Uh…bad street brawler was amazing
Holy crap that’s Bad Street Brawler. I have this game still. It’s straight up the worst game I’ve ever played.
To think all you had to do was wait 2 more years for River City Ransom to come out. If only precognition was real.
The “actual game” looks like a Altered Beast that takes place in a US park.
I decided to play Crystal Warriors recently because of the awesome cover art. DUDE I WAS NOT DISAPPOINTED. That game rules!
I’m reading this game’s wikipedia page and it sounds very fun. What a shame it’s stuck on the game gear and the now nonexistant 3ds eshop. I hope Sega does another re-release. Not that it matters to me 🏴☠️.
My games were all pirated. Covers had a handwritten list of all games on the cassette (and later CD). The first legit game I’ve ever seen was Mortal Kombat Trilogy and I remember being taken aback by the waste of using a full CD for a single game (iirc the game used just 30 MB of space on that CD).
I 💯 went through this disappointment. I used to also love looking at a game’s concept art because they always looked so much cooler and atmospheric than the game. I remember the inflection point clearly. I was playing Mass Effect 3 and walking around the citadel wards/docks, with it’s beautifully detailed textures, evocative colours, and painterly lightshafts, feeling absolutely enthralled, and thinking “Holy shit, they’ve finally done it, the gameplay looks better than the box/concept art.”
I’m so glad I finally got around to playing the ME series. Such a memorable trilogy of games
You miss half the fun then, the imagination in your head of transforming the graphics into whatever you want. And then gameplay is the most important
The one game I remember getting based on the cover alone was Solstice.
That game was hard as fuck. I don’t think I ever saw the end.
Bangin’ music tho. I still sometimes get ear worms from it.
ahem…
That’s the masterpiece that helped kick off the new age of gaming!
Honestly graphics aren’t really that important compared to the gameplay. Games such as those in the UFO 50 collection are a really good example of that. Also if you actually want a quality god vs satan game with old school graphics then I highly recommend Grimstone.
UFO 50 is so damn good
As someone who lived through that era, let me tell you, the gameplay graphics were never a disappointment. In your mind they looked as good as graphics today. The only thing I can remember being disappointed about was the Nintendo Powerglove. Man, what a collosal, non-working, over hyped advertising lies, piece of shit that thing was!
Box art back then was more akin to book cover art: an artist’s interpretation of the content. It never disappointed me. I even miss it sometimes. I used to collect images of box art even without the games, because it really was art.
Mario 3 was the most mind blowing leap in graphics I think I’ve ever experienced.
The game in the example is Bad Street Brawler which is every bit as terrible as portrayed. I have it somewhere still. Could never get past like thr second level.
Nah there were definitely games that had disappointing graphics relative to what I was expecting lol
Although it’s true, we generally were more forgiving about graphics back then than we are these days.
The Wizard lied to me for 2 hours about that useless piece of plastic.
Dude, the guy who introduced it in the movie straight up said “it’s so bad!”
But if you would have saved it until today you could resell it foe a whole $25 more (of course accounting for inflation it’s actually $105 less)
…
Wait is that true? Did a rare Nintendo product depreciate in value???
It was a mattel product
I’m gonna press X to doubt on that one.
No X button on the controller. Just A and B.
Touché.
No, he’s right. The power glove was garbage from the get-go. Really cool cyberpunk thing on paper but … hell, we still aren’t there today!
We absolutely could be “there” today but the lingering aura of the Powerglove is still so powerful that nobody has tried to make a better one. It got clowned on so hard the first time that the echoes of that are still rippling through our global subconscious 35 years later.
Also, Nintendo would probably try to sue you if you sold a glove-based controller, even 35 years later.
I’d argue that haptic gloves, valve index controllers, and hand tracking are there, but the hardware for VR isn’t quite cheap enough for it to be mainstream.
Even if it worked well, the idea was bad from the start. No one wants to control a game with motion controls.
I dunno, Wii seemed to manage it just fine.
but all the fun is taking the game graphics and transforming it in your head to resemble the cover art
I remember renting Phalanx just because of the box. like “why’s this old man playing the banjo?” then you look at the back and it’s a friggin space shooter. I had to rent it.
The agency that created the box art created it for the exact reason you picked it up.
“you can’t take the sky from me”
TIL Firefly is part of the Phalanxverse.
yeah after posting this I read the story on Destructoid about it. It worked. it was a meh game but the only reason I wanted to play it was because of that box.
the back usually showed gameplay shots.
Yes, where they put the superior Amiga screenshots on the back of your ZX Spectrum game
Lol how was that allowed? It’s a complete different version.
The scene was too small back then for anyone to pay attention. Most microcomputer developers were selling games out of their garage via mail order.
If you think it’s an unregulated mess now, take a look at the home computer scene in the mid-80s. Absolute wild west, dude.
In today’s gaming envoriment large companies can make promise after promise, deliver on none of them and walk away like nothing happened. The worst thing that can happen is some people calling you bad names online. What makes you think advertisement would be more ethical at a time no one gave a shit about gaming?
I had Bad Street Brawler for the NES and it’s so bad, it’s funny. Even back in the day… fighting midgets, dogs, and circus strongmen, trying to get to the dumpster at the end of the level, and with 2-player coop to boot
Aka. Bop’n’Rumble for Commodore 64.
It wasn’t all bad. The gameplay was alright.
It was Street Hassle as well I think.
Only ever saw a few screenshots in a ZX Spectrum magazine, but it certainly has a memorable art style.
I somehow missed Bad Street Brawler and went for Bad Dudes because I played that one at the arcade. Wasn’t nearly as good as the arcade version though.
