How to kill a videogame genre ...

 Why do all those great fighting-based action-packed Animes and Mangas, like Naruto, One Piece, Dragonball Z, Bleach and whatnot, have to be reduced to the mere brawling when converted to a videogame?! They either become Beat 'em Ups or Hack'n'Slay-Games. If the game has some story in it then surely it's hidden in the booklet or presented fancifully in non-interactive cutscenes. Or in the worst case in form of text dialogues with character stills. Tons of text dialogues ... This is bullshit. [...]
(show me)(don't show me)

Why not make Action Adventures out of those? This genre is so much more efficient to transfer the stories of these franchises. After all, it is the story that makes these franchises readable, watchable and worth continuing. The story - not the fighting. The fighting's good, too, and mostly thrilling, but still! There's travelling and treasure hunting in One Piece, intrigues and learning the arts of Ninja in Naruto, hiding and space travelling in Dragonball Z - well, okay, there isn't as much "storyful" story in DBZ as in the earlier episodes - and Bleach has this complex universe and rich character set. But no, let's just make it a "Defeat the enemy to reach the goal"-realization of these events.

Besides, as if there wouldn't be any good beaters out there already! Just look at Tekken, Dead Or Alive, Street Fighter, Soul Calibur and Virtua Fighter. And come to think of it: I didn't name single Beat 'em Ups here but whole series again. In my humble opinion a clear sign that the market is pretty much satisfied. Btw, what happened to the great Clayfighter series ...? (^^ ) Hehe, so awesome ...

Anyway, it's okay for those series to be incremented by one new game every five years or so, but why the hell add more than one new beater per anime/manga franchise to the pile? It's ridiculous if you ask me.

I mean, as I'm a fan of Click'n'Point-Adventures I tend to long for great new modern games of this genre, so maybe I'm pushing it too hard, but so many games for one series? Why isn't one enough? Here's a quick list to show you what I mean:

• Fighting For One Piece (2oo5) [PS2]
• One Piece Grand Battle! (2oo5) [NGC, PS2]
• One Piece (2oo5) [GBA]
• One Piece: Unlimited Adventure (2oo7/8) [Wii] // This one's actually tagged as an Action Adventure but the images and trailers speak a different language
• One Piece: Grand Adventure (2oo6) [NGC, PS2]
• Naruto: Uzumaki Chronicles (2oo5/6/7) [PS2]
• Naruto: Ninja Council (2oo3/6) [GBA]
• Naruto: Ultimate Ninja (2oo3/6) [PS2]
• Naruto: Ultimate Ninja Heroes (2oo7) [PSP]
• Naruto: Clash of Ninja (Revolution) (2oo3/6/7) [NGC, Wii]
• Naruto: Rise of a Ninja (2oo7) [X36o]
• Dragon Ball Z Budokai (2oo2) [NGC, PS2] // two direct sequels
• Dragon Ball Z Budokai Tenkaichi (2oo5) [PS2]
• Dragon Ball Z: Gekitou Tenkaichi Budokai (1992) [NES]
• Dragon Ball Z Budokai Tenkaichi 2 (2oo6/7) [PS2, Wii] // another direct sequel
• Bleach (2oo5) [NGC]
• Bleach: Shattered Blade (2oo6/7) [Wii]
• Bleach: Erabareshi Tamashii (2oo5) [PS2]
• Bleach: Blade Battlers (2oo6) [PS2]
• Bleach DS 2nd (2oo7) [NDS]
• Bleach: Heat the Soul (2oo5) [PSP]
• Bleach: The Blade of Fate (2oo6/7) [NDS]
  

On a side note: while doing the Information Retrieval for this list, I thought how senseless it is to make this incomplete list - but actually that's the whole point of my psoting: there's just so fuckin' much! They are named differently implying that they are different videogame series and still they are so much alike that there's no big chance of telling a difference. Where's the sense in developing so much cloned games? It's even more than "one different game for each videogame system".

Btw: who's as anxious as me about the new yet to come Street Fighter IV? Holy Moly!
# top #