Franchises That Failed to Make the Leap into 3D

[Austin]

This is a thread to discuss games that you thought were fantastic in 2D, but when the market started to shift towards 3D, the franchise began to lose what made it magical.

What comes to mind first for me is Castlevania. I love Castlevania games, especially the NES ones, although my favorite is Super Castevania 4. Although the franchise continues to make plenty of games, I've never found any of the 3D games to be worthwhile. The N64 ones were trash, and while the most recent (Lords of Shadow) wasn't really a bad game, it really failed to draw me in. A more glaring flaw though, in my opinion, was that it didn't feel like a Castlevania game at all. It just shared the title.

 

[A Link In Time]

I definitely agree with you regarding Castlevania, Austin.

Another franchise which comes to mind is Sonic the Hedgehog. The 3D games are much less polished than their 2D counterparts from the Genesis days. The series is no longer about pure platforming either; Sega appears hell bent on introducing some perfunctory gimmick with every installment. There's a weak argument in stating Sonic is different due to the fast nature of the gameplay yet other lightning paced titles like F-Zero has managed just fine in the 3D sphere. Sonic Colors and Sonic Generations were steps in the right direction but far from the blue hedgehog's best. It'll be awhile before Sonic and Mario brawl for the title of #1 platformer again.

 

[Ventus]

The Sonic the Hedgehog series immediately comes to mind when I think of the thread title. I loved Adventure 1 and Adventure 2; they were genuinely great games in my opinion, have kept me many hours in my dad's room with our Dreamcast, etc. However, immediately after Adventure 1 & 2, the 3D side to Sonic just hasn't performed as well as the 2D side (which, by the way, was still running alongside the 3D counterpart) was.

Unleashed was a great concept, but not as polished as I'd expect it to. Colors? Let's not. Generations? Let's not. SEGA can't redeem the series seemingly...and I honestly don't know what's up with the series.

 

[Spirit]

Castlevania, Sonic and i'll not be agreed with on this but Rayman. I've played The Great Escape and Hoodlum Havoc and didn't enjoy them, Rayman's 2D efforts are far superior dating back to the ps1 days, the original had so much character that the 3D games just didn't have and Origins is a brilliant 2D platformer, one of the best i've played and i'll be looking forward to Legends if I ever purchase a WiiU.

(on the subject of Sonic Generations though, if you own a 3DS then i'd wholly recommend it. The 'new' Sonic's levels are still in 2D so now awful 3D glitches and crummy gameplay there.)

 

[Hero of Time]

Pokemon. Gale of Darkness was pretty good; the rest of the 3D games suck. I still can't believe the 3DS is out and Nintendo still made another set of Pokemon games for the DS. 2D Pokemon is getting old; there are only so many things you can do with it. I think it's time for Pokemon to venture into 3D again, and improve upon Gale of Darkness's flaws.

 

[Hanyou]

Final Fantasy. The first fully 3D Final Fantasy was X. Playing that after playing 1, 4, 6, or 9 is disappointing in the extreme. The aesthetic is just gross, the plot too complicated for its own good, the linearity is crippling, and the characters, aside from Yuna and Auron (who are tolerable cliches), are horrible. I don't think the series has fully recovered since then.

Donkey Kong 64 was everything I disliked about Rare's games rolled into one.

What comes to mind first for me is Castlevania. I love Castlevania games, especially the NES ones, although my favorite is Super Castevania 4. Although the franchise continues to make plenty of games, I've never found any of the 3D games to be worthwhile. The N64 ones were trash, and while the most recent (Lords of Shadow) wasn't really a bad game, it really failed to draw me in. A more glaring flaw though, in my opinion, was that it didn't feel like a Castlevania game at all. It just shared the title.

I didn't find Lords of Shadow very much fun. I didn't mind the visual aesthetic, but music is so important to Castlevania, and Lords of Shadow's music was an abomination. It was an absolute low point for me, and after a couple of levels, I figured I'd rather invest my time in far better hack-and-slash games if I felt like playing that genre at all.

No, but seriously, what happened with the soundtrack? This is Castlevania, for Christ's sake. It should have some energy.

While I like 2D Castlevania, it's the Iga ones that win the day for me, particularly Symphony of the Night and Aria of Sorrow. Never got into the older ones much except Bloodlines.

Pokemon. Gale of Darkness was pretty good; the rest of the 3D games suck. I still can't believe the 3DS is out and Nintendo still made another set of Pokemon games for the DS. 2D Pokemon is getting old; there are only so many things you can do with it. I think it's time for Pokemon to venture into 3D again, and improve upon Gale of Darkness's flaws.

