(logo chimes) - [Narrator] There are so many
video game genres out there, like completely different
types and styles of games with their own fandoms, but unfortunately some of
those fade away over time, thanks to the ever-shifting
cultural landscape that is gaming, I guess. So we've got 10 genres
that have kind of vanished, not completely, you know, there's always
an indie developer that'll make a cool nostalgic version or things here and there, but still, we've got 10 genres
that aren't quite as big as they used to be. So let's get started off with number 10. When you're talking about platformers, there's a hard line
between two separate camps, you know, your regular
platformers like "Mario," "Sonic," and of course everybody's
favorite "Bubsy," (laughs) and then there's the cinematic platformer. Instead of having a freewheeling
relationship with physics like those previous games, the cinematic platformer
attempts to create a more realistic experience by limiting the sorts
of things you could do to something that approximates
the real world a little bit. You know, these games are
more like puzzle games, where getting around
the environment itself is often the riddle
that needs to be solved. I'm talking about games
like "Prince of Persia," "Flashback," even the original "Tomb
Raider" games to an extent. If movement feels stiff and awkward, then you've probably got a
more cinematic style platformer on your hands. That has to be the primary reason this genre kind of died out. They were often more frustrating than fun to play in practice. And these days, many, many games contained the DNA of a
cinematic platformer. I mean, the "Assassin's
Creed" series is all built off of what kind of the "Prince
of Persia" games did, the rebooted "Tomb Raider" games still have a strong platforming focus. You're still climbing in these games. The reason this one is at
the top of the list is that, well, you know, the genre
isn't completely dead yet. It's on live support for sure,
but it's not entirely dead. There are still games coming out that kind of keep this game spark alive like, say, "Little Nightmares," the recent "Deliver Us Mars," and one of the biggest
games from 2022, "Stray," you can't argue is kind of in this genre. Now, the platforming part of
the genre may have slowed down, but the cinematic part has
only gotten bigger and bigger. Pretty much every major
AAA single player big game that has any form of jumping in it owes something to what
a lot of us call that cinematic platform or genre. These games may be tough to go back to, but they're an important step in the development of
the industry as a whole, if you ask us. Next over at number nine, let's talk about like the old school, real realtime strategy games. You know, we still get a new
game every once in a while, like "Age of Empires IV"
and "Company of Heroes 3," but the genre is nowhere
near as big as it used to be. For about 10 years from the
mid-'90s to the mid-2000s, the RTS genre absolutely
ruled the PC gaming market. I'm talking about "Command & Conquer," talking "Warcraft,"
"StarCraft," "Age of Empires," "Warhammer: Dawn of War." There were a lot of RTS games and people couldn't get enough of them. There was a point too where like we had plenty of license games, but in the PC world, it was like every big IP
also had a licensed RTS game. These games were all
about building up a base, constructing units, and then sending them out
to destroy your enemies, like keyboard and mouse
are basically required to keep up with all the
complex commands and things and shortcuts needed to
really keep everything going. And while there have been
some valiant attempts to bring the RTS genre to consoles, it never really completely took off. You've got to remember
that for a while there, RTS games were big money, "StarCraft was eSports for a while there, but for whatever reason, player interest slowly kind of waned and the genre went into
a pretty sudden decline. Some people will speculate
that part of it can be blamed on the popularity of like DOTA likes, but for us at least, it seems like the genre failed to evolve and kind of change with the times. I guess the formula got
stale for some people, so maybe they just moved on. Like the previous entry
and like I said earlier, the genre isn't completely dead yet. I mean we're still getting
the odd RTS every now and then like the recent "Company of Heroes 3," it was pretty good, and indie developers are
still making these things every once in a while, and they're doing a pretty good job. But these games have nowhere
near that massive market share that they used to. Next over at number eight, let's talk collect-athons. Let's just say upfront that for this one, we wanna make it clear that,
like, we're not talking about 3D platformers here. You know, if anything, 3D platformers are getting
a bit of a resurgence with games like "Psychonauts
