Tomb Raider (1996)
Then: Top-notch adventure. Put 3D
action on the map. Boobies! This is great.
Soon After: Wait, this is terrible. Those aren't boobies, they're
semi-pyramids.
Now: Wait, we were right the first time. Oh! And
Lara is the first gaming sex symbol.
In the mid to late 90s, Tomb Raider was pretty hot
stuff. GamePro would put both the second and third Tomb Raiders on their
covers in the middle of the hit-packed holiday seasons and Nintendo Power
dedicated multiple issues worth of letter sections to how much people who
played them needed girlfriends.
Tomb Raider III poster. Those are her
shark-jumping boots.
By the time the Dreamcast era came along, Lara's time in the sun was declared over. It would get so trendy to rail on everything bearing the Tomb Raider name that the very people who bought the game and lauded it with praise during the PSX era dumped all over those exact games by 2001. During this time, admitting to liking Tomb Raider anything, even the original, was admitting to liking a Limp Bizkit CD, even Three Dollar Bill. When Tomb Raider: Legend was announced, message boards were abuzz (this was just before the era of the moderately well-trafficked proletarian game blogger) with contests to see who can come up with the snarkiest lines about the series' inevitable death after its release.
After Legend, though, the game herds once again did a 180 on the Tomb Raider games, especially the original. Many in this said herd would go so far as to use the word 'great' when discussing the second and even the third games of the series. Though they recognize it's nigh unreplayable today, they laud the game for its ambition and influence and applaud its appearances on those 'best ever' lists you see sometimes. People from Europe are especially guilty of this.
And let's face it, Tomb Raider was never really any good. It was average back then, perhaps given credit for being an early foray into the third dimension, but it's nearly broken now. If people weren't trying to capture some gamer street cred, they'd talk about how Tomb Raider Anniversary is basically the original if it wasn't a complete ball of poorly-proportioned ass.
Resistance (2006)
The "I'm Feeling Lucky" search for the word
Resistance as I type this. Would've been much funnier, or at least
much more interesting, if this was instead a snippet from the front page
of Resistance Records, a label known to carry bands who describe
their music as 'hatecore,' which was the top Google search for the word
until very recently.
Then:
The PS3 Killer-Ap (TM). Master Chief better shit a brick, and Solid Snake, too
for good measure, though Snake is loyal to the same console gods, he still
best worry. The PS3 has officially won the console war now and forever.
Now: The word killer-ap sucks. Halo was never in any serious trouble, neither was Metal Gear. Turns out Resistance isn't world-changing, it's just pretty good. Eventually brought to the 360.
I hope I don't need to turn the clock back to the PS3's launch day, but I can think of no game that so typifies this bombastically humiliating point in gamers' history than Resistance. For starters, quick, you have five seconds to name another PS3 launch title. What did you say? Genji? Madden? That reviled Gundam thing? Nothing at all? I thought so.
Some thought Resistance was here to establish itself and its initial host system as the dominant FPS force, wrangling that crown from Microsoft. Only problem was that was that it wasn't different enough from the murky, edgy, violence-porn pervading the genre, nor was it good enough to define that said template. Another selling point of this game was that it was to do things the 360 could decidedly not, but as that system's future release calendar would indicate one that would include Resistance, this was certainly not the case. And taking a look at that said calendar, the PS3 certainly did not secure that FPS beachhead dominated by MS. Hmmm.
Dragon Warrior III (1991)
Then: These graphics are whack, man.
Now: One of the quintessential early JRPGs.
In June of 1991, when this game hit North American stores, you couldn't pay people to care about the rise of Erdrick. Not even Nintendo Power would give this game more than a page and a half worth of coverage (alongside one page of Dragon Warrior II coverage) and like a 3.8/5.0 (though pretty much everything in NP in those days got a three-point-something). All eyes were focused on the amazing power of the Super NES.
 This is a glamour shot of Dragon Warrior III. |
Really, I can't say as though I blame them. This is the third installment of a game series, the first of which that exact magazine had to bribe people into getting which was followed up by a disappointing and ignored sequel (didn't get any coverage from the said mag until that issue DWIII was covered). Adding to this is the fact those screenshots and maps from the said mag were often our chief source gaming-related decision-making tool, and when your game looks like and early-mid NES-era game (though notably better than its American older siblings or Japanese twin), eyes will be focused on the marketably-selected 16-bit promo shots found in pages near.
Of course, these days, in most circles of geeks, it's much cooler to have a Japanese feel to your gaming (and, well, all other) preferences. You know how Super Mario Bros. often tops American 'best game ever' lists? Dragon Quest III is the Japanese SMB. Yeah, I can go on about how the DQIII hubbub is better known to Western audiences as long lines and laws allegedly inspired by its release, but know that it tops those surveys people make about people games ever over there.
These days, gamers will talk about how they experienced this game in all its awesome in 1991, or something to that effect, but know that the odds of this being true is likely equal to the odds of that guy trying to talk you into a telemarketing job actually a participating member of that craft. They won't tell you they were hoping for Drakken instead.
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