10 Best Ever Console Launch Titles In Gaming History
The games that made it worth paying full price for a new console.
The gaming public is a fickle mistress on occasion. While some players will stay firmly entrenched in a particular camp, many will simply go where the best games are. As such, console makers are under constant stress to continue producing results to not only ensure the loyalty of their existing fanbase, but also to ensure that early adopters of the console are kept satisfied until a good library of games is built up.
This means that the opening salvo of any console war has historically been massively important when it comes to deciding what comes out on top. While not necessarily the be all and end all in today's marketplace - where the most recent generation of consoles managed to get away with releasing a bunch of last-gen games with more sparkly graphics - a console's launch titles will at the very least be able to give it some momentum and, at worst, can lead to the console dying before it ever gets started.
Not all great launch titles lead to the success of their console, however, there are many games that have managed to surprise with the level of quality that they have on offer - especially considering their developers were still getting to grips with the machine when the titles were released.
10. Sonic Adventure - Dreamcast
SEGA dropped the ball with the Saturn in many ways, not least of which was their failure to bring a proper Sonic game to the system. Sonic Xtreme ended up in development hell and never saw the light of day, which left a compilation of the classic Megadrive titles to pick up the slack.
As such, it was never established whether or not the blue blur could even work in 3D, which is why there was so much anticipation for Sonic Adventure.
Luckily, when the game was released alongside the Dreamcast it lived up to most of the hype. Sure, those overworld sections were more than a little boring, but that first run through Emerald Coast was more than enough to convince anybody that Sonic could be made to work in 3D.
The games that came after were a little hit and miss, but it seems like SEGA have finally managed to settle on a formula that mixes the best of both worlds. Sonic Adventure was a big first step in that process and really helped the Dreamcast to shine in those early months.