If you ask me, the traditional Pokemon games have gotten better. While Gold and Silver remain my favorites, I love B&W as well as B&W 2.

I am curious, though, what's your problem with Pokemon Stadium and Pokemon Snap? Those are widely praised games, and I've always thought they're a good deal of fun. Snap in particular is creative and I'd love to see a sequel.

 

[JamesBond007]

The only franchise that I remember currently in Mother/EarthBound - EPIC FAIL. Originally, Mother 3 (also known as EarthBound 64) was planned for Nintendo 64DD. Instead of release, the game first got "Real Ura Zelda" treatment (actual game on cartridge and expansion disk planned to be released later), and finally it was cancelled in 2000 (even if there was actual playable demo on E3 1999). Although the game was lated revived on GBA and released in 2006, it has 2D overhead graphics and some content shown earlier was scrapped, like the minecart sequence. There was also some more interesting pictures, like destroyed Onett and Fourside, and kid with yellow/blue striped shirt (which could be early Lucas, early Claus or Ness).

Donkey Kong 64 was everything I disliked about Rare's games rolled into one.

I disagree with you completely. That's my favourite Donkey Kong game and I'm expecting a sequel for YEARS.

 

[Hanyou]

I disagree with you completely. That's my favourite Donkey Kong game and I'm expecting a sequel for YEARS.

The Donkey Kong Country games--all of them--were well-designed, fast-paced platformers with seamless controls. Donkey Kong 64 was a slow, arduous trek by comparison.

The characters move slow as molasses, major stretches of each level are barren, and you're forced to switch characters just to collect different-colored bananas in each level. Even the most basic of actions could require an overture of character-switching, switch-flipping, and puzzle-solving. I count it as quite possibly the slowest game I have ever played, and it baffles me that it would be presented as a sequel to the Donkey Kong Country games. It didn't feel like it was designed so much as randomly assembled, and the core mechanics just don't have much forward momentum to them.

Even the overworld is large for no apparent reason and has little to offer, in stark contrast to Peach's Castle in Mario 64 and Gruntilda's Lair in Banjo-Kazooie. Why?

I should add that I love Banjo-Kazooie. What Donkey Kong 64 does is take some of the ideas from that game, slows them down to a crawl, makes the levels bigger, adds a greater proportion of fetch quests, increases the character count but makes few of the characters control well, and makes basically 100%ing the game mandatory for completion. I marvel at the fact that the game could be the product of some of the same people who made the leaner Banjo-Kazooie.

I feel similarly about Super Mario Sunshine in relation to Super Mario 64, but at least Mario was a proven property in 3D by the time Sunshine came out. Donkey Kong 64 had nothing to do with any of the Donkey Kong games that preceded it, Country or otherwise, but worse, it lacked immediacy and a proper identity of its own. It was an exploration game and nothing more. Exploration wasn't rewarding, like it is in Zelda or Metroid, and it didn't lead to interesting level design that tested your skill, as it did in several parts of Banjo Kazooie. It had no real endpoint, no unifying objective to hold my interest.

 

[Austin]

Another franchise which comes to mind is Sonic the Hedgehog. The 3D games are much less polished than their 2D counterparts from the Genesis days. The series is no longer about pure platforming either; Sega appears hell bent on introducing some perfunctory gimmick with every installment. There's a weak argument in stating Sonic is different due to the fast nature of the gameplay yet other lightning paced titles like F-Zero has managed just fine in the 3D sphere. Sonic Colors and Sonic Generations were steps in the right direction but far from the blue hedgehog's best. It'll be awhile before Sonic and Mario brawl for the title of #1 platformer again.

I thought about Sonic as well when making this thread. The weird thing about Sonic is that they /have/ made good 3D Sonic games, in my opinion, like Sonic Adventure 2 Battle and Sonic Heroes. The formula does exist. It's just for some reason, Sega somehow manages to keep messing up on future installments. The only Sonic game I've played past Heroes was Shadow the Hedgehog and words cannot describe my dislike for that game.

Even though certain games were good, I would agree that overall Sonic has failed to transition well into the 3D era.

Pokemon. Gale of Darkness was pretty good; the rest of the 3D games suck. I still can't believe the 3DS is out and Nintendo still made another set of Pokemon games for the DS. 2D Pokemon is getting old; there are only so many things you can do with it. I think it's time for Pokemon to venture into 3D again, and improve upon Gale of Darkness's flaws.

