It's easy to think that every franchise in video games starts out like the original Mario title: A game that was ground-breaking upon release, and continued to be genre-defining with most of its releases, explaining why all of its fanbase is so devoted to the series.

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Unfortunately, not every first game knocks it out of the park like that right away. Some first time games are basically just the proof of a good idea, and everyone playing it becomes aware that with a bit more polish and a second try, the franchise can live up to the potential that the first didn't quite get a chance to reach. Sometimes, a franchise has an incredibly shaky start only to become an all-time great series with just one or two sequels.

10 Street Fighter (AKA "Fighting Street") Was A Clunky Early Attempt At A Then-Fledgling Genre

Sagat taking damage in the original Street Fighter

The concept of fighting games was fairly new when Street Fighter— ported to some home platforms as Fighting Street— first launched back in 1987, and developers weren't yet certain what to do with them. Nowhere is that more clear than the original Street Fighter, where players basically only had the game's basic arcade mode.

Solo players could choose only Ryu, who enters a tournament to prove his strength and goes up the ladder facing off against multiple enemies.  There's ten different enemies on the ladder, with all of it ending in a battle against Sagat. The only opportunity to face another player is at the start where Ryu can face a player-controlled Ken (who plays exactly the same as Ryu), and even then the winner goes on to play the remaining fights against the computer.

9 Grand Theft Auto Was A Top-Down Game That Already Looked Dated Upon Release

Grand Theft Auto 1

Grand Theft Auto is one of the most surprising transformations for a franchise ever. The original game involved playing a criminal trying to become a big shot in the criminal world. The entire game takes place from a top-down perspective, and goes between the three cities Grand Theft Auto fans are familiar with: Liberty City, San Andreas, and Vice City.

The player completes a number of jobs to gain more money, and can also cause chaos through various other crimes as well. This franchise struggled until it went polygonal and 3D the release of Grand Theft Auto III, which created the basis for the juggernaut fans know today. To date, Grand Theft Auto V alone has has earned over $6 billion for publisher Rockstar, making it the most profitable entertainment product of all time.

8 Assassin's Creed Hid Amazing Gameplay Behind Repetitive Missions

assassins creed 1

The original Assassin's Creed was meant to be one of the first major titles coming out for the HD consoles that was going to show why the new hardware was so important.  It had everything: An open world, the ability to explore a historical setting that was scarcely ever visited, and a cool-looking protagonist people wanted to play with.

But then the game actually released, and there were only a handful of mission types that were repeated over and over again across dozens of hours of play time— something that would have to be fixed in subsequent installments, which unsurprisingly are more beloved games and make the original look like little more than a proof of concept.

7 Mortal Kombat Had Little Mechanical Depth For A Fighting Game

Mortal Kombat 1

Mortal Kombat launched at a time where fighting games were finally beginning to figure themselves out. The Street Fighter franchise had evolved into something nearly perfect, and there were plenty of other games figuring out what was necessary to make a competitive fighting game in the arcades and consoles.

By comparison, Mortal Kombat was a ridiculous (but intentionally so, to be fair) game with odd-looking photo-realistic visuals, literal palette-swaps to pad out the character roster, and not much depth to its gameplay, instead drawing attention largely due to its blood and hyper-violence. Nonetheless, the fans loved what MK was presenting and bought in completely, allowing it to become not just one of the longest-running franchises in fighting games, but also eventually one of the best, outlasting almost all of its contemporaries.

6 Watch Dogs Had One Of The Most Boring Protagonists Ever

Aiden Pearce hacking with his phone in Watch Dogs game

Watch Dogs was meant to be the premiere title of a new generation, but unfortunately Ubisoft ran into problems again just as they did with Assassin's Creed a generation earlier. They sold the game as this graphical showcase, but the game wasn't able to hit the targets they showed off at E3.

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But worse, when the game came out it featured a boring protagonist in Aiden Pearce, and literally everyone in the game was more interesting to follow. Fortunately, Ubisoft turned it around with Watch Dogs 2, which gave fans an arguably better city in San Francisco and a more likable lead protagonist in Marcus Holloway.

5 Fire Emblem Was Plagued By A Weak Story & Graphics

Fire Emblem Shadow Dragon

The first Fire Emblem launched on Famicom in 1990, and by that time they were already running into problems pushing the limits of what the system was capable of.  The game was so massive in scope it created problems both with the graphics and the memory storage, and the developers would have to change the scope of the story and graphics to make it work.

The game received mediocre reviews, but still found an audience with fans, which allowed them to make two more games before they finally hit something with Fire Emblem 4, a legendary Super Famicom title. And with the recent hit Fire Emblem: Three Houses for Switch, plus the multiple Fire Emblem characters in Super Smash Bros., the franchise is mega popular worldwide now and has really come into its own.

4 Uncharted Was A Mostly Unremarkable Third-Person Action/Adventure Game

Nathan Drake leaping from a collapsing building in Uncharted 4

Uncharted was thought to be the savior for Sony's first-party titles when it launched back in 2007. Naughty Dog was already well-known as the premiere studio for the company, having made the Crash Bandicoot and Jak & Daxter titles, and Uncharted was the studio going to another level.

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But while Uncharted is a great title for it's time, it's not exactly ground-breaking. There are a lot of frustrating moments and it's easy to pick the first game up and wonder why everyone spends so much time raving about the franchise. It isn't until Uncharted 2 that the franchise delivers being a high-stakes action-adventure and truly becomes a top-tier AAA franchise.

3 Tales of Phantasia Was A Bland JRPG That Didn't Do Much To Stand Out

Tales of Phantasia GBA

Tales of Phantasia wasn't a bad game by any means, but it launched it was during a time where quality Japanese RPGs were plentiful and games had to do something special to escape the shadow of Final Fantasy and Dragon Quest.

Final Fantasy in particular was at the top of its game, and Square in general was on fire as well. There were also other major franchises like Star Ocean and Lunar, and in the face of that, Tales of Phantasia was just another title. It wouldn't be until the second game, Tales of Destiny, that the series picked up. Talking swords just makes everything vastly more interesting.

2 The Witcher Showed Promise, But Had A Lot Of Growing Pains To Overcome

Geralt and Vesemir Witcher 1

The Witcher was decent enough game for its time period, but unfortunately due to the era it released in, few people were interested in trying it out. Franchises like Dragon AgeMass Effect, and The Elder Scrolls weren't just present but they were on console, which made something like CDProjekt RED's PC-exclusive first game a little harder to pay attention to.

It wouldn't be until 2011's The Witcher 2 where everyone stood up and took notice, both to the quality of the story and the gorgeous graphics. All of this primed fans for The Witcher III: Wild Hunt, which would become one of the most successful and acclaimed video games of all time.

1 DBZ: Budokai Was A Very Basic Fighting Game

Dragon Ball Games Budokai

People didn't want much from a Dragon Ball Z game; they just wanted it to be good. And outside of a handful of card-based RPGs on the Famicom and Super Famicom, things weren't looking good. A trio of mediocre to downright terrible games on PlayStation, and suddenly hope for a good Dragon Ball Z game was fading fast.

But then along came Dragon Ball Z: Budokai. It wasn't anything special and going back now to play it is painful, but it felt enough like DBZ at the time to spawn both the Budokai franchise (which peaked with its third installment) and the Tenkaichi Budokai series (which peaked with its second), creating a renaissance for DBZ fans and gamers worldwide.

NEXT: Final Fantasy: 5 Best Final Bosses In The Series (& 5 Worst)