The holiday season of 1997 was a complete minefield

[SamanthaSamantha's icon]

It's really not that important, but I find it interesting how several games which had promised to revolutionize the entire medium had aimed to come out during the holiday season of 1997 only to end suffering massive delays, and then were either cancelled or critically destroyed once they did show up. I'm not aware of any other period when this happened so reliably.

Notable examples include: DNF, Daikatana, and Tonic Trouble, but there were many, many more.

Bit of a cursed date, that one.

 

[DinoRexMax DinoRexMax]

Is this supposed to be, like, the evil version of 2007? The one that everyone says was a GOAT years because of all of the AAA hits that came out back to back in the same month?

 

[BrawlMan]

Eh, still a good year overall. My older brother and I were mostly unaware, because we were too busy getting games for PS1 the week after Christmas.

 

[theshiningpath]

I have fond memories of Christmas of '97 because that's when I got an N64 bundled with Diddy Kong Racing, lol.

I was completely unaware of any of those games, but it's always interesting to see the publicity Daikatana had if you go back and read/watch stuff about it.

 

[Graw]

1997 had so many good game releases it's not that surprising some of them failed. 1997 was also a pretty big transition year. It was the first real year of 3d consoles being established and companies doing new big crazy things on all the new fancy hardware available. It makes sense it would be a time when there were lots of companies biting off way more than they could chew and promising gamers a world they couldn't actually deliver and the holiday season tends to be the time when companies like to drop big crazy new releases it would make sense that holiday season 1997 in particular would have a significant number of failed or delayed grandiose projects.

 

[Jeff]

1997 had...
Mario Kart 64
StarFox 64
Diddy Kong Racing
Goldeneye
Mega Man Legends
Mega Man 8
Castlevania Symphony of the Night
Game & Watch Gallery
Kirby's Dreamland 3
Kirby Star Stacker
Crash Bandicoot 2
Sonic R...?
Blast Corps

That's basically much it in my opinion in 1997.

 

[Chariotsoffire]

I remember Christmas 1997. I was 14 and had just gotten chickenpox. There was almost nothing I wanted to play that was out. It came down to Test Drive 4 or NFL Gameday 98.

 

[SamanthaSamantha's icon]

Test Drive 4

It still haunts me.

 

[sandogma sandogma]

1997 had some big releases across all major platforms

Spoiler

except Sega, unfortunately