Dead video game series/franchises you refuse to let go

Battle Arena Toshinden.

For some odd reason, that series still sticks with me. It honestly should had an anime or allow for a beat em up, I believe the main problem with the OAV is that the art design shouldn't have strictly been done by Masami Obari and instead been given Kotobuki Tsukasa's art style, and that as cited from the first game's "false" ending, "New warriors have yet to appear..... This is not the end. This is only the beginning"; this series would have benefited from having a lot of characters. Something about this series screams that its world where everyone can fire energy projectiles and perform large than life attacks merely by working out and training hard enough would had made the series huge if it was handled right, along with its emphasis on secret societies and organizations that rule the world from the shadows and making more evident of its referencing of real world history and mythology.
 
Unreal Tournament
I'm still very bitter about Epic Games' decision to ditch development of the next-gen Unreal Tournament so they could divert all those resources towards god damn Fortnite. I get why they did it -- money printer goes brrrrr -- but dammit, couldn't they have left at least a skeleton crew to keep working on UT? I know they're still developing the Unreal engine (because Fortnite uses it) and that would undoubtedly benefit UT as well, and there was some pretty good community engagement (in both directions) for the project, so it's not like they had to devote a big team to.

But their faggotry knows no bounds these past few years, so between UT, their also-ran game store, their Apple shenanigans and tainting the world with Fortnite, I don't expect them to get any better or come to their senses anytime soon.

RIP, Unreal Tournament 4, we hardly knew ye.
 
Gears of War, it was a fun dumb series I enjoyed playing on my 360 back then with my buddies.
 
Gonna toss in Breath of Fire.

The first four were good. III and IV being the best imo and it is hard to choose which was better. Dragon Quarter was okay at best. Turning into a Dragon could kill you.

Then came Breath of Fire 6. A shitty mobile game where you don't play as Ryu, but as his child or something. Game was awful to the point Capcom pulled the plug a year later.
 
i dont know if you can call duke nukem "dead" at least not in the same way other series are but i feel like after the fiasco that was DNF and now given how the games industry has become infested with wannabe anita sarkisians and brianna wus, i can't image a new duke game being made in the near future unless:

A. you remove a good chunk of one side calls problematic but most gamers would call fun thereby stripping the duke nuken games of what made gamers like them.
B. this whole woke pc culture bs goes away or at least gets toned down and the devs who own the rights to duke nukem don't listen to the manbabies on twitter crying about how "wahh wahh duke nukem is misogynists' and promotes heteronormative toxic masculinity!"

damn shame too, for all the flaws forever has i still enjoy it and often go back to it to remind myself of the days of the golden age of gaming. before it became just as politized as the rest of the media and had to bown down before the gods of political correctness.
 
Battle Arena Toshinden.

For some odd reason, that series still sticks with me. It honestly should had an anime or allow for a beat em up, I believe the main problem with the OAV is that the art design shouldn't have strictly been done by Masami Obari and instead been given Kotobuki Tsukasa's art style, and that as cited from the first game's "false" ending, "New warriors have yet to appear..... This is not the end. This is only the beginning"; this series would have benefited from having a lot of characters. Something about this series screams that its world where everyone can fire energy projectiles and perform large than life attacks merely by working out and training hard enough would had made the series huge if it was handled right, along with its emphasis on secret societies and organizations that rule the world from the shadows and making more evident of its referencing of real world history and mythology.

Oh MAN! All I could think of when you said Toshinden was the fucking loltastic localization job. 'Any time, any vere!' from the Russian dominatrix-character and the howlingly bad 'French' accent of the knight-character. 'yew vere desteened tew leuse!!' The Scots guy too. "ah noo yew Fo Fai! magician...keelar!" I swear they just pulled a few guys out of the localization QA room and told them to put on an accent and read into the mic. Full of grotty and clipping early 3d console graphics and lots of exploitable moves as well as the audio should have made this a game to avoid, but somehow....it dosen't. Combat is fun, I liked the rotating 3-d effect and you could pull off some great sucker-moves if you knew what you were doing, especially Fo Fai with his long reach claws and magic rollerball attacks. The story didn't grip me too much, but it didn't need to.

I wouldn't mind a proper modern sequel either.

Fuckin hell, I have the Saturn version staring at me from the wall now, demanding I hook up the Saturn and play it.
 
