Most untarnished big-name franchise (can be any type of media)?

Shoggoth2588

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u2rocksbaby said:
(a) THE LORD OF THE RINGS, because the trilogy is both my favorite book and film series, which more than makes up for the humdrum of so-so video games based off of it...
Here you go:


That's part of the animated Return of the King from 1980. There was also an animated Lord of the Rings though I think it only covered the first two books from 1977 or so. I liked The Hobbit more than Lord of the Rings proper.

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I think The Discworld series got off pretty well. There were a couple of animated mini-series' that looked pretty horrible but the live-action ones were great.
 

Don Savik

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canadamus_prime said:
SycoMantis91 said:
Dragon Ball. The first was fuggin epic. The 2nd was fuggin epic plus one. The third was really damn good, just gets a bad rep for not being as great as the first 2. That and all the movies are quite quality.
While I agree with assessment of the franchise as a whole, I disagree with your assertion that it has remained untarnished. I think the Dragon Ball franchise gets tarnished with each and every video game that gets made based on it, even the relatively good ones. And let's not even talk about Dragon Ball: Evolution.
Or that horrible series with Trunks as the main character (oh jeez that was bad). And just my opinion, I hated the whole Majin plotline. A fat pink genie, who turns into a kid, and also a big muscular genie (none of which made sense) are the main villains and more powerful than previous, BETTER main villains like Frieza, and turns people evil by putting a big M on their forehead. It was fucking mind-bogglingly stupid.
 

JordanXlord

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Hawk of Battle said:
I can't beleive nobody has said Avatar: The Last Airbender yet. Shame on you all.
The Movie Sucked Ass...no other word

the Series rocked Ass though
 

mrhappy1489

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In my opinion, the InFamous games were both really really great games and honestly if they were on more consoles I think they probably would have gotten far greater recognition. As it stands though, they are both fantastic games and I've loved them both.
 

SycoMantis91

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canadamus_prime said:
SycoMantis91 said:
Dragon Ball. The first was fuggin epic. The 2nd was fuggin epic plus one. The third was really damn good, just gets a bad rep for not being as great as the first 2. That and all the movies are quite quality.
While I agree with assessment of the franchise as a whole, I disagree with your assertion that it has remained untarnished. I think the Dragon Ball franchise gets tarnished with each and every video game that gets made based on it, even the relatively good ones. And let's not even talk about Dragon Ball: Evolution.
I never stated it's completely untarnished. Though I was thinking purely of the anime/manga franchise and directly-related movies. I probably should have included everything with the words "dragon ball" on it in my assessment, but didn't think to. I really like the Budokai games, and the Legend of Goku ones were pretty good. Though yea, I'll agree there are quite a few poor ones. And yea, Evolution. We have dismissed this claim.
 

mrhappy1489

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Razoack said:
Erm. tempted to say Grand Theft Auto series.
I'd second that, I've yet to play one which I haven't enjoyed and in my books IV was awesome. That said though, I've never played the first two games, but I'll still say that it is awesome.
 

Razoack

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mrhappy1489 said:
Razoack said:
Erm. tempted to say Grand Theft Auto series.
I'd second that, I've yet to play one which I haven't enjoyed and in my books IV was awesome. That said though, I've never played the first two games, but I'll still say that it is awesome.
Pretty sure they released the first 2 for free.

http://www.rockstargames.com/classics/
 

Zeckt

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Terminate421 said:
Well recently Halo has dropped from Main Stream, it's still popular sure an it's amazing but it's not as "holy shit everyone is doing it" ordeal since Call of Duty took over

I'd personally say that, Dead Space, or a Valve game, but then again Valve is mainstream to its hardcore fans so....it's odd
There was that Dead Space game on xbox live, which in my opinion was the worst game I have played this generation. It was only 5 dollars and believe me when I say it was a complete rip off. Other then that the Games, rail shooter and animated movies were excellent.

And to the guy who said Deadlocked from the ratchet and clank series. It was more of a black sheep, I loved every minute of that game.
 

Tyrant55

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Firefly and Cowboy Bebop are the only real series that I can think of that went untarnished in any way.
 

Flailing Escapist

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Remedy but I guess they're not that mainstream anyway. They were my first thought from the game development industry besides Obsidian and they're probably more obscure than Remedy is.

BasementCat said:
Discworld. Nuff said.
Actually, you might wany to say more than that. You can get warnings and even suspension (eventually) for low content posts [http://www.escapistmagazine.com/forums/read/18.309173-Moderation-FAQ]. Just go back to your post, click EDIT and add a little bit more than that. Oh and welcome to the Escapist ;)
 

Terminate421

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Zeckt said:
Terminate421 said:
Well recently Halo has dropped from Main Stream, it's still popular sure an it's amazing but it's not as "holy shit everyone is doing it" ordeal since Call of Duty took over

I'd personally say that, Dead Space, or a Valve game, but then again Valve is mainstream to its hardcore fans so....it's odd
There was that Dead Space game on xbox live, which in my opinion was the worst game I have played this generation. It was only 5 dollars and believe me when I say it was a complete rip off. Other then that the Games, rail shooter and animated movies were excellent.

