Monday, May 31, 2010

Tales from the Wikipedia Trash Can 3 - Engineering Flops


Errare humanum est (Lucius Annaeus Seneca).

Wikipedia, Dr. sipmac hereby finds you guilty of datacide. Sip (and the sipmac ensemble) have found that your policy of deleting interesting and humoruous articles, by the sole reason of being interesting and humorous is downright criminal. Since when the pursuing of knowledge and the joy of learning are mutually exclusive? Not in our book, we daresay. From now on you are found in contempt of this court and put in double secret probation until you rectify your wrongdoing. In the meanwhile, sipmacrants! proudly presents...

List of famous failures in science and engineering

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia.


A scientific flop may be something that took years of man-hours and a lot of money to complete (or perhaps never completed) and ended in failure.

Contents

•1 Failed aerospace prototypes
•2 Failed weapons
•3 Failed scientific projects

•4 Failed civil engineering projects
•5 Failed buildings
•6 Faile
d mechanical engineering projects
•7 Failed ships
•8 Failed standards

Failed aerospace prototypes

•The Europa rocket failed five times, without a single successful launch
•The Messerschmitt Me 163 was so dangerous that it killed more Luftwaffe pilots than Allied airmen.
•The world's first commercial jet airliner, the de Havilland Comet 1, introduced into service in 1952, suffered three crashes in the next two years due to design flaw
•Most reusable space vehicles: Shuttle Buran, HOTOL, the X-33/VentureStar, various NASA space planes, and arguably the Space Shuttle.
•The Hughes H-4 Hercules flying boat, aka the "Spruce Goose", Howard Hughes's often-ridiculed massive aircraft. Hughes himself did not consider it a failure, and kept it in flying condition until the end of his life. Though the project was consistently portrayed as a failure by the media, even prior to its debut, the H-4 Hercules in some senses presaged the massive transport aircraft of the late 20th century, such as the Lockheed C-5 Galaxy and the Antonov An-124 and An-225, demonstrating that the physical and aerodynamic principles which make flight possible are not limited by the size of the aircraft.
•The Soviet N1 rocket, equivalent to the US moon rocket Saturn V, repeatedly exploded during takeoff. There by earning it a 100% failure rate.
•Project Vanguard (1958), the first attempt by the United States to put a satellite into orbit. The project managers insisted on using a new, civilian-designed, purpose-built rocket. There were repeated embarrassing crashes. After Sputnik, it was quickly decided to use proven military missile designs as the base for future space attempts.
•The Boeing 7J7, intended as a replacement for the Boeing 727, was cancelled in 1987 because airlines were concerned about the economics and noise of its unproven unducted fan engines. The cancellation of the 7J7 led Boeing to concentrate on 727 replacements in the 737 and 757 families.
•The Boeing Sonic Cruiser, intended as a replacement for the Boeing 767 and meant to fly at near the speed of sound (transonic). Airlines rejected the idea of an aircraft that, while as efficient as a 767 and carrying the same number of passengers, would only fly marginally faster. The cancellation of the Sonic Cruiser led Boeing to concentrate on 767 replacements in the Boeing 787.

Failed weapons

•The Chauchat light machine gun - this French weapon of World War I was notorious for its unreliability, frequent jamming and lack of precision manufacturing.
•The German Maus tank was so heavy (188 tons) that it was unusable.
•The British SA80 rifle was notoriously unreliable.
•The Ross rifle was used by Canadian troops in World War I; it was a great gun until it was brought into the trenches, where it constantly jammed. Canadian soldiers were forced to salvage rifles from dead British soldiers.
•The original M16 was so widely known as a failure that initially, Vietnamese troops refused to take them from slain soldiers during the Vietnam War (though they were happy to use corrected models).

Failed scientific projects

•Cold fusion - after much hype, claims of success proved false. (Research into cold fusion continues.)

