Maybe @Miramon can tell you why!
Nah. It’s true that space sims started dying during the era of the original Playstation, but it was the death of joystick gaming in general on the PC at the time that was more to blame. EA did port Wing Commander to the Playstation, but I don’t think it was a hit there. I think console could have saved space sims, but console controllers sucked for space sims back in those days. Remember the original PSX didn’t have analog controls when the Wing Commander games came out for it. It just had a little d-pad, which is terrible for controlling space ships. It’s almost as unsatisfying as controlling a ship with mouse and keyboard.
Yeah, the ease of consoles pulled people away from joystick gaming. Point still stands.
Warhammer Online had more good ideas per square inch than any MMO I’ve played before or since, it’s a shame the engine couldn’t cash the check they were trying to write. That game would have been amazing if it wasn’t a slide show in PvP.
I disagree. This is the late 90s we’re talking about. PC gaming was stronger than ever. And big PC developers weren’t lured to consoles until the 360 era, which was almost 6-7 years later. Joystick gaming was just dying on PC, it had nothing to do with consoles. Mouse and keyboard gaming killed joystick gaming.
Well I disagree. I’m not talking devs, I’m talking users. They were following the allure of the easy-to-use console rather than the cumbersome PC, and Freespace 2’s sales numbers spoke to it. Less than 30,000 copies. That’s IT. For the best space game ever?
Yeah, consoles.
So very much this.
Cool, thanks for sharing!
Advance Wars. I have no idea what happened to the series, but it’s been a decade since a new one got released. I guess Fire Emblem was more popular and Creative Assembly / Nintendo decided to focus on that exclusively. Now, I like Fire Emblem just fine, but Advance Wars was even better. It didn’t have that problem that Fire Emblem does where certain battles feel more like puzzles than a level in a strategy game.
The next Deus Ex and Mass Effect games that won’t be made :(
I still don’t see the connection you’re making. Yes, it sold poorly, but how are you connecting that consoles? I think it’s more likely PC gamers were lured away with games like Everquest, which was huge at the time.
But hey, it could be a little of this, a little of that. The Dreamcast did also come out around that time. People were too busy playing Soul Calibur and Final Fantasy VIII and Everquest and Quake 3 Arena and Unreal Tournament.
Whenever I read a comment like this, all it sounds like to me is
Anyway, there were so many games that I wanted to play that got canceled. Just in the point’n’click genre, I’d have to say Secret of Vulcan Fury and Warcraft Adventures. Whatever Pandemic was going to do next. But I also think of the Pirates of the Caribbean open world adventure game Armada of the Damned, just because it looked sounded really cool.
Hm? Never even heard of Star Chamber.
They were making Star Chamber just for you and when they realized that you didn’t love them back they folded with broken hearts.
Whatever guys, I know I’m right. ;)
I thought about mentioning Human Head’s Prey 2, but the fact is that we’ll never know if it was good or not.
That trailer was awesome, though.
Vampire Bloodlines: Troika is defunct, no idea who owns the IP, but we really need another dark, disturbing Vampire game like this.
Thief: No idea if we’ll see another Thief game, but after playing the last one, maybe it’s best to let this series die. Thief 1 & 2 will always remain two of the best PC games ever made.
The original X-com 3.
Torn (although I think some of this games ideas made their way into Pillars of Eternity).
Hero Song. :(
I should add that all 3 were cancelled for financial reasons. In two cases, it was because the publisher pulled the plug (Interplay went tits-up; can’t recall who was responsible for X-com 3). Hero Song apparently involved some serious misjudging on the part of the studio heads, who pulled the plug it when EA sales were lukewarm. Either they were always intending to rely on those - which is dumb, yes - and never mentioned it or some other source of funding disappeared. We’ll never know.
Oh man, I haven’t thought about that game in ages. What was playing it like? People were so excited for that.
As a teenager, Crusader: No Remorse was the greatest thing I’d ever seen/played. I still don’t understand why there was never a sequel and only that half-hearted expansion.
No One Lives Forever is a close second.
Wait…there was a sequel…