Top Ten Cases of First Game Syndrome

help sick and injured children by donating to my extra life campaign link in the description and pinned comment all proceeds go to children's wisconsin if we reach a thousand dollars i'll make my discord server public so tom brady really just decided he couldn't let primadonna aaron rodgers have all the drama huh [Music] [Music] there's a lot of great video game franchises out there filled with lots of widely beloved games of course every series has to start somewhere the problem is there are a lot of situations where it can take a serious time to really find its footing this can be for a number of reasons like not quite having games mechanics refined yet or not having fully decided what direction you want to take as a result the first game in the franchise is rarely its best we call this phenomenon first game syndrome and what i bring to the table today are 10 games that haven't quite aged as gracefully as later sequels for whatever reason whether it took one sequel or more for the franchise to its stride there is no denying that these first games had issues that later games would address just goes to show you that when you're starting out growing pains are to be expected kind of like how a lot of youtube channels started out it's game time [Music] so let's start off with everyone's favorite devil hunter nowadays devil may cry 5 has re-established the series as one of capcom's heavy hitters people loved its free-flowing and stylish combat as well as dante's signature style and attitude so it may surprise some people to hear that the original dmc was originally going to be a resident evil game looking at the game itself however yeah i can see it starting with fittingly enough fixed camera angles good for survival horror but they go together with a hack and slash like toothpaste and orange juice maybe that's why some people wait 30 minutes after brushing their teeth this is especially troublesome with enemies that can be off camera when they attack and even more so with certain bosses where the camera is more of a threat than the actual boss not to mention situations where platforming is involved yeah maybe shifting game styles mid-development might have warranted more dev time to know what you wanted to do aside from that melee weapons had mostly the same moves differing mainly in stats and special abilities and a lack of mission select basically means the only way to get items you missed is to do a new game plus and the story didn't know if i wanted to be suspenseful action-packed or dramatic granted it's not all bad the combat is fluid enough if a bit basic and some of the bosses are pretty cool it's not a bad game just a bit awkward however the reason it's at the bottom is because the second game is notably worse it wasn't until the third game where the franchise hit its stride for find the combat make the weapons more varied and let dante be dante and you've got a party [Music] with sonic frontiers in the works the struggle of the blue hedgehog to maintain consistency in 3d is once again brought to the forefront but when you really think about it is it really all that surprising that sonic has been hit or miss in 3d well not really considering that sonic didn't burst out of the box at full speed in 2d either huh sonic was marketed as a character with two things speed and attitude and yeah in the original game you could really go fast for about the first few levels or so after that though the level design was hit or miss with the missus failing to really play the sonic's speed all i have to say is labyrinth zone and i'll be able to hear physical cringing from halfway across the country in fact some areas outright punished it as early as marble zone it's like half the levels in the game were designed after it was decided that speed should be sonic's gimmick the fact that the iconic spin dash wasn't added until the second game didn't do anything to help matters on that front and many of the boss fights were bland compared to later games typically against the egomatic and its various gadgets that being said the good levels were pretty damn good green hill for how much it's been overused in recent years is iconic for a reason with it being probably one of the best ways to introduce a character based on gaining and maintaining momentum while spring yard and starlight zones did a decent job of working with that idea and even back then the music was pretty catchy the previously mentioned labyrinth zone notwithstanding the basic enemy design was also varied enough so that you couldn't just handle every problem the same way but there's no denying that there were some issues that later games would work out and yet when this game was ported to the game boy advance 15 years later it turned out to be the worst thing to happen to 2d sonic probably the best way to play the original is kristin whitehead's version which not only adds the spin dash but makes tails and knuckles unlockable not surprising considering he would later be the driving force behind mania [Music] exclusives are a huge selling point for a console and for playstation fans ratcheting clank rift apart was high on the list of reasons to keep a finger on the trigger for the exact second any sign of a ps5 popped up on the radar something something supply chain issues something something chip shortages given that critics and fans both generally love the game it certainly paints a bright future for the iconic duo as for how they began well while the first game is still good with a wide assortment of weapons great environments and a lot of variety there are a few glitches in the machinery that later games would work out for starters for all those weapons you could obtain you couldn't upgrade them except with gold bolts and simply buying the weapons meant you needed a lot of regular bolts which simply aren't as plentiful as they would be in later installments and for the bolts you did collect you'd be better off prioritizing health upgrades yeah those had to be bought in the first game as opposed to being gained through leveling up and considering you started with only four health which could be eventually upgraded to as many as eight there's little margin for error any mistake cost you a whole hit point no matter what hit you be it a rocket or a stray bullet from off screen there were two big issues that made cheap hits more likely the first is that the quick menu didn't pause the action meaning you could be caught by surprise as you tried to change weapons on the fly granted