Old school video game fans, prepare for take-off! Cool link inside

Cool yet depressing all at the same time.

<a href="http://www.gamespy.com/top10/march03/genres/" target="_blank">http://www.gamespy.com/top10/march03/genres/</a>

Top Ten Dying Game Genres Today

crying

It's so true. frown

At least 2d Fighters are still alive and well, partially due to the 3d backgrounds (Capcom games) and hi-res games (Guilty Gear X).

It's a shame old skool shooters are dying (Darius, R-Type).

<small>[ March 25, 2003, 07:52 PM: Message edited by: The Auction Sniper ]</small>

crying King's Quest = buttrock buttrock buttrock

The "Shooter" genre in 2-D (with faux 3-D) could be revived, it would just take a massive rethinking of how to go about it, more development time, killer music, mulitple endings, a storyline and the ability to play through the game as both the good guys as well as bad guys with the storyline and events spun around from that perspective. The graphics as far as sprites go would have to be High-Res Sprites (ala' the new Gulity Gear game) and basically pick up where Yumekobo left off with "Blazing Star".

If several shooters hit the seen with that level of replayability, believe me... even the most fickle mainstream gamer would buy them. The problem lies within the fact that most companies still producing shumps (save Treasure) will not take the time to do this.

I think "Puzzle" genre was a bad call.

Otherwise I can see the rest happening.

Maniac Mansion was fun!

Those were the days.... frown

MegaDrive 20XX:
The "Shooter" genre in 2-D (with faux 3-D) could be revived, it would just take a massive rethinking of how to go about it, more development time, killer music, mulitple endings, a storyline and the ability to play through the game as both the good guys as well as bad guys with the storyline and events spun around from that perspective.

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Now there's an interesting idea! The ability to play as a baddie in a shmup... never crossed my mind before.

Online play like that would rock. Can you imagine? Someone's the good guy, and you are controlling one of the bad bosses? It'd be fun to see who comes out on top (advantage: the guy using the big boss probably)

It'd be interesting because CPU always has a pattern. Facing human controlled bosses would be fun as hell -- everyone would attack differently.

Great idea man!

2. Beat 'Em Up

<img src="http://www.gamespy.com/top10/march03/genres/02s.gif" alt=" - " />

Ah, the glorious beat 'em up: once a familiar sight on consoles and in the arcades, the beat 'em up genre suffered heavy losses once the majority of games moved to 3D.

Most beat 'em ups were fairly straightforward, you were a guy and your goal was to beat up other guys until they disappeared into thin air. These were usually 2D, linear, side-scrolling affairs, but there were plenty of variations. Games like Golden Axe III offered multiple branching paths and River City Ransom added RPG elements to the mix.

Sadly, attempts to update the beat 'em up style of play for the modern era have been mediocre at best, downright wretched at worst. Fighting Force, Dynamite Cop, even Square’s much-hyped The Bouncer all suffered from various combinations of dullness, poor controls, unoriginality, and poor design.

Beat 'em ups can never hope to retain their former level of prominence, but I personally think there’s still a lot of life and potential left in the basic concept. Maybe some day we’ll see another good one, but there’s not exactly anything promising on the horizon.

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crying *Cries* crying

<small>[ March 26, 2003, 01:14 AM: Message edited by: GregN. ]</small>

I miss those good old beat em ups and space shooters. I grew up on those sweet sweet game gems.

I think it all boils down to the fact that arcade-style games are dying, not so much a particular genre. Most ppl only want action adventures/RPGs, BeMani, vast simulations and FPS games, with a few 3D fighters thrown in, oh, and racers, that's it.

Developing games has gotten very expensive, and most companies go by the motto "better a good clone than a crappy new game concept". They fear to come up with something that cost a fortune to make but sits on the shelves forever, so they take game ideas like Halo, the Final Fantasy-series and a few real-time simulations, make a new game out it and release it under a new cool name, then the cycle starts again. That's not exactly a new thing to be honest, game developing companies do this since the very beginning; just look at the insane number of clones/boots of games like Pac-Man, Galaxian, Space Invaders, Pong, and later on Final Fight, Mario, Capcom's SF and SNK's KoF series, etc. etc., not to mention all the similar generic horizontal or vertical shooters that had been released by the dozens every week in the 80s. I clearly remember a Zapp!64 "day at the arcades" article where ppl constantly complained about "the shmup craze" and the ridiculous number of Mario-look-a-likes... vg history repeats itself, only with a lil' more processing power...

Whoa. Severe case of nostalgia.

Just think, in 20 years we'll be asking, "Hey, what happened to all those stealth games, and survival horror games? Remember those?! Those were the days...when we didn't have microchips plugged into our brains...." Well, maybe we won't be saying that...

*Runs to reinstall Sam N' Max: Hit the Road, Full Throttle and Day of the Tentacle*

EDIT:

Growing up in the 80’s, I wasted hundreds of hours of valuable elementary school time playing all sorts of fun "educational" computer games: Oregon Trail, Carmen Sandiego, the Stickybear games, and various others.

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This describes my grade school PERFECTLY. I remember it being "cool" to name all of your party members in Oregon Trail either Teacher's names ("Mr. Heggerty has died of dysentary.") or swear words ("Assmunch has successfully completed Oregon Trail.")

Anyone remember that fish game, where you had to choose a fish to be and survive like a month without being eaten?! I didn't learn diddly squat in any of those classes.

SECOND EDIT: I keep looking at it again and thinking of more stuff to say. Just one more thing: Graphic Adventure games are still my number 1 favorite video game genre. Nothing can match the fun I had with the top 5 best (Sam N' Max, Full Throttle, Space Quest Series, King's Quest Series and The Maniac Mansion Series) of the genre.

God, I'm going to be playing these all night now, thanks to this. Guess no school tomorrow...

<small>[ March 26, 2003, 03:55 AM: Message edited by: Zeekade Zarathos ]</small>

Beat Em ups could make a come back if people actually tried hard to make a good one in 3D or even better 2D. Gekido was the last game I saw try it and they failed.

Almost all of those except maybe 3 deserve to die forever.

The Beat Em up genre did not die.
It just became Dynasty Warriors, Mystic Heroes, Devil May Cry and Chaos Legion.

Oh, and it seems that CORE is working on a Fighting Force 3 as well.
Apparently it will be more like the first game than the second (which sucked), so there's another one for the list.
Yea, I liked Fighting Force 1, so sue me.

Online play like that would rock.

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Well Raiden Fighters Evo for the Xbox will have online play (just like 2 player mode though)

Anyways I have not gotten a new beat 'm up for a while, and probably wont. I actually made the mistake of getting the Xbox Bruce Lee game oh_no . If there is a good reason for B'm ups to die this is it.

Unfortunatly I see shmups dieing. It will never completly happen, but if you want a new shmup your going to have to search long and hard to find them.

Anyways. I will support schmups till they finally die.

Thats why they need to suprise the fuck out of everyone and come out with R-Type 4 next year with the best 2D graphics anyone has ever seen.