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Oh MAN! All I could think of when you said Toshinden was the fucking loltastic localization job. 'Any time, any vere!' from the Russian dominatrix-character and the howlingly bad 'French' accent of the knight-character. 'yew vere desteened tew leuse!!' The Scots guy too. "ah noo yew Fo Fai! magician...keelar!" I swear they just pulled a few guys out of the localization QA room and told them to put on an accent and read into the mic. Grotty and clipping early PSX graphics and lots of exploitable moves as well as the audio should have made this a game to avoid, but somehow....it dosen't. Combat is fun, I liked the rotating 3-d effect and you could pull off some great sucker-moves if you knew what you were doing, especially Fo Fai with his long reach claws and magic rollerball attacks. The story didn't grip me too much, but it didn't need to.

I wouldn't mind a proper sequel either.

Fuckin hell, I have the Saturn version staring at me from the wall now, demanding I hook up the Saturn and play it.
Wasn't there there games in the series? I played the first one and enjoyed the music.

I remember was at the third where there was a monkey character that replaced some other character.

I vaguely remember this game and Psychic Force
 
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Wasn't there there games in the series? I played the first one and enjoyed the music.

I remember was at the third where there was a monkey character that replaced some other character.

I vaguely remember this game and Psychic Force

I know there was a Toshinden 2, but I don't recall playing it and I never heard of a 3rd. By that time there were far better beat-em-ups out there, especially on the Saturn where the Capcom beat-em-up ports were pretty much arcade-perfect.
 
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I still want a new Castlevania in the old, original continuity, which hasn't been seen since Order of Ecclesia all the way back in 2008.

I still can't believe (though it's really not that shocking given it's Konami) that they threw away literally decades of lore in favor of rebooting it with the lame Lords of Shadow games.

Because in the case of Castlevania there's one very big clear gap in the original lore and that's we never got a battle of 1999 game, we never got to see the final showdown with Dracula, so it feels incomplete.

Bloodstained was nice and better than nothing but at the end of the day it just left me wanting the real McCoy, I so wish Konami would let IGA make another Castlevania.
 
Dead Space!

First two were completely fantastic. Horror game, action horror game and then... eugh, the third one. The series ends on a cliffhanger, and it gets torched on purpose with the unbelievable and unattainable goal of 5 million copies sold, something not even the first two games combined had reached. Of course EA had to fuck it all up. Why wouldn't they? They had just gotten those Star Wars IP's around the time 3 had dropped, so to make sure they can divert all manpower, they fuck over the game with intentionally bad mandates, and then torch the series and run. I feel really bad for Glen Schofield, the guy that spearheaded Dead Space.

Now that I think about it, a lot of games in that period had a third entry that fucked over its consumerbases...
 
Dead Space!

First two were completely fantastic. Horror game, action horror game and then... eugh, the third one. The series ends on a cliffhanger, and it gets torched on purpose with the unbelievable and unattainable goal of 5 million copies sold, something not even the first two games combined had reached. Of course EA had to fuck it all up. Why wouldn't they? They had just gotten those Star Wars IP's around the time 3 had dropped, so to make sure they can divert all manpower, they fuck over the game with intentionally bad mandates, and then torch the series and run. I feel really bad for Glen Schofield, the guy that spearheaded Dead Space.

Now that I think about it, a lot of games in that period had a third entry that fucked over its consumerbases...
The steam version of Dead space has a glitch where you have to turn Vsync off to get a playable frame rate. But if you turn it off the scripts don't work on some doors so the game soft locks as soon as you get the done. EA fixed it in the origin version but steams borked.
 
The steam version of Dead space has a glitch where you have to turn Vsync off to get a playable frame rate. But if you turn it off the scripts don't work on some doors so the game soft locks as soon as you get the done. EA fixed it in the origin version but steams borked.
I just got it on GOG and it doesn't have that problem either. Seems to me that Steam users are just fucked.
 
Oh MAN! All I could think of when you said Toshinden was the fucking loltastic localization job. 'Any time, any vere!' from the Russian dominatrix-character and the howlingly bad 'French' accent of the knight-character. 'yew vere desteened tew leuse!!' The Scots guy too. "ah noo yew Fo Fai! magician...keelar!" I swear they just pulled a few guys out of the localization QA room and told them to put on an accent and read into the mic. Full of grotty and clipping early 3d console graphics and lots of exploitable moves as well as the audio should have made this a game to avoid, but somehow....it dosen't. Combat is fun, I liked the rotating 3-d effect and you could pull off some great sucker-moves if you knew what you were doing, especially Fo Fai with his long reach claws and magic rollerball attacks. The story didn't grip me too much, but it didn't need to.

I wouldn't mind a proper modern sequel either.

Fuckin hell, I have the Saturn version staring at me from the wall now, demanding I hook up the Saturn and play it.
Hahaha, oh lord, I grew up with the PSX game. For it being some of the first 3D fighting games, Toshinden 1 was a promising balance of incorporating both 2D gameplay into the 3D realm. It's not perfect, but it's still playable than most of the later fighting games that came out after.