And to the guy who said Deadlocked from the ratchet and clank series. It was more of a black sheep, I loved every minute of that game.
Same here, I love dead space, but I mean it's hardly well known,

I ask a group of people who are familiar with games and they say "What's that?" it's amazing as a series but it's not too well known
 

Vigormortis

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disappointed said:
For the sake of opening up the field, I'd like to suggest that Half-Life is tarnished by the joke that was originally called episodic content. We've got all the enormous interest from the dedicated fan base, including some proper campaigning and yet Valve won't even acknowledge that it's a franchise that is still alive. Does that count as tarnish? A bit?

If you count Portal as part of the Half-Life world, there was that business with the AR game that came to nothing. OK, I'm stretching now. I realise none of this affects actual content, so probably doesn't count, but Valve wins far too easily otherwise.

While I'm here, I want to point people to the bit in the title where it says "big-name franchise" and also the clarification which says "mainstream." That means idiots have to have heard of it.
I seriously think you underestimate how commonly known the Half-Life series is among gamers. Especially PC gamers. (and yes, PC gamers out number console gamers. don't delude yourself. Steam alone has more users now than Xbox Live does.)

Also, considering two failed experiments still led to some of the best games to be released in those respective years, I'd hardly consider them (the Episodes) to be blemishes.
 

JaceArveduin

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Eyup, Ninja'd by the top, LOTR it is. Bad things related to LOTR? That old animated "movie" for The Hobbit was just completely terrible, I admit. Not sure about the actual LOTR animated ones. LOTR:The Third Age wasn't the best of games, but it wasn't completely terrible. The Fellowship of the Ring videogame (not a movie adaption iirc) was fun. The second two where fun hack n slashes. BFME 1&2 were fun, with 2 and it's expansion being a whole lot of fun. (expansion got 1 official patch though, which gives me more reason to hate EA than most of you :p) I vaguely remember there being gameboy games that were top down hack n slashes that weren't that bad. Conquest was considered to be a complete failure, which is sad cause I love BF2. LOTRO is epic, and I've no idea what War in the North is like. Am I missing any games? Novel-wise, there's only been things from Tolkiens archives n such, so nothing on that front. I think there was a tcg, but not sure bout it.

Yeah, think I got most of the LOTR stuff Conquest and, possibly, the animated stuff would be considered the only tarnished bit here, but with all epic present, it might get a slide :D And The Hobbit is going to be epic when it comes out. (Ori Nori Dori Oin Gloin Fili Kili Bifur Bofur Bombur Thorin Balin Dwalin, by the nine, I think I got them all without having to look them up)
 

Starke

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Erja_Perttu said:
u2rocksbaby said:
THE LORD OF THE RINGS
And there's your winner. Aside from a kinda crappy animated version, I don't think there's been anything really bad associated with Lord of the Rings. I even quite enjoyed most of the video games.
The video games, not associated with the New Line Cinima films were notoriously, and universally bad. There have also been a few pretty gawdawful games from the New Line Cinima era, including that JRPG style release, The Third Age or some such?

On top of that there was the old ICE tabletop RPG which was (I'm told) horrible, although I've heard some positive things about their CCG.

The books themselves also suffer from this, because while the trilogy and the hobbit are excellent reads, the other Tolkien works, IE, the stuff he didn't want out there, that was published posthumously is, if not bad, certainly not up to the standards of the main works.
 

Whoatemysupper

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Christopher Bocanegra said:
Ratchet and Clank, every game from that series has atleast been decent, the worst one was probably Deadlocked, and that was still an alright game.
Are you kidding? Deadlocked had excellent satire of media corporations and maintained the humour of the previous games. It may have made it a bit more mature but the fans were aging too with the game. I you ask me, the worst was Tools if you count the Future series.

O.T. I second Ratchet & Clank.
 

BytByte

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As someone previously mentioned, the adorable puffball that is Kirby. I still think that his kart racing spin-off is better than most Mario Karts.
 

CommanderL

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Hawk of Battle said:
I can't beleive nobody has said Avatar: The Last Airbender yet. Shame on you all.


I am with this guy over here in the awsome corner of untarnished ness
 

CommanderL

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JordanXlord said:
Hawk of Battle said:
I can't beleive nobody has said Avatar: The Last Airbender yet. Shame on you all.
The Movie Sucked Ass...no other word

the Series rocked Ass though
you lie there was no movie -sticks fingers in hears lalalalalala-