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Developers that release nothing but hits

civilstrife said:
I'm talking about the full package. Games that sell like hotcakes, but with good reason.
I'm pretty sure that ends the thread with a grand total of 0 possible answers.
 
Yeah I suppose 2 games is not enough to be considered for this, true. Retro studios wouldn't count for the same reason.


I would have said Looking Glass, but Terra Nova disqualifies them (~9k units).
 
What is a hit? Sales, critical acclaim, personal judgement?

It's hazy.

I'd say Maxis, Firaxis, Nintendo's EAD and Blizzard are all up there in terms of all 3 criterias.
 
Matlock said:
Donkey Kong: Jungle Beat
Jungle Beat didn't sell as well as Nintendo was expecting but that doesn't mean it wasn't a hit. Maybe for Nintendo standards, it wasn't a hit, but it sold enough to be considered a hit.
 
KingJ2002 said:

I wouldn't even call AM2 a golden child. They're a very talented developer, and should know since I've played thier games. However they do have a few rotten eggs, like Sonic Champions(Sonic The Fighters),

Also to Amusement Vision is a golden child also is pretty absurd. To be quite honest, Spikeout was one of the worst arcade games to come from SEGA, but that was produced AM4 aka Amusement Vision

Anyhow no dev is flaweless because they've all had stinkers at some point. I mean, I love Snowblind and all, but was shocked to the find out they produced the god-awful Top Gear games on the N64. Thankfully thier previous 3 titles was good enough to make those Top Gear games forgettable.
 
Deku said:
What is a hit? Sales, critical acclaim, personal judgement?

It's hazy.

I'd say Maxis, Firaxis, Nintendo's EAD and Blizzard are all up there in terms of all 3 criterias.

Since you haven't read the thread so far--

Maxis: SimAnt, SimFarm, SimSafari, Tony La Russa Baseball 3, The Urbz...
Firaxis: Sid Meier's Civil War attempts
EAD: Donkey Kong: Jungle Beat
Blizzard: Justice League Task Force, Death and Life of Superman
 
SpiffyG said:
Jungle Beat didn't sell as well as Nintendo was expecting but that doesn't mean it wasn't a hit. Maybe for Nintendo standards, it wasn't a hit, but it sold enough to be considered a hit.

GCN DK: JUNGLE BEAT 212,415

!

Well, I'll be damned. The game was disappointingly bad, dunno how it pulled that many sales tho.
 
I'll probably be burned for this, but what about Squaresoft? I'm not really counting after S-E merger though, so I dunno if it still hold, or even before that during their PC days.
 
Mefisutoferesu said:
I'll probably be burned for this, but what about Squaresoft? I'm not really counting after S-E merger though, so I dunno if it still hold, or even before that during their PC days.

3-D WorldRunner, Alcahest, Bahamut Lagoon, The Bouncer, Ehrgeiz: God Bless the Ring, Einhander, Rad Racer, Threads of Fate, Tobal No.1...

temp said:
Didn't MDK2 end up selling about 1 million copies combined?

Not sure, I thought it did fairly poor...hrrm.

Yoshi said:
This is a great game, I don't know, what you're trying to tell me by this

Andrew2 said:
Hold the phone, but Beach Spikers was phenominal. If not one of the best arcade sports titles ever produced. Maybe your talking about the Cube port, but overall its an excellent non-sim sports title.


Hits, not "good games to me!" F-Zero GP Legend and Beach Spikers wound up being astounding commercial failures. :p
 
Matlock said:
Any Kojima project that isn't Metal Gear.



Justice League Task Force.



Beach Spikers.



Catwoman.

Hold the phone, but Beach Spikers was phenominal. If not one of the best arcade sports titles ever produced. Maybe your talking about the Cube port, but overall its an excellent non-sim sports title.
 
Matlock said:
GCN DK: JUNGLE BEAT 212,415

!

Well, I'll be damned. The game was disappointingly bad, dunno how it pulled that many sales tho.
Dissapointingly bad? I am required to make a comment only because the game is the exact opposite. DK: JB is definitely one of the best platformers this gen.

What do you base this judgement on? What made it "dissapointingly bad" in your eyes?
 
Andrew2 said:
Hold the phone, but Beach Spikers was phenominal. If not one of the best arcade sports titles ever produced. Maybe your talking about the Cube port, but overall its an excellent non-sim sports title.

It wasn't a H I T
 
argon said:
Then you can take Blizzard off the list. I don't think Blackthorne, Rock N' Roll Racing, and Lost Vikings sold like hotcakes.

