Sequels. They should, in theory, build upon what has come before. They should be better, a consolidation of everything that made their predecessor great, with fresh takes, new ideas... but enough of what fans loved first time around.

That doesn't always happened. The history of gaming is littered with the husks of sequels which, for one reason or another, remain overshadowed by their forebears; they were just too similar, too different, or too bad. 

Here are ten of them. 

Prince of Persia... Another World... Flashback.... What do all these games have in common? That's right: all of them made me want to stab skewers into my brain.

Also: they formed the backbone of a weird sort of sub-genre in the late-80s/early-90s. To wit: flip-screen platformers with rotoscoped characters and really annoying controls 'em ups. Few of us who played these games got through them without polluting the air with the sort of language that would make a sailor blush. 

They were insanely demanding, the challenge coming from the weird weighting of the main character, who would plummet to his death if you didn't press the jump button at precisely the right moment. Each screen was a puzzle in itself, success stemming - essentially - from training yourself to remember when the correct time was to press which control. 

​1991's Another World from Delphine's software took Prince of Persia's basic idea, gave it a sci-fi make-over, and stirred into the mix what were - for the time - some truly cinematic, albeit heavily stylised, cut-scenes. A year later, Delphine released the not-a-sequel-but-could've-been Flashback, developed by one Paul "The Ball" Cuisset, who had previously frustrated players with his point-and-click adventure Future Wars. 

Understandably, Cuisset brought aspects of his point-and-click puzzle experience to the genre, along wth his baffling inclination to make important objects literally the size of a single pixel - thus driving players to distraction, as they scoured the levels looking for things they'd missed. But who cares about whether or not a game is actually functional, right? 

I mean, why don't we just hide the controls on our microwave ovens? Make them the size of a pinhead, so customers have to search for them, and then have to insert a needle into a hole in order to to program it. That'd be fun, right?

Anyway. Look now: Flashback is back - 25 years on from its debut - with a special anniversary edition.

Many, many, many years ago... I got myself into a right lather of anticipation for Sonic Spinball.

Remember dat? It was a - ha ha ha... ha ha ha - "spin-off" of the Sonic The Hedgehog franchise, which took that series' Casino Night Zone pinball-y bits, and built a whole game around them. At least, that's what it did in theory.

As ideas go; that's brilliant. A platformer that's also a pinball game. Except, Sonic Spinball wasn't terribly good. It was achingly mediocre, more pinball than platformer, and failed to live up to the expectations I'd built for it in my guilelessly optimistic mind.

23 years later... the game that I'd wanted Sonic Spinball to be has finally arrived, in the form of Yoku's Island Express. By way of a commentary on Sega's historic mismanagement of an open goal, it stars - rather appropriately - a dung beetle.

You know: a disgusting little creature that pushes poo around, and doesn't seemingly understand why nobody wants to eat it.

One of my favourite games of all time is Super Tennis on the Super Nintendo.

I played it again not so long ago, and got a bit hooked on it for a second time. I was pleased to discover that it remains every bit as good and addictive and challenging as I remembered it. There are no bells and whistles. It's just a decent little tennis game, with a deceptive level of depth.

Super Mario Tennis Aces is not a game lacking in bells and whistles. Indeed, there are bells, whistles, klaxons, rattles, people smashing cymbals together, eleven screaming goats, a lost child crying for its mummy, and being stuck in a sweat box for 36 hours with a hen party, that wacky bloke from your office, and a box of comedy photo props.

It is - in a number of important, fundamental ways - the single most irritating tennis game I have ever played. Heck, forget tennis; I think hit might be single most irritating game I've ever played, regardless of genre. 

GUEST ARTICLE BY SUPER BAD ADVICE
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They say you never miss the water until the well runs dry. Which may be true, but who are ‘they’ and why don’t they just use the tap like any normal person, or if thirsty just buy some Um Bongo? What are they, medieval peasants?
 
Of course, I’m joking – it’s just a figure of speech like “He who has rubber arms can’t lift a bag of spuds, but he’s a cracking bodypopper!” and “Stop touching that, it’s already bleeding”. In this case, it means people often take things for granted. And oh look, here’s a silly arse who did that coming along now: me.
 
To cut a long story short (because as you’ll soon realise, typing is literally and figuratively a right pain for me at the moment), a few weeks back I fell awkwardly on to some concrete and well and truly buggered up my right arm – which is my ‘doing’ arm, assuming I want to do whatever it is I’m doing with any level of accuracy and competence. Broken bone sticking out, an operation, pins in my wrist and everything.

Not every game can be massive, especially in an era where the market is dominated by big, annual, franchise releases. Indeed, with development costs being higher than ever, it can be a risk for publishers and developers to try and create a new franchise.

You expect the less-good games to do bad... but what about those great games which never got a fair shout? How many of those have there been? Well now... according to this list, there have been at least ten of these so-called "Flaccid Fenstons". Maybe more - who knows?

Who cares? 

This list is what truly matters right now.

Oh, Nintendo. You have such a friendly public face, but deep down you're pure sod. You're like a kind clown with a short temper, who will occasionally kick a dog up the bottom so hard that its colon pops out of its mouth, making it look like it's blowing a kiss.

Admittedly, most big corporations end up in a courtroom sooner or later, but Nintendo has a particularly knee-jerk history when it comes to inflating its legal balloon... as well as often being on the opposite end of the statutory balloon-bounce from others.

Here are 7 times Nintendo felt the need - the need for speed (to unleash its lawyers).

Remember when games first started arriving on CDs? Remember how that was going to be the future, and how they said that one day everything would one day be coming out on CD; movies, food, hats... even horseys?

Well, CD-ROM was the future... but before we got to that future we had to endure the awfulness of the first wave or two of CD-ROM games. You know: like having to walk through a carpark full of tramp manure before you can reach Lidl.

You can't really blame the developers of the era. It's not their fault that they were all idiots who didn't really stop to think that games could be made better by using the huge storage potential of CD. They just thought it meant they could do video, and saw it as an opportunity to reinvent the wheel. Indeed, this is the point at which "cinematic" cut-scenes were born, for better or worse, and all game developers began thinking they could be Hollywood directors.

It's telling, however, that while many of the earliest video games from the 1980s have stood the test of time, the vast majority of those early CD-ROM games... have not.

​Here are 10 that made the biggest stink at the time.

Every year when I do a series of E3 round-up articles - whether it's tongue-in-cheek or sincere - it gets less hits than if I just put a list of a old things for you to remember. 

In all honesty, I might not bother next time. I have a love/hate thing when it comes to E3 anyway. I mean, I've never visited the show... but I find the online coverage - the pre-show presentations - overwhelming enough as it is. 

And not just overwhelming... but underwhelming. When I see all the new games rolled out in a production line, for me it just highlights the weaknesses in the approach of where the industry is at currently.
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Here are six reasons in particular why this year's E3 left me feeling disenchanted.

With E3 2018 well underway, the big players have started displaying the games that they'll be releasing over the next year or two.

The latest major player to hold a presentation was Ubisoft. Here's a blow-by-blow account of what turned out to be a highly eccentric event.