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.ph...+of+Fury+Remix
All right folks, it's your turn. Name some brilliantly conceived but poorly executed games you've played.
JR