2," "Crash Bandicoot 4," and "Kirby and the Forgotten Land," and all being pretty great and
coming out pretty recently. For this one specifically, we're talking about the collect-athon, that relatively small band of games where collecting stuff was the gameplay. Like I'm talking about "Super Mario 64," the "Banjo-Kazooie"
games, the "Spyro" games, the first "Jak and Daxter, kind of, and of course, "Donkey Kong 64." Now in these games, your primary
goal is to just run around large, open environments
and pick stuff up. Usually, that stuff you pick up can be used to unlock new levels where you can pick up even more stuff. Sometimes, you have to pick up things to unlock new abilities that let you pick up even more stuff. If you have enough stuff
by the end of the game, then you can fight the final boss and probably get a cut scene
telling you to get more stuff if you didn't get everything. It's just a lot of sitting around, figuring out how you can get to that place to pick up more stuff. To say that these games
can be a little exhausting is an understatement. There's a reason so
many modern platformers have kind of ditched some
of the collect-athon aspects of the genre. Now, the thing with these games is that there's like a balancing act, where the act of collecting can be fun without feeling like you're doing chores. The original "Banjo" really pulled it off, "Mario 64" is a classic for a reason, these games nail it. For a lot of people, "Donkey Kong 64" is where the collecting gets a little out of control. There's just so much
to pick up in that game that you kind of feel
like you're just a janitor more than a hero doing cool adventures, at least once you stop and
think about it as an adult. After these games we mentioned, the genre felt like it was
kind of in decline after that, as most of the games that
were collection focused moved away from that on
kind of onto other genres. So while it is mostly a dead genre, we still get a new game
every once in a while, like "Yooka-Laylee" wasn't great, "A Hat in Time" was pretty excellent, and the reason "SpongeBob
and the Cosmic Shake" is about as unabashedly old school as one of these games can really get. So there are a few of these
things still out there. Of course, you could also play pretty much any open world game in existence. You can't argue that these
games are kind of the evolution of a collect-athon for better or worse. Now over at number seven, man, with the overall
kind of death of arcades, so too came the death of
the light gun shooter. If you spent any time in an arcade in the '90s or early 2000s, you know what we're talking about here, the big flashy game cabinets
where you blast away at enemies with an oversized plastic gun. These things were awesome, especially the "Time Crisis" games that incorporated force
feedback into the guns, so every time you fired, there was actually like some
kickback on top of a pedal that also let you duck behind
cover whenever you pressed it. Anytime we went to arcades, those were the machines
we would hit up first. "Area 51" was another classic, albeit a little bit more
rudimentary and old school. Your goal was to blast aliens
while avoiding the civilians. There was a common obstacle in these games where innocent people would
just pop up on the screen and go, "Oh no!" and if you shot them, you'd
take damage or be penalized. Now, as the first person
shooter genre got bigger, the demand for these kind
of on-rails action games kind of declined. We still got some fun stuff like those two "Resident
Evil" shooters on the Wii and the surprisingly good
"Dead Space Extraction," but these games are
mostly gone these days. Most you'll really get
now is the random VR game, which is cool, but it's not quite the same as having an actual weighted
plastic gun in your hand. They're more immersive overall, but the arcade experience,
you can't replicate that. Next over at number six, let's
talk music and rhythm games, but we have to be specific. Like a lot of genres
we've listed so far of, these types of games
aren't literally dead. If you're really looking, there are some pretty great
music games out there, especially coming out of Japan. But compared to the explosive popularity they enjoyed in the 2000s, a lot of these games might
as well not exist in, like the popularity basically
came from two games, "Guitar Hero" and of course, "Rock Band." It cannot be understated just how big these games were for a while. They were absolutely massive. Both Activision, with "Guitar Hero," and later EA, with "Rock Band," they knew they had a golden
goose on their hands, so they proceeded to milk them for all that they were worth. I guess with this, people
just got burned out. The amount of "Guitar
Hero" sequels and spinoffs was like ridiculous. The fact that the games
were basically unchanged from "Guitar Hero 1" was
kind of an issue too, like they did little change
ups but I guess not enough. There's only so many ways
