The Series: Navalgazing about what a Series is

Unlike my cohort’s ramblings, I intend to write monthly columns, and post each one on Friday afternoon.  While the first column of every month will be The Ratings, a deeper look back on the games we played the month before.  The second Friday of every week will be a column called The Series.  What will I be posting on other Fridays?  Well you’ll have to read and find out!

The Series will be about a particular series of videogames, chosen by me, which may relate to something we’ve played on the podcast, like Super Mario Bros., or it may be something much newer I feel like talking about like Naruto Ultimate Ninja.  I’ll take a look at the various games within the series I’ve played, admit to the ones I’ve missed, and try to make excuses for that, and talk about the changes made to each game, which ones worked, which ones didn’t which were genius, and which killed the franchise.  For series I’ve followed along with such as The Legend of Zelda, I’ll also talk about the changes going on in gaming around the time, and why certain ones were likely made.  For series I’m just now coming to and observing from the outside, like Mega Man, I’ll speculate wildly about why decisions were made, and merely focus on whether they worked or not.

Since this is the first week, I’m going to instead talk about what makes a series, and why sequels are so prevalent in Video Games, even compared to industries like movies.  First and foremost, for the purposes of this article, I’m defining a series as any sequence of games with similar titles and intents with at least three games in it.  That’s perhaps a little vague, so I’ll go a bit more in depth.  Obviously, I want there to be at least three games within the series.  A series is different then a game that has a sequel.  Arkham Asylum and Arkham City are both great games, but there are only two of them, so I don’t count them.  You could argue that there are many older Batman games to connect them to, but they clearly differ in intent, being old side scrollers and fighting games. 

That said I don’t want a change in developers to “Break” the streak of a series.  The Legend of Zelda: Oracles of Ages and The Legend of Zelda: Oracle of Seasons were both produced by Capcom instead of Nintendo, but the intent of the games is clearly the same.  On the other hand, while Mario Kart and Mario Party share Mario in the title, the intent of those games is clearly different, and separate from the Mario franchise as a whole.  I also don’t want storyline to be a factor, as Final Fantasy II is clearly in the same series as Final Fantasy X, despite the stories having almost nothing to do with each other.  Title is also insufficient, since Naruto: Clash of Ninja and Naruto: Ultimate Ninja, while both fighting games based on the popular Naruto anime series, have very different mechanics and were made to be competing games.

So now that we’ve equivocated on a term for two whole paragraphs, why are series so frequent in videogames?  Before the Nintendo Entertainment System, they were actually pretty rare.  Ms. Pacman is sort of a sequel to Pacman, obviously they were made to appeal to the same people, but it’s almost just an update to the original Pacman rule set.  This began to change with the NES.  Super Mario was not only a video game character; he became a marketing platform, with a cartoon and everything.  The same happened to Mega Man.  Suddenly you had lunch boxes, action figures, and in Mario’s case even a (terrible) live action movie.  But the thing that started it was a videogame, making more seemed obvious.

While Nintendo of Japan was quick to bring out Super Mario Bros. 2, less then one year after the first, Nintendo of America hesitated.  The common legend is that they felt the game was “too hard” for a American audiences, and if you’ve ever played Super Mario Bros. The Lost Levels you can’t help but imagine that was a factor.  But more then that, as videogames were becoming more and more complex; Nintendo of America felt that people wanted more from the next Mario game then just more levels.  In addition, they had a game called Doki Doki Panic that they simply did not know how to market.  The solution?  Paint over the sprites in that game with Mario sprites and sell it as Super Mario Bros. 2.  While in the modern era, they’d be billed as charlatans trying to cash in on a successful brand, in a world without the internet, Super Mario Bros. 2 looked more vibrant and colorful then the original, with more playable characters and new enemies, and while it’s sometimes seen as the black sheep of the family, it’s still one of the most popular games in the franchise today, and elements such as the Shy Guys and Birdo have migrated over to the series proper. 

After that, the Mario series proper became an innovator with its games.  Super Mario Bros. 3 brought us the map screen, as well as adding some inventory options to Mario, though it was hardly the first game with these, as well as the Raccoon suit, which allowed you to fly over the entire level.  Super Mario World can in some ways be seen as just a more colorful remake of Super Mario Bros. 3, but added in Yoshi and some of the series best enemies.  Super Mario 64 is the first truly great game to use 3d, and many of the subtle things it did are still found in games today.  The marketing side of Mario was spun off into great games like Mario Kart and Mario Tennis, and while they’re sometimes decried as a cash in, they’re clearly made with love. 

That doesn’t explain why sequels are so popular now though.  Clearly Call of Duty doesn’t have a cartoon, and I’ll shoot myself if I find they’re making a live action movie.  Well, in the old days, a video game could be made by a single guy given enough time.  As technology improved, it became reasonable to hire a guy to do all the art, and another to do music, while you had two or three programmers and a “director” to make sure everything was coming together nicely.  As graphics got better, you needed more artists and more coders.  As levels got bigger and expectations grew you needed more.  As story started to become more important, you needed a few writers.  As dialog grew in importance, you needed more, and with voice acting, you of course needed actors.  The price of the average videogame has simply spiraled out of control.  You need to sell a ton of units to make back what you put into a game.  Trying something new is risky.  Trying to sell a sequel is quite safe.

This is starting to run long, and thus I’ll end things here.  Next month, I’ll continue to talk about why sequels are safe, why we see so many of them, and ultimately if that’s a good thing or a bad thing for the industry.