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Fully agree with this, Monkey Island must have been like the first adventure game that truly did it perfectly. graphics/characters/music/story/gameplay. it was just super fun.Quote:
Originally Posted by Mad Moham
While they made adventure games prior to Monkey Island it really was the first game where everything just fell into place.
I don't know about Renegade. Somebody could make the case for Final Fight and maybe the 89 Ninja Turtle arcade game.
Renegade did some things, but I don't think it was enough to say it defined beat em ups.
Renegade was just a blip on the gaming radar. Double Dragon kicked the doors open for the genre.Quote:
Originally Posted by Nightwolf
Surprised nobody mentioned Herzog Zwei for RTS (there are earlier ones but they all seem to stick to a single hall instead of the full-blown expanded areas that would become the norm later). Although Dune II seems to be the one to have made it popular (then again, I recall hearing that Herzog Zwei influenced that game too, so there's that).
Battle City seems to have turned into its own genre in Russia despite being a footnote elsewhere :v It seems like every Russian tank game uses it as a template.
It does seem to have defined modern JRPGs though. Final Fantasy 1 came out a week earlier than Phantasy Star 1, but FF1 was way too mechanical (with an excuse plot at best) while PS1 focused a lot more on storytelling as would become the norm later. Early Dragon Quest games were also heavily mechanical.Quote:
Originally Posted by EclecticGroove
But yeah, PS1 has aged a lot better than FF1 and I'm pretty sure that has a lot to do with it. The mechanical aspect of JPRGs has aged horribly.
And this is the other thing, WRPG and JRPG have little to do in common (both have roots in tabletop RPGs but branched into completely different paths), so when somebody says RPG you have to guess which of the two they're talking about.Quote:
Originally Posted by gamevet
Shmups were some notoriously gradual improvements stacked on top of each other, so there isn't much of a game defining the genre there. The closest you have to it is Space Invaders for setting the very basics that the rest improved upon, not to mention it was the reason the Atari 2600 had taken off in the first place.Quote:
Originally Posted by OverDrone
Growing up in a town big on games, I never saw Raiden in an arcade in any city until the 32-bit generation and when it came out on consoles, none of my hardcore gaming friends had ever heard of it.
Tiger Heli was everywhere, but even when it first came out, it felt crude and dated.
The arcade vertical shooter which had the biggest impact on me was Sky Soldiers.
Quote:
Originally Posted by gamevet
Double Dragon was a longer game but mechanically everything was already established in Renegade. TMNT arcade was a popular game but it didn't add much to the genre, Final Fight did a lot more, it was kinda the SF2 of beat 'em ups.Quote:
Originally Posted by sull56ivan2010
Tiger Heli was one of the first Toaplan games, it was Flying Shark and Twin Cobra when they came out with a solid formula that lasted for quite a bit, Raiden 1 was essentially a (good) Toaplan imitator.Quote:
Originally Posted by Black_Tiger
Double Dragon put beat 'em ups on the map. Period. Without it, there would be no TMNT or Final Fight.
True on arcade (I never saw Renegade on arcades back in its days, but Double Dragon is more similar to Renegade than Final Fight is to Double Dragon), then on 8bit computer, It was Renegade. Plus Target Renegade (both the very best beat'em up)Quote:
Originally Posted by midnightrider
From what I've read in some Gamest lists DD wasn't even all that popular in Japan, the genre wasn't all that big until Final Fight. DD was important but without Renegade there probably wouldn't be belt-scrollers at all.
I played Renegade (arcade) at my tech school's game room. I later got the game on the Amiga. The C-64 versions feel like a totally different game.Quote:
Originally Posted by Nightwolf
Rail Shooters; is Panzer Dragoon too late in the day? It's my go to game when I need an on rails fix.
Yeah, C64 feels not as good port as Spectrum and specially Amstrad CPC, since were great ports, but the graphics style were different. The same can be said with Target Renegade on NES, very different, and not a very good game than the one for Speccy and CPC version. Anyway, those are not as playable as DD arcade and millon km from FF.Quote:
Originally Posted by gamevet
The genesis wasn't popular in Japan either, but that never stopped it from being a popular console around the world, to the point that Capcom and Konami stated to make games for it as soon as they could.
Double Dragon was massively popular in North America, which has always been the largest market. It even made a big deal about it's arcade statues on the NES box:
http://gamefaqs.akamaized.net/box/0/8/1/3081_front.jpg
You didn't start seeing other games in the genre, as it was redefined by Renegade, by other companies, until after Double Dragon's success. Without that, who's to say Capcom would have even tried to make Final Fight as a beat 'em up, instead of taking another crack at the fighting genre, before Street Fighter II?
They didn't make a movie about Renegade, but they did make one about Double Dragon.
They didn't make a movie about Pit Fighter, but they did make one about Mortal Kombat.
They didn't make a movie about Yie Ar Kung-Fu, but they did make one about Street Fighter II.
The games that defined a genre were rewarded like this.
Oh so it's about movies now, then Postal should be the most genre defining game ever ;)
That analogy is totally off, Yie Ar Kung Fu and SF2 have nothing in common except for being 1vs1 games (and Yie Ar Kung Fu wasn't even the first anyway). What makes SF2 important is that it set the new fundamental mechanics for the genre. Double Dragon is different, it came out just 1 year after Renegade by the same company and followed its fundamentals just adding bigger stages (especially Double Dragon 2 that even used the same control scheme from Renegade).
Oh and Mortal Kombat didn't define anything in the genre, it just followed the SF2 hype and was popular because western game + gore.
If the MD was popular in Japan then Capcom would release some decent games for it instead of just a couple half-assed ports. It had some decent support from JP devs but it would have been much better if it was a popular console there.Quote:
Originally Posted by midnightrider
"Double Dragon was massively popular in North America, which has always been the largest market."
Except arcades rapidly died in the 90s there with only Midway giving a damn about them. And yeah Final Fight was influenced by Double Dragon, however when Akira Nishitani went to the US he was told that Street Fighter 1 was actually selling better than DD lol
But anyway, my point isn't that Double Dragon wasn't important, my point is that the development of Renegade and DD are so related that it would be unfair to ignore Renegade at all.