We all love our sequels. Who could possibly get enough Grand Theft Auto, Halo, Legend of Zelda, Final Fantasy, Grand Turismo, just to name a few? These are games that are constantly refreshing and reinventing, pushing the envelope of what the (insert cash cow here) name means. But sometimes, it goes just a little too far. There IS a limit to how many sequels and rehashes that can be shoved down our throat without us just becoming numb to it all together. No longer do we feel that excitement, that joy, that comes with seeing a new number or subtitle with our gaming franchise. Love can only carry you so far. Where love fails, sales will continue to drive production, new numbers, and subtitles.

Street Fighter.
Now don't get me wrong. I LOVE my Street Fighter to death. It is one of my favorite series of all time, bar none. I'm sure we are all psyched to see Street Fighter 4, no denying. You know why? Because we haven't seen it IN NINE YEARS. This series lost a lot of fans somewhere between Super Street Fighter 2 Turbo and SUPER Street Fighter 2 Turbo HD Remix WITH SPINNING RIMS Deluxe Edition Hyper Aniversary Collection 10th Redux the 7th Addon Old Generation All Stars Collector's Set Special Crazy Ultra Evolution 2006 the Movie Zero New and Improved Taste Extra Flavor Remake. Think that's a bit overblown? Well, I do too, but i'm not too far off. I originally killed off hopes of ever seeing a Street Fighter 4, seeing as how Capcom left this incredibly fun, influental franchise for bigger and better things. (Like Megaman Sequels.) This is a case of too little, too often. All of the semi-sequels added few updates and characters. By the time Street Fighter 3 came out, no one was really caring save the hardcore. I am all for seeing Street Fighter 4 being a monster hit. Heres hoping they don't beat this horse anymore then they have to.


Quick! What version of Street Fighter is this? Yeah, I can't tell either.

"Megaman."
Speaking of the Blue Bomber, he is another one that should probably take a good long break. Seriously. When you have this many titles under your belt, you have probably permiated the gaming consciousness enough so you will NEVER be forgotten. I have to say, not many can say they have 120+ titles under their belt. Think about that for a second. Can you imagine your favorite band coming out with that many albums? How about that many books in a series? A movie that spawns more than 100 sequels? As much as we care about you Megaman, sometimes enough is enough. Slow it down to a trickle, and I will start buying more often. I stopped after estimating how much I could spend trying to collect all of the Megaman games. I do say I would have to resort to selling organs, robbery, scams, holding Santa hostage, finding the Philosopher's Stone, and collecting the bounty on Osama Bin Laden. Needless to say, only 3/6 of these are viable options. I'll let you guess which ones. Please, Capcom. I am fiending to play Megaman 9 as much as the next guy, but if you can just stop for a moment to re-imagine this awesome character and series, I just might not have to go on a terrorist hunt. Then again, If they keep pumping out this kind of box art, all is forgiven.



"Mario Party."
Ahh, back in the glorious days of the N64, this was THE party game to bust out. The addictive mix of skill, luck, and punching your friend in the arm to make him lose a minigame all came together to form a collective pool of fun. Remember when everybody had to have a party game? Crash Bandicoot, Sonic, even Pac-Man got in on the action. Lucky for us, Mario Party can only be imitated, never duplicated. Except by Nintendo, of course. We have seen at least one every year since it's release, each time a little bit of the joy is sucked out. From recycled mini-games to more and more randomness being injected to determine the winner, we are losing a great party franchise to the Stale Monster. I'm sure the designers could use a break, and so could we. Perhaps we can revisit the series with a new bounce after a year or two.

Really. What more needs to be said about this picture?

"Dynasty Warriors."
Speaking of the Stale Monster, he gets his his bullets here. He makes them from distilled Dynasty Warriors. This is putting out the same exact game with surface differences. As much as I hate to say it, it shares similarities with Street Fighter in the update catagory. But at least Street Fighter isn't as pretentious as to put a number in front of the remakes and expecting you to belive it is a full fledged sequel. Tell me which screenshots are from which Dynasty Warriors.













1. Dynasty Warriors 4.
2. Dynasty Warriors 2.
3. Dynasty Warriors 3.
4. Dynasty Warriors 5.

If you guessed all of those correctly, I salute you. I can't tell them appart myself. With minor graphical updates, few new mechanics, these should really be called Dynasty Warriors 1.22phonedin. After slaughtering your 1 millionth brainless peon with your overpowered super character based of a chinese legend, a little of the magic is lost when you realize you've been doing the same thing for the last 4 titles. I'm sure Koei needs the money, but so do I. I'll keep mine until I see a genuine update, thank you very much.

Let me just say I don't hate these games. Not one bit. I just wish that the companies that make them would take a break once in a while to re-examine what would make this franchise better. I'm not talking about roster updates and minor tweaks. I'm talking about inovation, new mechanics, making us look at this or that franchise in a different light. Yes, I understand why we see more Megaman then some of us see the sun rise. Money talks, and it is saying people want to see more of these titles. Keep running these titles into the ground with re-release after re-release, however, and we might not have any more buyers who want to pay for the same thing 143 times. I for one would hate to see Street Fighter go back into the grave because the sequel couldn't come up with anything new. Trust me, make me wait. I'll buy anything if you tease me long enough.

Enough longwinded blogging. Thanks for reading.

(P.S. Interesting totally unrelated note. I've been stuck at rank 666 for a while. PLEASE COMMENT. It's creeping me out. O_o; )