Widespread gaming history myths

[MrPopo]

Myth - Game publishers have the developers remove about 10% of the game so they can sell it separately as DLC.

Yeah, I guess that is a myth. The content is actually on the disc but you need to spend real money to "unlock" it. If people would stop supporting DLC, this bullshit would stop.

Aside from all the stuff that's not on the disc. And then the DLC that gets released 6 months after the game came out. But please, keep generalizing about DLC, it makes you seem so knowledgable about the subject.

[o.pwuaioc]

I'm not sure how people can compare Adventure to Zelda. While technically they feature similar gameplay, they are very, very different. Zelda was the rocket to Adventure's automobile.

[MrPopo]

As I understand it Adventure is a real time game where you explore an overworld, battle/avoid monsters, and find a tool to allow you to continue. It is very primitive compared to Zelda, to be sure, but it has a lot of the same pieces.

[o.pwuaioc]

As I understand it Adventure is a real time game where you explore an overworld, battle/avoid monsters, and find a tool to allow you to continue. It is very primitive compared to Zelda, to be sure, but it has a lot of the same pieces.

No sure, I get that, but there's a huge missing link between Adventure and Zelda. Continuing with absurd analogies, Zelda is a musket and Adventure is a sling. ;P

[baphomet_irl]

Myth - DLC is a current event not video game history.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Samba_de_Amigo
Samba de Amigo for the Dreamcast, released in the year 2000 had DLC. Today that content is unobtainable through legitimate means. The same thing happened with the original Xbox, and it will happen again with the Xbox 360 and PS3.

'All of this has happened before, and it will happen again...'

[Opa Opa]

2) ZELDA IS THE FIRST EXAMPLE OF THE GENRE

The Legend of Zelda's gameplay was predated by Ultima I and II several years later.

Hmm.. This is a better example of the early adventure genre.

[Original_Name]

Falcom's Dragon Slayer action-RPG series had two entries prior to The Legend of Zelda: Dragon Slayer (1984) and Xanadu (1985). Elite offered an unbelievably sophisticated open-ended world for its time in 1984. It's perfectly okay to like The Legend of Zelda better, but "gaming historians" have been misinforming people for years, often stating verbatim that The Legend of Zelda was "the first action-RPG".

And sheath (welcome to the boards, by the way!) makes a great point about how Nintendo manipulated the market in order to be - as they are often referred to - the savior of video games. As prone as I've been to scrutinizing Nintendo, I had never fully considered just how much history has seemed to overlook the circumstances by which they rose to dominance.

[Erik_Twice]

Zelda and Ultima being in the same genre would be a myth in itself.

You are very right. I will remove it.

I don't really know what I was thinking to be frank. I actually wrote how Adventure was the most obvious example.


Another one:

MYTH THE WHOLE VIDEOGAME INDUSTRY CRASHED IN 1983

When people talk about the crash of 1983 they refer to the console crash that greatly affected Atari. This is not the same crash that killed arcades in 1984 tough Atari was a key player in both. The Arcade crash was caused thanks to increasing difficulty (Glapus and Joust II come to mind), death of the laserdisc fad and staleness of the genres offered among other factors.

But not only those two are different crashes, they didn't affect the whole industry the same way. Japanese arcades were not as affected by the 1984 crash and survived until today while the computer market grew incredibly strong in Europe thanks to the Spectrum and Commodore computers.

MYTH: DRAGON'S LAIR FARED POORLY IN THE ARCADES

This is a surprisingly common misconception that I'm really surprised to find. Dragon's Lair was so popular that the joysticks broke down of use and probably ranks among the best-selling arcade games ever made. According to a newspaper of the era linked in Wikipedia it made more than 32M$ in profits for the company.



And really ,Inazuma, this is not a thread about history not a thread about how DLC is the evilz. Take it elsewhere.

[Original_Name]

Another one would be that Super Mario Bros. was the first side-scrolling platformer. That honor belongs to Jump Bug, which came out a mere five months after the single-screen leveled Donkey Kong. Jungle King, Moon Patrol, B.C.'s Quest for Tires, and Pac-Land were also side-scrolling platformers which preceded Super Mario Bros. Yet, I've heard time and time again that Super Mario Bros. was the first -- I've even heard something to the effect "Super Mario Bros. was the first game to capture the feeling of going on an adventure," from some gaming documentary or another.

Donkey Kong does indeed deserve to be called the first run-'n'-jump platforming game, however.

Let's see... Sega saw Nintendo's success in the home market, so they started making their own consoles to compete. I saw something to this effect said in one of the AVGN's videos, as well as in multiple other places around gaming communities. However, the Famicom and the SG-1000 were released on the exact same day.

[sheath]

Myth - DLC is a current event not video game history.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Samba_de_Amigo
Samba de Amigo for the Dreamcast, released in the year 2000 had DLC. Today that content is unobtainable through legitimate means. The same thing happened with the original Xbox, and it will happen again with the Xbox 360 and PS3.

Good point I suppose. But I don't think Samba De Amigo's DLC helped create a popular revision of history.

Let's see, another one I see all the time and really hate is Console X failed because it was technologically inferior and didn't have any good games. In fact most console generations have fairly similar hardware with unique strengths and weaknesses and most libraries are fairly close in quality and quantity while the platform was actively marketed.