you could use the pause menu to change weapons but that was a bit awkward and second and the biggest issue no strafing now i'm not sure if this is because the proper conventions of third person shooters hadn't yet been established but in a game where weapons are a main focus the lack of a proper strafing mechanic is honestly baffling and it seems like insomniac hadn't quite perfected the proper balance between a shooter and a platformer yet thankfully the rest of the gameplay worked out well and not only made the original a game worth returning to but laid the foundation for a franchise that became a playstation staple [Music] okay by now my abject love for mega man is so well known and thoroughly documented that it may as well be the free space on my bingo board that being said my introduction to the series was mega man 2. i didn't even play the first game until maybe a year or two later turns out i didn't necessarily miss all that much as a game on its own it's not bad but has the launching point for a beloved franchise it feels like a prototype more than anything else the foundation is there it just had some bugs in the system that had to be worked out the trolls felt a little stiff especially when falling off a platform and being yanked down by black hole gravity not to mention a lack of water physics in areas like iceman's stage there are also some cases of questionable level design gutsman's platforms and elec man's first screen come to mind as well as any area with spikes which even iframes can't save you from the game was also really short mainly due to it being on a small amount of rom 6 robot masters instead of 8 along with 4 end game stages and the levels themselves were all relatively short compared to later games not to mention the boss rush that would become a series staple was spread out in a fixed order over two of the wily stages instead of the now iconic teleporter room and they didn't even give you health pickups when you won the rematches other design decisions that wouldn't stick included the lack of e-tanks a single miscible support item instead of having them as end-of-level rewards a full-on enemy-filled hallway before each boss fight and a scoring system for some unknown reason honestly was capcom so used to making arcade games that they figured a console only game had to have points that serve no purpose that being said most of the boss fights were fun and challenging with a couple notable exceptions the weapons were cool for the most part and the music started a grand tradition of kick-ass tunes but pretty much everything this game did would be done so much better in later games that it's hard to come back to the original unless you have the legacy collection in which case go ahead [Music] naughty dog's fall from grace as a development studio has been widely documented given allegations of abuse harassment and ungodly crunch culture they used to have quite a reputation though given their work with series like uncharted the adventures of nathan drake have painted him as quite the badass i mean treasure hunter yeah that's the term i'm looking for of course before he could get to this he had to go through well this yeah the first uncharted game definitely had some growing pains before the series really hit its stride for starters let's talk about the setting nearly all of the game takes place on the island as opposed to the more varied settings of later games only three chapters or so take place outside the areas of the island itself we had more variety as early as uncharted 2. the story is a lot more simplistic than later games as well especially when it comes to the relationships between characters take a look at the relationship between drake and sully in the first game as opposed to the third game and you'll probably have a good idea of what i'm talking about here but the biggest issues with uncharted 1 came from the gameplay let's start with the quick time events they tend to come at very inopportune times and add little to nothing to the gameplay not to mention they're as unforgiving as the refs in the nfl with a small window between you and us of your punishment sometimes being instant death as far as climbing goes there is a lot of it and it isn't always clear where you can safely grab and where you can't you may think you're clear to jump but you may end up jumping straight to the pits of hell but the big issue with uncharted 1 is the shootouts in the game to put it simply shootouts in uncharted 1 are the source of about 90 of complaints about the game goons take forever to kill without headshots have stupidly powerful weapons could shoot a fly from across downtown milwaukee and are about as numerous as bars in wisconsin and that's before taking all the boxes that people hate about cover systems in fact the whole final chapter pretty much encapsulates most of the first game's issues how fitting that it's a fight with the game's worst villain seriously he's only the main villain for like 10 minutes before he gets a cartoonishly pathetic death [Music] oh hey another game by naughty dog that fell victim to early installment weirdness in the early days of the ps1 sony was pushing hard for the maniac marsupial as a mascot for their new competitor to mario those old commercials were pretty funny not gonna lie and while both mario 64 and the original crash innovated 3d platforming in different ways to say that the bandicoot had a few serious hiccups starting out wouldn't be exaggerating one bit let's start with the controls remember this was one of the first ps1 games to come out meaning this was before the advent of the now iconic dual shock in other words this was a d-pad game which may have worked at the time for a 3d platformer but geez is it hard to come back to movement feels stiff and with a slight delay when starting or stopping to run it can definitely throw you off at times jumping also feels heavy sometimes causing you to fall just short of your next platform and it doesn't help that you maintain forward momentum after jumping on an object not the best use of physics-based realism when you require precision and this stiff control can especially get in your way when you want to save your game yeah you heard me let me explain in crash one there are only two places you can save the first is after completing a bonus stage which are accessed by collecting three tauna or cortex tokens in a level however once you complete it you can't go back the second way is to save with the gems to get a gem and crash one you need to break every