Ubisoft is known really well for its Watch Dogs, Assassin’s Creed, and Tom Clancy games, but Ubisoft has been in the industry since the ’80s with many releases every year. It’s one of the Big Four in video game publishing for good reason; it’s been involved in many influential games throughout the years.
While they spent many years creating movie/TV show-to-video game adaptions, they also worked on a lot of games you didn’t realize came from them. Many of the games on this list are going to be a nostalgia trip and may even be childhood favorites of yours. So here are ten popular Ubisoft games you didn’t know existed.
10 Devil May Cry 3
Devil May Cry 3 is often cited as one of the best games made. Its overall Japanese style eccentricity and quirkiness combined with a fast-paced battle style made it a major success with fans and critics who saw it as a classic. Ubisoft was involved in the publishing of the game which means they were apart of the printing, marketing, and merchandising of it which could have lead to its huge success. Being developed in Japan it’s easy to miss Ubisoft was involved in the game by association alone or if you aren’t a super fan of the series.
9 No More Heroes
While this eccentric game was developed by the likes of Suda51, Ubisoft was involved as the publisher for this Wii-centric game title. It did get a PS3/XBOX360 version, however, being the Xbox version is uncensored the intendedly violent and over the top game was given a “Z” rating making it so that it couldn’t be distributed by the publisher. It took a lot of effort on the publishers’ part to help it become a best selling game.
8 Rocky
Yes, Rocky had his own video game series, and plenty enough people played it to scratch their itch for the void Nintendo left with not releasing a new Punch-Out! game until the Wii. Even now there has been no new Punch-Out! game since then, leaving many back reliving that same void.
From a certain standpoint, nothing sounds better marketability-wise then a Rocky video game to fill the market. You’re talking one of the most popular ’80s movie series and for the era of TV/Movie-based video games, it worked.
7 CSI Games
Another entry from back when TV show video game adaptions were all the rage with AAA publishers like Ubisoft and THQ. CSI took over much of the PS2 era with many sequels throughout its lifespan. It suffered the same fate as many other video game adaptions with “Sharp” polygonal graphics and a lower quality that left you to desire to watch the show instead all while being a short experience.
6 Shaun White Snowboarding
Shaun White Snowboarding is a game most would know who were into extreme sports during the 00s. This game came out as the counter to the Tony Hawk series and saw decent results. It was able to survive, going through several sequels through the generation. It did start a trend of other games and party games trying to replicate its snowboarding effects and take hold of that sports market, but perhaps not to the success Shaun White Snowboarding did.
5 ZombiU
ZombiU was one of the launch games of the Wii U to show the capability of the hardware. It was released to as much decent success as a game could find on the marketing disaster that was the Wii U. Many solid games were released for the Wii U, and this game was a solid, but short, game. Its gameplay was more about its experience but held a lot of the standard FPS game elements that you would expect from Ubisoft. If it wasn’t for being one of the start titles for the Wii U it wouldn’t have made as a big of an impact.
4 South Park: The Fractured But Whole
South Park: The Fractured but Whole, while being an amazing pun, spent many years in development leaving fans of South Park: The Stick of Truth in a constant state of excitement and agony waiting for it, hoping it wouldn’t turn out to be vaporware.
The game went through a tough developmental cycle and was eventually moved to Ubisoft to develop it after they purchased the rights to South Park: The Stick of Truth, to keep in line to what they’ve done for years in publishing Video Game adaptions. Immediately after it’s release it became one of the top games on most modern platforms, even though it divided most critics on its humor.
3 Beyond Good And Evil
Beyond Good and Evil 2 has infamy on its long and troubled development time, nearly matching Final Fantasy 15 and Half-Life 3 in developmental time scope. Many people for years believed it would never happen due to the first game not being a commercial success. The first game came out as a well-recieved cult-classic, something that was beloved by those who played it when it came out. Beyond Good and Evil 2 has gone through several versions and several console generations over the years before being fully finalized and set to release sometime 2020. With the quality of the first game, its only hope that the next in the series will be up past that standard after nearly skipping 2 generations of consoles.
2 Haze
Haze looked to innovate for its timeframe during the early start of the PS3/mid XBOX 360 era. Many of the elements it promoted were supposed to be innovations for the system in general, such as a single-player campaign that featured online multiplayer and “Advanced” AI partners. While its scope was huge it could only be released for a single platform which would be the PS3. Haze also got bogged down by not having patches out for the final game in time of reviews and getting middling scores for it, however, the game did sell enough to be a financial success. Haze did suffer from an underwhelming single-player plot in many of people’s eyes which further dragged it down, even though the hype made it out to be the “Halo Killer”.
1 Myst
Myst has always been a cult-followed gaming series, but Ubisoft jumped on the cult wagon later on with publishing and eventually developing their own games in the series. Another element of Myst games is that they commonly are more than $10 million dollars to make per game, making their financial success harder to achieve, such as the Case with Uru: Ages Beyond Myst. While this Ubisoft published game was critically well-received, it suffered through many developmental troubles that overall backfired in the end. Many of the planned multiplayer modes were canceled. There was a second attempt to make it a multiplayer game through using an online pack, but after a short period that was canceled as well because of low subscriber count.
NEXT: The 5 Best & 5 Worst Ubisoft Games Of The Decade (According To Metacritic)