No Right Answer: Worst Instance When Fans Didn't Show Up
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Both were sadly failures, though I feel that had the internet been as huge when Earthbound originally released it might have stood a better chance. I was a bit young and actually never had a 16bit system so I only played it much later on *cough* emulator *cough* then on virtual console.
Scott Pilgrim had a good buzz of geeks saying "oh yeah gotta go see it" "I'm totally going to see it", but instead more turned out for the dumb jock unoriginal action movie Expendables (See Movie Bob's review for much better criticisms of it.)
I had the comics on my back burner for a long time until I learned of the film, then I jumped on it and read the comics in a weekend months before the movie came out.
Scott Pilgrim had a good buzz of geeks saying "oh yeah gotta go see it" "I'm totally going to see it", but instead more turned out for the dumb jock unoriginal action movie Expendables (See Movie Bob's review for much better criticisms of it.)
I had the comics on my back burner for a long time until I learned of the film, then I jumped on it and read the comics in a weekend months before the movie came out.
you know, a huge part of me still believes that Scott pilgrim didnt flop, because i went to see it in theaters, TWICE and each time i brought at least 2 freinds, and each time it was a fairly full house, and yeah i might not of bought the dvd but im broke now...
...so yeah, i guess i should just not take the one case of that one theater and apply it to the whole world... also that failure of nerddom was totally not my bad...
oh and im pretty sure i either wasn't alive, or was too young to pick up earth bound...in fact *le wikipidia*...yup i was like 5 back when it came state side, i'm pretty sure i wasnt even allowed up past 8oclock then, let alone allowed to research new releases and go out unsupervised to an EB games.
...so yeah, my point here is way to drop the ball other nerds
...so yeah, i guess i should just not take the one case of that one theater and apply it to the whole world... also that failure of nerddom was totally not my bad...
oh and im pretty sure i either wasn't alive, or was too young to pick up earth bound...in fact *le wikipidia*...yup i was like 5 back when it came state side, i'm pretty sure i wasnt even allowed up past 8oclock then, let alone allowed to research new releases and go out unsupervised to an EB games.
...so yeah, my point here is way to drop the ball other nerds
Just throwing out a few ideas.Firefilm said:
Mario vs. Luigi
Best Conan (Barbarian or O'Brien)
Best/worst Doppleganger (Wario, Bizarro, Dark Link, Reverse Flash, ect. take your pick)
Best/worst would-be world rulers (Pinky & Brain, Dr. Horrible, M.Bison, COBRA, ect.)
I don't think the fans really failed EB at all. I mean Nintendo took a shot at bringing a Japanese only title to American shores to extend it's product and sales. Japanese retail is like.... night and day compared to American retail. What works over there won't necessarily work over here.
Added to that, in the fact that this was the second game in the series and had extremely poor advertisement, you can't blame the so-called American "fan base...." If no one really anticipated it in the first place.
Added to the added, the game was horrendously expensive. I want to say we payed $85 for it in 1995. I still have my copy (huzzah) but c'mon. That's a crap ton of money, even if a guide came with it.
I don't think it was the fans fault at all. It was Nintendo's fault.
Added to that, in the fact that this was the second game in the series and had extremely poor advertisement, you can't blame the so-called American "fan base...." If no one really anticipated it in the first place.
Added to the added, the game was horrendously expensive. I want to say we payed $85 for it in 1995. I still have my copy (huzzah) but c'mon. That's a crap ton of money, even if a guide came with it.
I don't think it was the fans fault at all. It was Nintendo's fault.
I went to see 'Scott Pilgrim' with my dad who is 50 and has never played video-games, and he loved it. I guess he could relate to the human-relationship aspect of it.
But he would have never went to see it without me dragging him to it.
So, I guess the lesson is, try dragging non-geeks to see the movies in question? They might not hate you for it.
But he would have never went to see it without me dragging him to it.
So, I guess the lesson is, try dragging non-geeks to see the movies in question? They might not hate you for it.
Don't blame me! I bought EarthBound when it first came out and Mother 3 is the only game I have ever imported. I even wrote Nintendo a handwritten letter requesting them to localize Mother 3 explaining to them that despite the fact I already owned a copy, I would buy it again.
You want to wish damnation on a company for not wanting to pay more money to sell a franchise in the U.S. than they would probably get in profits from selling said franchise in the U.S.?Capitano Segnaposto said:
Hey, I showed up for Scott Pilgrim in theaters, AND I bought it on DVD. Earthbound I didn't show up for because, well, I didn't have a Super Nintendo back then, I had a Sega Genesis. At least I have a legitimate excuse.
