This Is How To Resurrect A Dying Video Game

Cult Games Remained Dead And Buried

Let’s jump back a few gaming generations scientists demoted Pluto from planet status and the Eye-Toy was as the closest thing there was to virtual reality. A game flopping bode its death and possibly the whole studio along with it.

With hardcopy as the primary distribution method, if a game didn’t perform well on release, then the distribution would most likely halt with the remaining unbought cases thrown into the 99p bargain bucket. Yet this didn’t mean games overlooked by the mainstream were dead and gone forever.

Those who found the likes of Fatal Frame and Katamari Damacy in that bargain bucket could spark a cult following. Why didn’t good games sell well in the first place? Well, developers had a lot more obstacles to overcome regarding sales.

Shenmue failed to rake back their exorbitant budget of $47million, and cult-hits like Earthbound and Ico fell to poor marketing. Beyond Good and Evil released into an over-saturated market, while Okami just felt like a cruel twist of fate, achieving the Guinness World Record for “the least commercially successful winner of a game of the year award”.

While it’s terrific that dedicated cult fans sang these games’ praises, it was a little too late to save them from destruction. With the unlikelihood of more distribution, it was tricky for cult followers to get their mitts on a sought-after game. Wikipedia lists 30 cult games from 2002, more than the 2010s combined; the lack of incentive to distribute cult games kept them at a cult-status.

Unfortunately, these titles were doomed to their small, devoted fanbases on the backwater forums of the internet. But as the gaming industry shifted, cult games began to rise from their graves.