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Not that big of news. In X-Play's One Piece review for Ps2, they mentioned it may make their 'Franchises that need to die list' and then it cut to a picture of Mega Man, Naruto and Sonic.

So it begs the question: What franchises do you think need to die?

Here's my list

-All Mario spinoff games

-Pac-Man (unless we're talking about the original on a compliation disc. His 3D games look rather lame)


I'd put Tony Hawk on the list, but despite the fact new Tony Hawk games are churned out several times a year, they all stay in pretty good quality. (I've yet to play Downhill Jam or Project 8 though)

Naruto just has too many fillers, Sonic has lazy people and megaman has crazy people who like to kill characters and make new series of the same thing.

Pacman needs a good redesign, the current Pacman looks boring.

And Mario needs to make more Old School style games (even better 3D games with old school elements) and more RPGs, I love Mario RPG's.

Mario&Luigi was the bOMB!

cjmcray wrote:So it begs the question: What franchises do you think need to die?

Here's my list

-All Mario spinoff games

If that includes the RPG games, Warioware, and any other platformer from the 'Mario family' then die.

The only spin-off Mario series that really needs to die is Mario Party. It's like Nintendo's Madden... another year, another barely-different iteration.

Most of the other Mario spin-offs are actually pretty good, really.

Ngangbius wrote:

cjmcray wrote:So it begs the question: What franchises do you think need to die?

Here's my list

-All Mario spinoff games

If that includes the RPG games, Warioware, and any other platformer from the 'Mario family' then die.

It's refferring to Mario Party, Mario Golf, Mario Baseball, and whatever Mario -insert profession/sport here- game.

Whether they are good or not, it's simply overkill. There's like, 20 Mario games released a year (ok, maybe I'm exaggerating a bit there) But none of them are 'real' Mario games, they're just spinoffs that have nothing to do with what made Mario popular in the first place.
They're just attempts to cash in on the Mario name, without having to actually work on a 'real' Mario game.

Wario on the other hand, gets the thumbs up from me.

Yeah, but they are fun in there own right. Even Mario Party is fun, except for the whole releasing the same thing every year: Of the three I played I enjoyed them.

In other news french keyboards are a pain in the ass.

I'm still waiting for Nintendo to make Mario paint-ball.

I'm offended that they think One Piece should die. They clearly know nothing of the series outside of the shitty dub, if that.

[Segasonic] 4Kids has destroyed any chance that One Piece would gain main stream popularity in the West. [/Segasonic]

Dont you get it?

Ignoring 4KIDS is like ignoring AIDS.

Considerinvg Vivendi Universal has yet to give the Crash franchise to someone who can actually handle the game right outside of the Naughty Dog era, I'd wish they put the series to rest and just leave Crash alone, he's suffered enough.

cjmcray wrote:Whether they are good or not, it's simply overkill. There's like, 20 Mario games released a year (ok, maybe I'm exaggerating a bit there) But none of them are 'real' Mario games, they're just spinoffs that have nothing to do with what made Mario popular in the first place. They're just attempts to cash in on the Mario name, without having to actually work on a 'real' Mario game.

Most of them are related in some way to the Mario world and surprisingly fun, but that's not really the point. The point is, Mario Strikers is great.

Frankly, a franchise should only die if the games they release are consistantly bad. Sure, "Tony Hawk", "Mario Party", "Madden" and all that are all basically the same damn thing... but they're still good, so no one really cares. People like Mario sports games plenty well, I don't see why they need to die.

Most anime-show games are pretty lame, Megaman has been trash since #2 in my opinion, and I think it's too early to say "go die" to Sonic. Although it's getting there.

Too early? Heroes wasn't bad enough for you?

Really comparing the quality of Heroes to the recent games is a bit of a joke in my opinion. It's far from a good game, but it's fucking amazing compared to what's came since.

I think the time for the big "Go Die!" stamp on Sonic will be if the next game is terrible.

I dunno, four terrible games in a row (Sonic Heroes, Sonic Riders, Shadow the Hedgehog, Sonic the Hedgehog 360/PS3,) is enough for me.

