Do you still feel conned by overhyped games?

[AmigaCD32]

I was thinking today about games that were really hyped but let you down and Rise of the Robots came to mind.

I remember seeing this all over magazines and as I had an Amiga CD32 it was the "must get" game ever. You even had a promotional video on one of the discs that came with the console. I watched that video over and over when I got it and then sh*t hit the fan when I played it.

My friend who had an Amiga CD32 bought it for Christmas then left it with me for a week. To say I was bitterly disappointed and felt conned is an understatement. Even the music which was done by Queen's Brian May was crap and didn't save the game.

So what games made you disappointed once you played them after months of waiting and seeing it in magazines?

[Amigajay]

Rise of the Robots had the warning signs of being crap even before reviews as previewers were saying it had little gameplay, so that didnt really surprise me when the reviews slated it.
I guess games like Syndicate being previewed saying having a high res mode etc and turning out to just be the A500 version.

Same for Super Skidmarks, after playing the 256 colour CD32 demo, the final game releases was, you guessed it the A500 version!

[jotd]

Don't forget that Rise of the Robots was coded by Sean Griffiths (ex Bitmap Brothers) who coded Magic Pockets (a coding masterpiece).

You really wonder what went wrong with all this. There's a "making of" in retrogamer, where they explained that Sean was assisted by trainees with little experience. That certainly explains a lot.

Time warner bosses must have thought that good music & sfx would have been enough... Programming can be subcontracted to Mars if the testing is good...

Hyped games, or ... most Psygnosis games with movie-like introduction? (Red Zone, Awesome, Walker, KGS ...)

[Foebane]

If I remember, most if not all of the Amiga magazines in their over-saturated market covered this game to ridiculous extremes, and if I remember correctly, the entire market nearly collapsed when the truth came out, as covered in this video: [ Show youtube player ]

[Minuous]

I never felt conned about that game in the first place. I do agree the music is very disappointing, but apart from that it's a very good game, just a few gameplay issues which have since been fixed anyway.

[gimbal]

"Feeling conned" is something of the 21st century, IMO. Back then a bad game only led to a mild disappointment and then you moved on to playing the games you did like, it did not lead to the amount of emotional uproar that it does today where people even go as far as throwing death threats at developers. I can imagine that for a CD32 title there could be a stronger disappointment involved as it was vitally important that the machine would succeed - for that you need good games and RoR should have been a system seller. But still, the response to Rise of the Robots was respectable nonetheless. "Too bad, so sad".

Imagine today if Destiny 3 would release with really poor networking code... woof. Better book a ticket to Mars, the amount of outrage that will spill into the atmosphere is going to make the rain acid.

[Glen M]

Rise of the robots I own on CD32. I bought it way back when even after reading the crap reviews because the game itself was a graphical master piece and god damn it I wanted something pretty on my console!

It is crap and I admit at the time and ever after reading the review I was of the opinion it can't be that bad but oh my how I was wrong.

The controls are sluggish to say the least and the animations have maybe 3 frames in them at best. Like watching to robotic arms being controlled by my granny under a strobe light. But oh my isn't it pretty with FMV intro and FMV between fights.

[Hewitson]

I never felt conned because, like most Amiga users, I never paid for them. Seeing the trainers & cracktros was always, to me, far more interesting than playing games.

Originally Posted by jotd

Don't forget that Rise of the Robots was coded by Sean Griffiths (ex Bitmap Brothers) who coded Magic Pockets (a coding masterpiece).

Masterpiece? It ran at 25fps if I remember correctly.

[Foebane]

Originally Posted by Hewitson

I never felt conned because, like most Amiga users, I never paid for them. Seeing the trainers & cracktros was always, to me, far more interesting than playing games.


Masterpiece? It ran at 25fps if I remember correctly.

ALL Bitmap Brothers games did, as far as I remember.