My vote goes for Stargate Universe. Here we have the best serious sci-fi show since Firefly and we were let down first by the existing fanbase for rejecting it arbitrarily, then we were let down by SyFy for not calculating the digital ratings and just being pretty shit in general. Thanks a lot human race.
And Alan Wake. It was a brilliant game that everyone made the mistake of thinking was supposed to be scary horror instead of a super-natural thriller. So when it wasn't scary everyone gets let down and misses the point. Although Microsoft forgetting to count half its sales didn't help much. At least we're getting another chance at this one.
And Alan Wake. It was a brilliant game that everyone made the mistake of thinking was supposed to be scary horror instead of a super-natural thriller. So when it wasn't scary everyone gets let down and misses the point. Although Microsoft forgetting to count half its sales didn't help much. At least we're getting another chance at this one.
Actually Earthbound isn't a good example. As someone who had a SNES I never heard of that game until well after the SNES had gone. While it might have been promoted heavily to a segement within geek culture, it was NOT promoted properly to the demographic at large as I knew a decent amount about gaming at the time, was really into RPGs, both PnP AND computer oriented, and it was my kind of thing.
To be honest I think there is MORE awareness of Earthbound and Mother now than there was then.
Basically, throwing up advertisements and spending a lot of money promoting something is absolutly pointless if you somehow do it the wrong way, and it's not always obvious what went wrong.
To be honest I tend to think of Nintendo as being less stingy, than stupid.
Earthbound/Mother is in the same basic position as "Shin Megami Tensei", basically despite the promotion that was done with it, it managed to slip under the radar. The original SMT releases did not sell all that well, and got most of their following after the fact, which eventually lead to them trying again, and well... you can see what happened with the SMT titles becoming a pretty big deal in the US within the intended niche audience, which CAN sustain them.
Of course I suspect a lot of this comes down to racism as well. To be entirely blunt marketing realities aren't all of which drives the Japanese gaming industry. Years ago I used to be heavily into reading translated Japanese gaming periodicals to find out what was going on. One thing I caught was that there was an attitude that the Japanese, especially the fans, want to keep a lot of things Japan-only, and feel that it somehow cheapens the property to have an overseas release, especially to the US (which they have a wierd love/hate relationship with). Things like NOT releasing the "Final Fantasy X: International Edition" with expanded content and "Final Fantasy X-2: Final Mission" ending that story were NOT based on sales, but simply a desire to snub the US, some things I was reading were quite blunt about it.
This logic also influances why the US has not gotten numerous other games like the various "Super Robot Wars"/"Super Robot Taisen" games released more seriously here. There are claims that the liscencing would be too expensive, and similar things, but the bottom line is that there is a lot of pressure to keep them out of the US market. Selling to the US for more money is actually seen by some as "selling out". Now granted you might remember us getting some rather bad installments for the gameboy, and a more recent "Fronteir" installment which oddly enough didn't include any fighting giant robots and was more of a straight RPG (though it did feature Kos MOS from Xenosaga which was pretty cool I guess).
The overall point here is that with "Mother", I'm not entirely sure you can put the blame for us not getting futher games in the series at the feet of the fans. With the word of mouth and it making all these "best of" lists as a game many people hadn't heard of beforehand... well I'm pretty sure it could pull a SMT. I think there are a couple of differant reasons (mentioned above) we haven't seen it.
As far as "Scott Pilgrim" goes, I think there was some vast overestimation of the popularity of the property. What's more it was a movie made very specifically for a young geek demographic, rather than geeks in general. Kids by definition having less disposable income and the need to convince their parents to take them to a movie like that and pick them up.
I'm a huge geek, and really while I thought some of the ideas were interesting, I had no real interest in seeing the movie, so I didn't. It pretty much made my "maybe on Netflix, if I'm really bored" list, because really I don't associate myself with a teenager hipster douchebag doing a modernized retread of "Parker Lewis Can't Lose". Granted 15 or 20 years ago when I was in high school, or maybe early college, I would have loved this, at 36... meh.
Scott Pilgrim failed because it wasn't a geek movie, it was a movie aimed at a narrow segement of the geek community, that oddly enough have problems (especially in this economy) attending movies. Especially seeing as movie theaters over the last decade or so have tended to move to more isolated locations, as opposed to being say on the side of mainstreets. Most are attached to shopping centers, isolated from residential districts for traffic related reasons. This is also done specifically because movie theaters attract kids, and people in downtown or nearby residential areas don't want the rowdy kids around that they bring in.