Failed civil engineering projects

•The original Tacoma Narrows Bridge collapsed due to aeroelastic flutter in a gale force wind.
•Between 1920 and 1925, at a cost of US $6,000,000 (2004 equivalent about $61,000,000), a 7 mile (11 km) tunnel was built in Ohio for the Cincinnati Subway. Only after the initial investment was spent was it learned that there was no interest in funding completion of the project, which remains unfinished and unused today.
•An extensive levee and flood wall system was built up to protect the low lying areas of New Orleans from flooding from the Mississippi River and from Lake Ponchartrain. Due to a design or construction error several flood walls were breached by the storm surge in Lake Ponchartrain caused by Hurricane Katrina in 2005. Most of the city was flooded resulting in a large fraction of the 1000+ deaths reported in Louisiana following the hurricane.

Failed buildings

•The Gothic Cathédrale Saint-Pierre de Beauvais in Beauvais, France, begun in the year 1247, was an ambitious attempt at the tallest cathedral in Europe. The vaulting of the choir collapsed in 1284 due to poor engineering, and a central tower failed in 1573, permanently halting work on the project. A part of the cathedral still stands and is known for its fine stained glass.
•The John Hancock Tower in Boston is said to have been "known more for its early engineering flaws than for its architectural achievement." Wind-induced swaying was so large, it induced motion sickness in upper-floor residents, requiring the addition of a pair of 300-ton dampers on the 58th floor. Another unrelated but serious problem was that 65 of its 10,344 floor-to-ceiling plate-glass windowpanes fell out of the building to the ground during construction (with, amazingly, no injuries to passerbies or workers), and all required replacement. During engineering analysis of these problems, it was also discovered that under certain wind conditions the building could actually collapse, requiring 1500 tons of structural reinforcements in the building's core.
•The Pruitt-Igoe housing project in St. Louis, Missouri, designed by Minoru Yamasaki. After its completion in 1956, this major urban renewal project almost immediately fell into disrepair, disuse and vandalism. It was entirely demolished on March 16, 1972, and this event is seen as a milestone in architectural history: an end to Modernism, the beginning of postmodernism, the signal of a profound disconnect between designers and users, and a turning point in public housing and urban planning.
•Portsmouth's Tricorn Centre, a mixed use Brutalist-style building, designed by Owen Luder and opened in 1966; it was voted as one of Britain's ugliest buildings, and was considered a social hazard. The structure originally consisted of apartments, stores, a laserquest arena, a nightclub, and a parking garage, with each facility closed down and condemned. The complex was demolished in 2004.
•The elevated walkways of the Hyatt hotel in Kansas City, Missouri, collapsed during a tea dance in 1981, killing more than 100 people. (See Hyatt Regency walkway collapse.)
•The Sampoong Department Store collapse killed over 500 in 1995.
•The May 24, 2001, collapse of the Versailles wedding hall in Jerusalem, Israel, killed 23 and injured more than 200. The collapse was blamed on poor construction practices. The disaster, which is considered Israel's worst civil disaster, was caught on videotape. The wedding hall was built using the cheaper Pal-Kal method, which uses thinner sections of concrete than usual during construction. The building method was banned in 1996 because of safety concerns. Ten people were arrested by the Israeli authorities, including the wedding hall's owners, the engineer who invented the Pal-Kal method, and contractors and builders involved with recent renovations. In October 2004, two of the owners of the hall were convicted of causing death through negligence; two other employees were acquitted.

Failed mechanical engineering projects

•Isambard Kingdom Brunel's Atmospheric railway in South Devon, England in the 1840's failed because of problems in maintaining a vacuum seal.

Failed ships

•RMS Titanic: Although billed as an unsinkable ship, the Titanic crashed into an iceberg on its first voyage and did not have enough lifeboats for everyone aboard, so many of the passengers drowned. Not to mention drafting and design flaws hence the splitting apart.
•Vasa (ship): A 17th-century Swedish warship, it sank on its maiden voyage because of design flaws; when fully loaded with crew, supplies and weaponry, the lower-deck gun ports were low enough to allow water to flow in
•K-Boats: a pre-sonar steam-driven submarine rushed into production by Britain during World War One. Models were famous for sinking, exploding and generally going out of control. On 31 January 1917, an exercise took place off May Island, Scotland, in which 100 British seamen were killed by their K-boats without any enemy participation. The K-boat never saw active service.

