Top Ten Medal of Honor Franchise Facts - News
by VGChartz Staff , posted on 17 October 2010 / 13,864 Views
This week saw the release of the new Medal of Honor game, which takes the venerable shooter franchise out of World War II and places it firmly in a far more contemporary setting. When looking back at the series, one can find a wealth of awesome information about its origins, heavy hitters and sales. I have compiled a list of ten interesting facts that you guys might like, good or bad. These are, as usual, in no particular order.
MoH was Created by Steven Spielberg, until he abandoned it.
Despite his failings with the Atari 2600 E.T. game (which he just basically put his name on), famed director Steven Spielberg recognized gaming as a new emerging art form, and it was a matter of time before he helmed another game series. In the height of the “hey remember World War II” fad of over a decade ago, Spielberg decided to create a realistic World War II shooter in the vein of movies such as Saving Private Ryan. He then sold his game company, DreamWorks Interactive, to EA and a franchise was born.
In an interview with Reuters, he even looked back at what could have been:
"The smartest and dumbest thing I ever did was to sell my company to EA," said Spielberg. "Medal of Honor" was almost done and we made the decision to sell Dreamworks Interactive to Electronic Arts and had we not sold, we would have been able to stay in business just based on the success of "Medal of Honor."
There were a few Cancelled MoH Games.
In the history of the Medal of Honor series, only two games are known to have been cancelled:
The first was Medal of Honor: Fighter Command, a flight-simulation game that was to be released for the PlayStation 2. Looking at old press releases it was going to boast a heavy multiplayer campaign and give folks the option to choose which post to man whether it be pilot or tail gunner.
“Created by the writer and producer of the original Medal of Honor, Fighter Command continues the tradition of recreating the experience of intense WWII combat, but this time the battle is fought in the air. Extensive hands-on research with the actual planes of the era and consultation with the pilots who flew them delivers the authentic sights and sounds of the flight combat experience, immersing the player into a world they've only read about in books or seen in movies.”
The next game was Medal of Honor: Rising Sun 2. It was cancelled due to a mixed response for its precursor; EA chose to take a new direction afterwards.
Gamepro Marketing Toys
Gamepro and Joyride Studios have released action figures for the series including this one:
There were also figures of George Bush, Colin Powell, and Dick Cheney given away at a convention! Joy Ride is perhaps best known for its wide array of popular Halo Franchise action figures, a series that continues to grow every year.
World Record winning series!
The franchise has won a Guinness World’s Record! In the book, Guinness World Records: Gamer's Edition 2008, Medal of Honor was awarded with a world record for "Best selling FPS franchise." This is no shock based on the sheer amount of games out for the series! Which brings us to:
Sales totals
The Medal of Honor franchise has sold 31 million units to date worldwide with over half of that in the United States alone. To keep this in perspective it has made just about the same amount of money as the Halo franchise.
Sound Byte
The soundtrack for the original MoH game was composed by Grammy winning composer Michael Giacchino, who also did work for Ratatouille, Up, Lost, and even rival shooter franchise Call of Duty.
Medal of Honor was the first ever non-fantasy World War II First Person Shooter.
Medal of Honor was the first ever non-fantasy World War II First Person Shooter. Before that time there were many Games like Mortyr, Wolfenstein, and Spear of Destiny that allowed one to sneak behind enemy lines in Nazi Germany with one catch: many of these games were heavily based on either the Occult or Science Fiction. One look at the armored “Super-Hitler” in Wolfenstein will break any sense of realism. The genre came into its own with the very first Medal of Honor game, and ushered in a new era of historical shooters.
Move over Samus, the overlooked heroine - Manon.
When looking for game characters to compile a list of “strong female characters” many seem to overlook one major player in the historical FPS genre. I am of course speaking of Manon Batiste, the French underground super soldier. Based on real life French badass Helene Deschamps Adams, Manon was seen to do many things including destroying a V-1 bomb facility and her eventual progression into the OSS. Manon is one of a very small group of female FPS heroines, and one of the best.
The new game was banned on U.S. Military bases.
No game in the last few years (aside from Six Days in Fallujah) has generated as much controversy as the newest Medal of Honor game. No matter what side of the issue that one sits on, when a game gets banned from U.S. military bases, that’s a pretty big thing. Can controversy generate success?
Glorification of War?
The last item of this list will be a little food for thought. One criticism that many have of the Medal of Honor series is that it downplays a lot of the horrors that occurred during the respective wars that the games are about. Critics have cited that the games show no bystanders or regular citizens at all. Aside from a few exceptions, this means no emaciated Jewish people, no screaming Japanese children, and no Russian famine victims. While not the developer's fault, Medal of Honor kicked off a trend in making historical games into whitewashed versions of what really happened.
Well there you have it, join us again next week for another Top Ten!
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Some interesting stuff.
Medao of Honor Underground is awesome!
Then it went all down to trash .-.
Hmm indeed...
Interesting, I learned stuff
ummm interesting.
That's actually not true on the last one. Medal of Honor: Frontlines was by far the best one and had many jewish civilians walking around and dying and some attempting to help. Civilians were all over the place on a few of those levels.