As for those voice actors, oh yeah, hahaha, I also believe the localization team got some of their relatives and friends to come in to voice act. I died hearing the ethnic attempts on the Saturn on Youtube. So that's where they got the voice tracks.....

Wasn't there there games in the series? I played the first one and enjoyed the music.

I remember was at the third where there was a monkey character that replaced some other character.

I vaguely remember this game and Psychic Force
Fuck me, There was even a Toshinden 4! It didn't get released outside of Japan, though.
There were four main games, and there was even a Pocket Fighter styled cute parody fighting game, a puzzle fighter game, and even a card game (yeah I'm kind of a fan for this series lol). Oh yeah, there was a reboot in 2009 with one for the Wii, but that game flopped. Too simple gameplay and despite having the artist from Death Note on it, the story was the most bare basic of anime.

Wait... There was.

https://battlearenatoshinden.fandom.com/wiki/Battle_Arena_Toshinden_3
It's forgettable considering it came in the same time frame better 3D fighters like Tekken came out.
You kidding me? There were fansites for even Toshinden 3 and even 4/Subaru. It was pretty cult, but the series had its fans. You're not wrong in the series by that time being outshadowed by Tekken and Soul Edge in the day though. The story turned pretty damn Mortal Kombat though by 3, the story comes to revolve around a cult that worships an old Greek god of conflict and oversaw all slavery and savage activity of the world until the Secret Society, and they send out assassins to sacrifice the cast of the past games to their god. Fun shit.

Toshinden 4 though, you'd be more hardpressed to find fans for that installment. That was the game that killed the entire series. They tried to sweep the whole story and cast clean for a reboot, but you know what happens when you remove everything people liked about the series in the beginning....
 
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Hahaha, oh lord, I grew up with the PSX game. For it being some of the first 3D fighting games, Toshinden 1 was a promising balance of incorporating both 2D gameplay into the 3D realm. It's not perfect, but it's still playable than most of the later fighting games that came out after.

As for those voice actors, oh yeah, hahaha, I also believe the localization team got some of their relatives and friends to come in to voice act. I died hearing the ethnic attempts on the Saturn on Youtube. So that's where they got the voice tracks.....



There were four main games, and there was even a Pocket Fighter styled cute parody fighting game, a puzzle fighter game, and even a card game (yeah I'm kind of a fan for this series lol). Oh yeah, there was a reboot in 2009 with one for the Wii, but that game flopped. Too simple gameplay and despite having the artist from Death Note on it, the story was the most bare basic of anime.


You kidding me? There were fansites for even Toshinden 3 and even 4/Subaru. It was pretty cult, but the series had its fans. You're not wrong in the series by that time being outshadowed by Tekken and Soul Edge in the day though. The story turned pretty damn Mortal Kombat though by 3, the story comes to revolve around a cult that worships an old Greek god of conflict and oversaw all slavery and savage activity of the world until the Secret Society, and they send out assassins to sacrifice the cast of the past games to their god. Fun shit.

Toshinden 4 though, you'd be more hardpressed to find fans for that installment. That was the game that killed the entire series. They tried to sweep the whole story and cast clean for a reboot, but you know what happens when you remove everything people liked about the series in the beginning....

Huh, My Wii actually IS still hooked up to my tv/monitor, I should grab an image of the Wii Toshinden ( God I love soft-mods for consoles) and give it a go just for shits and giggles.

Another excellent fighting game series that seems to have been abandoned is Samurai Shodown. One of the games along with Pulstar and KoF that really made me lust for a Neo Geo back in the day, but as a married father of 2 there was no way I could justify the cost of the unit. Had to get my fix of Samurai Shodown 2 at one of the few remaining arcades in Vancouver at the time. When MAME added Neo Geo support I was over the fucking moon and junkied on Shodown 1-5. A modern comeback like Street Fighter IV/5 did on the PC would be amazing to see. I would even pay for it this time. ;-)
 
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Another excellent fighting game series that seems to have been abandoned is Samurai Shodown. One of the games along with Pulstar and KoF that really made me lust for a Neo Geo back in the day, but as a married father of 2 there was no way I could justify the cost of the unit. Had to get my fix of Samurai Shodown 2 at one of the few remaining arcades in Vancouver at the time. When MAME added Neo Geo support I was over the fucking moon and junkied on Shodown 1-5. A modern comeback like Street Fighter IV/5 did on the PC would be amazing to see. I would even pay for it this time. ;)

There was a new Samurai Shodown two years ago, unless you don't count that one.
 
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