crate in a level and complete it all without dying once now not only is this easier said than done but again once you collect a gem you can't recollect it to wit there is a limited number of saves throughout the whole game thankfully later crash games and by extension the insane trilogy fixed the save system letting you save on the map granted crash's graphics and soundtrack were really good for early ps1 the bosses had good ideas behind them and some of the levels were really well made but if you want to experience crash 1 your best bet is buying the insane trilogy used that way activision doesn't get your money until bobby cody and his goon squad are out on their butts they don't deserve your cash [Music] man does it feel good again to be a metroid fan after a period where the only things from the franchise were a big misfire and a spin-off that came out at completely the wrong time we were gifted with a solid remake of the second game and a few years later a long forgotten project ended up becoming one of the best games in the series kinda makes you forget how rough the series started yeah the original metroid really makes it clear just how limited games were at the time with their technology while the first game was groundbreaking as one of the first exploration based platformers there were quite a few rough spots the first being apparent as soon as you spawn with 30 energy every time this means you have to grind for health every time you respawn which just wastes more of your time this may be due to the limited cartridge resources for the us version compared to the storage of the famicom disk system version in japan but this is pretty significant it doesn't even matter how many energy tanks you have you die you respawn with the same 30 health meaning dying only gets worse the further you get in another thing which was limited in the beginning was the versatility of your beam you couldn't stack beam types it was either wave or ice and having to choose isn't nice diagonal aiming wasn't an option either and you couldn't even shoot the full length of the screen without the long beam this is the only original game in the series that has this item by the way but the biggest limitation of the original metroid comes with the lack of an in-game map the nes at the time simply didn't have the capacity to have a feature to tell you where you were and this was especially troublesome because a lot of corridors look the same leading to getting lost and wasting more of your time later games would fix pretty much all of these issues and improve the feel of the controls with metroid 2 ditching the long beam and giving players a proper save system and super metroid finally giving you beam stacking and a map and giving that zero mission exists which not only addresses most of the original's limitations but expands the lure of the first mission on zebus there is really no reason to go back to the original other than nostalgia we all know samus is a woman by now it's no big shocker anymore [Music] before square enix there was just square and enix both companies renowned for revolutionizing rpgs with enix's signature franchise being dragon quest and square being known for final fantasy while the franchise has swerved in quite a few different directions leading to now the super nintendo and the ps1 eras had a good degree of consistent quality and the original nes game actually helped save a then desperate square from going bankrupt looking back at it today however you can see that it took a while for the series to find its identity in fact the first game in the series was essentially a dungeons and dragons game in all but name starting with the formation of your initial party accusing a class giving your character a name all that's missing is rolling for stats and giving your characters personalities the only other games where you had self inserts were 3's famicom release and the mmos next similarity the bestiary a lot of it was pulled wholesale from dnd including mind flares and beholders the latter of which were changed into one-eyed skulls to avoid a lawsuit several staple creatures like chocobos and a man choices marlboros and behemoths wouldn't show up until the second game next magic which basically amounts to dnd spell slots spells were divided into levels you had to buy them at magic stores and you could only cast each level of spell a certain number of times before you had to refill them by resting mp didn't even become standard until the snes era but the biggest sources of first game awkwardness could be seen in battle first instead of positioning your character strategically to aggro enemies your party order determines the likelihood of being attacked with your party leader probably taking the brunt of it in other words the best strategy was to let your tank take point second you know how some of the later games had equipment that dealt multiple hits on enemies or certain enemies could attack more than once well in the first game that was all rng third and the biggest issue with battle was the lack of any auto targeting if a character's target died to someone else's attack before their turn came up they'd be swinging at air and well intimidation doesn't work in this game much like metroid if you want to experience the story of the original you're better off playing a remake be it on gba ps1 or heck even the pixel remaster because if you're going for the original original you're bound to run into some well [Music] okay do i think it's a little early for pokemon scarlet and violet well that kinda depends my main concern isn't the time frame per se after all three to four years has always been the time frame for a generation i'm just hoping the team that worked on legends arceus isn't the same team working on generation 9. freaking crunch regardless one thing that i can expect is that it won't have the same awkwardness of gen 1. okay we all know what a revolution that rby was an ushering in the now most profitable franchise in media but it's also a case study and how the limitations of hardware can use obstruct on a studio's ambition compared to the improvements gimmicks and quality of life changes we've seen since the og is so old school it's practically bedridden in the nursing home by now the list of bugs and issues with gen 1 is so long you can make a cinemasins video out of it for example did you know that the only way to check how close you were to gaining a level in gen 1 was to access the menu no meter here that wasn't until gen 2. another odd quirk that later games