While it was many years ago, one of the last few remaining theaters in an actual town that showed movies like this "Jewett City" was in part responsible for the town imposing a curfew on those below a certain age after a specific time. It was challenged and overturned, but well... that kind of summarizes the attitude.
Now granted there are probably areas that represent exceptions as far as theater locations, youth access, and similar things, but thinking nationally... well, I think there were problems with audience accessibility that were not considered, of course then again I also think they misunderstood who their audience actually was and how narrow a niche it was.
To be honest I think there is MORE awareness of Earthbound and Mother now than there was then.
Basically, throwing up advertisements and spending a lot of money promoting something is absolutly pointless if you somehow do it the wrong way, and it's not always obvious what went wrong.
To be honest I tend to think of Nintendo as being less stingy, than stupid.
Earthbound/Mother is in the same basic position as "Shin Megami Tensei", basically despite the promotion that was done with it, it managed to slip under the radar. The original SMT releases did not sell all that well, and got most of their following after the fact, which eventually lead to them trying again, and well... you can see what happened with the SMT titles becoming a pretty big deal in the US within the intended niche audience, which CAN sustain them.
Of course I suspect a lot of this comes down to racism as well. To be entirely blunt marketing realities aren't all of which drives the Japanese gaming industry. Years ago I used to be heavily into reading translated Japanese gaming periodicals to find out what was going on. One thing I caught was that there was an attitude that the Japanese, especially the fans, want to keep a lot of things Japan-only, and feel that it somehow cheapens the property to have an overseas release, especially to the US (which they have a wierd love/hate relationship with). Things like NOT releasing the "Final Fantasy X: International Edition" with expanded content and "Final Fantasy X-2: Final Mission" ending that story were NOT based on sales, but simply a desire to snub the US, some things I was reading were quite blunt about it.
This logic also influances why the US has not gotten numerous other games like the various "Super Robot Wars"/"Super Robot Taisen" games released more seriously here. There are claims that the liscencing would be too expensive, and similar things, but the bottom line is that there is a lot of pressure to keep them out of the US market. Selling to the US for more money is actually seen by some as "selling out". Now granted you might remember us getting some rather bad installments for the gameboy, and a more recent "Fronteir" installment which oddly enough didn't include any fighting giant robots and was more of a straight RPG (though it did feature Kos MOS from Xenosaga which was pretty cool I guess).
The overall point here is that with "Mother", I'm not entirely sure you can put the blame for us not getting futher games in the series at the feet of the fans. With the word of mouth and it making all these "best of" lists as a game many people hadn't heard of beforehand... well I'm pretty sure it could pull a SMT. I think there are a couple of differant reasons (mentioned above) we haven't seen it.
As far as "Scott Pilgrim" goes, I think there was some vast overestimation of the popularity of the property. What's more it was a movie made very specifically for a young geek demographic, rather than geeks in general. Kids by definition having less disposable income and the need to convince their parents to take them to a movie like that and pick them up.
I'm a huge geek, and really while I thought some of the ideas were interesting, I had no real interest in seeing the movie, so I didn't. It pretty much made my "maybe on Netflix, if I'm really bored" list, because really I don't associate myself with a teenager hipster douchebag doing a modernized retread of "Parker Lewis Can't Lose". Granted 15 or 20 years ago when I was in high school, or maybe early college, I would have loved this, at 36... meh.
Scott Pilgrim failed because it wasn't a geek movie, it was a movie aimed at a narrow segement of the geek community, that oddly enough have problems (especially in this economy) attending movies. Especially seeing as movie theaters over the last decade or so have tended to move to more isolated locations, as opposed to being say on the side of mainstreets. Most are attached to shopping centers, isolated from residential districts for traffic related reasons. This is also done specifically because movie theaters attract kids, and people in downtown or nearby residential areas don't want the rowdy kids around that they bring in.
While it was many years ago, one of the last few remaining theaters in an actual town that showed movies like this "Jewett City" was in part responsible for the town imposing a curfew on those below a certain age after a specific time. It was challenged and overturned, but well... that kind of summarizes the attitude.
Now granted there are probably areas that represent exceptions as far as theater locations, youth access, and similar things, but thinking nationally... well, I think there were problems with audience accessibility that were not considered, of course then again I also think they misunderstood who their audience actually was and how narrow a niche it was.
On both topics: I own Earthbound, it's fantastic, and it's moving in all spectrums of emotions, and it's rather fun. I think it has one of the best last acts of any video game ever made (I'd put Earthbound's Ending with Metal Gear Solid 4's amazing almost ending act sequence), and I enjoy it so much.