Failed standards

•Brunel's broad-gauge railway track for the Great Western Railway, at just over 7 feet, was incompatible with the "standard" gauge of 4ft 8½" used elsewhere. Despite its demonstrable benefits for comfort, speed and safety, the wide gauge was replaced by the standard gauge, which eventually became a worldwide standard.
•The United States Mint's Susan B. Anthony and Sacagawea dollar coins both failed to gain popular acceptance.
•The Common management interface protocol (CMIP) largely flopped as a replacement for the Simple Network Management Protocol (SNMP). The complexity of CMIP is often cited as the reason it was not more widely adopted.
•The 1975 Metric Conversion Act was an attempt to institute the use of the Metric system in the United States within ten years. The United States never converted to the metric system, let alone during those ten years.
•The decline of the ALGOL computing language, once the dominant language in academic computer science, was in part due to disputes and consequent delays in the standardization process.

This series will be continued...
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Wednesday, May 26, 2010

Phineas and Ferb - Rules of the Cyberspace Road Public Service Announcement


What else should I say? These smart kids say it all! Of course, they are Phineas and Ferb. Hopefully this will be available in other languages. Be careful of what-choo doin' on the internet!



First when Dr. sipmac saw this, he said: "I know what the sipmac ensemble is going to do today!" Enjoy.

Friday, May 14, 2010

Dr. Taylor's (Mis)perception


Aaaaaaaaagh! Not again! Here comes Paul Maršić in an angry mood! Well, you have been warned! Now, ladies and gentlemen, without further ado, sipmacrants! presents a rancid and bloated rant against

Dr. Taylor's (Mis)perception


Well, you might think I'm wasting my time again, stubbornly going against the most powerful blog in the world. Talk about tilting at windmills, Don Quixote! Gee, that's an interesting choice of words, I will show you why in this post.

Today I was reading something that caught my attention: An opinion piece written by Dr. Jim Taylor, a psychologist with all the imagined (and well deserved, I suppose) credentials, but with a flawed criterion. I really took my time reading it and then I began to write my rebuttal and hesitated because, according to his website, Dr. Taylor is:

A former alpine ski racer who competed internationally, Dr. Taylor is also a 2nd degree black belt and certified instructor in karate, a marathon runner, and an Ironman triathlete.
Then I thought, what the heck! You're already messing with the Huffington Post! Go ahead and keep tilting at another windmill, too!

In a nutshell, this is what Dr. Taylor wrote:

1. There is a climate of of mistrust, anger, and polarization that made the last decade one of the most tumultuous and divisive ones in U.S. history. It wasn't only what happened in this decade, which was grim enough, there was something else aggravating everything.
2. Looking for clues, he found that the culprit common denominator was information, i.e., biased information, or just plain misinformation.
3. That means there is no more reliable news sources to be found. In his own words "These days, you can't find "fair and balanced" news anywhere. Too much information these days is tainted with an agenda, whether political, religious, economic, or some other."
4. To solve this, Dr. Taylor wishes for "the U.S. federal government creating a Department of Information whose responsibility would be to determine the facts behind any decision that confronts [America]."

As a matter of fact, I can easily agree with points nr. 1 and 3, somewhat agree with the oversimplificating point nr. 2, but I could never agree with his proposal expressed almost verbatim in point nr. 4. As a further matter of fact, Dr. Taylor later states that "[He] know[s] what [we are] thinking: This sounds like something that belongs in a totalitarian regime."

