Games that just wouldn't be made in the modern game industry

[J T]

What are some old games you love that just wouldn't stand a snowball's chance in hell of being made in the modern day gaming market?

I am playing through Gabriel Knight 2: The Beast Within at the moment. I'm really enjoying it, but I think that a lot of what I find interesting about it would simply doom it's chances of being made in a modern day context. The first obvious characteristic is that it is an FMV adventure game, which is an almost (but not quite) dead genre.

But what I most like about the game is that it is a detective game that actually requires that you do detective work, which means lots of research and talking and other things that don't involve blowing stuff up or punching things. There are not that many action sequences to the game. You have to do a lot of reading. In fact, I'm learning a lot about actual German history as a result of playing the game because they have crafted a fiction about werewolves and the occult out of some of the real world mysteries surrounding the eccentric behavior and strange death of King Ludwig II of Bavaria and his relationship with classical composer Willhelm Richard Wagner. There is even an entire chapter of the game devoted to touring museums and doing audio tours of the king's castles, Neuschwanstein and Herrenchiemsee. It's really a pretty brilliant script created for this game that combines fact and fiction.

The more I play this game though, I just keep thinking that no one would make this game today because it is far too intellectual and dry. There's also a lot of untranslated German, which I find I am starting to learn a little by picking up a few words as I go along. While it was possible to release this in the 90s when FMV seemed like it was going to be the future of gaming, so people would put up with a slow paced and minimally interactive game just for the fascination of seeing human actors in a videogame; it just doesn't seem like a risk that any game developer would bother to take now. I sort of find that sad, but it also makes me appreciate this game as something special, so now I'm wondering what older games do you guys love that just wouldn't get green lighted in the modern day industry?

[ZeroAX]

Gabriel Knight would have been made today, just on the DS, or on the PC but by a European developer (I really don't know why American developers have forsaken the genre that made them the biggest force in PC gaming during the 80s and first half of the 90s)


Hm I think Mario wouldn't have been made these days. If you think how strange the Mushroom kingdom really is, there is no way such an imaginative setting could be born in this day and age of "realistic" graphics.

[RiverBoa999]

Custer's Revenge.

[pepharytheworm]

Custer's Revenge.

It still would by independent companies. Rapelay comes to mind.

[J T]

Custer's Revenge.

lol. Though, I'm sure you could find some porn flash game like that, or maybe even an i-phone app.

[J T]

Gabriel Knight would have been made today, just on the DS, or on the PC but by a European developer (I really don't know why American developers have forsaken the genre that made them the biggest force in PC gaming during the 80s and first half of the 90s)

A lot of great point & click adventure games are coming out of Germany these days. I wonder if that genre partly became popular over there because Gabriel Knight II has so much German in it.

[pepharytheworm]

The only type of game I can think of are text adventures FMV games. But then again how can you make a modern Text adventure and it feel modern?

FMV games could be done really well today but they lost the awesome shock value from in the day. I am glad they are still porting these games to newer consoles, Dragon's Lair Trilogy-wii, but wouldn't a Night Trap II be awesome.

[ZeroAX]

A lot of great point & click adventure games are coming out of Germany these days. I wonder if that genre partly became popular over there because Gabriel Knight II has so much German in it.

Nah the genre is popular there cause most mainland Europeans grew up playing video games on computers, instead of consoles. Just look at the gaming room collections of most of our members from mainland Europe. Most of us have tons of PC games.

And the genre never really died in Europe. It just died in the US

[girlracer]

I just wanted to say I love the Beast Within, I have it in my pc collection

[alienjesus]

A lot of great point & click adventure games are coming out of Germany these days. I wonder if that genre partly became popular over there because Gabriel Knight II has so much German in it.

Nah the genre is popular there cause most mainland Europeans grew up playing video games on computers, instead of consoles. Just look at the gaming room collections of most of our members from mainland Europe. Most of us have tons of PC games.

And the genre never really died in Europe. It just died in the US

All europeans really. In the UK, whilst the master system was really popular, lots of people owned sinclairs, spectrums, commodores and amigas too. Just looking though retro gamer magazine you realise that the computers get almost as much space as the consoles, which just shows how popular they were. Most people getting into retro gaming in retrospect probably arent going to go for the comploicated computers over the simple to use consoles.

That said, the point & click genre seems pretty dead over here too. It's a real shame.