Twenty-Five Years of Games Across Eight Metrics – Bonus B: Trivia and Oddities

More on Metascores

The day with the most games released with a 90+ metascore was, well, a two way tie.

February 29th, 2000
- Dead Or Alive 2 (Dreamcast)
- Tony Hawk’s Pro Skater (N64)
- Rayman 2: The Great Escape (Dreamcast)
- Resident Evil: Code Veronica (Dreamcast)
November 18th, 2001
- Star Wars Rogue Squadron II: Rogue Leader (Gamecube)
- Madden NFL 2002 (Gamecube)
- IL2-Sturmovik (PC)
- Tony Hawk’s Pro Skater 3 (Gamecube)

Great days for Dreamcast and Gamecube. Wow, Dreamcast had 7 games release on Leap Day, and Chu Chu Rocket was pretty close to the 90+ club.

The greatest drought between games with a 90+ metascore was… ok, I was going to say between Realms of the Haunting and Dungeon Keeper, but in double checking I have now found 3 possible release dates for Realms and the one I have recorded is probably wrong.

Let’s instead go with Out of the Park Baseball (3/23/06) and Company of Heroes (9/13/06), a period of 174 days. Remember how 2006 saw that dip in metascores?

Two games, one name, two developers, one score.

More on Descriptors

Are you ready for more content descriptor details? The game with the most descriptors I could find was 9, and it’s not something you would expect:

I didn’t get into this before, but the ESRB combines substance descriptors if they’re both “use” or both “reference” for some reason. Not sure any game has all three. That was a bit of a pain to deal with.

Anyway, I have no idea why this singing game has so many, and oddly enough the Switch version only has 8, no Partial Nudity.

Several other games had 8 descriptors, most are current generation:

Constructor Plus (Switch, 3DS, PS4)
- Blood, Crude Humor, Drug Reference, Language, Suggestive Themes, Use of Alcohol, Use of Tobacco, Violence
Constructor HD (Xbox One, PS4)
- Blood, Crude Humor, Drug Reference, Language, Suggestive Themes, Use of Alcohol, Use of Tobacco, Violence
Night in the Woods (Switch, PS4, Xbox One, PC)
- Fantasy Violence, Mild Blood, Sexual Themes, Drug Reference, Language, Crude Humor, Use of Alcohol, Use of Tobacco
The Red Strings Club (Switch)
- Blood, Drug Reference, Nudity, Strong Language, Suggestive Themes, Use of Alcohol, Use of Tobacco, Violence
Thimbleweed Park (Switch, PS4, Xbox One, PC)
- Crude Humor, Drug Reference, Language, MildBlooo, MildVio, Sexual Themes, Use of Alcohol, Use of Tobacco
Def Jam Rapstar (Wii, PS3, Xbox 360)
- Drug Reference, Mild Blood, Mild Violence, Partial Nudity, Sexual Themes, Strong Lyrics, Use of Alcohol, Use of Tobacco
Grand Theft Auto V (PS3, PS4, Xbox 360, Xbox One, PC)
- Blood and Gore, Intense Violence, Mature Humor, Nudity, Strong Language, Strong Sexual Content, Use of Drugs, Use of Alcohol
Duke Nukem Forever (PS3, Xbox 360, PC)
- Blood and Gore, Intense Violence, Mature Humor, Nudity, Strong Language, Strong Sexual Content, Use of Drugs, Use of Alcohol
Skylight Freerange (Vita)
- Violence, Blood, Sexual Themes, Nudity, Drug Reference, Strong Language, Use of Alcohol, Use of Tobacco
Skylight Freerange 2 (Vita)
- Violence, Blood, Sexual Themes, Nudity, Drug Reference, Strong Language, Use of Alcohol, Use of Tobacco

The only game with both Mild Fantasy Violence and Mild Cartoon Violence was Xbox Live Arcade Unplugged Vol. 1. Okay, a compilation, but it doesn’t seem like there should be a reason those don’t ever appear together otherwise.

The only game with Nudity and Simulating Gambling was Dead or Alive Xtreme Beach Volleyball.