Outside of Sonic Rush, there hasn't been a decent Sonic game since Sonic Adventure 2. I doubt Sega will just stop whoring out their mascot character, but I doubt they'll do anything to fix it soon either. If they can't get it right, I'd rather they just stop. Maybe the shitty sales of Sonic the Hedgehog on 360 will send them the message they can't just burn shit (as in literal feces,) onto a disc and expect people to buy it.

Or not. Who knows.

Also: Isn't the entire Mario series technically a spin-off of Donkey Kong?

Yeah, Pac-Man really needs to go. Namco keeps trying to jam the poor little yellow pie-shaped whatever into every genre they can rip off and it just doesn't work. Maybe in their own minds they think Pac-man is up there with Mario, but he's not. Mario defines genres. Pac-man is just another cookie-cutter franchise.

The same goes for what Konami is doing with Frogger.

I think Final Fantasy - at least, Tetsuya Nomura Final Fantasy - needs to go. I loved Final Fantasy 7. I thought Kingdom Hearts, in concept (haven't played it yet), was pretty cool if hard to swallow. But it's really starting to get ridiculous now and kind of predictable. I look at Final Fantasy 12 and I go, "Hey, I kind of like some of these character designs." and then I glance over at FF13 and it's like "Yeah, this is totally Tetsuya Nomura. What is that, a gas-powered sword? Fuck."

Crash Bandicoot and Spyro the Dragon have needed to die for years now. Vivendi and Travelers Tales are no substitute for Naughty Dog and Insomniac, and it's been pretty apparent since the first PS2 Crash game that the franchises have been watered down to the point of obsolescence.

Splinter Cell needs to be put down. It's become Ubisoft's Madden. Before the next version is even out, they're already talking about the game beyond it. They could stop with the "Pandora Tomorrow", "Chaos Theory", and "Double Agent" sub-titles and just rename them "Splinter Cell 2007", "Splinter Cell 2008" and I don't think anybody would mind.

Castlevania is starting to show signs of weakness. I won't say it's time for the franchise to die, but it certainly needs to be revitalized a bit. I haven't played Portrait of Ruin, though, but I've heard it's still a pretty standard Metroidvania game with a few interesting tweaks.

Squirrelknight wrote:I dunno, four terrible games in a row (Sonic Heroes, Sonic Riders, Shadow the Hedgehog, Sonic the Hedgehog 360/PS3,) is enough for me.

I thought Riders was pretty good. And Heroes was a bit of a disappointment, but it wasn't really THAT bad of a game.

The only really bad Sonic games are Shadow and (from what I hear) Sonic2K6.

Everything else has been either good to medicore. Game critics have just been unreasonably harsh on the series since it's 3D debut. (SA2 did NOT deserve all those bad reviews)

I still need to get my hands on Advance 3 and Rush.

I'd avoid Advance 3. It's a lazy, ugly, cluttered mess. It's the worst of the Advance series.

Actually, I thought it was pretty decent. <i>Advance 2</i> is easily the worst of the lot, by thinking that speed is a good substitute for actual platforming.

And yes, I remember reading your review on why <i>Advance 3</i> sucks so much. At some point, anyway; memory might be rusty.

Although I think the first <i>Advance</i> was probably the best. Sure, the characters aren't differentiated much, and the stages don't have too many unique gimmicks, but I only ever play as Sonic anyway, and the stages tend to be fun anyway, so there.

On topic, I really don't want to see the <i>Sonic</i> series die. It'd be better than what we have now, to be sure, but it'd be a very disappointing end to the series to end with THIS schlock. I say give it to Crystal Dynamics; if <i>Tomb Raider: Legends</i> is any indication, they seem to have a knack for reviving near-dead franchises. Heck, I found the demo for <i>Legends</i> to be more fun that the full version of the first <i>Tomb Raider</i> on the Saturn, which was supposed to be the series' heyday. (To be fair, I haven't gotten that far in <i>Tomb Raider</i>, in the three years or so I've owned it. Restarted a few times, even.)

BlazeHedgehog wrote:Yeah, Pac-Man really needs to go. Namco keeps trying to jam the poor little yellow pie-shaped whatever into every genre they can rip off and it just doesn't work. Maybe in their own minds they think Pac-man is up there with Mario, but he's not. Mario defines genres. Pac-man is just another cookie-cutter franchise.

