Dork Age/Video Games: Difference between revisions
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{{trope}}
* The Electronic Entertainment Expo ([[
* [[Nintendo]] fans try not to remember the [[Virtual Boy]], an allegedly portable clunker of a gaming platform that was supposed to deliver the cutting edge of 3-D virtual reality gameplay but instead gave us eye strain, neck strain, and hideous graphics in only two colors: Red and black. To add insult to injury, damn few of the games put out for it (there were less than 20 in all) made any use of 3-D and could just as easily have been produced for a better gaming platform. Gumpei Yokoi, the victim of executive meddling, ended up [[Kicked Upstairs]] before quitting Nintendo (the only game for the system that gets a pass is ''Virtual Boy Wario Land'', which managed to be genuinely fun despite the headache-inducing graphics).
* Nintendo fans also have the [[The Legend of Zelda
* The early [[Nintendo 64]] era was something of a [[Dork Age]] for Nintendo. The overly long development of the N64 caused some Super NES gamers to jump ship to [[
** This wasn't helped by Nintendo's historic lack of support for third parties; one big selling point of the N64 hardware was custom microcode, but Nintendo never released information on how to use it, fearing it would be copied by their rivals. Among other groin-punches, they also patented using the N64 pad's C-buttons to control an in-game camera, meaning every non-Nintendo game had a shitty camera system, and continued in their usual habit of meddling with in-game content to be more 'family friendly'; for example, forcing ''[[Perfect Dark]]'s'' 'Adrenaline Pills' to become 'Combat Boosts', and ''[[Duke Nukem]]'''s steroids powerup to become 'Vitamin X'.
* The ''[[Silent Hill]]'' franchise is notorious for its horribly [[Broken Base]], but most fans will agree that the series peaked with ''[[Silent Hill 2]]'', and the existence of a franchise [[Dork Age]] is nearly-unanimous. The general summation of this is a reverence for "Team Silent" and a mistrust of the games in which this development team was not involved. The general consensus is that ''[[Silent Hill 4|Silent Hill 4: The Room]]'' is where the slide began, however, even though it was the last of the "Team Silent" entries. The recent ''[[
* ''[[Twisted Metal]] 3'' and ''4'' were developed by 989 Studios rather than series' original developers, Singletrac. When the former staff members of Singletrac formed Incognito to develop the newer games in the franchise, it elected to wipe the events of those two titles from continuity.
* While it is true ''[[
** ''Wrath of the Lich King'' is seen as one as well, but due to gameplay-based reasons rather than story-based reasons.
** With ''Cataclysm'' both of these are now being stated as [[Golden Age|Golden Ages]] and the current expansion is the Dork Age. There are already people people claiming the next expansion is a Dork Age for having Pandas, and proclaimed to be great expansion because of the Pandas.
* A variant: ''[[Monkey Island 2: LeChuck's Revenge]]'' ended in such an [[Mind Screw|impenetrably baffling fashion]] (The last part of the game takes place in {{spoiler|the maintenance tunnels of an amusement park, and the undead antagonist turns out to be Guybrush's brother in a mask, and the whole escapade was [[All Just a Dream]] - ''[[Or Was It a Dream?]]''}}) that its sequel, ''[[
** It's far more likely that it was just the final absurd twist in a game full of them than any sort of deep statement about the characters.
* The makers of the MMO ''[[
** One of the ''major'' reasons for this is that the developers changed the way one becomes a Jedi. Originally, players had to find holocrons and master whatever class tree it said to master, then the player may luck out and become a Jedi, or would receive another holocron. This, naturally, would be a grind. The New Game Experience let players start as a Jedi. Not only did this mean that everyone picked to be a Jedi and avoiding every other class, it also futzed with the canon and royally pissed off those people unlucky enough to have had to master ''every'' class to become a Jedi. You had many thousands of Jedi when there were no Jedi other than Yoda and Luke at the time it takes place in the official storyline.
