Which games missed potential in your opinion?

I'll second Streets of Rage 3 (and BK3 to a lesser extent). SoR 3 was changed for the worse, so that is obvious, but BK3 is a an interesting one. The game is a huge step up technically and mechanically from SoR 2 at first glance, but somehow I never play it while I can't stop enjoying SoR 2.

The sprites are bigger and more detailed but everything is a grainy ugly mess. There are more characters to play as but they all suck besides Shiva, and even Shiva feels really unsatisfying to play as in this game. The new weapon durability mechanic removes all the fun from using weapons, and I pretty much never bother to use the new moves.

The whole attempt at a storyline in the game is crap too, and the music is horrendous.

What a mess. Just goes to show that art direction and a good "feel" matter a lot more than how good the game engine is.

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Originally Posted by Da_Shocker

TMNT II: The arcade game First time I played the actual arcade game I felt like I was basically playing a scaled down episode of TMNT. NES version well it felt like a NES game.

Sonic Jam: They could've pulled a Mario All-Stars and reworked every single aspect for the Saturn. Higher resolution, more colors, zero slowdown, playing as Knuckles and Tails in Sonic 1, better chip based music. Instead we got ports with inferior music, a 3D engine that I don't think was every used again and the Japanese commercials (!) because SoA was to cheap to pay American actors royalties FUCK OUTTA here.

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I don't know what you were expecting with the NES port of TMNT II. It's going to be scaled down, no matter what. Any game on that console was if it was a port from 1984 and up. It's like people complaining about Pac-Man on the 2600.

Never played Sonic Jam, but it came out in 1997 when Sega was bleeding a lot of money so it's a petty thing to bitch about wanting a brand of commercials despite their importance.

Only problem with NES TMNT2 is that the standard attack 2-hit combo don't work (leaves you open after first attack), as a result everyone only plays this game spamming A+B special attack throughout all game instead. Surprised no one came with some sort of a hack fix for this considering how popular the game is.

This is where TMNT3 NES is superior. Not only can you 2-hit combo with regular attacks, but you get more points for it too which leads to faster score extends (1ups) as a nice incentive to use weaker attacks.

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Originally Posted by Thief

Only problem with NES TMNT2 is that the standard attack 2-hit combo don't work (leaves you open after first attack), as a result everyone only plays this game spamming A+B special attack throughout all game instead.

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Well that's kinda accurate, the arcade's "combo system" is a damn mess so you have to either time your attacks or just spam A+B.

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Originally Posted by sull56ivan2010

I don't know what you were expecting with the NES port of TMNT II. It's going to be scaled down, no matter what. Any game on that console was if it was a port from 1984 and up. It's like people complaining about Pac-Man on the 2600.

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Except Pac-Man on the Atari 2600 was rushed and forced to fit in a smaller ROM size (8KB was a thing already, but Atari wanted to squeeze as much money as possible - same goes for ET). That one could have been done better (and I think the biggest complaint was the ghosts always flickering as if they were in the worst case).

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Originally Posted by Sik

Having more tracks would have been more useful I'd say. Even the 32X version falls short I think (though it's definitely better, not gonna argue that - and I honestly deal much better with the stock car than the F1 car).

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The tracks are fine. The three (or five) cover all of the major types of racing challenges that tracks can offer. Nobody would say that Monaco is boring, let's get a different track this year, for example. The real long-term challenge is competition -- that's why Monaco has been challenging for even experienced drivers again and again for over seventy-five years. And I mean, c'mon, wouldn't it be cool to actually use the pits?

Agreed, I always wished in VRD to have a more sim mode where you needed to use the pits. Forgot about that because I have never actually driven into the pits, since it is just an arcade-born feature which guarantees to put you behind.

Have to say that Shinobi On the Saturn is also one of the biggest missed opportunities. What is a really nice playing game, should have also been a showcase for the Saturn 2D power with Huge Sprite and a ton of Scaling and rotation effects along with a CD-DA Yuzo koshiro soundtrack.

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Originally Posted by Team Andromeda

Have to say that Shinobi On the Saturn is also one of the biggest missed opportunities. What is a really nice playing game, should have also been a showcase for the Saturn 2D power with Huge Sprite and a ton of Scaling and rotation effects along with a CD-DA Yuzo koshiro soundtrack.

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Excuse me but i considere Shinobi fine for me. You experimented the japanese version?