In my case, he's completely right. For starters, Nazi Germany had the pompous named "Ministry of Public Enlightenment and Propaganda", lead by none other than Joseph Göbbels. But wait, there's more! The former Soviet Union had its information flow strictly controlled by the state, with creepy tragicomical results. Is this what Dr. Taylor is yearning for? Apparently yes, because he promptly elaborates

"But the reality is that someone has to decide on what is factual and what is not. So who can we trust to give us the most accurate information available? Big Business? Traditional media? The blogosphere? I certainly wouldn't trust any of them. Though our government is far from perfect, it does exist, at least in theory, to serve the best interests of the American people."
Again, sorry Dr. Taylor, but you're deadly wrong. Don't you see that giving the state the control of the information ends with the state trying (and achieving) the very thing you're trying to avoid? History is too full of examples to ignore this, your ironic tone is no justification for your ill-conceived proposal.

And still there's more! Reading your article closely, anybody can realize your bias: according to you, anybody with a conservative leaning simply can't face reality, and isn't facing reality for sure. For instance, the tea party may have never realized that the healthcare reform financial projections might be flawed. No, that can't be true. Maybe conservatism is a mental disorder, you might add. I'm sure it was really so in the Soviet Union. "The facts of life are conservative", said Margaret Thatcher. No wonder she and the very conservative Ronald Reagan suffered from Alzheimer (note: please don't miss my sarcastic tone).

Because of this, I will never buy your good intentions when you stated that:
This post is directed toward to everyone else, those who, whether a Republican or Democrat, Christian, Jew, Muslim, or atheist, environmentalist or industrialist, socialist or capitalist, are reasonable people who believe that truth should trump ideology, who are interested in separating fact from fiction, and want to know both sides of an issue before forming thoughtful and well-supported opinions.
Well, there is just one more thing: maybe the solution you are looking for comes from the very freedom of expression right. The problem is that you wrote in a very patronizing mode, you think that the rest of the people is gullible and can't figure out the truth by reading all the lies. It is amazing to find the parallels between Don Quixotte and 1984. In both works the main characters defend the truth but are found insane by their societies. Their respective supporting characters are down-to-earth persons, better adjusted to "the reality", but incapable and unwilling of comprehending the "big picture." Your curriculum vitae might be impressive,

I'm only Paul Maršić, but I will nevertheless keep tilting at windmills.
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Tuesday, May 4, 2010

Tales from the Wikipedia Trash Can 2 - Computer Flops


Deleted by the wikipedians, rescued by the sipmac team! Without further ado, Dr. sipmac presents...

List of commercial failures in computer and video gaming

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia.

The computer and video game industry has seen several commercial failures since its birth in the late 1970s, some of which have drastically changed the video game market. For example, the flops of E.T. and Pac-Man for the Atari 2600 were high profile games of low quality, contributing to the video game crash of 1983.

Contents

•1 Video game hardware failures
•2 Computer and video game software failures
•3 Computer and video game services failures
•4 External links Video game hardware failures

3DO Interactive Multiplayer

Designed by R.J. Mical and the team behind the Amiga, and marketed by Electronic Arts founder Trip Hawkins, this "multimedia machine" was marketed as a family entertainment device and not just a video game console. It was introduced at $699, triple the price of most game consoles at the time.

Amiga CD-32
Released in 1993, this system had very few original titles released for it (though it was able to play Amiga 1200 games). The lack of original titles meant that few gamers wanted it when they could buy the more feature-intensive A1200.

Atari Jaguar console

Released in 1993, this system was far more powerful than its contemporaries, the Sega Genesis and the SNES. However, a number of crippling bugs and lack of software hurt sales, and with the release of the PlayStation and Sega Saturn in 1995, the system could no longer claim technical superiority.

Atari Lynx handheld
Only months after the release of the Game Boy in 1989, Atari released this much more powerful system. Featuring a color display and a backlight, the system should have easily captured the market. However, due to poor marketing and design choices and an extremely low battery life, the system failed to garner any significant sales.

NEC's Turbo series of consoles
The failure of the Turbo series led NEC to pull out of the North American market by 1994. Like Sega, they released numerous peripherals, which did even worse than their Sega counterparts. Furthermore, critically-acclaimed Japanese games were not released in America, in favor of licenses like Darkwing Duck. The Japanese version of the console, the PC Engine, was relatively successful.