** Just how bad is it? [[Star
* In ''[[Final Fantasy XI]]'', the ''Chains of Promathia'' expansion is considered to be a [[Dork Age]] by many, many, '''many''' players. Reasons included; grueling boss fights that required very specific party combinations and a fair amount of luck to win, storylines that were left hanging between updates, Notorious Monsters that were amazingly gimmicky with incredibly low drop rates for gear AND pop items for further Notorious Monsters. The era was also known for the infamous "Ranger Nerf" that, while somewhat justified in the fact that the Ranger job was severely overpowered compared to other jobs, went way too far and made it into one of the weakest jobs in the game. (This nerf was partially countered years later after Samurai became the new over-powered pet-job of the Dev Team.) Combined with the first unbeatable boss of the game, the Jailer of Love which was then nerfed to make way for the new unbeatable boss [[That One Boss|Absolute Virtue]], quite a lot of mid to end-game players left FFXI to play [[World of Warcraft]]. Not that ''Chains of Promethia'' was completely terrible; the mission storyline is among the longest and most interesting in the game (and better than some of the storylines of the main games), created systems and fights that are still popular years later like Limbus, ENMs, Bahamut, and Ouryu, and included many in-depth optional side quests such as Adventuring Fellows. (Your own personal NPC.) Changes to the mission fights were made to help players, such as making the fights easier, removing the experience penalty if they fall during battles, rewarding players with experience if they help people with the battles, and easing the restrictions of special items that help to make the battles easier- but these were made after the next expansion, ''Treasures of Aht Urhgan'', when most players will agree that the [[Dork Age]] ended with a vengeance with a completely new philosophy in game design. (That it shouldn't be terrible to do things in the game.) Many people look fondly at the ''Chains of Promathia'' expansion, mainly because time has passed and people don't quite remember the original [[Nintendo Hard|controller throwing difficulty]] of the unnerfed missions, or they had only played the missions after they had been nerfed. Also, not losing thousands upon thousands of XP to the then unnerfed Jailer of Love and the still-to-this-day unnerfed Absolute Virtue may well help to keep those glasses rose-colored.
* The ''[[Leisure Suit Larry]]'' series entered a [[Dork Age]] with the games starring Larry Lovage (''Magna Cum Laude'' and ''Box Office Bust'').
** Worth noting that Al Lowe, the series' creator, isn't involved with either of them. Judging by his site, he'd be more than happy to give them advice, and is also more than happy he wasn't involved when the games bombed.
* In the late 1990s, [[Konami]] farmed out the development of the ''[[Contra]]'' series to Hungarian developer Appaloosa, resulting in the creation of the series' two [[
** Made all the worse by the fact that ''Legacy of War'' was relying on a 3D glasses gimmick for sales. We're talking '50s B-Movie red/blue cardboard glasses here. Oh, and massively derailing existing characters and canon, considering these followed on from ''Contra: Hard Corps'', one of the more story-heavy ''Contra'' games, it did not go well.
*** It should be noted that both games are explicitly [[Canon
* ''[[Backyard Sports]]'', with the games from 2006 onward. There have been numerous character changes and [[Brother Chuck|removed characters]], and the announcers are incredibly boring.
* ''[[King of Fighters]]'' fans generally look at the period of time Eolith was handling the games (KOF 2001 and 2002) as a Dork Age. The way 2001 plays is in general more glitchy and gimmicky than any other incarnation of the series, and is in general a mess. The music for these games has been compared to the sounds of robots farting among other things and Eolith introduced a few of their own character designs. When SNK [[Back
** To give ''2002'' some credit, it's still one of the most played versions in the series competitively, and even after the release of ''2002: Unlimited Match'' you'll still see some original ''02'' tournies being played. Now, ''2001'' on the other hand? Uh...
* ''[[Street Fighter]]'' actually inverted this. When the ''[[
* ''[[Deus Ex: Invisible War
** He may have found a rehabilitation of his image in the unlikely vessel of a [[Epic Mickey|Mickey Mouse game]], though its mixed reception (and Spector's claims that negative reviewers "misunderstood" the game) didn't make for the reputation resurrection that was hoped for.
* ''[[Metal Gear Solid 2: Sons of Liberty]]'' is widely considered the weakest of the franchise, centering mostly around a [[Replacement Scrappy]] and featuring [[Gainax Ending|an ending that had a Cthulhu-like effect on most gamers' sanity]]. Whether or not it came perilously close to killing off the entire franchise, however, is debatable given that the game was still a critical and commercial success. The widespread belief that Hideo Kojima made it bad on purpose because he wanted to quit making games is also perpetuated by MGS2's [[Broken Base]] - Hideo has repeatedly insisted on stepping down as director, only to return time and again of his own volition to and turn out a spectacular effort like ''[[Metal Gear Solid Peace Walker]]''.
** A non-canonical example could be the game, Metal Gear 2: Snake's Revenge, an American follow-up to the original [[Metal Gear]] game for the NES. The game not only completely changed Snake's character and his relationship to the franchise but also took the game that introduced the concept of *stealth* gameplay and turned it into a generic shoot-em-up.
* [[Sonic the Hedgehog]]'s history from November 2005 to January 2007 might be this with the releases of ''[[Shadow the Hedgehog]]'', ''[[Sonic the Hedgehog (2006
* The [[Sega Saturn]] period was the dark ages for Sega in the West, along with the late [[Sega Genesis|Genesis era]]. In Japan it is a well-known and loved console but in the West it is considered a failure due to poor marketing, a lack of [[No Export for You|exports]], no ''[[Sonic the Hedgehog]]'' main games, and fierce competition. The [[Sega Dreamcast]] out shined the Saturn, but in the end it faded too in the West.. In Japan it went on until around 2007.
