Okay, before this article destroys the casual games industry, I just want to say that I am all in favour of casual games. They have brought various generations of people who wouldn’t usually know what a controller is into the world of video games. Mario Kart Wii and Warioware are two of the most enjoyable games of this generation and less we forget; the entity that is LittleBigPlanet.

But there have been some casualties in this casual game transition.

Some have been bigger than others so let’s begin with the character that needs to be out of intensive care as quickly as possible.

Sonic the Hedgehog

Ah, Sonic. I remember waking up on Christmas day in 1992, running through to the living room, unwrapping Sonic 2 and playing it until my eyeballs bled. Sonic 2 is without a doubt one of the greatest games ever. Nothing but a hedgehog, a couple of his fellow characters, a spin dash and a jump.

That’s all Sonic needed back then but now he’s running around with bloody swords. If he’s not doing that he’s changing into wearhogs and why you ask?

To make his games more kid friendly. How good would Sonic Unleashed have been if the Wearhog hadn’t made an appearance?

And although Mario and Sonic at the Olympics sold billions it was a travesty to old school Sonic fans. How the hell could anyone beat Sonic in a race?

It beggars belief. Sega are trying to undo the damage with the announcement of “Project Needlemouse” but it may be too late to save their mascot from casual destruction.

Rayman

Now here’s a blast from the past. Rayman was one of the premium platformers on the PS1. He would use his hand to grab, punch and swing from start to finish in a glorious amount of colourful worlds, always with great bosses.

Then they came…

The Rabbids.

They started off as the enemy of Rayman back on the PS2, however the game didn’t sell too well. But then along came the Wii and with it a cavalcade of people looking to not play games but mini-games.

Ubisoft saw the potential here and sprung on it. Now Rayman is a retired character and any hope of him getting a new game, by himself, is dead and gone with the latest incarnation of the Rabbids where, as far as I can see, he is absent and not accounted for.

Banjo Kazooie

Banjo-Kazooie on the N64 and now Xbox Live is brilliant.  The sequel, Banjo-Tooie, was one of the best sequels ever to grace the game industry.

Everyone waited with baited breath to see what the next gen version of Banjo would be. We were not impressed. Instead of various worlds and great platforming we got a build-your-own-cart and race it around. Granted there were a few platforming bits but there wasn’t enough.

Just think how good this game could have been if they would have dropped the kart building and concentrated on the level design and more zany moves?

It could have been spectacular.

Let’s just hope the sequel will have what it deserves to have, a bear, a bird and a whole lair of worlds to explore on the back of said bird.

Nintendo

Now this is quite a weird one that will probably raise a few eyebrows because Nintendo has made billions off the casual games industry but with this amazing wealth comes a great price; they have lost the respect of hardcore gamers.

Granted you can get all the stars in Super Mario Galaxy and you can try to unlock everything in Super Smash Brothers Brawl but at the end of the day they have really neglected us hardcore gamers.

Recently they have been trying to get us back on side with Madworld and House of the Dead Overkill, but while both these games where received reasonable well, it just doesn’t make up for the likes of Summer Beach Sports and the awful Wii Music.

Maybe Nintendo will one day chose to take a hit in profits and focus on their “niche” market of hardcore gamers but I can’t see it happening anytime soon.

Grand Theft Auto Chinatown Wars

Which leads me onto this sob story.

Chinatown Wars is one of the best reviewed games of the year. It mixed the old school top down perspective of GTA 1 and 2 with the new version of Liberty City coupled with amazing mini-games where you hotwire cars and make guns. On top of that, it had the usual amazing writing we have come to expect from Rockstar and all the violence and murder you would find in any GTA game.

But it had one very big flaw…

It was a hardcore game trying to make it big on a casual console.

Chinatown Wars has the unfortunate stigma of being one of the only 18 certificate games on the DS and it shows. This amazing game has sold around 90,000 units in its first 2 weeks of release. Quite shocking when GTA 4 made 3.6 million on its first day of release. If this game was on PSN or Xbox Live it would have sold in the millions but no, Rockstar wanted to try and break into that casual market and, though it pains to say, they failed.