- Hey, y'all Scott here. And brace yourself fellow family members, specifically those who are insecure about your placement in the family because we have a new
addition to the family, Ringo the fly, an absolute all star, if I've ever seen one. I bought them at the pet store recently, completely house trained,
watch as he avoids the swatter. Yeah, this could have been easily avoided. The death loved one is definitely no fun, especially when that
loved one is Chibi-Robo. The video game industry
has often been accused of rehashing the same tired franchises rather than churning out fresh new ones. Call of Duty, Battlefield, FIFA, Mario, Pokemon, Forza, Assassin's Creed, the amount of times you'll see
these names on store shelves, year after year, surely
defines an overdose. But for every franchise a
company won't stop pumping out, there's like four more they own they have done absolutely nothing with for the past eon and a half. Dead franchises, series that have been put on hold or simply never to be heard from again for one reason or another. Some have been dormant for some time, and some have recently been resurrected after long thought of to be dead. Sega is one of the best when it comes to not giving a piss
about their franchises. I'd consider almost every single one of their IP's to be dead, Golden Axe, Jet Set
Radio, Space Channel 5, Vector Man, Alex Kidd, Virtual Fighter, basically anything
that's not Sonic, Yakuza or Valkyria Chronicles
has not been touched by Sega in at least five years. Most of these series are
relegated to nothing more than compilation titles
and cameo appearances, a shame, surely. Nintendo isn't as guilty as Sega but definitely isn't getting off scot free when it comes to leaving
franchises in a hot locked car. Chibi-Robo, the most underappreciated of the underappreciated. The main game people remember
him for is the first game on the game queue because
well it was a Chibi-Robo game, an adventure in a big
house as a tiny robot. He's gotten multiple games since then but they aren't what people
consider main Chibi-Robo games and are more so spin-offs, either that or they're
put in circumstances where it's impossible
for the game to do well. Chibi-Robo Park Patrol
was a Walmart exclusive and Nintendo probably blamed Chibi-Robo when the game didn't sell well. You got two 3DS titles, one being an e-shop
exclusive photo finder, which is more so a smaller game based around taking pictures, and the other being Zip Lash. This game blows. This is not what any
game franchise deserves. Not only did no Chibi-Robo fan ever ask for a 2D platform
for the character, but nobody asked for a bad one at that. It's so generic, bland
and just not fun at all, yet Nintendo said that the
future of the franchise depended on the success of Zip Lash, I'll see ya Chibi-Robo. (bell toll) The F-Zero franchise has been in the ground for the past 14 years, possibly left to rot because Mario Cart is Nintendo's main racing series, like I guess they'd rather
focus on that one instead. Shigeru Miyamoto has
stated that the main reason an F-Zero game hasn't been made in such a long time has
been the lack of new ideas. They simply haven't come up with a good idea on
where to take the series. And if a new controller
brings forth a new idea then a new F-Zero game
will shortly follow. Now that implies F-Zero
hasn't been on Nintendo's mind since the last release,
but it's been reported that Nintendo went to Burnout developer, Criterion, in 2011 and
asked them to a new F-Zero for the Wii U, however, they were too busy at the time to take it on,
which is a mega bummer. That would have been the coolest. (bell toll) 1080 Snowboarding, Wave Race,
Custom Robo, Star Tropics, so many series that weren't given another look for over a decade. Nintendo truly has loads
of dormant IP, it's insane. One, many will surely point
out is Earthbound slash Mother, which has done mainly because the creator, Shigesato Itoi, considers
Mother 3 to be the end and has no plans for more entries, but who knows maybe
somebody else at Nintendo can take over and make a fourth game. Back in the late two
thousands, early 2010s, the music game craze was hitting hard with industry Titans, EA and Activision, duking it out with the respective Rock Band and Guitar Hero franchises. Not only were they releasing
new titles annually, but they both flicked the holy (beep) slow down switch on by releasing
multiple titles yearly, and EA specifically flick
the just kill it now switch with Lego and Green Day Rock Band. Listen, these weren't just games that were getting released constantly, these were 100 plus dollar
sets that were taking up shelf space and flooding the market. It makes sense that these
things completely died out. They simply were oversaturated
to the point where many consumers didn't care
to constantly buy them, but then hope glimmered,
Rock Band developer, Harmonix and Activision, decided to
resurrect their rhythm games for another go the same year, with a Rock Band 4 and Guitar Hero Live. Yep, the trend to resurrection
tactic works every time. Every time, the music
game genre was completely beaten to death,
literally back in the day. And when they give it another shot not enough people cared, or at
least not as many as before. (bell toll) Another franchise Activision burned to the ground was Skylanders, the toys to life game, featuring another dead franchise people can't get enough
of, Spyro The Dragon. Poor Spyro was used as a sacrificial lamb for Skylanders success. His name appeared in the
first game subtitled just to ignite interest in the franchise. And when it took off, well, Spyro was kind
of pushed to the side. Kids and collectors went
bonkers for the series and it saw new installment
every single year, until 2017, where Activision decided to halt development
due to declining sales. They wanted to hop out of the sinking ship before it became a sinking ship on fire, just like Guitar Hero did. Skylanders inspired other
companies to throw their hat in the toys to life ring, and almost every single one
of them saw some success, but then saw cancellation. Disney Infinity was a
very similar concept, but with Disney characters and worlds, and the project was put to an end and shelved after version 3.0. And Lego dimensions saw
the same fate as well with further development
of the project ending. And with that, I will give
my world famous response to these games ending development. While a cool idea at first, these things flooded the market and overwhelmed and kind
of annoyed everybody. (bell toll) Now you wanna talk dead, let's talk Rare. Originally, a Nintendo
developer, Rare created some instant classics, Banjo
