Right now I am watching Pulp Fiction in an attempt to appease Lewis over at ScreenDemon. This has got me thinking about cult classics. Of course Pulp Fiction isn’t really a cult title, it received far too many award nominations to really be classed as that; it just feels like it could easily have been a cult hit.
So back to cult classics, lets look at games. Just as there are with movies and books there are certainly cult titles in games. I think it’s a little harder to identify in gaming sometimes, particularly given the way that until relatively recently I would say that the general perception was the whole industry had a cult status. Of course there’s a lot that’s changed after the last couple of console generations and I don’t think anyone could argue that the gaming industry is niche or cult any more.
The undisputed kings of cult in gaming are Team ICO. They’ve only produced two titles over the past 9 years, and both Ico and Shadow of the Colossus seem to be hugely loved by fans without really shifting a significant number of copies. Yes, it probably is a shame that those titles haven’t shifted the huge volume that titles like Call of Duty manage, but it doesn’t really diminish their value as games. In fact it probably increases it, as it makes those kinds of titles rarer and feel more special. If they became popular you’d just get a group of similar titles, making ICO’s titles feel more part of the gaming landscape instead of feeling pretty different from the majority of other titles.
As always when we discuss gaming in the modern era download titles should get a mention. Titles like flOw and Flower are certainly the cult hits of modern gaming, and they’re games that would almost certainly never be made if they were going to be released on physical media. With the freedom that digital releases give developers there’s the potential for more cult hits to emerge, although it may be hard for them to move beyond the initial niche market where most cult classics start off.
I know I’ve certainly missed out some pretty significant cult hits here, so lets hear your favourite cult titles. Do you think that we’ll see more of these kind of titles with the opportunities that digital distribution allows?
sharpie
I don’t think that the medium of computer games is suited to cult classics. If I wanted to go and watch a DVD of Metropolis (1927) or Man with a Movie Camera (1929) I could go home and do that this evening. If I wanted to re-play Mid-Winter (1990) or Codemasters Grand Prix Simulator (1988) there is no way to do it without hanging on to obsolete hardware and setting it up every time you fancy a game.
hazelam
there are a few games i’ve played that i could describe as cult games.
early ones for me would be a couple of amiga titles, the first is zombi, based loosely on the dawn of the dead movie.
and a not very well known game called eco, it’s kind of like an ancestor to spore, you play a creature, who has to find food to survive, once you’ve eaten enough you can then mate, once you find a mate you get to the next stage, and you unlock a new section of your dna to change, the more dna you unlock the more kinds of creature you can become, that was a fun game, i don’t know if it was ever possible to finish it but i enjoyed it a lot.
i never found a copy in any shops but they did give the game away on a coverdisc one time.
i’ve hoping for years that somebody would do a remake, but sadly, nobody has. :(
more recently there was panzer dragoon saga, a bloody fantastic game, but virtually impossible to find at the time, and now going for ridiculous amounts of money on ebay.
what’s worse with that game is sega gave away the first disc as a demo on the official saturn magazine, but then didn’t release anywhere near enough copies in the shops, so i got to play a good portion of the game but i know i may never get to finish it.
back then, pre internet, mostly, there was no way to order it online so i never managed to find a copy.
i’ve waited for a remake of this, or even an hd port, but no. ;_;
Stf@n
Team ICO the undisputed kings of cult gaming? Not really. In fact, they’re pretty low on the list. I’d have to say Treasure tops it, by a long, long way. Treasure games are heralded by legions of journalists and fans, most of whom have never played a single game. I would wager that 99% of all references to Radiant SilverGun are made by people who’ve never played the game.
I’d also place Tetsuya Mizuguchi over all of Team ICO. What about SNK, pure cult classism right there…
aerobes
I know I mention this a lot but Vib-Ribbon was such a wonderful and simple concept and really deserves a HD release on the PSN. I think it would be a real success if marketed correctly.
I realise this probably isn’t a true cult classic but I’ll mention Killer Instinct anyway because, unlike many games listed here, since its release, business has gone in such a way that it’s unlikely we’ll ever see a sequel or modernised version of what was a brilliant game at the time and compared to most fighting games, nearly forgotten about.
Stf@n
I’ve been thinking about Vib Ribbon a lot lately – Might have to find a copy somewhere.
TSBonyman
macfoxes , not just a ‘cult’ game.. o.O
minerwilly
Deathchase 2000 , Booty , Driller , Ant Attack, Stunt Car Racer , Hogs of War , Panzer Front, Valkyria Chronicles some of my favourites that people love to reminiscence about but never sold particularly well.