Ask 411 Games 03.15.10: Video Game Mascots, Best Selling Non-Sequels, and Why Can't I Beat Up Jay Z?

Posted by Mathew Sforcina on 03.15.2010

What characters have been official mascots for gaming companies? What is the best selling game to never get a sequel? Why wasn't Christina Milian a playable character in Def Jam Vendetta? Get all of the answers in the latest edition of Ask 411 Games!


Hello, and welcome to the only column on 411mania written by a guy who only just got a copy of Mario Kart DS, Ask 411 Games!

This won't be quite as rushed as my last Ask 411 Wrestling column (which went so well), even though I do have to get up for work in under 10 hours. And I need my beauty sleep.

I mean, imagine how ugly I'd be without it!

Anything? Not even crickets? Damm that's harsh.

Enough blathering and stalling, time for NEW IMPROVED BANNER!



An improvement until someone can make me a gif from a flv video.

And!

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First of all: Sorry for the confusion. I am Australian. Yes, Fire Pro Returns was released in the US. Australia and the US, despite many similarities and cultural crossovers, are not the same place. Again, sorry for the confusion, I forget this is a new audience who doesn't know all about me and my peculiar eccentricities.

And yes, by all means, the GBA had plenty of games better than Snood. But I didn't own that many, and Snood was my personal favourite, which was what the question asked.

And I am very happy with my Creative Zen music player, thank you. And there is a PS3 in the house I live in, and I am trying to buy a copy of Heavy Rain and have a GOW Box set thingy on pre-order. So get off my back, OK PS3 fans?

And remember, got a question? Comments or [e-mail]. You know it makes sense.

Well, I actually have questions left over from last last week! Bad habit I know, but still, let's get to them. First of all, Jeff wants to further discuss Capcom and Marvel.

Jeff here, you answered my question on Marvel Super Heroes. Just some feedback you may or may not want to print.

1) You may have misread me. I was not indicating that MSH was the best ever, I agree with you that it had more than it's fair amount of problems. What I meant to say was that a proper sequel, if it was ever made, could have been the best ever. Especially if Capcom did a 'Street Fighter Alpha 2' on it.

2) If Capcom wanted to do a tag game they didn't necessarily have to add the Street Fighters into it. Just taking the rosters for X-Men and MSH into account they already had 20 characters.

Thanks for answering anyway. Your columns are always worth a squirt.

Jeff

PS, here's one for your opinion section possibly: Do you think Capcom missed the boat by not making a Powerstone style Marvel game? I certainly do.

Here's a video of Power Stone gameplay if people aren't aware of it.



It's basically a 3D Arena combat game where the focus is on picking stuff up and throwing it at your opponents, as well as collecting Power Stones to become a super version of yourself, with the sequel adding in 4 players combat. Originally an Arcade game, it got ported to the Dreamcast. A combination of the two (the original and sequel) was released on the PSP a while back.

This is one of those games that is not that well known, relatively, but those who do remember it do so with fondness. It's a very fun game, similar to Smash Bros in a way. And I think that such a game style with Marvel characters would be a damm good idea. I mean, the tabletop Marvel Hero Clix game works on a similar principal, so why not a Video Game version? Huh?

Next up is Tyrone asking about a demo he saw once.

There was this demo on XBL awhile ago. Maybe last year or year before. Where this guy was looking for his daughter in some kind of mining place. In the beginning of the demo it had you sneaking passed a zombie or some kind of possessed mine worker and then he went into this shack and there was a woman (I think his wife or ex) in there that accidentally hit him with something because she thought he was one of them. I know its a sucky description and probably not very helpful, but I can't seem to get this game out of my head. You wouldn't happen to know the name of it, would you?

It's weird, Daddy issues are big in games. If you're not looking for lost kids in a dozen or so games, you're having to choose which kid you'll play with in Heavy Rain, or raising a family in Fable II, or even having one of the big advances on the horizon being Milo.

I mean, Japan got the Natural Ultimate Digital Experiment, now we get… Milo. Great.

Well, given that you've specified XBL, that rules out Silent Hill Shattered Memories. I doubt it's Dead Rising 2, another game revolving around zombies and daughters, given that this does not look like a mining town, nor was it, you know, put on XBL.



It might be ‘Shellshock 2: Blood Trails', a game released last year, a FPS based during the Vietnam war, with Zombies thrown in. I couldn't find a video of the demo, but does this look anything like it?



Beyond that, I'd need some more details, unless one of you readers knows your XBL Demos off by heart.

Eh, I got nothing this week except awesome music!


And now, HGTJONES has all his questions answered.

Which company outside the current 3 is most likely to have future console success?

