Taking a defensive stance on the past decade had me feeling a bit reluctant on writing a whole article about the positives as there's the rightful opinions of those who were in a divide of agreeing and disagreeing, but this time around I thought I'd make a follow up where the readers could relate to some moments from the era that I wasn't too fond of. So this time around I'd like to call this one.....
1. 4Kids anime dubbing and edits
It wasn't a surprise that following the success of Toonami on Cartoon Network, both Fox and the WB channels would have their own lineup of anime after. Though it was intentional for English voice actors and edited footage to be cleaned up to not show violent scars or adult content, it was the dubbing company's task to work these out for the American viewers to watch to get introduced to anime. 4Kids however was an example on how you shouldn't write your own material to fit in a scene and edit footage. By 2002, the FOXBOX (Later known as 4Kids TV) morning block had a handful of anime such as Sonic X, Mew Mew Power, One Piece and Shaman King and they obviously had kid friendly English translations, but the writing can sometimes have characters spouting dry jokes and lame puns. As for editing scenes, some would really stick out like a sore thumb, for example, replacing a gun with a mallet/hammer that looks completely out of place from the rest of the footage.
2. Box office flops
The Hulk, Catwoman, Monkeybone, Son of the Mask, Garfield, and Dragon Ball Evolution. What do these movies have in common? They bombed at the cinema. Son of the Mask had to have been the most criminally talked about because of how much nightmare fuel it packed with its CG effects. Monkeybone on the other hand is like the complete opposite as I never see anyone talking about it, made by the creator of the Nightmare Before Christmas (No, not Tim Burton, he was only the writer of that movie) it has some bizarrely creative visuals showing the brain of Stu Miley, but the attempted humor makes it hard to sit through. I still remember when DBZ fans were both excited and groaning over Dragon Ball Evolution, but once the character designs were revealed it all went downhill from there. Not only was Goku and Chi-Chi as high school teenagers a headache to viewers, even Master Roshi looked like a joke, with a Playstation Portable tie-in game that made the movie fall flat on its face as it was equally bad.
3 Microsoft ending MS-DOS compatibility for future OS hardware
As home computers would evolve with Windows XP, Microsoft felt that it was time to do away with MS-DOS and its floppy disk compatibility. CDs and DVD-Roms were pushing forward to connect with these new computers, and playing some of our favorite DOS games growing up wouldn't be the same. We eventually did get a solution by the likes of a fan supported software called DOSBOX years later, but it was still upsetting to many consumers knowing that a once key feature of Windows was getting the axe.
4. Sonic tripping over himself transitioning to 3D
I think it's safe to say that the video game mascots out there have only a lucky chance of being successful when moving on to 3D when it comes to the developer. Mario had his faults with Super Mario Sunshine but rose back up with Super Mario Galaxy a few years later. Sonic however met with mixed opinions on his future games. I could go on saying that Sonic Adventure was his first 3D game and the glitches were acceptable, especially when Super Mario 64 had many. But midway through the 2000s, his games such as Sonic Unleashed, Sonic & the Secret Rings and Sonic '06 were when gimmicks had to be thrown in to keep the games interesting, but they seemed more interesting to work with on paper, and later Sonic '06 was universally known to be the buggiest and worst 3D Sonic game to date as it was a rushed job to be done by Sonic's 15th anniversary. And to make matters worse, it had beastiality tones focusing on Sonic and the human princess, Elise. This one game in Sonic history broke me as a fan of the franchise for all of those put together and I've even heard about people pushing themselves to finish it by taking constant breaks. it's that bad.
5. The downfall of the Sega Dreamcast
And speaking of a Sega related topic, their last console making its dying breaths in 2001 was pretty upsetting for me. I was unaware of other consumers wanting the system to have DVD player support since I was just 11 years old at the time and not really caring about that kind of functionality. I actually had a pretty decent library of titles before Sega ceased production of the system. Sonic Adventure, Power Stone, Marvel vs. Capcom and Slave Zero were just a few of the memorable titles I had during my time of owning one. And since Sega met their end of producing consoles, Sonic's creator Yuji Naka left the company shortly after because he didn't want to see his beloved mascot on other consoles and it makes sense, as Sonic was the mascot for the Sega Genesis. It was upsetting for me, to say the least. Sega held their own in the gaming industry since the Master System back in 1988 only to become a third party company.
6. The fall of the Simpsons
As I recall in one of the earlier episodes, Bart mentioned that if he'd have his own show that he'd run it to the ground, and surprise surprise, that's what the Simpsons show had become. Where we once had episodes making fun of celebrities, future episodes would frequently just have them make cameos for easy network rating views, all while the familiar characters we knew from Springfield became bland stereotypes, and Homer went from laughable dumb oaf to cynical idiot as just an example. It may be an impressive feat to be on the air for such a long period of years, but it doesn't have the same shine it used to.
7. Nintendo and their cringy E3 2008 conference
The Nintendo Wii really held the tide for consumers with its gimmick of motion controlled games, even if it's just remembered as a fad now, but back then the company did its part (and tried its best) at showing their upcoming games, just as Microsoft and Sony did at E3. Their press conferences weren't all the best though, with some embarrassing performances from those who had to give a preview of the future releases. E3 2008 was notoriously bad as Nintendo had an overly excited woman playing Wii Sports Resort, a long, drawn out talk about the Wii Fit and DS features, and a dude just flailing a Wii remote and nunchuck as drums as he's covered in sweat previewing the soon to be forgotten Wii game, Wii Music. The aftermath of this brought forth some of the Nintendo memes we know today, such as Reggie's "My body is ready" line.
And that's pretty much the best examples I could give for some of the more bad moments from the 2000s. What's your take on my listing? Gimme your thoughts and as always, see you next article!