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Originally Posted by segarule

Excuse me but i considere Shinobi fine for me. You experimented the japanese version?

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Excuse me, I said its a nice game, but it was a total letdown in the GFX dept and the sound should have been so much better. I have both the Japanese and the Pal version and the music score really should have been done by Yuzo and the game should have been a showcase for Saturn 2D mixed in with Polygon effects like Taroumaru on the Saturn.

This is the sort of visuals we should have got from a Saturn Shinobi game
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bDiD2UcqO0M

TA this songs are not top?
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0cyTDic6JjE
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3rrhP4wTU3o

I loved it

|T2 Arcade on the MD was a good game, with more polish it could have been the reason to own a Menacer. Me and my bro used to play the Hell out of it with pads though.

Agree with the general sentiment that Bare Knuckle III disappointed on release, mostly due to the glitchy sound FX cutting out all the time, the polar opposite of the previous game's masterful integration of PCM. Even then a lot of the sounds lack impact compared to BKII full stop.

Throwing another vote towards Bloodlines, too, since despite eventually revealing itself as a rock-solid Castlevania game, the palette issues, undercooked sound FX and a few questionable background graphics were a bit of a blow BITD to be honest.

The definitions of disappointment are kinda broad here, innit?

I've replayed this game recently, so I'll just say Fallout 2. You have an improved interface, more ways to control the actions of your NPCs and a bigger journey when compared to Fallout and that's it.

The first part of the game is really boring and so is the last part (well, you can kill "Mr.President"...) and stuffed in the middle there's a huge collection of side quests that greatly vary in terms of quality. The battle system is a drag, just like you drag your ass around through the wasteland until you get the car.

Contrary to popular belief, lots of customization options and different ways to solve a challenge doesn't necessarily translates into a great game.

It's a shame, because I really like the first Fallout and there are moments in Fallout 2 where you can see that the potential for a more solid experience is there.

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Originally Posted by Bottino

The definitions of disappointment are kinda broad here, innit?

I've replayed this game recently, so I'll just say Fallout 2. You have an improved interface, more ways to control the actions of your NPCs and a bigger journey when compared to Fallout and that's it.

The first part of the game is really boring and so is the last part (well, you can kill "Mr.President"...) and stuffed in the middle there's a huge collection of side quests that greatly vary in terms of quality. The battle system is a drag, just like you drag your ass around through the wasteland until you get the car.

Contrary to popular belief, lots of customization options and different ways to solve a challenge doesn't necessarily translates into a great game.

It's a shame, because I really like the first Fallout and there are moments in Fallout 2 where you can see that the potential for a more solid experience is there.

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I agree, the first Fallout is engaging and well packed, while the second feels just bloated.

Eternal Champions comes to mind big time. Cool characters and story, decent music, but the gameplay was like Street Fighter In molasses. The CD :"sequel" was better, but the music was pure trash on it. Also hard as hell.

And even then the only thing that killed it was a dispute between SOJ and SOA rather than the games themselves (・～・) For all we know a third game could have been much better if that hadn't happened.

And yeah, Eternal Champions is flawed as heck, once I got into a situation where the AI corned me such that I couldn't make any move at all. Not even jump or walk. Dammit.

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Originally Posted by Sik

And yeah, Eternal Champions is flawed as heck, once I got into a situation where the AI corned me such that I couldn't make any move at all. Not even jump or walk. Dammit.

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The AI is the least of EC's problems. I know this is a console exclusive fighting game from the '90s, so I'm not expecting it to have tournament level fine tuning or anything but it's pretty far from having a competent gameplay engine. The specials centering around charge type moves and the way they work with the inner strength gauge is not good IMO.

And the music is unfortunately supremely weedy.

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Originally Posted by segarule

TA this songs are not top?
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0cyTDic6JjE
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3rrhP4wTU3o

I loved it

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The music was ok, but it should have been a showcase for the Saturn in the way Revenge of Shinobi was for the MD back in 1990; That game showed off the MD hardware with super smooth scrolling, make fab use of the extra layer lovely effects and then that amazing music. Saturn Shinobi should have been much the same, use the amazing 2D hardware and make full use of the Saturn sound chip and I really don't know why SEGA went with that Digitised look, it took up loads of memory and meant that most of the enemies were badly and poorly animated. I remember the flyer that came with the Saturn on its launch in Japan and the early screen shots of Shinobi looked much better with some lovely GFX.