/vr/ - Retro Games

>>9709778
>>dungeon crawl through procedurally generated levels
>>not Diablo
I thought they were semi-random with some repeating general templates.
>acting like it was guaranteed to flop is a misrepresentation of the factors at play
how so? I have stated many times already that even the top of the line RPGs sold only "okay" in the West.
you seem to have no clue what kind of games ACTUALLY sold on consoles. picrelated is the best estimate I've found (though there are errors like FF6 having combined sales of SNES and PS1 version, and that error with Nobunaga no Yabou: Haouden). note how few RPGs were there. note how all of them are easy JRPGs. note how you don't see any WRPG ports here. because, again—they didn't sell. and guess what—neither did the dungeon crawlers on PSX I mentioned above.
that's because largely, the auditory for consoles was still kids. what sold was platformers, action, a few fighters, and in general the kind of games like Ninty's 1st parties. everything else sold less and less the more complex it became.
btw—roguelike is not a console genre, it's a PC genre. different auditory, different demographics. PCs had more adults playing them. consoles were largely for kids and teens only.
>that weren't idorts with access to Fatal Labyrinth
no one even fucking played this game. this is what you don't really get. you seem to be under assumption that when people "had" a game in a genre, that means everyone had played that game. in reality, many games just passed unnoticed. hell, even games like Phantasy Star hardly were very popular, and the whole JRPG hobby was somewhat niche (especially prior to FF7), but you name some fucking Fatal Labyrinth that no one even remembers.
maybe you think it would sell TODAY, and yes, that might be the case. but back in the day, would you buy Torneko if you were an 8yo? you'd probably get filtered by it in seconds. with all the other games available, no kid would buy it.