Kazooie, Killer Instinct, Perfect Dark, Conkers Bad Fur Day, then when making the leap
into the console market, Microsoft purchased
the company so they can nab some killer exclusives
on the original X-Box. They did nothing for them. Rare, literally barely released anything of note after the Microsoft acquisition. Like yeah, some titles were
quality, but near as iconic as their original hits. It's definitely fair to consider the vast majority of Rare series dead. Sure, Killer Instinct made
a pretty stellar comeback, but Conker and Banjo Kazooie, it's not looking too bright for these guys at this very moment, especially because the
most they've been used for has been compilations and tech demos. That's basically it. (bell toll) Sometimes a game series
can be considered dead while it's still going on. One main example being Metal Gear Solid, Hideo Kojima announced Metal
Gear Solid V: The Phantom Pain, would be the last in the
long running franchise, and before the games release, Konami had a major corporate shakeup
with new hirees and firees. Later, the famous term
on most Metal Gear games, a Hideo Kajima game, and any mentioning of Kojima Studio, Kojima
Productions were removed from the Phantom Pains
website and box art. However, Kojima confirmed
that he was going to be with the Phantom Pains
development until the very end. Konami was not a great
place to work, far from it. With cameras monitoring
employees every movement, berating and humiliating
employees who make mistakes, and restricting Kojima Productions workers from corporate utilities
and internet access. The way they pushed
Kojima out of the company was far from ideal, especially considering he was basically the face of the company, and they treated his name
like it was the plague, stripping it off of his products and renaming Kojima Productions to number eight production department. Why would Konami do this? Possibly because they wanted to focus on their mobile game at Pachinko business, with AAA game development
being incredibly expensive, especially anything Kojima
touched, even though his projects usually turned
out to be quite successful. With the Phantom Pain released, Kojima considered the Metal
Gear series to be complete. But of course, Konami
didn't think that themselves and later announced Metal Gear Survive, a budget online micro-transaction
infested survival game, which isn't necessarily
what people want to see from Metal Gear, a series based around stealth and espionage. Kojima officially left Konami and started a new Kojima
Productions himself where he is developing the
PS4 game, Death Stranding, which seems to be taking elements from a game he was working on at Konami that got canceled, Silent Hill. Silent Hill is a fan favorite survival horror series originating
on the PlayStation One. It continued to get
installment after installment, And then bam, Silent Hill
announced a breath of fresh air. One of the most prolific
horror experiences in gaming ever released,
then of course canceled. It was all due to Kojima
and Konami's little spat, haven't heard from Silent
Hill since that cancellation, disregarding any machine
related to Japanese gambling. While we're on the topic Konami, man what a company of corpses,
Contra, Gradius, Castlevania, Konami doesn't seem all too interested in bringing these series back in any sort of legitimate game experience. (bell toll) Alas dead franchises
don't always stay dead. Keiji Inafune, the artist,
and later producer, of the Mega Man series
left Capcom in late 2010, a few months after the
release of Mega Man 10. After his departure it seemed as if Capcom had no idea
what it wanted to do with the Mega Man franchise. The game Mega Man Universe, which was basically a
Mega Man level creator was canceled in March of 2011, with it being basically
completely finished. Mega Man Legends 3 was
being developed for the 3DS, but was quickly canceled
after the announcement of a prototype. A gritty first person reboot
of the franchise, entitled Maverick Hunter was never
announced, but canceled in 2010. Salt was added to the
wounds of Mega Man fans, when Mega Man was announced
as a guest character in the PlayStation versions
of Street Fighter X Tekken, and while it was meant to be
taken as just a dumb joke, the use of the Bad Box
Art version of Mega Man from the first game was
not handled well at all by fans in the context of Mega Man state. The most Mega Man got from
2010 to 2017 were mobile games, re-releases of older titles,
a Capcom endorsed fan game, and a Super Smash Brothers appearance. Mega Man was basically
considered to be dead, that is until the
announcement of Mega Man 11 late last year, there is a God, and while it's incredibly anticlimactic that it turned out to be Capcom, but man, that is almost
a decade of no games. When previous years, housed
too many mega man games, sprawling all kinds of
different genres and series. The Metroid series was
one of Nintendo's most famous dormant franchises
for quite a while. Metroid took a hiatus
from the release of 1994 Super Metroid to 2002's
Metroid Prime Infusion. And then things were looking pretty good for the series until Other M, yikes. Other M was developed by Team Ninja. And while a structurally decent game, did numbers to the story and made the game an overall negative
experience for most fans. 2010 was the last we heard
from the series until 2015, with the announcement of
Metroid Prime Federation Force, a four player first person co-op game for the Nintendo 3DS, where
you control nameless soldiers. 2010 was the last we
heard from the series, until 2017 with the announcement of Metroid Prime 4 and Metroid Samus Returns, selling poorly, a loss of
talent, a lack of focus, over saturation, negative reception, all can kill a franchise off, but unlike a fly, death isn't permanent most of the time in the
video game industry. Just because a game developer
hasn't made a new series entry in awhile doesn't mean it
will never not happen again. We will see a new F-Zero, e
will see a new Chibi-Robo, a new Banjo Kazooie, a new
Castlevania, a new Road Rash, a new Dino Crisis, a new Chrono game. It'll happen guys, don't sweat it. What may not work out now,
may work in the future. Come on, Mega Man is
back, Metroid is back, XCOM is back, (beep)
Bubsy, anything's possible. If you're a fan of a certain series that hasn't seen any love recently, there's a pretty decent shot
that someday it'll be back. You know on second thought I think I was being a bit too rash burying Ringo. I think I'm going to
pull a video game company and turn my dead property into cash. I'm going to return him to the pet store. (beep) he was on clearance. (electronic music)