someone can play the same game over and over before the
experience gets stale, and I guess that's what happens. It seems like most of the mainstream folks just got tired of it and moved on. Music games are still around
today, of course, like we said, rhythm games are still a thing. The "Just Dance" games are
inexplicably still releasing and are constantly making
the top 10 in sales for any given year, and of course the recent
"Theatrhythm Final Fantasy Games" is a top-notch collection
of songs from that series. So there's still interest
in music games in general, but, you know, as a genre, especially with plastic peripherals, it is nowhere near what it once was. Next over at number five, let's talk vehicular combat games, 'cause now we're really getting
into the real dead stuff. Even the most obscure genre of game gets a few indies out on Steam these days, but not so much with
vehicular combat games. There's not a lot. There's "Road Redemption,"
which came out a few years back, and that's really it for right now. Now during the PS1-ish
era, these games were huge. "Twisted Metal" was the big one, but "Vigilante 8" was another
really underrated one, and then there were like
all these copycat games. "Star Wars" had one, there was a wrestling one, "The Simpsons" had one, and they all had one thing in common, a lot of them really sucked. Really, it was "Twisted
Metal" and "Vigilante 8" and those were the goats. Really, as much of us weirdos really worshiped "Vigilante 8," it was "Twisted Metal"
as the big mainstream one and nothing really else. So when that series ended, so did the entire car combat genre. There are plenty of games that are kind of, sort
of related to the genre, but for the most part, it's
pretty dead and buried. Maybe if Sony ever revives
"Twisted Metal" again, it'll happen, but at least right now, it seems unlikely. There's still that TV show that's meant to come out this
year for "Twisted Metal," so seriously that's still happening. And then there was also that PlayStation 5 vehicular combat game that
didn't last very long, but, you know, that's really it. And you know what, it's a damn shame because vehicular combat is fun. Now over at number four,
let's talk arena shooters, 'cause back in the day, these shooters were lightning
fast and uncomplicated, keyboards were basically required and the skill ceiling was so high. Before "Call of Duty" and
"Halo" made shooting games more palpable to a wider
mainstream audience, there were games like
"Quake," "Quake III," "Unreal Tournament." Now these games are some of the best
multiplayer games out there but feel almost alien these days because they lack almost everything people have come to expect
from a multiplayer shooter. There's no progression
track, no loop boxes, no battle passes, no monetization or real
progression of any kind other than the cost of the game itself, and then you just shoot
and you play and that's it. There wasn't really
leveling up or anything, it was just practicing and getting better. That was the leveling up. So many popular modern shooters borrow from the arena shooter with their mechanics and movements but it's never quite the same. What makes an arena shooter stand out is how everyone is on the same level. There are no load outs, everything, you have to
just pick up on the map, which makes learning
levels absolutely essential to being good in this. Because everything is
collected in the maps, there's little room for
weapon skins or unlockables, like none of that stuff matters. It could probably still be done, but for whatever reason, these games just aren't popular anymore. Developers keep trying
to come out with new ones and they always fail or have
a very small player base, like, look at any of the more
recent attempts at reviving, you know, the arena shooter
like, say, "LawBreakers," or "Quake Champions" or a couple others. All of these games are solid, but the player base just
never really was quite there. Next over at number three,
let's talk extreme sports games. This is another one of those genres that was absolutely massive
during the '90s and the 2000s, but it died off hard after that and for pretty much the same reason that killed rhythm games. You know, for those, it was "Guitar Hero" that kind of killed like the plastic peripheral
rhythm genre thing, well, for this one, I
guess it was Tony Hawk. "Tony Hawk's Pro Skater
2" was a massive hit, and the franchise kept
going strong for a while, at least until kind of the Xbox 360 era. During the PS1, PS2 era
of the games though, it seemed like every other
game coming out for consoles was an extreme sports game, all with some other sports personality like "Dave Mirra BMX" or
"Kelly Slater's Pro Surfer." The genre was so saturated that games had to start
getting weird to stand out, like "Toxic Grind" or "Dark Summit," a snowboarding game about