Well, ignoring any possible future collaborations (like Nokia working with Sony on a PSPhone or some such), the default answer would be Apple, in that the IPhone, as much as I dislike it, is a huge success and the AppStore does move a lot of merch. Thus, you'd have to say that they'd back into 4th by default almost. I'm not sure anyone would ever talk about them as the Big 4, but it's the most likely scenario.

I guess as an outside chance, EA and/or Activision Blizzard might, eventually, be willing to risk launching their own console. But I don't see that happening, honestly, that's a long shot, given that you'd be taking a huge risk if you dropped all other consoles on a brand new one, and if you still supported the rest you'd be a laughing stock. Unless Samsung decided that it wanted to make a console, and hooked up with one of them. Then all bets are off.

Hey, you might eventually see Starcraft Ghost in 2015 on the brand new S.A.B Gamevision.

Who's the best paid programmer?

Well, I can't rightly tell you. No-one who actually programs games is on the Forbes Billionaires list, for example. All I can tell you is that the highest reported salary in a recent survey of video game makers was $215,000, and that there were people making this in Music, Animation, Programming, QA, Producers, if you're damm good at any one part of making video games, you can get paid for it. But $79,000 is the average salary, which is it's own thing (if you earn a salary, you don't get overtime, which in Video Games is a bad thing…)

Overall, however, probably the man who makes the most money out of video games is Hiroshi Yamauchi, owner of most of Nintendo. Technically Bill Gates is way higher up the chain, but most of his money is out of Windows and other non-Video Game things.

But by all means, any of you know of someone making 215K or more?

EA shuts down, where's the industry at 5 years later?

Well according to one former exec, that's not as unlikely a prospect as you'd think.

Of course, such a question is conditional on the basis of what happens next. Let's assume that the EA suits all suffer simultaneous heart attacks and die, and every company that owns stock suddenly goes under when they all bet on pre-taped horse racing, say. So there's no "EA2", no attempts at restarting, there is a fire sale of the EA properties by whoever ends up holding the bag.

As to where the industry is in 5 years? I can see it becoming Activision-Blizzard-BioWare-Pop Cap-Maxis-Zynga V Everyone Else, in that AB would, you'd have to think, be one of the few companies that could sweep in and buy all the licences and such if EA goes kaput. Certainly AB would be the main dog in the yard, and become THE 3rd Party Video Game company in the world. Would this be better or worse? As a rule, the less competition you have, the worse it is, and certainly while many people might see AB as the lesser of two evils, few would choose to have one go away for good.

But overall, the industry would survive. As long as it's possible to make flash games, there will be people making simple little casual games. And as long as there is that, then little companies can make them into full games. And as long as there are those little companies, big ones will grow.

Unless Pop Cap keeps buying them all up.

Why didn't SNES game Metal Marines get a sequel? If it did could you point me in the right direction?



Ah Metal Marines, you Gundam inspired Beat Em Up/Shoot Em Up/Platformer/RTS SNES game. Released for the SNES in 1993-1994, it didn't exactly set the world on fire, despite being a fairly solid Strategy/Action game. Especially for the time. And while the game did get a PC version later on (that got voices and some art updates) and is now available for your downloading pleasure on Virtual Console (and/or on Abandonware sites, if you're a dirty thief!

But anyway, why no sequel? No idea. I've email Namco Bandai, although I seriously doubt a reply. But hey, you never know. Suffice to say I think it probably just didn't sell well enough to warrant a sequel. It happens.

Although one now might be pretty cool…

What characters that have been official mascots of companies?

Well, with various levels of success, here is a list of ‘official' mascots (I'm sure some will argue some of these, feel free). Note that they didn't always pan out, but at some point, these were mascots. And yes, Mario is always the main and biggest Nintendo one, but they have had others…

Crash Bandicoot Sony
Terry Bogard SNK
Captain Falcon Nintendo
Charizard Nintendo
Chocobo Square
Chuck The Plant LucasArts
Alex Kidd Sega
Kirby Nintendo
Lara Croft Eidos
Mario Nintendo, obviously.
Mega Man Capcom
Duke Nukem 3D Realms
Pac-Man Namco
Pachio-kun Nintendo
Pikachu Nintendo
Prinny Nippon Ichi
Slime Enix
Sonic The Hedgehog Sega, clearly.
Toro Sony
Johnny Turbo TurboGrafx

That's the lot.

Whats the best selling game to never get a sequel?

Looking forward to the answers, thanks for doing the hard work for me.

You're welcome.

Anyway, biggest selling game with no sequel. Well, let's look at the list.

