Each generation of consoles has its own advancements and limitations. The key that any game developer wants to achieve is to find the right balance between the two, either graphically or mechanically.
Unless you need chaos. A surprising number of developers love chaos.
Yes, whether it’s testing the limits of the hardware they’re building to see what it’s capable of, or just having poor optimization and a task manager with an uncontrollable ego, there have been plenty of games over the years. the consoles or PCs they’re releasing and claim they’re pushing the limits.
Sometimes it’s a smart thing, other times it’s really, REALLY bad. But it is convenient to discuss the cases, especially the ten that your scribe has collected here.
So here are the top ten examples of developers and publishers who put a console to the test by seeing what can be done with it and how it propelled them to new heights or blew up in their faces.
Crazy Taxi, one of the most productive games Sega has ever produced. A fast-moving 3D driving game that tries to get your passenger to their destination with all the mayhem and carnage you can collect along the way.
Only a dedicated arcade device could truly grasp just how absolutely insane this game can be, with the home console versions doing their best to stay active.
Naturally, they put it on the Game Boy Advance.
Roughly a portion of this list will be made up of the bad sides of games that take their systems to the extreme, and Crazy Taxi is the best first example of this. The entire game is cluttered and compressed until it fits a handheld, more or less ruining the overall experience.
While it’s certainly impressive that they’ve managed to integrate something similar to the original game into Advance, that doesn’t stop this edition of Crazy Taxi from being one of the most confusing ports in video game history. A wonderful example of a progression team that only focuses on “could”, not “should”.
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