Neo Geo Pocket and Neo Geo Pocket Color handhelds
SNK's cult classic pocket system, discontinued only 2 years after the release of the NGPC, due to a lack of games (virtually the only publisher was SNK itself, and as has often been the case, third-party games proved the crucial element of a system's success).

Nintendo 64DD
The expansion system for the Nintendo 64 that was announced at 1995's Nintendo Shoshinkai game show event (now called Spaceworld). The drive was heavily hyped, and many high-profile games, such as Earthbound 64 and Zelda 64 were supposed to be compliant with it. In the end, however, the N64DD (Nintendo 64 Disk Drive) was only released in Japan on December 1, 1999- after being delayed for many years. Many of the titles originally planned for it were simply shelved, or released for the normal N64 due to impatience. Nintendo, anticipating that their long planned out disc drive peripheral would become a commercial failure, sold the systems through a subscription service called RANDnet rather than selling the system directly to consumers or to retail outlets. As a result the 64DD was only supported by Nintendo for a short period of time.

Nintendo e-Reader
One of Nintendo's more recent failures was the e-Reader for the Game Boy Advance, which was used by several games (such as Animal Crossing, and Pokémon Ruby and Sapphire), and then abandoned.

Nintendo Virtual Boy
The monochromatic 3-D "virtual reality" system caused eye strain and headaches, and was ignored largely in anticipation of the upcoming Nintendo 64. To date, it is the only Nintendo console (apart from the Pokémon Mini) ever to flop.

Nokia N-Gage
Sales were poor and many video gamers mocked the system for its design. Common complaints included the difficulty of swapping games and the fact that its cellphone feature required the user to hold the device "sideways" against their cheek. A redesigned version, the N-Gage QD, has since been released to eliminate these complaints. However, it did not address the popular complaint that the control layout was "too cluttered"; and it has yet to reach the popularity of the Game Boy Advance, Nintendo DS or the Sony PSP.

Philips CD-i
A "multimedia machine" jointly developed by Philips and Sony, the CD-i was considered overpriced and underpowered. A lack of compelling software doomed the "console".

Sega CD/Sega Mega CD
This was a CD-ROM drive built for Sega's Mega Drive system. However, costing over £600 ($950) and with discs costing £70 ($115) each, this was a colossal flop and the beginning of the end for Sega (and even splendid games like Sonic CD couldn't save it). Having witnessed this blunder, arch-rival Nintendo almost immediately cancelled their similar CD-based collaboration with Sony (codenamed "SNES PlayStation Xperimental"); which inadvertantly caused the creation of both Nintendo's and Sega's greatest rival: The PlayStation.

Sega Dreamcast proprietary media format
The media used by the Dreamcast were GD-ROMs, which had more capacity (1 GB against 700 MB of a regular CD) and were intended to reduce software piracy. However, early discs were susceptible to defects, and the games were eventually pirated by ripping or re-encoding audio and video files. Extensive piracy and the previous history of Sega consoles (as well as aggressive pre-release marketing of the PlayStation 2) are primary factors in the console's commercial failure.

Sega Game Gear
This was the first handheld system to be released by Sega, and it was indeed technically superior to Nintendo's market-leading Game Boy (as it possessed a colour screen and a sharper picture). However, it was hardly portable (being, to this day, the largest handheld console ever designed) suffered from a very low battery life (using up six AA batteries in little over an hour), lackluster launch titles (as Sonic the Hedgehog and Sega's other flagship franchises were either exclusive to the Mega Drive/Genesis, or at an embryonic stage); but it also had unusually patronising advertising slogans: "It's time to grow up!" Within six months the Game Boy had toppled the opposition, giving Nintendo a monopoly in the handheld market it still holds to this day.