1. Pokemon Red, Blue and Green
2. Super Mario Bros. 3
3. The Sims
4. Nintendogs
5. Pokemon Gold and Silver
6. Super Mario Land
7. Grand Theft Auto: Vice City
8. Pokemon Ruby and Sapphire
9. The Sims 2
10. Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas
11. Super Mario 64
12. Gran Turismo 3: A-Spec
13. Grand Theft Auto III
14. Pokemon FireRed and LeafGreen
15. New Super Mario Bros.
16. Gran Turismo
17. Pokemon Diamond and Pearl
18. Super Mario Bros. 2
19. Final Fantasy VII
20. StarCraft
21. World of Warcraft
22. Brain Age: Train Your Brain in Minutes a Day!
23. Gran Turismo 2
24. Mario Kart 64
25. Halo 2
26. Donkey Kong Country
27. Super Mario Kart
28. GoldenEye 007
29. Pokemon Yellow

There we go, we have a winner. GoldenEye 007. No official sequel, just lots of spiritual successors and other games based on the franchise. But feel free to argue that one as well.

And with those out of the way, now onto questions from last week!

Morne has 3 questions.

I have 3 questions:

Told you.

1)Why wasn't Christina Milian a playable character in Def Jam Vendetta.

Because the character was the damsel in distress, and if she ended up being capable in the ring, you'd begin to ask questions as to why she didn't fight back. That, and since she was the forced girlfriend at the end you couldn't have her fighting since you had to pick her. But still, yes, she probably should have been an unlock at the end. But the storyline was against it, and perhaps Def Jam, which was somewhat unsure how to market her, didn't want her in there as anything but a character. She was sweet and innocent in half her songs, so she can't be fighting…

2)Why wasn't Jay-Z in the Def Jam series. He would've made a great punching bag.

Again, hard to say. There was a pretty big gap in the line up of that game, there weren't THAT many rappers. Probably again an image thing, by 2003 Jay Z wasn't quite as hardcore as he once was. Or maybe it was a copyright thing, perhaps at the time Jay Z was a trademark of Roc-A-Fella Records. But again, a lot of big names were missing from the game. I have no source on him wanting more money, but it wouldn't surprise me.

3)Last WWE game I played was SvR07. What was the point of the TLC match being won by pinfall or submission and not climbing the ladder.

The TLC matches in the Video Games have always been like that. It's an issue with keeping track of everything. In order to have ladders, tables, chairs, hotspots AND the wrestlers all in there and interacting, the game couldn't handle all that AND the ladder mechanics. It needed to keep the default pin and submission rules to allow the game to handle it all. If you wanted a ladder match, you picked the ladder match and just learnt to live without tables.

The Man asks about another game without a sequel.

Panzer Dragoon Saga: Why was there never a second RPG? I understand there was a cock up regarding the US release, but I believe it did pretty well in Japan. Did Sega just have no interest in PDS2 or is there more to it?

Well, let's keep the theme up, and look at some video!



PDS was a dramatic departure from the Panzer Dragoon series, which until this game had been rail shooters only (and afterwards, was only released as rail shooters). Released neared the end of the Sega Saturn's life, it ignored the PS and it's emphasis on bright colors, as the game is all about loneliness and isolation, with the color scheme helping it.

The US cock up was that about 6000 copies were printed for the whole of North America, leading many people to miss out, although more printings, eventually, were made, but only about 30000 copies exist overall in the US. Hence why it's quite valuable.

So, what happened? Well the game took a long time to make, as the developmental team had to keep aspects of the PD universe, and yet invent a whole new game system using traditional RPG elements. Thus when it finally was released, it was near the end of the Saturn's life, not helping it's chances.

But it was a huge critical success, the critics loved it, and it often features in best of lists, and there is demand for a re-release. However, after the game came out, the development team split up, and Team Leader Yukio Futatsugi has stated that the source code is lost. This, coupled with Sega uninterested in re-releasing it, made any port unlikely.

However, now, apparently, there is a way. GameTap, the online distribution service, has the rights to re-publish the game. But they feel no pressing need to do so, given that it's a bugger to recode and may not be suitable at all.

So, given all the hard work to even just get a port of the game, it's little wonder why there's no sequel. Until such time as someone publishes it, and if they end up making a lot of money out of it, there's just no interest in making the game from Sega or anyone else, sadly.

And finally, from Havok.

Why was Phantasy Star III made so differently from the rest of the (original) series?

Well, the simple answer is that Rieko Kodama, the man who created the series and was instrumental in making 1, 2, 4 and a whole lot of other games didn't work on 3 at all. So since the rest of the them were his vision, and III didn't involve him, thus there are different.

That, and the generational game play mechanic was just such a departure that it highlights the rest of the changes, since it's such a big, huge difference. And one that seems to have taken a long time to come back, oddly enough. You don't see too many games with differences based on generations…

And on that note, I await arguments about my logic and reasoning… Now!