10 Most Overhyped Video Games of All-time

Video games have become a big business. In 2009 some video game sales rivaled the gross of some of the biggest blockbuster movies. As long as video games continue to make money the studios will continue to put a lot of time and money into advertising, which is why there are some video games that are hyped a lot more than they should be. These are the 10 games that have been hyped the most.

10) Every Madden Game
Every year Madden is released and fans line up and midnight and have Madden parties. It always makes me laugh because Madden isn't even the best football game of the year. NCAA Football is annually a better game. Madden doesn't offer 120 teams, rivalry trophies, a slew of awards and most importantly recruiting during the offseason is superior to the extremely boring draft in the Madden video game.

9) Mortal Kombat/Street Fighter
When Mortal Kombat was first released it went toe-to-toe with Street Fighter and for a few years they were both major franchises. Both series have been stagnant for some time (Street Fighter isn't even Capcom's best fighting game anymore). Die hard fans of the series (or fighting games in general) still might care but no game in either series deserves to be treated like a video game that everybody cares about.

8) Halo 3
Halo 3 is like the Dallas Cowboys of video games. It certainly isn't a bad game (it's actually by far the best game on this list), it's flashy, it's popular and it's better than about 80 - 90 percent of games out there. The hype for Halo 3 would make you think it's the greatest video game of all-time, which it isn't.

7) Grand Theft Auto IV
Grand Theft Auto IV, all the hype of Halo 3, but not as good. Grand Theft Auto IV was not a bad game. Any game that is open-ended with lots of missions and side games is going to be fun but GTA IV was being hype as the best Grand Theft Auto ever but it was actually a step down from San Andreas (which was a step down from Vice City).

6) Pac-Man
Before games like Street Fighter, Mortal Kombat and NBA Jam the king of arcade games was Pac-Man. Like those other arcade games there was a lot of hype when Pac-Man went from arcade to console but the transition was not nearly as good and Pac-Man was a disappointment.

5) Final Fantasy VIII
The Final Fantasy series is a difficult one to explain. Final Fantasy VII was a very overrated game. The graphics were impressive at the time but the story and dialogue were pretty atrocious and they just covered it up by making it pretty. However, because Final Fantasy VII was so overrated it was actually the next game in the installment, Final Fantasy VIII, that was overhyped.

4) Sonic the Hedgehog
If I may make another sports analogy (this may be the wrong audience for so many sports references), Mario and Sonic were like the Yankees and Red Sox of the video game world. They were only "rivals" in that they were competing with each other but really Mario dominated. When Sonic joined the current generation everybody was excited that this might finally be Sonic's time to shine. The developers didn't just drop the ball; they let it trickle through their legs like Bill Buckner. Now Sonic fans are cursed with sucky games for the next 86 years.

3) Shenmue
Shenmue was being hyped as a game-changer. There were a lot of critics that thought it was a masterpiece but others thought differently. Shenmue's biggest problem was that it cost an unprecedented $70 million and was advertised as a game for casual gamers but it was more a niche game. The budget was so large that in order to make back its $70 million production every single Dreamcast owner would have to buy two copies of the game.

2) Black and White
Originally Black and White got high praise from critics but as they played the game more their excitement waned. A popular video game website, GameSpy, named Black and White as the most overrated video game of all-time and IGN has also said Black and White was greatly overrated.

1) ET
Obviously hype for video games in the Atari days were not as great as they are today but if there was some way to alter the hype for inflation then the ET hype would be great. Of course, ET has the distinction of being the worst video game ever made so that would be a significant amount of overhype.