Scott Pilgrim, I actually watched it on DVD twice (I almost never watch movies more than once), bought it on Blu-Ray and DVD combo (Love it, started my bad habit with Blu-Ray purchases), have bought the PSN game for it, yet I did all this without even reading one book (Yup, I broke my own rules and watched the movie first instead of going to the original medium).
I live in the middle of nowhere, Montana, where the movie did not play anywhere, so watching it on DVD was the best I could do. I was also too young to support Earthbound when it came out (Wiki said the North American Release Date was June 5, '95 - I was Five years old).
I think I should be exempt, but understand I love them both.
Scott Pilgrim, I actually watched it on DVD twice (I almost never watch movies more than once), bought it on Blu-Ray and DVD combo (Love it, started my bad habit with Blu-Ray purchases), have bought the PSN game for it, yet I did all this without even reading one book (Yup, I broke my own rules and watched the movie first instead of going to the original medium).
I live in the middle of nowhere, Montana, where the movie did not play anywhere, so watching it on DVD was the best I could do. I was also too young to support Earthbound when it came out (Wiki said the North American Release Date was June 5, '95 - I was Five years old).
I think I should be exempt, but understand I love them both.
I remember seeing Earthbound on the shelves.
It costs the equivalent of 90$ when it first came out. It's not so much as fans didn't show up as Nintendo packed that stuff so full of useless promo shit it ramped the price up beyond any reason.
I was not gonna spend 90$ the equivalent of 2 regular games on a new release. No matter how much I wanted that game. Though if you really look at the sales figures it sold twice as well in Japan, but that really means it only sold about 300000 copies in Japan.
Nintendo just didn't know how to market a new product and they still don't because their localization offices are run by morons, sitting on their ass shoving cake into their fat faces.
It costs the equivalent of 90$ when it first came out. It's not so much as fans didn't show up as Nintendo packed that stuff so full of useless promo shit it ramped the price up beyond any reason.
I was not gonna spend 90$ the equivalent of 2 regular games on a new release. No matter how much I wanted that game. Though if you really look at the sales figures it sold twice as well in Japan, but that really means it only sold about 300000 copies in Japan.
Nintendo just didn't know how to market a new product and they still don't because their localization offices are run by morons, sitting on their ass shoving cake into their fat faces.
Here's my problem with the argument: It assumes all Geeks/Nerds/Dorks are alike. We are... WERE separated from the mainstream for liking quirky and intelligent things, yes, but we don't all have the same tastes. This might start some flames, and please go ahead with your opinions. However, I didn't watch nor care about Scott Pilgrim and I'm not moved at all that it failed.
I find nothing relate-able to Scott Pilgrim. Not a single thing. The cast doesn't appeal to me in anyway, the in-jokes are out of my purview, and the character designs make me feel left out in the cold. I'm not going to go and put out my money to make sure something like Scott Pilgrim succeeds just because it supposedly should fall under my protection as a Geek/Nerd/Dork IP. I don't WANT more things like Scott Pilgrim to succeed because all people will just focus on stuff like it more, leaving me with more unrelatable things.
It's like how people got on my case for not liking Guitar Hero. Even non gamers would tell me how they don't play games and they find it amazing, wondering what was wrong with me. Simple. I don't like Rock. I don't like Heavy Metal. The music genre that the game was catering to did not include me. I'm not a bad gamer for not supporting a game that doesn't have me in mind, and I resented the 'If you don't support these new IPs, all we're going to get is sequels' argument then. And I damn sure don't appreciate it now.
Simply put, Sequels would not get made if people wouldn't go out to see them. Just like another Scott Pilgrim won't be made in some time because no one went to see that. If they put out Transformers 2 even thought Transformers 1 got some dicey reviews... and NO ONE went to see Transformers 2, would we have a three now? No. People don't go to sequels because they have no choice. People go to Sequels BECAUSE it's their choice. I haven't been to the movie theater in months because nothing interested me. I never once thought 'That's all they have out this friday? ok, I'll just pick up because these are my only options.'
It's a guilt-trip move to blame us for the plethora of Movie Sequels out there. Like one poster said, maybe we are not just as big of a majority force like the net convinced us we were. We go into cracks to seek each other out. Just because we have a big group here in the Escapist doesn't mean the World Went Geek. Because I and my friends still get the judging eyes from the majority of non-geeks there are in the world.
I loved it so much I knew I was going to be heartbroken. As soon as I followed it and told everyone about it, I found out it was brought back for a second second... but never would be heard from again.
In our defense, the original time slot was garbage and no one knew it was on. Who puts anything on a Tuesday?
