10 Video Game Spin-Offs That Insulted The Fans

You can't keep on doing the same thing forever and whilst every video game franchise should try to maintain and keep a hold on those all-important roots of what made it such a success in the first place, reinvention is sometimes key. And where better to test the waters of an idea than in a spin-off?

After all, spin-offs only count when they're good, we all know that! When they're bad, we can all do our best to forget about them and move on with our lives. Unless, they're particularly awful.. In which case, we can point at them as an example of what not to do... ever again.

Taking a risk is all well and good but sometimes what seems like an exciting, otherwise unheard of idea can blow up in your face. Maybe the reason it seemed like such a wild proposition was because nobody in their right mind would actually want such a thing?

Nonetheless, the video games in this list have spun off from beloved franchises in truly unbelievable ways, for the worse. These are the side-games that fans would prefer to forget about.

There are plenty of franchises that could perhaps benefit from a fighting game that pits its vast array of characters together.

In all fairness, it’s not like Castlevania doesn’t fit that bill with its lore taking place over hundreds of years. Judgement, as a concept, should've been a nice surprise that brought familiar faces and locations together.

In practice though, the game was a hot mess of terrible decisions. Whilst Castlevania had changed art style over time, Judgement’s take on the series just wasn’t the right fit and many classic characters were poorly represented. When it came to the gameplay, the Nintendo Wii’s motion controls meant that the fighting itself was imprecise and aggravating, which got even worse with the camera whipping around wildly.

Koji Igarashi himself, a figurehead of the series and a producer on the title, even admitted that the controls were “difficult to do when you’re waving something around”.

Motion controls in a fighting game just aren’t worth the trouble and they wounded any promise the game had mechanically. The salt in that wound was how everything Judgement got right about Castlevania (such as including sub-weapons and a host of kickass music), it got twice as many things wrong.

What should’ve been a celebration of the series’ wide, gothic cast and history instead was a huge sales failure and a black mark on the franchise.