[AChristian]

i didnt really like bitmap bros. games ;0 shocking i know

secret of the silver blades wasnt hyped but it was a poor D&D game

I think i was lucky enough to mostly buy games that lived up to the hype e.g. dune 2, syndicate

i think alien breed was a bit over-hyped tho

a bit off topic final fantasy 7 was hyped beyond belief but i thought it was just ok, not a patch on fallout

[gimbal]

Originally Posted by AChristian

a bit off topic final fantasy 7 was hyped beyond belief but i thought it was just ok, not a patch on fallout

... This sentence breaks my brain.

[rare_j]

Amazingly, I’m still bitter about zool, decades after the event.
I bought it on the strength of the cu amiga demo, which was quite different from the finished game. Hardly played it.
Also bitter about Assasin. Bought that on the strength of the demo and it turned out the rest of the game was balls.

[AChristian]

Originally Posted by gimbal

... This sentence breaks my brain.

Yes that was badly written. I'll put more effort in next time.

[jotd]

About the Bitmap Bros: 25 FPS doesn't make a bad game. Each Bitmap game had some nice features & awesome A.I. for the time.

note that 50FPS doesn't make a good game either.

[Foebane]

The Bitmap Bros games certainly had a unique visual look - that wonderful dithering texture across all the graphics really made use of the limited colour palette.

[dlfrsilver]

Originally Posted by jotd

Don't forget that Rise of the Robots was coded by Sean Griffiths (ex Bitmap Brothers) who coded Magic Pockets (a coding masterpiece).

You really wonder what went wrong with all this. There's a "making of" in retrogamer, where they explained that Sean was assisted by trainees with little experience. That certainly explains a lot.

Time warner bosses must have thought that good music & sfx would have been enough... Programming can be subcontracted to Mars if the testing is good...

Hyped games, or ... most Psygnosis games with movie-like introduction? (Red Zone, Awesome, Walker, KGS ...)

This game was not coded by Sean Griffiths. He was only the Project Manager.

The game was programmed by Andy Clark on Amiga and Gary Leach on PC.

[lilalurl]

Originally Posted by rare_j

Amazingly, I’m still bitter about zool, decades after the event.
I bought it on the strength of the cu amiga demo, which was quite different from the finished game. Hardly played it.

Was it that different?
Out of curiosity (never played the demo before) I tried the CU Amiga demo from July 1992 (I suppose you meant that one):
http://amr.abime.net/issue_595_coverdisks

The main difference I noticed was that the sweets filling the percentage gauge actually served as ammo (when you reach 0% you can no longer fire, until you grab some sweets again).
Otherwise, it seemed rather similar to the final game. I only played a few minutes though

[FOL]

Originally Posted by jotd

Don't forget that Rise of the Robots was coded by Sean Griffiths (ex Bitmap Brothers) who coded Magic Pockets (a coding masterpiece).

You really wonder what went wrong with all this. There's a "making of" in retrogamer, where they explained that Sean was assisted by trainees with little experience. That certainly explains a lot.

Time warner bosses must have thought that good music & sfx would have been enough... Programming can be subcontracted to Mars if the testing is good...

Hyped games, or ... most Psygnosis games with movie-like introduction? (Red Zone, Awesome, Walker, KGS ...)

Magic Pockets was an awesome game, they used to use it over here on Saturday morning kids tv as a phone in game you controlled with your home phone.


I don't feel conned at all, it was a privilege to own an Amiga back then as they were quite expensive. I didn't have to pay for games as my dad owned a computer shop, so he would just give them to us, if we asked.
After his shop closed, I used to save up pocket money and would get games ordered in special from a rival shop on the way home from school.


Life was so much more fun back then.

[Daedalus]

Originally Posted by gimbal

... This sentence breaks my brain.

Really? I played FFVII quite a bit on the Playstation, and while I though it was alright, it didn't grab my attention enough to keep playing all the way through and I abandoned it some way through the second disc. Definitely didn't live up to the hype for me, though it wasn't a bad game either.

[jotd]

Magic Pockets is an awesome - albeit underrated and hard to comprehend - game.

I've seen Sean Griffiths profile on linkedin. I may contact him at some point just to tell him how good it was...