like a dystopian mountain or something. It was to the point where like EA even had their own special offshoot label for these crazy extreme sports games. There were so many
awesome ones in the genre, it's almost impossible to
talk about them all here, man. Tony Hawk was the king, of course, but the "Skate" games, "SSX
Tricky," "1080 Snowboarding," "Jet Set Radio," "Aggressive
Inline," like they, we just can keep going. All amazing, and it's a
shame that these days, that genre was mostly dead. You know a genre has really vanished when attempts at a revival come
out and get kind of ignored. I mean, remember "Riders Republic"? Yeah, I mean, you probably
don't remember it. We really liked it, but
it didn't really catch on. At least everyone rightfully loved the "Tony Hawk" 1 and 2 remake, but at this point it's hard to say if we'll ever see a real
resurgence of the genre or not, and it's a bummer. Next over at number two,
let's talk movie tie in games. I guess with these,
they're just too expensive. Game production is too volatile, and it's not worth the effort for them. It's just easier to make
cheap phone game tie-ins rather than actual full console releases. For the blockbuster generation of gamers, there was no genre of game
more equally loved and despised as the movie tie-in game. These days, video games don't
need movies to be successful. They can be their own thing, free of ridiculous release
dates and directives from clueless movie studio executives who have no idea what
actually makes a good game. But in the '80s and '90s and
through most 2000s, I think, like if there was a big movie coming out, then it was likely that
there would be some kind of movie tie-in game, even if it sometimes
didn't make too much sense. Sometimes they were good, like most of the Disney
games on the SNES or Genesis, or the "Lord of the Rings" beat 'em up, or "Chronicles of Riddick:
Escape from Butcher Bay," the "Spider-Man" movie games, and then like sometimes
they were really terrible, like basically all the other ones, a really long list. For most people, movie tie-ins were
synonymous with shovelware. You know, a lot of them were crappy games rushed out earlier to meet a release date. They were made to fulfill a contract, not make something legitimately
great or memorable. The fact that there were some
good ones, like, I don't know, "GoldenEye" was the exception
rather than the rule. And that's probably the biggest
reason why movie tie-ins mostly died out, along with Activision realizing
a human make way more money from its original properties while at the same time not really having to split the
earnings with a movie studio. Now down to number one, let's
talk toys-to-life games, you know, stuff like "LEGO Dimensions," "Disney Infinity," "Skylanders," even Amiibos technically
aren't like popping off like they used to, but
that's kind of a side. Now, back in 2011, Activision
kind of popularized this brilliant idea of
microtransaction but real. It's a great idea on paper actually. You sell toys which have
these RFID tags in the base, which, when scanned, will make it so your toy will appear as
a character in the game. This all came about right
as the great peripheral boom was starting to wade, people were putting away
their steering wheels and their "Rock Band" drum sets and their "Guitar Hero" guitars we talked about earlier. So Activision wanted something else that would encourage kids to get a lot of additional plastic stuff on top of buying a $60 game, and this is what they came up with. "Skylanders" ended up
being a massive success, at least for a while, and then the copycat soon followed. There was "Disney Infinity,"
"LEGO Dimensions," and a lot of smaller and midtier ones that just never really got anywhere, not barely even got out of the gate. It seems like these toys-to-life games were the future of the
industry for a while, but only after a few years,
that money spigot dried up. Only the Amiibos are left standing. Even if like we're not buying as many, there's only a couple releases
a year here and there . Now, it was just way
too much, way too fast. The basic idea of a toy line that's integrated with
video games isn't a bad one. It sounds better than your average NFT. But as the video game
industry tends to do, like they went way overboard
with the monetization and made everyone sick of it real quick. But, hey, those are 10 genres that are pretty much either
dead or disappearing. It was fun to talk about this
but also extremely painful. A lot of this stuff is a
fun trip down memory lane. So we want to hear some of
your memories of these genres. You're probably gonna
wanna defend some of them, you know, like some of
these aren't totally dead. So if there's one game
still keeping you around, let us know. We love a recommendation. But if you like talking games
with us every single day, where we upload, click on the Like button helps us out. That's all you gotta do. But as always, thanks for watching, and we'll see you guys next time.
