Best Game No One Played
Bad games sometimes sell hundreds of thousands of copies, whether because of hype, a good license, or any of a number of other reasons, but it's perhaps more distressing when a game that actually deserves success is instead released to the sound of crickets chirping. The cause of this can be bad marketing, bad timing, an overly ambitious design, or something else. Here are our five finalists for the dubious distinction of Best Game No One Played, all of which, by this industry's high standards, are commercial failures--each one has sold fewer than 20,000 copies in the United States to date (according to data from the NPD group):
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Although Codename: Panzers features a beautiful engine and tweaks the tried-and-true RTS gameplay formula enough to be unique (and very fun), it unfortunately entered the marketplace at around the same time as Axis & Allies, Kohan II, and Warhammer 40,000: Dawn of War. And this nonlicensed nonsequel just couldn't compete at retail with the big guns.
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Slaying hordes of enemies isn't exactly a sparklingly original feature in action games, but Otogi 2 takes the concept and runs with it, giving players a unique cast of controllable characters and some all-out, pure-adrenaline gameplay. Like its predecessor, though, Otogi 2 didn't break out at retail.
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A throwback to the olden days of turn-based tactical combat, Silent Storm mixes a superb engine, featuring fully destructible buildings, with deep strategic combat. Unfortunately, it flew under the radar for a lot of PC gamers who probably would've enjoyed it, if they'd given it a chance.
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It doesn't get much simpler than TrackMania. One of the big selling points for this online-oriented racer is the ability for players to construct new maps and host them on servers, which other players can connect to and play on without more than a couple of seconds' worth of downloading. Unfortunately, it didn't turn out to be appealing enough to help the game sell.
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This boxing game features a great sense of humor--you can fight against gorillas, pimps, fire-breathing demons, and even an evil version of yourself. Even with its pure-fun mentality, though, it didn't exactly pique the interest of GBA owners.
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And the Winner is...
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