do you agree that EA was a great dev in the 90s but not anymore

Discussion in 'Games, Gaming & Game-demos' started by ramthegamer, Mar 22, 2017.

  1. DocStr4ngelove

    DocStr4ngelove Ancient Guru

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    They were pretty good in times of BF3. That title still rocked.

    But look at those stocks in those times, they were at 20 US $.

    After 2011 loot boxes in fifa became a steady thing that would send their stock through the roof. No wonder they thought that was a gold mine.
     
  2. TheDeeGee

    TheDeeGee Ancient Guru

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    C&C Remaster Collection will make EA great again :p
     
  3. twonha

    twonha Master Guru

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    Props for bumping a dead thread exactly three years after its (former) last post.
     
  4. Tat3

    Tat3 Ancient Guru

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    Yes, this is a old thread, but shows how things have changed, EA has very tough competition now. Few years ago EA was the worst, but look at Bethesda, Activision Blizzard and Take-Two. Fallout 76, few bad mobile games, Warcraft 3 remake, don't you people have mobile phones, CoD lootboxes, long time staff leaving Blizzard and Rockstar and so.

    That new Star Wars seems like a good game.
     

  5. DocStr4ngelove

    DocStr4ngelove Ancient Guru

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    ^^ that was the moment when i thought 'maybe a total crash of today's game industry wouldn't be such a bad thing after all'.


    I think a lot of publishers lack the insight or have lost the ability to let developers produce high quality content. Most go for the fast food option now. Games are like burgers: look great when announced but after consuming they leave a bad taste in your mouth and 2 hours later you're even more hungry.
     
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  6. Zenoth

    Zenoth Maha Guru

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    To answer the original question from OP, about whether or not EA made good games in the 90s; the short answer is: More or Less (depends on how you see it).

    At least speaking from the NES era, a lot of the games that are to this day associated with EA were simply published by them. If we start with the NES, on which there's about 2 or 3 games with the "EA name", and only one of which I can think of, being The Immortal; was a game developed by Sandcastle. If we go with James Pond 2 on the Master System, for example, we have to look at Vectordean as the developers. But EA had a minimal presence on the 8-bit scene.

    They exploded with 16-bit consoles though (at least in terms of raw numbers of games published and/or made). There's about 25 to 30 or so games "from them" on the Super Nintendo. But they truly went nuts on the Genesis / Mega Drive, with something like 80 to 90 games (maybe more, EA on the Genesis at the time was a very big name). However, many of those games are associated with EA when in fact they only published them. But most kids at the time didn't make the difference with that. Usually we'd see a name of a company and go "that company is amazing!" or "oh those guys! yes!". I know, been there done that. One thing is pretty much a given, their 'EA Sports' games were very popular, and definitely developed by them (NHL 94 anyone?). Just on the Genesis alone, there were more than a dozen unique development studios that had their game published by EA. I can't recall the names by heart but I absolutely remember reading pages about that sort of info at the time in magazines like GamePro or EGM; about how big EA was and, at the time, appeared to be some sort of savior for smaller studios in 'helping them getting on the map'.

    However, if you take in consideration how many of those games they actually made versus how many they merely published I'd say that they did excel in the Sports genre, if anything.

    Me and my cousin during those years would often rent their games and I can recall a bunch. But I'm cutting out the ones I now know weren't made by them per se; it does impact the list:

    This is just on the Genesis (easiest one for me to remember)

    - James Pond
    - Mutant League Hockey
    - Road Rash 1 / 2 / 3

    On the Super Nintendo I can only think of those two (I know there's probably more but that's the only thing I can recall):

    - NBA Showdown
    - Theme Park

    Now looking at this myself I know it's not the "full story".

    Name / Brand association was important at the time especially for the younger chimp I was. As I mentioned earlier during those years no one cared about who made what and who 'distributed' or published and all that shenanigan. That's one of the main reasons why today you'd speak to a "90s kid" like me and ask which good games were "made by EA" in the 1990s means I'd do like most people would in my boat and immediately claim that games like...

    - Strike series (Desert Strike, Jungle Strike, Urban Strike)
    - John Madden series
    - NBA, FIFA, NHL games
    - B.O.B
    - James Pond 2
    - TechnoClash
    - The Immortal
    - Zool

    ...were amazing (or at lot of them were; in my case I avoided most Sports games with only a very few select, like NHL 94 obviously, and Mutant League Hockey / Football), suddenly making EA seem like a much more competent 'games company' in general, doesn't it.

    My favorites "from them" during the 16-bit years would probably be:

    - Blades of Vengeance
    - Road Rash II
    - Desert Strike
    - NHL 94
    - Mutant League Hockey
    - James Pond II

    And that would be it for me.

