included Waverace on the gameboy myself.

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MENTALIST
1/5/2018 12:54:55 pm

If you want a forgotten precursor to the Battlefield series, you ought to go look up Codename Eagle.

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Bobby Chuckles
1/5/2018 01:03:23 pm

The etymological point about soccer is interesting, and is true of many other perceived Americanisms that get people's gussets in a twist. Calling it "fall" instead of autumn was the norm in olde England. We brits changed it to be more French sounding, and therefore classier, more la-de-da. Ditto cramming "u"s in words like favorite. Le-pompt-di-le-pompt, monsieur!

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Chris
2/5/2018 11:42:30 am

Weren't the 'U's taken out by the bloke who wrote the first American dictionary? Apparently he thought words were too complicated and removed a load of letters and chucked them in the bin, or was trying to save ink or something.

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Rick (no, not that one)
1/5/2018 01:32:31 pm

Happy to see the Amstrad CPC mentioned - and in it's correct place, before the Commodore 64 and ZX Spectrum.

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Mark M
1/5/2018 01:48:18 pm

That's fighting talk, that is!

I agree BTW - I really regret throwing out my CPC and 400+ games during house renovation but felt like I had to be ruthless... :(

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Rick (no, not that one)
1/5/2018 03:17:49 pm

I feel your pain - I tossed mine the same day as the Amiga and all the games.

MD Cribuffs
1/5/2018 01:48:24 pm

I remember the original Street Fighter coin-op instructions saying there were special moves, but never saw them and they weren’t in the 8-bit home computer versions. I was told that the space bar did a fireball on the c64, but that could have been a lie.

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Acid_Arrrow
1/5/2018 02:41:58 pm

It's funny how film franchises get worse as they go along (most of the time) where as game franchises get better (except when they don't).

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Mark M
1/5/2018 03:17:07 pm

Like EA rebadging the same sports games every year whilst merely tinkering around the edges... NHL 17 was an actual improvement, though, I'll give them that.

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colincidence link
2/5/2018 12:45:55 pm

Like... tech progress?

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Mark M
2/5/2018 03:46:16 pm

That doesn't always guarantee an improvement, though. The first game my mates want to play when we have a boozy get together at mine is Mariokart on the SNES which looks gash by todays standards. :)

HotSoapyBeard
2/5/2018 08:20:17 am

Does everyone remember the long lines of Elvis impersonators walking down the street in GTA 2 just waiting to be mown down?
I tend to think they wouldn’t get away with that today, especially with how the first person camera makes hit-and-runs disturbingly gruesome.
As the King himself said “Ambition is a dream with a V8 engine.”
Actually that isn’t that relevant, oh well ta ta for now.

Reply
organichamster
7/5/2018 03:37:02 am

GTA 1 had groups of Hari Krsna monks, if you took them all down at once you received a Gouranga bonus. Also if you punched and/or burped/farted at the leader they would all start following you.

Sidenote - in the original GTA pressing the horn button whilst a pedestrian would cause you to burp or fart.

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Matthew Long
2/5/2018 09:42:19 pm

I remember some of these things!

(Glad I could contribute to the conversation.)

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organichamster
7/5/2018 03:38:03 am

They had a Mario Bros. arcade machine in the Sandcastle at Blackpool (possibly at Bubbles in Morecambe, the two are a bit interchangable in my memory.)

Reply



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