would change is having your pokemon retain their status when sent to a box for storage and you couldn't even organize your boxes in gen 1 either or capture any pokemon if your current box was full next the limits of your item bag come on only 20 different items and no separate pouches even school backpacks are better than that but by far the biggest cases of awkwardness with gen 1 came from its terrible balancing issues you know how powerful dragon types were played up to be yeah there was only the dragonite line its only damaging dragon type move was the fixed damage dragon rage and only ice type moves could be super effective against them critical hits and one-hit kos were based on speed meaning faster pokemon essentially held all the cards but none of these imbalances hold a candle to the unseen hand that telekinetically holds down the entire scale sweet merciful arceus who wasn't introduced until three generations later psychic types bent the gen 1 meta like a spoon the only damaging bug type moves at the time sucked the ghost type moves that were supposed to be super effective were rendered useless by a programming error the only ghost type blend at the time was also part poison and the psychics had punishing attacks and dominating status moves especially amnesia amnesia was basically super saiyan mode thanks to special attack and defense occupying a single stat psychic types are still powerful today but back then they were so powerful gen 2 had to introduce two new types to counter them add to that numerous bugs and glitches and there's hardly any reason to go back to the originals especially when fire red and leaf green exist [Music] being a pokemon fan is suffering now before we move on here are some honorable mentions the legend of zelda one halo combat evolved tekken 1 the first mass effect and the first assassin's creed now let's see what the arcade nation has to say with this month's patron picks star fox for the super nintendo while it looked amazing at this time it doesn't age as great as the later games the ad controls weird visual format as well as ai that legitimately cheats only computer players can use items like the poison mushroom and yoshi egg and the marios can just turn on the star men whenever they want and sweet arceus it'll make emotion sick seriously though why the heck did the map take up half the screen this game has clunky controls a pseudo-collect-a-thon aesthetic and an open world that's linear at least the later sequels fine-tune most of it as well as give the rest of the main cast sometime in the spotlight gotta love progress [Music] well when i first mentioned this topic on my twitter.com i did get a lot of responses but one game kept coming up continuously and i can't say i blame them one bit so i'm not even gonna bother with building this up it's time to rip off the band-aid and explain why we don't talk about street fighter 1. yeah i know 35th anniversary and all that that just makes it all the more important to talk about this game because it makes it all the more clear just how far the franchise has come since then and honestly if one were to play street fighter 1 for the first time after having played virtually any other street fighter game they may find themselves wondering how the franchise survived this long the leap from street fighter 1 to street fighter 2 is so significant that one can barely tell it's the same franchise or not for the fundamentals sure they're all there the life bars the best of three matches the six button format command based specials and all that but the game as a whole is so janky kang that mastering it would drive lesser men to insanity how about starting with the fact that there was no character select ulnario and ken were playable and they were locked to your player position player 1 was ryu player 2 was ken and 10 other opponents you could never play as each with the same win and lose quotes that sounded like the adults in the penis cartoons other things that we see as standard in fighting games like stuns throws and combos just straight up didn't exist in this game and the controls dear lord in heaven the controls ground movement was restricted to awkward hopping along the floor instead of the smooth walking we've gotten used to in other words good luck positioning yourself with any degree of precision jumping isn't much better in all honesty and by the way those six button controls they were an afterthought built into later versions of the cabinet as an alternative why the original cabinet actually had hydraulic pads that gauge the strength of punches and kicks based on how hard you hit them and not only was it awkward it was expensive as but the worst part was the special moves yeah they were incredibly powerful and could end around in seconds if you could actually use them pulling them off felt like trying to roll a nat 20 with a loaded d20 more often than not the show where you can feel like a show where you crap shoot i'd find it hard to believe that anyone beat this game back in the day without a shitload of quarters the worst part is street fighter 1 was the only game in the main series outside of the alpha and ex games which didn't get any updates the original was all you had and considering the way that later street fighter games had at least two updates each this was the one that could have used the most and yet without any of these games we wouldn't have gotten the franchise as we know today without sonic's early limits and awkward levels we wouldn't have gotten the smoothness of later games like sonic 3 knuckles in sonic mania without the original metroid with all its limitations we wouldn't have epic adventures like metroid dread and yes without the chance of the original street fighter we wouldn't have had street fighter 2 and the entire fighting games genre as we know it might not exist today join me next month for another qg at the arcade as we take a look at just how street fighter 2 changed everything i'm the porter guy and until next time the arcade is closed [Music] hey everyone qg here if you enjoyed the video please like subscribe leave a comment and share the video around feel free to check out my twitter and my quick streams and consider supporting me through patreon and donating to my extra life campaign to support children's wisconsin thanks for watching [Music] [Music] you

Channel: The Quarter Guy

Views: 27,876

Keywords: The Quarter Guy, Quarter Guy, Quarter, Guy, Video Games, Gaming

Id: IyDYO6P3bL8

Length: 25min 40sec (1540 seconds)

Published: Sat Mar 26 2022