Sequels can be a pretty mixed bag. On the one hand, they can give us some incredible gems (Spark Man rocks the house). On the other, they often result in halfhearted or unfulfilled ideas shoveled onto a populace that's coming off the highs of a terrific franchise (Tomahawk Man, anyone?).
Sequels also give us - yes, I'm going there - more installments of Harvest Moon than anyone should have to play in a lifetime. That's why it was a little amusing to see Harvest Moon creator Yasuhiro Wada say in a Eurogamer interview that over-reliance on sequels is a worldwide danger to the games industry.
Regardless of the irony, he's right, of course. In fact, I'd go so far as to say that most video game sequels have no business being made at all. They're simply a sure-fire way to cash in on an IP that happened to be a hit with gamers the first time out. More often than not, sequels will let you down.
You see, most sequels try too hard to be both new and old simultaneously. You get a few fresh faces, maybe some graphical enhancements, but it's all the same basic story told over again. (Either that, or the developers change everything that was great about the original game in the first place.)
Why were the moves between Super Mario Bros., SMB 2, and SMB 3 so successful? Because everything was new, of course. Heck, Mario 2 (or Doki Doki Panic in Japan) was a completely different game. Mario's third outing returned to the format of the original platformer, but made so many meaningful additions that it was essentially a brand new idea. The controls were tighter, your bag of tricks was far more versatile, and the world had many new mechanics that the first Super Mario never dreamed of.
Super Mario World was a great game, but it failed to achieve the success of Mario 3. The gameplay leap between installments was much shorter. Nintendo employed mostly the same mechanics in the SNES release, and although the production values were obviously high for the time period, it was basically just Super Mario Bros. 3 with a flashier coat of paint.
Incidentally, the same concept can be applied to game hardware. Although we've seen some marvelous sights since the good old debut of 3D-capable consoles, in many ways nothing has changed since the mid-90s - nothing, that is, until the Wii exploded onto the scene a couple years ago. The Wii landed on shelves during a time when upgrading your gaming machine was nothing more than an avenue to better graphics and maybe higher-fidelity sound. Suddenly you have a piece of hardware that changes the way the world looks at video games. Instant success - a Super Mario level of success, no less.
By the way - I have nothing against Harvest Moon. I loved the original game and played it endlessly. But how many sequels came out before we finally saw a true innovation in the IP from the incredible Rune Factory spin-off? After investing so much time in the first game, I tried to get up the interest to try the N64 successor. It had some cool new stuff, but it was the same game. I bought another version on the GBA a few years ago, but only played it for a couple of weeks before I realized, once again, that there was nothing new in it. We now have three Rune Factory games. As far as I'm concerned, that's enough, and it's time for Harvest Moon to find yet another direction that will take the franchise into new territory.
The biggest beneficiary on the sequel hype train is the developer. The beneficiary of any new game should be the customer. If developers can get back to that basic premise, they'll soon find that they don't need sequels.
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