I would love for the next regular Pokemon game to be in true 3D. I'll likely end up enjoying whatever is eventually released but I do think a regular Pokemon game, just transitioned into a three dimensional perspective, could be an utterly fantastic game. I did like certain 3D Pokemon games though, such as Pokemon Snap.

i'll not be agreed with on this but Rayman. I've played The Great Escape and Hoodlum Havoc and didn't enjoy them, Rayman's 2D efforts are far superior dating back to the ps1 days, the original had so much character that the 3D games just didn't have and Origins is a brilliant 2D platformer, one of the best i've played and i'll be looking forward to Legends if I ever purchase a WiiU.

I actually loved The Great Escape but it was one of my favorite childhood games so I could be biased on it. As for Hoodlum Havoc, I can see more where you're coming from with that. Sadly, my only experience with the first Rayman was the Gameboy port, and that did not do much to impress me.

 

[surferguy7]

Kirby.


....Because it never happened. His games are 2.5D platformers and the closest we've gotten to moving Kirby around in a 3D enviornment was Air Ride

 

[Curmudgeon]

Depends on the franchise. I never liked Catlevania in 3d. Mega Man objectively failed. Metroid Prime surprised me by how good it was.

 

[Castle]

While Myst and its sequels were always presented in 3D, the core Myst series has always been presented as a series of prerendered stills. Players navigate from one still image to the next and they're linked in such a way as to give the feeling of transitioning from one to the next as though the player seamlessly navigates a 3D environment. Each still is animated here and there just so they don't look static. But Myst was not "real time" 3D. Rather it was like looking at one painting and the next from different perspectives.

But then the series tried to transition into full real time 3D with the URU spinoff games. Not only that but they tried to make the jump to an online persistent environment as well. For the most part, the series transitioned perfectly into 3D. It is not well known, but URU was running one of the earliest real time 3D virtual environments along side Tomb Raider and Mario 64 and for its day, given that those games are known for their attention to visual detail, vastly surpassed the graphical quality of any other real time 3D environment being run in its day.

Sadly, the technology just took too long to develop. Cyan Worlds, the developer of the games, are better artists than they are engineers and extremely bad at business management. The URU MMO failed at start up, was then revived, failed, and revived again. Now it simply sits in development limbo as a free to play open source project.

For one of the most advanced real time 3D environments URU garners very little recognition and all of its potential was wasted.

 

[Cfrock]

Everyone else said Sonic so I won't go into that one.

If Dan were here I'm sure he'd say Bubsy so, on his behalf, I say Bubsy.

i'll not be agreed with on this but Rayman.

I agree.

 

[Sir Quaffler]

I would love for the next regular Pokemon game to be in true 3D. I'll likely end up enjoying whatever is eventually released but I do think a regular Pokemon game, just transitioned into a three dimensional perspective, could be an utterly fantastic game. I did like certain 3D Pokemon games though, such as Pokemon Snap.

I second this. I love every one of the Pokemon games to come out, but what would make the next one possibly the best game ever was if it was transitioned into a true 3D realm and I could roam around like in Skyrim while still retaining the regular format of the mainline games.

 

[Djinn]

Overall I am not the biggest fan of taking a 2D platformer and making a 3D sandbox out of it. While there are a few occasions where it works out and make a genuinely enjoyable game, I think that more often it does not translate well at all. At least not without having to fundamentally alter just how that game plays and what they player has to do to get through it like the Metroid Prime series. In the case of Metroid Prime they mostly shifted to a separate genre by making it a FPS but maintained most of the puzzle solving aspects. In the case of other well known 2D games like Megaman, Kirby, Castlevania, Earthworm Jim, Paper Mario, Yoshi's Story, Contra, Pac Man, etc. they do not work out and are either confusing or have mechanics that are simply not possible or as fun in 3D.

There are a few that can make a jump to 3D without needing too much of a change, or updates to the series fit perfectly well with how the original games were played. Zelda, Metal Gear, Mario, Grand Theft Auto updated well enough without too many drastic changes to their gameplay. The Sonic series appears to translate well since they have created many 3D games that are fun to play but it does require more automatic control of the characters during things like running through mobius loops etc. The series has been very hit or miss based on what was released and the quality of the game itself. Sonic Adventure 2 and Heroes were great, but then they make weird things like Sonic and the Black Knight and Sonic Unleashed which do not have the same charm that attracted fans in the first place.

Overall I would much rather the greater 2D series to just remain 2D and in turn have something new on 3D instead. Far too many of them just cannot make the transition. There are a few exceptions and some others that make the switch through changing genres and essentially being an all new game anyway but with similar characters and names.