    But of course we could go on with the 32-bit years and the PS1. I don't know the number but I know they 'made' (and published) well over 100 games on the PS1 (maybe closer to 200 I think). It can be argued that they had their peak of popularity from the PS1. That's when you start seeing names [in association with / published by EA] like Bullfrog, Crystal Dynamics, DreamWorks, Probe, Argonaut, Maxis and a couple of others. But for me, it's their 16-bit games that I recall the most from them.

    And just going by memory, in relation to their PS1 games; I recall a TON of their EA Sports games numbered by the dozens lined up next to each others on shelves at my local store back when I used to rent games. They actually had a whole section entirely reserved for their Sports games (and mixed up with a few rare non-EA Sports game sprinkled here and there). To this day I still remember seeing them categorized by Sports type and year on the cover, since of course by the time EA games were made on the PS1 they annualized everything they touched and included the year for the new version of the game. The Madden games and their NASCAR games, along with their NCAA games were all carefully sorted like that from left to right, '97, '98, '99, etc, and it kept on going for a mile (manner of speech).

    On the PS1 from them I do recall 007: The World is Not Enough well (rented it maybe 2 times), Crusader No Remorse (amazing game, have it today on Origin actually), Medal of Honor (one of my top 5 FPS games on the PS1, and no it wasn't developed by EA, but they did publish it), Need for Speed III: Hot Pursuit (really liked it back then, played it a lot with my cousin since he was a lot into racing games), Nuclear Strike (one of my overall favorites on the PS1, and to EA's credits that one was indeed developed by them, can you imagine), Soviet Strike (very good one too, but that one wasn't made by EA), Space Hulk (unplayable today, for me; aged terribly, but I really liked it back then... oh the things I put it with at the time; what can I say I had a lot of patience and way more energy to keep on going), Syndicate Wars... and, that's about it? I think.

    For the Saturn they had a couple of games but I don't know the number. The Saturn is a console I largely ignored during those years. But I know EA had a presence there.

    Now with all this said, if I consider the context at the time (I.E. not caring about who made what, and only seeing whichever company name had the biggest letters on the box art or whichever game company logo intro was the most memorable having the 'lasting impact' for memorizing company names) and including both EA's published and developed games, then yes I'd say that EA were overall a pretty good video games company during the 1990s. They absolutely had their 'golden years' during that decade in my book.
     
  7. Dragam1337

    Dragam1337 Ancient Guru

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    Imo there has been a clear drop-off in games i'd rate as "great" after 2015 - but this is true for all publishers. Like in 2015 there was aloooot of great games that i was looking forward to... witcher 3, gta 5, fallout 4, just to mention the big ones. Since 2015? The amount of games i've looked forward to can be counted on 1 hand... and atm the only game i'm looking forward to is cyberpunk.

    As a note, star was jedi fallen order and star wars battlefront 2 from EA were good games, i just wasn't particularly looking forward to them, and i wouldn't rate them at the same level as something like witcher 3.
     
  8. Loobyluggs

    Loobyluggs Ancient Guru

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    came here expecting a poll, left disappointed
     
  9. XP-200

    XP-200 Ancient Guru

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    What is with all the necro threads of late. lol
     
  10. metagamer

    metagamer Ancient Guru

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    Nothing to do with that. It's to do with selling 5 million copies of a PC game at £40 or releasing a mobile game for free and making that money over and over.
     

  11. DocStr4ngelove

    DocStr4ngelove Ancient Guru

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    Well, make one yourself? ;)
     
  12. Loobyluggs

    Loobyluggs Ancient Guru

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    Came here expecting a humbling reply with humility and wisdom, left disappointed o_O
     
  13. DocStr4ngelove

    DocStr4ngelove Ancient Guru

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    Welcome to the WWW :D
     
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  14. Astyanax

    Astyanax Ancient Guru

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    EA has always been a Toxic publisher.

    Niether of these were developed by EA, only published.

    Simcity = Maxis
    MoH / AA = Dreamworks / 2015, Inc.
     
  15. Turanis

    Turanis Guest

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    Just a way to Remember these Good studios:

    [​IMG]
     

  16. ramthegamer

    ramthegamer Ancient Guru

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    The rise and fall of MoH
     
  17. Damien_Azreal

    Damien_Azreal Ancient Guru

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    The image doesn't have Visceral Games on it...
    There for the atrocities of EA are not fully represented.
     
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  18. XP-200

    XP-200 Ancient Guru

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    EA are more of a hedge fund orginisation these days than they are games makers.
     
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  19. ramthegamer

    ramthegamer Ancient Guru

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    playing fifa 20 and suddenly lost connection to ea servers.....lost my points and lost the squad battle game 3 0....shame on you EA shame on you.....
     
  20. ShadowDuke

    ShadowDuke Ancient Guru

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    Because they dont differ between connection loss and quitting game on purpose. Nothing new here..
     
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