One of the best parts about being a video game fan is that we can look forward to our favorite franchises improving over time, instead of getting worse. While any popular movie is bound to be ruined with a drastically inferior sequel (or 3), most successful video games end up spawning a series of sequels that far exceeds the original. From Mega Man 2 to Super Metroid, video game sequels delight us by being even better than the original.

Well, usually. There are, alas, some egregious counter-examples:

10) Super Contra

First of all, it's called Super Contra but it wasn't for the Super Nintendo. What the heck? Why on earth would they call it Super if it wasn't going to be for the Super NES? That would be like calling a game "Super Mario Brothers" and then--

What?

Oh. Well, okay, aside from the name, Super C just didn't quite capture the magic of the original Contra. Maybe it was because they replaced those weird bank vault 3-D levels with crappy top-down levels that looked like a bad version of Ikari Warriors. If we wanted that, well, we would probably be playing Ikari Warriors instead.

Ikari Warriors: ABBA Infinite Lives, biznatch!

Super C. And frankly, looking at that picture,
we're ashamed to tell you what the C stands for.

Anyway, the most heartbreaking thing Konami did wrong with Super C was leaving out the Konami Code! Even people who have never played Contra (I know it's hard to accept that such people exist, but kids today don't respect the classics) know that pressing up up down down left right left right B A start will get you 30 lives. And in most other Konami games -- in fact, all worthwhile ones -- that code does something. In Super C, all it grants you is 30 seconds of disappointment.

9) Baten Kaitos Origins

Did you like Baten Kaitos? Of course you did; it had an innovative card-battle system, plenty of gameplay, beautiful music, and a plot good enough that it was worth overlooking the somewhat sub-par voice acting.

Perhaps you'd be interested in a prequel? We'll keep the same low-quality voice acting, most of the same locations, and the less interesting parts of the plot. We'll replace the interesting parts of the old plot with a new feature that randomly tosses you into the past sometimes so you can't collect the magnus you need. How much would you pay for that? Well, what if we removed all the compelling characters and replaced them with characters you don't care about, and then replaced the clever puzzles with a mandatory twitch-based section in the final dungeon. Now how much would you pay?

Trust us, you don't even want to know about
the agonizingly bad trading system

Don't answer yet, we'll also change the deck combat system from a really fun one where you can go for pairs or straights and play numbered cards in any order, to one where you can only play numbered cards in ascending order otherwise your turn ends. Oh, and the magnus you use in combat can no longer evolve. Oh, and that cool elemental damage system was too complicated for Americans, so that's been removed, as well as the idea of using defensive magnus while the enemy attacks. Oh, and rather than giving each character their own deck, your characters all share one big deck, so all the character-specific special attacks will be useless two thirds of the time.

Hey, where are you going?

Technically, I still played through this damn game because I am incapable of not finishing every Gamecube or SNES RPG I get my hands on. But it should be noted that I spent most of the time wishing it was the original Baten Kaitos instead.

8) Driv3r

1337-5p34k i5 c001, d00d!

At least, we presume that's what was behind the decision to name this game with a 3 for an e, rather than just calling it "Driver 3". Perhaps they should have stuck with their original title, which was "Shmand Shmeft Shmauto".

Yes, as you may have guessed, this sequel was a lame knockoff of the Grand Theft Auto series, and fairly lame even on the lame knockoff scale. The previous Driver (Driver 2) was a decent game. Cool story as an undercover cop in the mob world, interesting missions, good music, solid graphics, and most importantly, good driving physics, because the game was called DRIVER 2.

Driv3r, however, replaced those driving physics with a state-of-the-art control method called the Touch-Swerve System. The way it works is this: When you touch the controller, you swerve out of control and into a lamppost. I can only presume that this system was supposed to be deployed on their upcoming release "Drunk-4ss Driver", but that they jumped the gun and decided to use it here instead.

"Hello, osiffer, I am not drouhnk.
But have you seen the rhest of my car?"

As an added bonus, the missions are boring, the sound effects are awful, and there is some severe bugginess that causes your car to get stuck in things, and various bits of scenery randomly appear from nowhere. Still, the driving is better than the parts of the game that force you to leave your car and walk around on foot, where the police department suddenly gets Imperial Storm Trooper AI, and mills around ineffectively waiting to be shot. Thank god they didn't call the game "Walk3r".

7) Every Sports Game Franchise that releases a new edition every year

Please. Just stop. We're begging you. You know that these are all destined for shovelware. There's a reason that many video game stores that offer trade-ins for used games will have big disclaimers that say "NO SPORTS GAMES". It's because you guys are burying the industry in unnecessary sequel crap. They're all the same game, which is what happens when you update every year instead of only when you have something interesting to add.

Rather than write another five paragraphs about what a pointless waste of programming and shelf-space these sequels are, we'll just say this:

"Madden '92 HUT!"

"Madden '93 HUT!"

"Madden '94 HUT!"

"Madden '95 HUT!"

"Madden 96 take a HIKE!"

"None of these things is not like the other..."

6) Jak II

Many people hate on Jak & Daxter. Sure, it wasn't terribly innovative for a 3-D platformer, and Daxter was sufficiently annoying that you would have gladly traded half of your power ups just to be able to choke him to death. But the game was solid. It had interesting towns and outside locations with lush graphics, lots of eggs (sorry, "precursor orbs") to collect, and varied gameplay. There were levels where you ran around outside collecting things, levels where you rode your airskateboard or jetbike as fast as possible, and a wonderful level where climbing at top speed was the only way to avoid drowning.

Jak II, on the other hand, was set in an uninspiring future town where all the buildings look the same. Inside or out, you're pretty much always surrounded by lots of gray metal.

In Soviet Russia, Bulldozer Drives You.

All the fun of the first game is gone, because Jak has become a much angrier and less fun person. (To be fair, if we had to spend all of our time hanging out with Daxter, we'd be less fun too.) The original Jak and Daxter had a nice open-ended orb-collection goal, much like the stars in Mario 64. There were many varied kinds of missions, and if you found one of them too difficult or not fun, you could always skip it and do something else.

Well, Jak II decided that volition is for sissies. So when you want to advance the plot, you have to beat the current mission. Even if that mission is a 90-mph speedbike race through the entire city that requires you to go through 100 rings unerringly, losing if you miss a single ring or so much as crash into a single wall and slow down.

Not that we're bitter.

Read Part Two >

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