Terrible sequels to awesome original game titles.

It has happened a number of times in history. Far too many times for me to have the best examples but there are a few games out there that really stick in my mind as something that I was excited about because the prior game had been so fantastic that the idea of a sequel was something that had me very excited. These were mostly days before the internet and we had nothing to rely on other than our own enthusiasm and our memories of the original title.

I'm not going to get into too many of these at a time because it would end up being far too long for anyone to actually read. Instead, if I end up feeling so inclined I will start with two examples and if you are old enough, I would imagine that you will probably agree with me on these and if you don't all feedback is appreciated anyway.

Number 1: Zelda and Zelda

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Like almost anyone that was a gamer in the 80's. The Legend of Zelda was absolutely groundbreaking. We had never played anything like it before other than maybe Adventure on the Atari 2600. This obviously was a much better game and for many of us, it was our first introduction to anything that even somewhat represented modern day gaming. The semi-open world environment the seemingly (at the time) endless exploration possibilities and the myriad of dungeons that opened up as you progressed was just an overall incredible experience. The fact that it was the first home cart to include an internal battery that allowed you to save your game without long as hell codes was just another added bonus.

It laid the groundwork for many adventure/RPG games to come and remains one of the most innovative titles ever released. Perhaps they set the bar too high because what followed a few years later just irked most of us and we all had a collective groan of displeasure when we were presented with Zelda II: The Adventure of Link.

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Virtually everything that the gaming community loved about the first game was abandoned in the 2nd installment. Gone was the "choose your own path" ways and we were re-introduced to side scrolling action the likes of which already existed in almost all other adventure games, most of which were mediocre and seemed like cheap copies of stand-up arcade games. Sure there was some map exploration but for the most part the game was now completely linear. Enemies were regurgitated versions of the same thing over and over and pre determined enemy locations on individual maps were replaced by RNG encounters in the wild while walking

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These guys would pop up at random intervals while you were walking and then you were forced into a separate side-view screen for battles that since there was no XP system, most people just did all that they could to exit the battle rather than engage in it. It was stupid and while there were a lot of things I disliked about this game compared to the original, I think the randomly assigned outdoor encounters were what I most disliked. Little did I know that this concept is something that would become the industry standard in RPG's for the next 8 years or so.

I'm sure I completed Zelda 2 for no other reason than the fact that there wasn't much else to play, but that doesn't mean I was happy about it. To me and most people involved in gaming at the time this was a definitive step backwards as far as the progression of the franchise was concerned. It was the only time that Zelda did this and they immediately switched back to the overhead exploration style in Zelda 3: A Link to the Past on the SNES, which in my mind is one of the best games to ever appear on any platform.

Number 2: Super Mario Bros vs. Super Mario Bros 2

Super Mario Bros on the NES was the starting point for a lot of gamers out there. This game totally revolutionized home gaming from something that people would spend a little bit of time on before going outside to play and changed it into something that all of us were completely intent on mastering in the best way we possibly could.

While there was no save game, there were tons of secrets to be found and most levels had more than one method of completion. This was something that nobody had ever really done before and of course, it was a massive hit.

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_{I'm pretty sure everyone remembers zone 1-1}

I can recall the way that myself and my childhood friends would sit around reveling in a new method that a friend had discovered in getting through a level, and there were tons of hidden secrets including methods of exiting the game screen in order to warp through vast sections of the game. Also, even though they seemed annoying at the time, the way that the game would switch over to underwater sections where the controls changed vastly was pretty damn inventive at the time.

This remains one of the most famous games of all time and is considered to be a major step in repairing the damn-near game-over damage that Atari had done to the home console industry in years prior.

Obviously they were going to make a sequel but a lot of people don't know that Super Mario Bros 2 was actually just a reworked game that Nintendo didn't even have anything to do with creating.

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If you were like me and you felt as though this game had very little in common with the original that is because it wasn't designed with the original in mind at all. In fact, the REAL Super Mario Bros two did get released in Japan but was deemed too difficult for the US market. Therefore instead of releasing the real SMB in USA, we got a reworked version of a game that already existed called Yume Kōjō: Doki Doki Panic. While I am sure there was a lot more to it than this, Nintendo simply swapped out some characters to make it as "Mario" as possible and then rushed it to market.

For some out there, perhaps they enjoyed this complete switcharoo, but I was not one of those people. I found the complete redesign annoying and I never really tried to get any good at it. I can still hear some of the panic music in it and can still see those damn invincible demon mask things chasing me.

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There's gonna be fanbois out there that will say that I am wrong about this but I think there is a reason why Nintendo reverted to the old-school style in Mario 3 and never looked back.

There are a ton of other games out there that upon the release of a 2nd installment seriously pissed off their fanbase, probably too many for anyone to ever make a complete list of them. There are many more that I feel this way about but these two are the ones that stick out the most in my mind probably because I was at my gaming peak in 1985 to 1992 or so. If you weren't alive back in those times or were too young you probably can't feel my pain but likely have your own ideas as well. In many ways we can look at these situations and think of it from a perspective of that the creators made a first game that was "too good" and were going to tick off customers no matter what they did. While I think this is very much true of other sequels out there these two are a situations where the designers already had a system that worked, but decided to change it up anyway. I'm more of a "don't fix it if it isn't broken" sort of person and these two games will forever stick out in my mind as massive disappointments.

What do you think?