I had to check the box to make sure it wasn’t an error on the ESRB website. But yes, Loons has two degrees of violence. I don’t think any other game I looked at had two “tiers” of something. I have to imagine it was a mistake.

Is there any actual content differences between these versions? I believe the Vita version was released before the “rate it yourself for cheaper” program.

I’m again not familiar with these two games, but could the Cartoon Violence really be significantly more major in one version? Usually when a game is released on multiple platforms, even months apart, it gets one entry if they have the same content. Maybe for some reason different people handled these two and had different opinions?

Fantasy Violence wasn’t a descriptor when the original was released, so fair enough there, but that is quite a difference in descriptors.

More on the ESRB Website and ESRB Weirdness

This game was known as Speedster in Europe, and Rush Hour in North America. Why does a North American rating system website have the European title at all? This was the only two name case like this I came across.

Released on “Nintendo”, I came across a few of those.

I was pretty confused by this when I saw it, but I found an article where the creator discusses what and why he tones down the Wii U version.

Should a crossword game where the clues are a bit off-color (this actually sounds extreme for a newspaper puzzle) count as much as if there were actual characters engaging in these acts? It’s a bit of an edge case. It’s also funny that they censored “ass” on this website aimed at adult parents.

The ESRB’s website will ignore spaces when searching titles. Finding the rating of a Playstation game called “One” was quite an experience. It was on something like the 37th page (results are chronological) and you can only go forward one page at a time. You can filter by system, but only for some newer systems because why would would anyone care about something old.

If you were wondering why I didn’t just look at a picture of One’s case on eBay, I did. Games are supposed to list their descriptors on the back, below the ESRB rating, but this one didn’t.

This My Little Pony game doesn’t have any ESRB information at all on the back. I can’t find much information about game box art requirements, like what size things have to be, where they need to be placed, just “in June 2003 — the ESRB announced new labeling procedures (requiring the prominent display of back-of-the-box information)“, which is odd since the overwhelming majority of games already had that. I suppose publishers handle box art, but there is still enough structure to them that they must have a lot of requirements.

After a bit of browsing, I found this E.T. game for Game Boy Advance without any ESRB information on the back.

The Best, worst and Most Average game

I realized that with all of the data I have that I can construct what would theoretically be the best and worst game possible, based on averages. This is a for fun exercise, please don’t take it too seriously.

The worst possible game, based on average metascores:

System: Wii
Release Date: August 4th, 2007
Genre: Educational
ESRB Rating: Everyone (Early Childhood games don’t even get ratings so I won’t assume)
ESRB Content Descriptors: None
Length: As short as possible, definitely less than 4.5 hours to beat

The best possible game, based on average metascores:

System: Xbox One
Release Date: December 28, 2019
Genre: Role-Playing and Compilation
ESRB Rating: Mature
ESRB Content Descriptors: Sexual Content, Nudity, Use of Tobacco, Use of Alcohol, Use of Drugs, Intense Violence, Blood and Gore
Length: As long as possible, at least 15 hours to beat

That best possible game sounds a bit like a Mass Effect trilogy compilation, which has been rumored as of this writing (May 9th).

Most average game, based on average metascores:

System: Game Boy Color
Release Date: February 3, 2010
Genre: Simulation
ESRB Rating: E10+
ESRB Content Descriptors: Crude Humor
Length: 7.5 hours to beat

Ignoring system, but considering proximity to the actual average score of 70.25, we might label The Urbz: Sims in the City to be the most average game of the past 25 years. It doesn’t quite fit every parameter, but nothing will. I’m sure there’s better ways of finding “most average” than looking at what parameters line up in the middle of metascores, too.

That’s all for the 25 year project. Is there a specific thing that I could find quickly with the information I have that you’re curious about?

Sources

GameRankings.com for metascores and some release dates. Archives: 1, 2, 3

MobyGames.com for genres, some release dates, some ESRB ratings, and some ESRB content descriptors

HowLongToBeat.com for main story and completionist times.

ESRB.org for ESRB ratings and ESRB content descriptors

Wikipedia for its many lists of games