Game Making 101: Don't Do This

Earlier yesterday, Destructoid lured me into one of their entries titled "The Two Greatest Game Endings Ever Produced". What I saw was... horribly unsettling. So unsettling, I feel it deserves to be written about- which means it was emotionally scarring.

Have you ever heard of a thing called "wasted effort"? How about "mismanaged license"? I can't think of better terms to describe these Legend of Zelda games that were released for Philips CD-i by an obviously low-budget, non-Nintendo developer. Suffice to say, this is the perfect example of a catalyst that made companies embrace (or grasp with an iron fist) their intellectual property.

Aside from the mind-bendingly awful cutscene quality (3rd grade animators FTL), you'd think it would be common sense that a game's ultimate finale shouldn't involve a one-hit boss TKO... from a book. Or something that resembles a book, but looks more like a flying medicine ball.

But alas, without gaming's skid marks, could we ever have masterpieces? Of course not! Hopefully this horrendous series served as a wake-up call to the industry- Nintendo especially- that licenses should be held close and dear, and game development should have some kind of base quality level. Without these tough lessons, undeserving coders would not have been shunned from future employment, and Darwinism wouldn't have had its chance to work its magic.

So, thank these games while you cringe in pain from the negative visual stimuli- otherwise, these guys would probably still be in the game-making business.

Videos after the break...