8 Video Games You Didn't Realise Broke The Industry

3. Legend Of Zelda: Ocarina Of Time (Maybe?) - Had The First Pre-Order Bonus

Nintendo

Pre-order bonuses are naff. Like, really naff.

We've all been there, pining over the next release of the Batman: Arkham franchise, only to realise that the costumes you're after (the kind of thing that would usually be unlocked in-game, by the way), are locked behind separate pre-order bonuses at different retailers. It sta-hinks, and while it's a nice enough thought to reward your most loyal customers, there comes a point where it gets too much.

Whether it's charging folks stupid money to steadily amass a collection of tat or some other gimmicky nonsense, pre-order bonuses ruin any sense of progression and put up paywalls in front of content that should, ideally, just be included in the base game itself.

What game kickstarted pre-order bonuses? Shockingly, this one is one of the hardest to nail down. Pre-ordering games really took off at the start of the late-nineties and early noughties, and it was around this time that retailers and publishers came together to offer specific pre-order bonuses. It's impossible to say with any degree of certainty which game was the first, but surprisingly, it seems as though Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time was one of the first - or at least the first to kick up a fuss.

North American players who pre-ordered Ocarina of Time in 1998 would get a special T-shirt and an equally special box, which had a plastic card. Is it the real culprit behind the tat-renaissance? One can only guess, but one thing we know for certain is that Arkham City was the worst offender, offering a myriad of bonuses with all sorts of retailers. Blegh.

Advertisement
In this post: 
L.A. Noire
 
First Posted On: 
Content Producer/Presenter

WhatCulture's very own resident movie guy, Ewan has been working in the content creation biz for over 10 years now, having started as a freelance contributor to WhatCulture Gaming all the way back in 2015. After graduating with a First-Class Honours in History from Northumbria University in 2017 (where he won a prize for a totally killer dissertation on the Watergate years), Ewan took on the role of Comics Editor at WhatCulture and quickly developed WhatCulture Comics into one of the biggest superhero-focused channels on YouTube. He followed this with a brief hiatus at Screen Rant in 2021, where he worked across the Gaming and Film sections as a writer and editor, before returning to WhatCulture as a Senior Content Producer / Presenter in 2023. He started his own podcast, We Love Dad Movies, in 2022, and has contributed several written pieces to the Eisner-nominated comics website Shelfdust as well. In his current role, Ewan incorporates his love of cinema, comic books, and history into written pieces and video essays for WhatCulture's Film & TV channel, as well as WhatCulture Gaming and WhatCulture Horror, with a particular focus on nineties-era Dad Movies, old school Westerns, and Golden Age Hollywood Noir. John Carpenter is his fave, and he thinks Batman Beyond should never have been cancelled. If that's your vibe, you'll probably like his stuff.