I find nothing relate-able to Scott Pilgrim. Not a single thing. The cast doesn't appeal to me in anyway, the in-jokes are out of my purview, and the character designs make me feel left out in the cold. I'm not going to go and put out my money to make sure something like Scott Pilgrim succeeds just because it supposedly should fall under my protection as a Geek/Nerd/Dork IP. I don't WANT more things like Scott Pilgrim to succeed because all people will just focus on stuff like it more, leaving me with more unrelatable things.
It's like how people got on my case for not liking Guitar Hero. Even non gamers would tell me how they don't play games and they find it amazing, wondering what was wrong with me. Simple. I don't like Rock. I don't like Heavy Metal. The music genre that the game was catering to did not include me. I'm not a bad gamer for not supporting a game that doesn't have me in mind, and I resented the 'If you don't support these new IPs, all we're going to get is sequels' argument then. And I damn sure don't appreciate it now.
Simply put, Sequels would not get made if people wouldn't go out to see them. Just like another Scott Pilgrim won't be made in some time because no one went to see that. If they put out Transformers 2 even thought Transformers 1 got some dicey reviews... and NO ONE went to see Transformers 2, would we have a three now? No. People don't go to sequels because they have no choice. People go to Sequels BECAUSE it's their choice. I haven't been to the movie theater in months because nothing interested me. I never once thought 'That's all they have out this friday? ok, I'll just pick up because these are my only options.'
It's a guilt-trip move to blame us for the plethora of Movie Sequels out there. Like one poster said, maybe we are not just as big of a majority force like the net convinced us we were. We go into cracks to seek each other out. Just because we have a big group here in the Escapist doesn't mean the World Went Geek. Because I and my friends still get the judging eyes from the majority of non-geeks there are in the world.
I remember not wanting to get into it when I first saw commercials for it. It was moved to Sci-Fi, back when they did four hour blocks on something.Susurrus said:
I loved it so much I knew I was going to be heartbroken. As soon as I followed it and told everyone about it, I found out it was brought back for a second second... but never would be heard from again.
In our defense, the original time slot was garbage and no one knew it was on. Who puts anything on a Tuesday?
I think the guys got this one wrong. Earthbound was released in Japan in 1994 and in the US in 1995. That's a LONG time ago, before the real rise of "geek culture" and the internet. I'd never even HEARD of Earthbound until I played Super Smash Brothers Melee (although being an Australian when I don't think it ever came out here didn't help with that). And back then, "weird" games like Earthbound didn't really appeal to the gamer base, even among JRPGS, compared to the likes of epics such as Final Fantasy VI and Chrono Trigger.
Now Scott Pilgrim on the other hand was nothing less than a glorious celebration of geek culture in its entirity. A film by geeks, for geeks, based on a comic by by a geek, for geeks. Any one who considers themself a geek has an OBLIGATION to see this film. Now, I don't know whether we actually let the film down by not showing or whether every geek actually DID go and see it (but no-one else, since the film is a hard sell to anyone who ISN'T a geek) but any geek who didn't see the film (or at least buy it on DVD as I did) should hang their head in shame.
And on the topic of Xenoblade Chronicles: if you don't want to buy it because you don't like JRPGs, that's more than fair enough. That's a no-brainer. But if you like JRPGs and own a Wii, then for god's sake buy the fucking game. Not because of Operation Rainfall, not because you have to "do your part", just because it's one of the best fucking JRPGs in years, capisce? Sheesh!
Now Scott Pilgrim on the other hand was nothing less than a glorious celebration of geek culture in its entirity. A film by geeks, for geeks, based on a comic by by a geek, for geeks. Any one who considers themself a geek has an OBLIGATION to see this film. Now, I don't know whether we actually let the film down by not showing or whether every geek actually DID go and see it (but no-one else, since the film is a hard sell to anyone who ISN'T a geek) but any geek who didn't see the film (or at least buy it on DVD as I did) should hang their head in shame.
And on the topic of Xenoblade Chronicles: if you don't want to buy it because you don't like JRPGs, that's more than fair enough. That's a no-brainer. But if you like JRPGs and own a Wii, then for god's sake buy the fucking game. Not because of Operation Rainfall, not because you have to "do your part", just because it's one of the best fucking JRPGs in years, capisce? Sheesh!
HEY!!!
i saw Scott Pilgrim in the theaters AND bought the blue-ray
Earthbound >.>
i don't actually like, so losing out on mother 3, mean s nothing to me
i saw Scott Pilgrim in the theaters AND bought the blue-ray
Earthbound >.>
i don't actually like, so losing out on mother 3, mean s nothing to me