Outside of the Namco Classic Collections, does anybody actually care for the Pac-Man spinoffs? I mean there hasn't been a Pac-Man game this isn't the original that's been a best seller in ages. Geez, Namco if you want a franchise that you want to put your whole energy in, why not concetrate on the Tales of... series. You can start by treating the Tales series in the West like you do in Japan such as giving it some decent advertising and keeping everything in(that you usually cut in the franchise) for once.

cjmcray wrote:Everything else has been either good to medicore. Game critics have just been unreasonably harsh on the series since it's 3D debut. (SA2 did NOT deserve all those bad reviews)

You kidding? Both SA1 and SA2 recieved good reviews when they debuted on the DC. It was only when they debuted on the GCN where Honeymoon was over and in SA:DX case didn't fix any flaws that was in DC version that it got slammed on.

SegaSonic wrote:Dont you get it?

Ignoring 4KIDS is like ignoring AIDS.

Getting rid of you would be like getting rid of cancer.

Except he would make more satisfying screams when he's destroyed.

Shadow Hog wrote:Actually, I thought it was pretty decent. <i>Advance 2</i> is easily the worst of the lot, by thinking that speed is a good substitute for actual platforming.

And yes, I remember reading your review on why <i>Advance 3</i> sucks so much. At some point, anyway; memory might be rusty.

Although I think the first <i>Advance</i> was probably the best. Sure, the characters aren't differentiated much, and the stages don't have too many unique gimmicks, but I only ever play as Sonic anyway, and the stages tend to be fun anyway, so there.

On topic, I really don't want to see the <i>Sonic</i> series die. It'd be better than what we have now, to be sure, but it'd be a very disappointing end to the series to end with THIS schlock. I say give it to Crystal Dynamics; if <i>Tomb Raider: Legends</i> is any indication, they seem to have a knack for reviving near-dead franchises. Heck, I found the demo for <i>Legends</i> to be more fun that the full version of the first <i>Tomb Raider</i> on the Saturn, which was supposed to be the series' heyday. (To be fair, I haven't gotten that far in <i>Tomb Raider</i>, in the three years or so I've owned it. Restarted a few times, even.)

Heh! I think Sonic Advance 2 is the best of the series. To me, it's like:

Sonic Advance: A generic, boring, uninteresting Sonic the Hedgehog 4. Little innovation; just flat, bland, extremely by-the-books Sonic.

Sonic Advance 2: The best. Takes a bit of memorization, but I feel that the gameplay additions really expanded Sonic in a way I enjoyed a lot. Bosses could use some work and there are some cheap deaths, though.

Sonic Advance 3: Nice ideas, worthless execution. Map stages are like big, boring, empty, featureless levels. Level design is extremely cramped and your acceleration feels too slow unless you're carrying 50+ rings. Cheap hits are worse than ever, meaning it's hard to have more than 50 rings at a time. Some of the ugliest Sonic levels in history, too (Sunset Hill, Twinkle Snow - I'm looking at you). And I hate the idea of rationing out popular/familiar special abilities to specific team parings. I generally just stick to playin as Sonic and Tails for the entire game because that controls the most like Sonic Advance 2.

Sonic Rush: Like Sonic Advance 2 Part 2. Everything I loved about Sonic Advance 2 is in here and expanded upon. It just... takes a lot of memorization before you start to really enjoy it.

Here's how I see it.

Sonic Advance 1: A not-bad-not-great, solidly decent attempt at a 2D Sonic game. I go through it without really taking much of it in, but I thoroughly appreciate the thought and the premise.

Sonic Advance 2: The levels aren't quite as much fun; they're bigger without being fun to explore and they're deadlier without reason, à la 3D series. And running bosses? Stupid. The fared worse in Heroes, but still.

Sonic Advance 3: Take away the zone navigation between levels and the insipid toy level and you have pretty much a game that just might trump the entire 8-bit Sonic series.

Sonic Rush: Continuing in the tradition of Adv3's enjoyable level design, it surprisingly has no replay value whatsoever. I've tried to play through it again. It just doesn't make sense.