10 Video Games Released At The Wrong Time

Shantae, you stay... on the shelf, because your system is dying.

There’s plenty of people who’ll rag on Shantae; it’s more than a bit camp with its ponytail attacks and playing it you can never quite decide if it’s a throwback homage or just a little dated. However, it’s such a great game that it just about survived a bafflingly bad release date.

Capcom decided to delay the game for eight months in 2002, which was an issue because it was only available on the Game Boy Color and the Game Boy Advance had just released. Seemingly nobody told Capcom that time is linear and lo and behold, when it eventually released, the Color was dying and all anyone cared about was the Advance.

The Advance was backwards compatible, so Shantae could be played on it, but eight months in most people wanted new, improved Advance games. Shantae was left on the shelves, and didn’t recover until ten years later when the sequel came out.

The game had a few other issues though. Too sexy for a kids’ game, too girly for a market which advertised even more heavily to men back then. Still, it was definitely hamstrung by delays.