Great games though.

I don't think the recent "Blizzard Classic Arcade" conversions of these games to Game Boy Advance were big sellers, but the versions released for various systems in the 1990s were all fairly popular. They weren't massive multi-million sellers like the Warcraft or Diablo games, but I think all of them were popular enough that they could be considered "hits."

By the way, I own all three of those games for different platforms: The Lost Vikings for Amiga (for which very few people are aware of its existence; I think it was one of Interplay's last Amiga games here in the US), Blackthorne for PC, and Rock 'n Roll Racing for GBA.
 
Matlock said:
Not sure, I thought it did fairly poor...hrrm.
Hey, according to their website it sold over 1 million copies. Although according to the same page their first game sold 200,000 copies, so I'm not sure how you want to count that.
 
3-D WorldRunner, Alcahest, Bahamut Lagoon, The Bouncer, Ehrgeiz: God Bless the Ring, Einhander, Rad Racer, Threads of Fate, Tobal No.1...

I liked Bahamut, Einhander, and Threads of Fate.

As to Tobal, Ehrgeiz, and the Bouncer... I believe Square published, but did not develop them, though obviously they were involved in the Asset process for bouncer (kinda like Crystal Chronicles).

None the less, you're right the rest.
 
temp said:
Hey, according to their website it sold over 1 million copies. Although according to the same page their first game sold 200,000 copies, so I'm not sure how you want to count that.

I retract my earlier statements then, my bad. Bioware does indeed fit the mold, as does Insomniac.
 
Matlock said:
Since you haven't read the thread so far--

Maxis: SimAnt, SimFarm, SimSafari, Tony La Russa Baseball 3, The Urbz...
Firaxis: Sid Meier's Civil War attempts
EAD: Donkey Kong: Jungle Beat
Blizzard: Justice League Task Force, Death and Life of Superman


Highly subjective. Sid's civil war games were very well liked. Nothing as big as the huge success of Civilizaiton, but Civilization is in a class in itself.

That's why I asked you what counts as a hit. Sales? critical acclaim? fan reception? weighted average of the 3?

If you're talking about any large developer with a long history they will have lots of games under their belts and a variety of successes from unqualified to lesser succeses. You're question seem to favour small developers who make very few games and are very young and may only have 2 or 3 big games in their entire history.
 
Oh dear.

I want to say Intelligent Systems.

...

How about Game Freak? I have a hard time thinking of any game they've released in the past 10 years that hasn't sold well.
 
I'll give another vote for Intelligent Systems. They simply do not make bad games, and they usually all sell better than average to very well.
 
Mefisutoferesu said:
I'll probably be burned for this, but what about Squaresoft? I'm not really counting after S-E merger though, so I dunno if it still hold, or even before that during their PC days.


Hmmm, considering FF1 was going to be Squaresoft's last game before they went under I don't think it's possible for them to qualify. ^^;
 
civilstrife said:
I'm talking about the full package. Games that sell like hotcakes, but with good reason.
By that standard, I'd say there aren't any. Unless you want to loosen the definition of "nothing but hits."
Intelligent Systems is the closest I can think of, but even then, not all their stuff sells like hotcakes regardless of how awesome it is. Especially factoring in Japanese sales, where nobody really buys anything from the Wars series.
 
I agree with the many listed here already, but one that wasn't said:

Capcom Production Studio 4:

RE1
RE2
RE3
RE4
REmake
RECV
DMC1
Viewtiful Joe 1
Devil Kings (...sold well in Japan, and certainly is better/slightly worse/on par than your most recent Dynasty Warriors)
PN03 (fuck, theory smashed, damn you Pn03!)
 
I was afraid to read this thread but I got bored. Holy cow that was some funny stuff. Matlocks ninja skills at smashing fanboy goggles was hilarious. Made this thread fun and honest.
 
GAME_FREAK_Intro.gif
 
Hits as in sold well? Probably EA's sport teams. :) As far as making MOSTLY just good games..

Nintendo R&D1

Intelligent Systems

Firaxis

Blizzard maybe... WoW really made me like them a lot less though. It's the first Blizzard game that was absolutely no fun to play. Yeah yeah it's huge hit.. but easily the worst thing they've ever done.
 
According to some almost flame war in the official Bioware forums the three versions of MDK2 sold 1million.

Ergo MDK2=HIT.

Bioware spotless so far.

bioware_001.jpg
 
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