Great Games That Sold Poorly (at Least Initially)
It's no news that artistic success doesn't have to go hand in hand with commercial one. However, sometimes it's hard to believe that the titles which are successful and popular to this day were complete commercial flops in their first years.
Table of Contents
- Great Games That Sold Poorly (at Least Initially)
- Shenmue and Shenmue 2
- Planescape: Torment
- Okami
- Psychonauts
- System Shock 2
- Quake Champions
- The Evil Within 2
- Original War
- Call of Cthulhu: Dark Corners of the Earth
- Bulletstorm
- Tales from the Borderlands
- Grim Fandango
Original War
- Release date: 2001
- Genre: RTS
- Greatest advantages: non-linear campaign, story concept, units, base development
At the beginning of the 21st century, the RTS market was dominated by Heroes, Settlers, Age of Empires, Stronghold, Total War and Warlords. Original War wasn't really inferior to them, but – apart from a small group of fans in Central Europe – it never turned out to be a production recognizable enough for larger industry mags to devote much attention to it. Anyway, in 2001, the Internet was just beginning, so breaking into the mainstream for such a small studio was sometimes impossible.
Even ardent fans of strategy games sometimes don't recognize Original War. I confess that even though I played all the games mentioned above, I only recently found out about the existence of this particular game, which I regret immensely. Because even two decades after its release, the game can impress with innovation – what a huge impression it must have made at the beginning of the 21st century!
It's about a global conflict – the Soviet Union, which managed to survive the thaw, threatens the existence of the Western world (who would have thunk?). In an attempt to curb the imperialist attempts of the Russians, US soldiers are sent on a mission to extract oil from... the past. At the same time, however, they discover something much more important – the Alaskite, which is an almost infinite source of energy (sort of like, I don't know, Uranium). Then things get complicated, and the political intrigue in which both European states and Arab countries are involved is one to match the threads of the best Hollywood productions. And yet, the story is just an excuse to get into strategic skirmishes. One can only regret that the game, which was truly original, didn't allow the ambitious Czech studio to make a killing.
