Gaming History: The Simple Series

For today's Gaming History article I'll be taking a look at a series of games that for the most part I wish didn't exist. It's filled with badly programmed, poorly designed rubbish and makes up just over 5% of the Playstation 2's entire Japanese library with 165 releases for the console alone. In total there have been 401 Simple Series releases across 11 consoles, with Sony's original Playstation and PS2 receiving most of the titles.

You may well ask how a company can manage to release 401 terrible games and stay in business, after all many other companies have gone into liquidation after far less failures, but the secret is in the budget. D3 Publisher don't develop many of the games themselves, but instead pay tiny developers who have no prior experience or talent to create titles for them for next to nothing. Once these are complete, they're put on sale for the budget price of 2000 yen (for the PS2 series, anyway) and the costs are recouped even if only a small percentage of gamers purchase the titles.

(The Sniper 2 for PS2 - The first simple series game I played)

Not all of the Simple Series games released in Japan made it over to Europe, but thanks to Midas Interactive (who already had their own line of terrible games established in PAL regions) 83 PS2 simple series titles were published over here. Since playing The Sniper 2, my first encounter with the Simple Series as a while, I've made it a personal challenge to find a game that I truly enjoy from the series.

So far I've not had much success, despite many attempts to find something I'll enjoy. I've even got a stack of Simple Series games that I've not yet reviewed because I've got nothing better to review it seems. It's pretty easy to spot a simple series game out in the wild; games with a generic title, published by Midas Interactive, or worse 505 Gamestreet are very likely to be from the series. In fact, in Japan every game starts with "The" and has borders to identify it as a Simple Series game. This results in rather silly title translations such as "The Tennis", "The Shooting" and my favourite "The Swim Meet of Covered Woman".

(Party Girls for PS2 aka The Swim Meet of Covered Woman in Japan)

Part of the reason the games aren't enjoyable is that graphically they're very basic, and unappealing. Many of the games in the PS2 simple series look as if they belong on PS1, and even use assets from other games if they can. I understand that these games were developed on a tight budget and thus can't afford the high level of graphics that we've come to expect of our consoles in the modern age, but there's a general lack of effort in most, if not all titles I've played so far.

Another general criticism of Simple Series games is their depth; often the play modes offered are very similar to one another and included only to give the illusion of more content. Menus have very few options, and most of the games can be completed in a single sitting. I'd perhaps expect this of games on simpler systems, back in the NES and Master System days, but to hardly fill a single layer CD when the PS2 has all the space of a DVD available for games is disappointing.

(Deadly Strike for PS2 - One of the worst beat 'em ups ever)

Before playing the Simple Series, I was under the impression that there were some genres that it was almost impossible to make a bad game for; racing, beat 'em up and fighting games for example have many examples of mediocrity, but not too many outright bad games. Whether through a lack of effort or a lack of funds though, D3 Publisher seems to manage to ruin one aspect of the game or another. With racing games, the steering is always horribly difficult to work, with beat 'em ups, the AI has no clue what it's doing and with any other game there's always a key component that doesn't quite work.

With many Simple Series games to check out, it's possible that I'll find a gem at some point and perhaps look a little more favourably on the series as a whole, but it's important to keep in mind where D3 Publisher are now, having published most of the Simple Series between 1996 and 2009. The Simple Series itself has luckily ground to somewhat of a halt, The latest game was "Family Party: 30 Great Games" for the WiiU, which was a universally panned launch title, wasting no time in putting shovelware on the console.

(Earth Defence Force 2025 for PS3 - The most successful export of the simple series)

The most notable games to come out of the Simple Series are without a doubt those of the Earth Defence Force series. What began as a Simple Series game of slightly better quality than most is now a series with full price titles that are almost as buggy as simple series titles. Most of the games hold a rating of 69 or less on Metacritic, indicating a fairly poor level of quality despite not technically being a part of the Simple Series anymore.

Outside of Simple series games, D3 Publisher have been involved with many cartoon and movie tie in games, most notably Adventure Time: Explore the dungeon because I don't know! which wasn't particularly well received at all. As another full price game from D3 Publisher, this more than anything proves the point I'd like to make about the Simple Series and D3 as a whole. If none of their games were ever released, gaming would be none the worse for it. In fact, it might even be slightly better for it. Avoid D3 Publisher, Midas Interactive and 505 Gamestreet games if you can, and leave the painful task of playing them to me.