Not many Rocket League fans know that the popular vehicular soccer game is actually a sequel to a forgotten title that was released almost 16 years ago. That’s just one of the examples of some game sequels that completely changed the fate of the franchise that they’re a part of, due to a massive improvement in quality over the original first installments.
Some titles are just so superior to their OG counterparts that revisiting the latter starts to make less sense as time goes on, making them a huge waste of time.
Rocket League Is Actually a Sequel to a Forgotten 2008 Game
On the subreddit dedicated to gaming, a user brought up an excellent question, asking their fellow gamers about that one sequel that ended up making its preceding title a complete “waste of time” because of their better quality. The responses included numerous games that made their respective original installments obsolete, with one user mentioning how Rocket League stands out as a perfect example.
For those unaware, the game was not exactly developer Psyonix’s first rodeo in the vehicular soccer genre since it released a title called Supersonic Acrobatic Rocket-Powered Battle Cars all the way back in 2008.
Another user sarcastically joked about how the game that came before Rocket League has such a hilariously long title that it “rolls off the tongue so organically,” which is why its own community does not use its full name when it scarcely gets brought up in conversation. Even the most dedicated fans of the original game call it SARPBC or SARP Battle-Cars instead, because who can really blame them?
The Reddit thread then became a nostalgic place for the OG Psyonix community as one player pointed out how once upon a time, it was actually known as Carball when it was only just a mod for another game called Unreal Tournament 2004.
When Rocket League was released in 2015, it received highly positive reviews from both critics and fans, which was a big improvement from the original SARPBC, which was launched to mediocre and mixed reception. The sequel improved on almost every single aspect that was introduced in the OG title, and it goes without saying that creating a whole franchise out of such an annoyingly long name would not have been easy for the developer.
One has more than ten syllables, and the sequel keeps things short and sweet with just three, which probably played some part in the original’s eventual irrelevance.
Street Fighter 2 Joins Rocket League in the Discussion About Sequels
Aside from Rocket League, for obvious reasons, Capcom’s universally acclaimed fighting game sequel from 1991 was also brought up in the conversation. The original Street Fighter from 1987 received generally mixed reviews upon release, but it was actually the second installment that took the world by storm and set a new standard for other games in the genre.
Street Fighter 2 started a revolution in the world of video games that is still continued today, and as a Reddit user pointed out, it “is known as the origin of most mechanics that define modern fighting games.”
According to the same player, the only relevant purpose that the original Street Fighter served was so that the sequel could have a “2 in the title.” It may be a completely different reason from the one that Rocket League fans discussed, but the second installment in the iconic fighting game series definitely took the concept to a whole other level.
Another user mentioned how all of the people they have met started their Street Fighter journey with Part 2, and none of them had ever played the original title.
Are there any sequels other than Rocket League or Street Fighter 2 that made their first installments completely irrelevant? Let us know in the comments!
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