Sega Nomad
Once manufacture of the Game Gear had permanently ceased, Sega began plans for a second handheld. At first known as Project Mercury (keeping with Sega's "planet theme" at the time), this system was much smaller than the company's previous attempt. However, it also suffered from a low battery life and weak third party support, and it was released just as arch-rival Nintendo's Pokémon franchise was taking off (a franchise that would revitalise the Game Boy and bring Nintendo, arguably, back to its former place as supreme power of the games market). The Nomad never really stood a chance, but it maintains a small cult following to this day.

Sega Accessories
The Sega 3D Glasses and Light Phaser for Master System. The Sega Genesis/MegaDrive saw the Menacer light gun, Activator motion sensor ring, Mega Mouse and multi-tap which all had limited support in few games.

Sega's post-Mega Drive/Genesis consoles
The Saturn and the 32X were all failures to some extent in North America (The Saturn was well-received in Japan, while the Mega Drive was not). This poor track record (and aggressive pre-release marketing of the PlayStation 2) led to a lack of confidence in the Dreamcast, Sega's final console before leaving the hardware market.

Tiger Game.com handheld
Produced by Tiger Electronics, the Game.com handheld was a handheld game console that could double as a PDA. The system was intended to compete with Nintendo's Game Boy, and targeted a more mature audience. Due to poor game quality and selection (only 20 games were ever released for it), the system was discontinued in 2000, only 3 years after its release.

Computer and video game software failures The 11th Hour
The sequel to the hugely successful game The 7th Guest, The 11th Hour spent two years in development. When Trilobyte finally brought it to market in 1995, over a year behind schedule, the technology it used was outdated. The designers created the game for DOS, which by then had been replaced with Windows 95, leaving many people unable to get the game working on their computers. Those who could get it working still had to deal with other technical issues, especially the touchy sound settings. Gamers also found the puzzles themselves disappointing; they were generally more difficult than those of The 7th Guest, and most were not nearly as much fun to solve. In the end, despite huge numbers of preorders, The 11th Hour sold well below expectations, and a planned third installment in the series was never made.

Battlecruiser 3000AD
This was one of the most-hyped, most-panned, and longest-developed games in computer gaming history. It was under development for seven years by Derek Smart, generating one of the longest and largest flame wars in the history of Usenet, before publisher Take Two released it in November 1996. It was later released as freeware.

Beyond Good & Evil
Although this game was critically acclaimed, it flopped commercially. It was commonly suggested that the release date, which conflicted with the release of the popular titles Splinter Cell and Prince of Persia, was rather unfortunate. It was also considered "too offbeat" by many. The game's commercial failure caused creator Michel Ancel and publisher Ubi Soft to shelve plans to continue the planned trilogy of BG&E.

Conker: Live and Reloaded
The second (and, ultimately, final) game developed by Rareware for Microsoft's Xbox system, Live and Reloaded was a remake of Rare's critically lauded and genre-breaking Nintendo 64 hit, Conker's Bad Fur Day. It was eagerly anticipated by fans of the original game; and mature gamers who had missed the game the first time around. However, even though reviews were generally positive, the game was not strongly marketed by the publisher (Microsoft Game Studios), and many saw the fact that Rare was remaking one of their past successes as an admission that the company was getting increasingly desperate for a return to their former position as a respected and successful games company (as their Game Boy Advance games were not selling very well, apart from arguably their ports of the Donkey Kong Country games; and Rare's recent Xbox game, Grabbed by the Ghoulies, was the biggest flop in the company's history). Rare has vowed to make a fresh start when the Xbox 360 launches.

Daikatana
This video game from John Romero's company IonStorm was intensely advertised early in development, including an infamous magazine advertisement captioned, John Romero's going to make you his bitch! The game missed several announced deadlines and ended up taking four years to complete. Feeling insulted by the hype, some popular gamer websites (notably Old Man Murray) subjected Daikatana and Romero to relentless mockery, making them the butts of jokes for several years. The game was not well received by critics and gamers alike when it was released; several features had been cut significantly from the initial feature list that had been promoted; and the game had significant bugs that made the unpatched version of the game impossible to complete.