** SEGA's dark age as a whole really began with the [[Other Sega Systems|Sega 32X]]. While the Sega CD could be considered just as bad, it's more of an [[Ensemble Darkhorse]] nowadays due to a few gems ([[Sonic CD]], Snatcher, [[Lunar]]) among massive amounts of shovelware, but the 32X really kicked off Sega's mismanagment in the west. Then the Saturn's surprise launch came along with [[Vaporware|Sonic Xtreme]] stuck in [[Development Hell]], and then Sega hired [[The Millstone|Bernie Stolar]]...yeah, things didn't really go well for them at all until they went third-party, considering the Dreamcast was [[Too Good to Last]].
* While ''Warhammer40000''-based games made by Relic Entertainment (''Dawn of War 1 & 2, Space Marine,'' etc.) have been generally well-received, the ''[[Dawn of War]]'' expansion that was farmed out to Iron Lore has received nothing but rancor. Canonically, the storyline of the previous expansion was a rousing success for the Spess Muhreens, while the campaign of the [[Obvious Beta]] that was ''Soulstorm'' is considered an [[Old Shame|embarrassing defeat that is spoken of only with great reluctance.]]
* Sony had a little dork age in the mid-late 2000s, though they've appeared to have grown out of it recently. It started with the [[PSP]], which, while being a success, never lived up to its expectations and was massively trounced by the inferior-seeming [[Nintendo DS]]. Then came the [[
* The ''[[Tony Hawks Pro Skater]]'' franchise fell into one hard with its final two games, ''RIDE'' and ''SHRED'', which attempted to revive the franchise by using a skateboard-shaped motion controller to simulate boarding movement. This failed to address any of the problems the series had been going through, and introduced several new ones. Both games failed as a result, and the ''Hawk'' franchise appears to be [[Franchise Killer|down for the count for good]].
** About to be revived by ''Tony Hawk Pro Skater HD.''
*** This seems [[Hilarious in Hindsight]], as ''HD'' was also of poor quality, and the follow-up ''Pro Skater 5'' proved to be the worst entry in the franchise by a country mile. It wasn't until 2020s ''Tony Hawk's Pro Skater 1 + 2'' remake the franchise could finally be said to have left the Dork Age.
* There are ten years between Black Isle's ''[[Fallout 2]]'' and Bethesda Softworks' ''[[Fallout 3]]''. There are two ''Fallout'' games between them--Microforte's ''Fallout Tactics'' and Interplay's [[In Name Only]] ''Fallout: Brotherhood of Steel.'' ''Tactics'' was a competent game that had severe issues with staying within the established continuity (in a world where World War III was brought on by a crippling energy crisis, many bases of have full drums of fuel just lying around more than a hundred years later, etc.); the same cannot be said of ''Brotherhood.'' Bethesda has proclaimed ''Tactics'' to [[Broad Strokes]] canon, while ''Brotherhood'' is full-on [[Canon
* The ''[[Need for Speed]]'' franchise had one. While [[Fan Dumb|some fans]] claim the entire ''Underground'' era to be [[Fanon Discontinuity]], most generally point to ''Carbon'' in 2006 as the beginning of the series' downward slide (especially coming on the heels of ''Most Wanted'', generally regarded as one of the series' high points), and ''ProStreet'' and ''Undercover'' in the ensuing years as the nadir of ''NFS''' dork age. In any event, it ended with the release of the very well-received ''Shift'' in 2009 and ''Hot Pursuit'' in 2010, which brought the series back to its focus on exotic cars and away from the burned-out "tuner" culture.
* There was a time where, to save on bandwidth costs, the site for hosting custom content for ''[[
* The ''[[
* If E3 2012 has shown us anything so far, it's that the industry is still in the growing pains of the Dork Age. All the usual buzzwords are being bandied about: grim, gritty, edgy, and--worst of all--"realistic."
* ''[[Devil May Cry]]'' had its own Dork Age with the [[Alternate Continuity]]/[[Continuity Reboot|Reboot]] ''[[DmC: Devil May Cry]]'' releasing in 2013. The game was intended to rebrand the franchise, as Capcom felt that the series' image was too cheesy. As well as being pushed as the future franchise, appearing in mainline games and cameos, the new look was to apply to the film, which had been in [[Development Hell]] for closing in a decade. After the game's tepid reception, with much fan ire directed at the new look and characterisations, and the franchise returned to its original roots.
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