Do you suffer from uncontrollable, bleepin’ rage at something in the gaming industry? Have you smashed TVs by flinging controllers, or made your thumbs bleed with all that unrewarded determination and mad skillz you’ve been dishing out? Here at RadNerd, we feel your pain. Literally. This new ongoing feature will channel our anger in a healthy way … we hope.

There’s something eating away at the gaming industry, infecting our beloved series and turning them into warped versions of their original selves that we no longer recognize. This plague is more common than we’d like to think—a silent killer that we only detect once it strikes a game close to our hearts. “Never my favorite,” we tell ourselves. But it happens, sometimes inevitably: One games developer hangs up its hat, and another tries it on for size and thinks it looks too pimpin’ not to wear.

The result? A laundry list of mediocre installments that barely resemble the spirit of the games we once knew. Crash Bandicoot (Naughty Dog) and Spyro the Dragon (Insomniac Games) have suffered at the hands of completely new management that changes practically every other game, and Konami/Team Silent’s Silent Hill series has also experienced similar treatment in conjunction with different partners. Where once such series flourished, now critics and gamers alike tend to agree that what they loved most has been flushed down the toilet along with last week’s GameStop coupons.

Oftentimes the problem emerges when developers make the incredibly difficult decision to axe their own creations and let them rest in peace, occasionally taking the time out of their busy lives to lay digital roses on the graves. But money can speak louder than good intentions, and instead the product goes to the highest bidder. However, fans aren’t always blameless in this matter. We keep sickly-looking franchises alive by stuffing bank accounts with our own cash in the hopes that we can delay a game’s spontaneous combustion long enough to save it and create something magical and fresh in its place.

Although rare, that line of thinking has been known to pull through and win the hearts of gamers both old and new. Resident Evil serves as an excellent success story for this tactic, with RE4 finally canning the same tired but classic formula and revitalizing the material with a game-changing new plan. However, it’s worth noting that RE has always been handled by a division of Capcom in some manner—for better or worse. It’s possible that the only way to renew the vigor of a franchise is for creators to mold it into something better without losing track of what made it fun and ingenious in the first place—arguably, a task only effectively accomplished by those who first gave it life.

It’s true that nothing good lasts forever, and games are certainly no exception. Sometimes all it takes is for a series to hit its expiration date regardless of how many developers it’s seen in its lifetime; if a franchise has obtained particular success, then it’s common for the game to never die off at all when it so badly needs to reside six feet under, among the bones of other retired ideas and past generations of what was once considered gaming innovation. On the other hand, now and then all a series needs is some tender love and care from a more lively and empathetic team. I won’t say it doesn’t happen—industry miracles and sparkly rainbows and ponies have been reported now and then among the muck and grime—but the question is, what side up does the golden coin more often land? How many of our favorite games are slowly suffocating under a foreign vision, in between dollar-sign smiles or secondary glances and thoughts of a meager profit or quick burial? Maybe we should go ask Mario … or God forbid, Wario. They know those genuinely shiny coins from the flimsy ones.

How many of your favorite games have bitten the dust thanks to a developers’ version of musical chairs? How many have dodged the bullet because of it?

What do you think? Am I right on, or way off my mark? Feel free to praise or bash me with all those fancy pants words and junk.

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