EarthBound
Although highly popular in Japan, EarthBound failed to gain popularity beyond a cult following in North America, despite advertisement efforts of Nintendo. Still highly popular in Japan ten years later under the name of Mother 2, EarthBound has been re-released along with Mother on the Game Boy Advance. The third game in the Mother series faced notorious delays in its development. Originally intended to be released on the Nintendo 64, and then 64DD (see above), it is currently being reworked as a title for the Game Boy Advance. There has been no announcement regarding release Mother 3 outside of Japan.

E.T. (Atari 2600)
Reputedly coded in just six weeks, this game was rushed to the market for the 1982 holiday season, and it was based (loosely) on the movie. It was expected to sell millions, but sold extremely poorly. Millions of unsold excess cartridges ended up in landfills. This game, along with Pac-Man for the Atari 2600, is thought to be one of the main causes of the video game crash of 1983 and contributed how Atari went from the US's greatest games publisher to a laughing stock. It was also the first of a trend still lamented by gamers: bad video games based on successful movies.

Soccer management games since 1999

One of the most active genres during the 8 and 16-bit computer era (80s and early 90s), the genre had a massive decline after Championship Manager 3 started to monopolize the market. EuroLeague Football (follow-up to the 97-99 lineage of Premier Manager and English version of PC Fútbol 2000), Bubball's UEFA Manager 2000 (and the follow-up 442 Touchline Passion), EA Sports' Premier League Manager and the ZOO Digital's rebirth of Premier Manager all failed in the market (except in some circles) due to the monopoly of the Sports Interactive franchise. However, even Championship Manager was not flawless: the shipped version of CM4 was deemed incomplete, some of the yearly revisions received only a lukewarm welcome, and their latest version (while mostly unrelated to the previous games in the series), CM5, was released late and bug-ridden, losing the battle to Football Manager and even TCM 2005.

Grabbed by the Ghoulies
The first game to be developed by Rareware for Microsoft's Xbox system was eagerly anticipated for fans of the company and the game system alike. Rare had created several innovative smash hits on previous consoles, most notably Donkey Kong Country and GoldenEye 007, and Microsoft had acquired Rare, paying US$377 million. Microsoft hyped the game as much as they could; and even pushed for the game to be released in time for Christmas (the most lucrative period for toys and video games alike). However, the game performed extremely poorly in terms of sales, due to mixed reviews from games magazines and journalists, a highly confusing storyline and content, and highly unorthodox controls. This remains, as of 16th October 2005, the biggest flop in Rare's history.

Jack the Giantkiller
In 1982, the President of Cinematronics arranged a one-time purchase of 5000 PCB boards from Japan. The boards were used in the manufacture of several games, but the majority of them were reserved for a new arcade game called Jack the Giantkiller, based on the classic fairy tale "Jack and the Beanstalk." Between the purchase price of the boards and other expenses, Cinematronics invested almost two million dollars into Jack the Giantkiller. It completely flopped in the arcade and many of the boards went unsold, costing the company a huge amount of money. Insiders sometimes refer to the game as "Jack the Company Killer" for the part it played in Cinematronics' eventual bankruptcy.

Laserdisc video games
While Dragon's Lair was a tremendous success for Cinematronics when it came out in 1983, the fallout from its success was a disaster for the arcade industry. Because of its complex laserdisc technology, Cinematronics sold Dragon's Lair machines to operators for $4000 each, twice as much as a normal machine. The operators passed the extra expense on to gamers, charging 50 cents to play it instead of the normal 25 cents (setting a precedent that later became standard practice for all new arcade games). Although gamers flocked to it when it was new, the replay value turned out to be very low; between the high cost of playing and because it was possible to memorize the entire game, many gamers never came back once they beat it. As a result, the cash flow into Dragon's Lair machines quickly dried up and even with the 50 cent charge many operators never recovered the money they paid for it. Finally, it ushered in the short-lived "laserdisc era" in arcades, which featured many more games styled after Dragon's Lair that attempted to cash in on its success. The vast majority of these games were expensive to produce, poorly received by gamers, and ended up being money-losers for companies and operators alike.

