Every great video game looks bad in some point in time.

Any long observer of the video game market will realize that the next great video game will come out of nowhere… because they always do. And they will realize that the next great video game rarely comes from big game companies or sequels.

But what many people, gamer and industry alike, are unaware is that every great video game looks bad in some point in time.

Pac-Man looked stupid when the market was full of Space Invaders clones. When Nintendo of America got the first copy of Donkey Kong, they though Yamauchi had lost his mind because the game looked so bad. And what about Tetris, the game that was nothing but blocks?

Show me a great video game,a nd I will show you that it looked bad before it came out. Super Mario Brothers looks bad compared to the rising 16-bit graphics of personal computers at the time. Legend of Zelda looks bad as it had much wandering and running around unlike other games. And what about Mega Man where you could choose your own stage at first and everything in the game was ‘robotized’?

Grand Theft Auto III looks bad before it came out. Not too many people heard of the series before III.

Warcraft II and Command and Conquer look bad when they came out. “Why would anyone play these games?” muttered some grizzly old Panzar General gamer. “It lacks the depth of sophisticated war strategy games and lacks the action of a shooter.”

What about Internet gaming? That looked really bad when it came out. The first MMORPG, Ultima Online, looks bad too when it was hatched.

Sim City looks bad when it was released. No one took the Sims seriously before it was released except for Wright worshipers. (Yet, Spore looked ‘great’ and had hype of the Second Coming.)

Consider Wii Sports. The game looks very bad at its time. I remember gamers mocking it, and saying how stupid it was. Yet, it is the best selling game ever. What about Wii Fit? Or Super Mario Brothers 5?

Wolfenstien 3d looks bad when it came out. So did Pokemon.

And what about games like Minecraft? The game looks bad, and then it is everywhere.

Why do great video games look bad at some point in time? It is because innovation looks bad at some point in time.

Every single ‘great video game’ is a crappy game for crappy customers. Therefore, it ‘seems’ like these great games come from ‘nowhere’.