Today's flop is not a flop flop. It's fairly lackluster and a sales disappointment, sure, but what puts Oni in the Flop Bin is more of a relative flop-ness. Oni was the game Bungie Software made before they made Halo, you see.

You wouldn't know it by looking at it (click the thumbnails to pop up screenshots).

Oni had way too many large, featureless areas like this. The main character, Konoko, had some nicely animated kung-fu moves— but most of the bad guys you faced had guns. Not to mention that the game was originally released for PC, and dealing out all those melee moves more or less required one more hand than most of us have. So you had a much easier time with the game if you stuck to ranged weapons, forcing you to ignore the one really cool part of the game.

End result: Oni, $5.95. Oni's Project Lead, Michael Evans, was assigned as the lead multiplayer programmer for Halo, which turned out to be a far better match for his talents.

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