Good game idea. Bad game.

[ManekiNeko]

Here's your chance to talk about games with brilliant concepts that, er, didn't turn out so brilliantly. My two choices are The Attack (TI 99/4A) and Brutal (Genesis/Super NES).
The Attack was your standard maze shooter, except the enemies started out as completely harmless spores. Unfortunately, these spores could clump together to form fearsome aliens that hunted you down relentlessly. Your only hope for survival was to either eradicate the spores (which become harder and harder to hit as their population decreased) or defend yourself against their fast, deadly offspring. This was one of those games that COULD have made you come back for more, and more, and more... if it had been better designed. Sadly, the control was so lousy and the graphics moved so choppily that you practically begged for the aliens to eat you, rather than desperately trying to avoid it.
This next one's for Aswald and all the other animal character fans in the forum. Brutal was a fighting game by GameTek, with fightin' furries instead of humans. You were given characters ranging from a canine Chuck Norris to a lion that spoofed both Jimmy Hendrix and blaxploitation karate flicks. Unfortunately, although the characters had lots of personality, the game itself was devoid of redeeming qualities. The control was a mess (the designers avoided the traditional Street Fighter II setup with disasterous results), some attacks were ridiculously overpowered, and you were always put at a disadvantage because you had to earn your special moves while the computer opponent always had them at its disposal. The disposal is probably exactly where most copies of this cartridge went... few fighters were more disappointing than this.
Fortunately, the Brutal story does have a happy ending. Someone in furry fandom took the graphics from the game and put them in a competant fighting game engine, giving them not only reliable control, but useful special moves and brand new, fun to use super moves as well. If you owned a copy of Brutal in the past, you should download this... you'll realize that it could have been excellent if both the art team AND the programmers had known what they were doing.

http://www.the-underdogs.org/game.php?name=Brutal%3A+Paws+of+Fury+Remix

All right folks, it's your turn. Name some brilliantly conceived but poorly executed games you've played.

JR

[digitalpress]

I always liked the CONCEPT behind US Games' "Picnic" for the Atari 2600.

http://www.digitpress.com/dpsightz/atari2600/picnic.gif

You basically have to stop bugs from flapping down the screen and stealing bits of your food. Its got all the elements of a classic: the panic, the loss of food, hell it even plays with a paddle! But somehow they just got it all wrong and the thing turns out to be a rather unmemorable relic in an era where games of its type choked the industry to death.

[++Valis++]

Off the top of my head I can think of two semi-recent games...

Courier Crisis on the Playstation. You're a bike messenger pedaling around a busy city, fighting off the cars and peds to deliver your goods. Sounds like a great idea. But they completely botched it, somehow.

Quarantine on the 3DO. Kind of like a cross between Crazy Taxi and Twisted Metal, years before those games came out! Another botch job. Pixels the size of Virgina hams and the graphics in general just a horrible mess.

[tony_good]

Sub Zero Mythologies.

[Snapple]

I have a couple.

First, I just mentioned King's Knight in the "20 Worst NES Games" thread. King's Knight I still think is a superb idea. It's just so... so... atrocious. What a waste. Of course, without King's Knight tanking, Square might've never put forth the tremendously desparate effort behind making Final Fantasy a good game.

Another game I'll add is Firestriker for the SNES. Hands down, one of the most original games to come out in the last 15 years. Basically, you walked from room to room in what looked a little like a Zelda clone. Except your only weapon was a ball of light that you had to bat around by hitting it with your sword. The ball would bounce around and would drift towards the bottom of the screen, exactly like pinball. The ball could even fall off the bottom and kill you. In addition, your character would still have to run around, chasing the ball and avoid getting hit by enemies. It was phenomenal. It's just that the game itself was so unpolished. The graphics, the animation, the level design, the repetitiveness, it was all incredibly amateurish. Basically, it was a shoddy game kept aloft by a brilliant concept. I still have fun playing it. But... if it were actually made by a good company, it could've easily been a classic.