Full-Motion-Video ("FMV") games (entire genre)

In the early 1990's, CD-ROM technology became less expensive, and quickly became a staple of the gaming world. In a few more years, the vast majority of consoles would be CD-ROM based. For a brief time in the early days of CD-ROM gaming, many developers, publishers, and investors thought that FMV games would be the future of the industry. Games that utilized full motion video, however, enjoyed very limited popularity and ultimately fell by the wayside by 1995-96. The main reason for this was poor gameplay. Developers tried to find innovative ways to shove video clips into games with very little success. Most FMV games were either puzzle games, in which you simply watched video sequences to gather clues, or rail shooters, where you simply pressed the right button at the right time, with little or no variations. This, combined with the costs of producing the games (sets had to be built, actors hired, etc.) led to this genre only lasting a few years. The future, it turned out, was games using 3D environments rendered in real time.

Might and Magic IX: Writ of Fate
The last game in the Might and Magic series produced by New World Computing suffered from outdated graphics and poor gameplay; the game and several failed spin-offs of the series were among the nails in the coffin of The 3DO Company.

Mortal Kombat (SNES version)
To comply with the "family friendly" policy enforced by Nintendo at the time, blood was recolored to resemble sweat and all fatalities were toned down. While superior in both graphics and gameplay to the Genesis/Mega Drive version, as the Sega version had blood and original arcade fatalities (which was the main reason the game become popular in the first place) unlockable with a cheat code, it oversold the SNES version exponentially, also giving the Sega console an edge in console sales. The losses caused by the incident led to Nintendo lessening creative control over developers in the future.

Rascal
Massively hyped 1998 Super Mario 64 clone for the PlayStation, hailed as the "N64 killer" by the Sony-sponsored gaming press in the earlier stages of development. While in fact the graphics were far superior to most other games, the terrible camera angles (which often made Rascal the only visible character) and bad gameplay made the game unplayable from the earlier levels. Some of the same press never reviewed the final game while others focused completely on praising the graphics.

Red Baron II
The sequel to Red Baron was released with no support for 3D graphics cards, inaccurate flight models, and bugs. A free upgrade for those who purchased the full-priced game, Red Baron 3D, was later released to solve most of these problems and, with a proliferation of unofficial patches, maintains a niche amongst fans.

Star Wars: Force Commander
The first RTS based in the Star Wars franchise, this game used a sub-par 3D engine combined with a bad interface and equally bad game design. Of all Star Wars games, Force Commander is one of the lower in the "pre-release hype + poor game value" combination area.

Tomb Raider: The Angel of Darkness
Expected to revive the long-stagnant Tomb Raider series, it was repeatedly delayed. When it finally shipped in mid-2003, it was not well received by video game critics due to multiple bugs or outdated game playing elements. The game was even criticised by Paramount Pictures, who said that gamers' dissatisfaction with the game led to the poor commercial performance of their movie Tomb Raider: The Cradle of Life. [1] This was also the last Tomb Raider game to be developed by its creators, Core Design. Eidos the publisher of the series, has assigned their other game studio Crystal Dynamics to develop the next Tomb Raider game (Tomb Raider: Legend) partly due to The Angel of Darkness' low sales numbers.
Ultima IX

Was very badly received by fans and even created such an outcry that Origin shut down an official online help page due to so many negative posts. Ultimately, due in part to the negative reviews, shortly after the release Richard Garriott left Electronic Arts, while EA kept the rights to the Ultima name, thus effectively ending the series.

World Cup Carnival
The official game of the Mexico '86 FIFA World Cup by US Gold, which had several problems during development, forcing the company to acquire an older game and modify it to suit the license. Buyers and the complete industry alike frowned upon the attempt to distribute a mediocre two year old game as a new one.

Computer and video game services failures
Sega's Online services: the Sega Channel, Sega NetLink and SegaNet were different online services for the Sega Genesis, Sega Saturn and Dreamcast, respectively. They failed to atract a large audience and the demise of each console ended with these services after some time.

This series will be continued...
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