Dead video game series/franchises you refuse to let go

[Coldgrip]

Tenchu. Done with today's technology would be fucking awesome.

 

[Melkor]

NiGHTS. I was a huge sperg for the remake when I was in middle school.

 

[Inquisitor_BadAss]

I know phantasy star has been mentioned a few times but sega keeps dangling that game over us and with PSO 2 coming out on PS4 in Japan I just can give up yet.

 

[José Mourinho]

This year marks the 20th anniversary of a once iconic video game character named Crash Bandicoot.

I remembered playing the awesome PS1 trilogy back in the day. Sad to see that the franchise is left alone at the moment but we'll see.

 

[Sable]

This year marks the 20th anniversary of a once iconic video game character named Crash Bandicoot.

I remembered playing the awesome PS1 trilogy back in the day. Sad to see that the franchise is left alone at the moment but we'll see.

Well, there is a Crash minigame in the next Uncharted. It's basically the Boulder Dash level IIRC.

 

[Coster]

Well, there is a Crash minigame in the next Uncharted. It's basically the Boulder Dash level IIRC.

Naughty Dog is good about not forgetting stuff like that imo. Uncharted 4 has Crash Bandicoot, The Last of Us had quite a few Jak and Daxter references.

 

[sasazuka]

Project Gotham Racing. It was the XBox's signature racing series during the original XBox era and the early days of the XBox 360, and the first one was essentially an upgraded version of Metropolis Street Racer on the Dreamcast (though without the day/night cycles). I especially liked how PGR 4 had Quebec City as one of the main racing venues; not a city you generally expect to see in a racing game. But Bizarre Creations wanted to do a racing game that they had full control over, which was Blur, a massive flop sales-wise, and ultimately the studio shuttered, though I keep my hopes up that one day Microsoft and Forza's Turn 10 might be able to revive the franchise, preferably with as much of the original staff as possible.

Also, OutRun, though I wouldn't want to see an OutRun 3 without the expensive Ferrari license, and Sega couldn't afford it now so they'd have to split the costs with an outside company, much like how Sega partnered with Acclaim to get the Ferrari license for their F355 Challenge arcade game with the trade-off being that Acclaim got to market the home version under their own label even though it was fully developed by AM2 at Sega.

I also keep a candle burning that there might one day be a Test Drive Unlimited 3, although the GT Interactive incarnation of Atari that was the label behind the first two Test Drive Unlimited games (made by Eden Games) is defunct, and the second Test Drive Unlimited game kind of crapped the bed by being buggy and adding an unneeded narrative involving a fictional reality game show with annoying characters. I still liked driving around Ibiza and Oahu despite the sequel feeling like they skipped beta testing entirely.

 

[c-no]

Two crpg series: Gothic and Wizardry.

Gothic s dead due to the devs temporarily losing rights to it. Once they got it back, they invalidated the Gothic games they didn't make (nothing of value lost there since the games were mediocre at best and crap at worst). The closest thing to a successor they made was Risen though its combat is more similar to Gothic 3 than 1 & 2. One of the things Gothic had going for was having a linear story that you progressed based off what faction you wanted to serve. Aside from that, there was also the feeling that the world was alive. NPC's would have conversations that were vague enough you know they weren't always talking about crabs but rather something that someone else should shut up about. They had their own schedules to do. This was since 2000 or 2001, some years before Bethesda did such a thing with Oblivion. Nowadays, the devs of Gothic are working on something else.

Wizardry is dead in the west but back since its inception, it was hot shit. To put in perspective, the series started off like Ultima, being from the 80's where you had the game on the Apple II. It was a simple game consisting of wire-frame dungeons with enemies whose appearance was a simple image like with Ultima. The game was successful in the west that it spawned 8 games and one spin-0ff (that had the Wizardry name tacked on to it despite being completely different). In Japan, the series was even hotter. It inspired the creator of Dragon Quest, with a translation of one of his games saying he wished he could make a game like Wizardry. Beyond that, the series spawned more spin-offs such as Wizardry Dimguil and Wizardry Empire. In the west, the series died just like Ultima but with a quiet bang that wasn't fucked over with bugs and retcons unlike Ultima 9. Nowadays, Wizardry is more or less a memory, with 6-8 being available on Steam and GOG. In Moonland, it went on longer that there existed a couple more games on the PS3 (one of which was translated for western release) as well as an MMO which I can assume is lasting longer. The non JP servers have been dead for a good couple of years but the Japanese servers are still going on. The most we can get are Wizardry clones such as Elminage Gothic and Stranger of Sword City.

 

[Army Burger]

Age of Empires 4 set during the lead up to and including the First World War, and then Age of Empires 5 taking place from 1918 to the end of the Second World War. Maybe have an Age of Empires 6 set during the Cold War?

 

[Long Sun]

Chrono Trigger FULL STOP

 

[Coldgrip]

Does Resident Evil count? After seeing the trailer for 7 I'm beginning to wish it died with 5.

 

[Burned Man]

Does Resident Evil count? After seeing the trailer for 7 I'm beginning to wish it died with 5.

Not excited for Resident Evils? I feel the same way. I'll be curious to see if it is linked to the series at all or just the name slapped on a new horror game. Considering the lack of guns, viruses, and established characters in the trailer I'm guessing the latter. Also the Revelation games were good.

 

[Coldgrip]

Not excited for Resident Evils? I feel the same way. I'll be curious to see if it is linked to the series at all or just the name slapped on a new horror game. Considering the lack of guns, viruses, and established characters in the trailer I'm guessing the latter. Also the Revelation games were good.

I've only watched my friend play the Revelation games, while they don't appear to be terrible I just didn't feel like they were really Resident Evil games. I think it's just my autsim at the lack of zombies and Wesker (the good one, not the Silent Hill wannabe).

 

[Guardian G.I.]

Age of Empires 4 set during the lead up to and including the First World War, and then Age of Empires 5 taking place from 1918 to the end of the Second World War. Maybe have an Age of Empires 6 set during the Cold War?

The game you describe is called Empire Earth - it has more or less the same game mechanics, except it goes from the Stone Age into the far future. That's both its best feature and its main downside - AoE-style game mechanics that work well for ancient and medieval times feel awkward in the late game modern era.
The 1st one and 2nd one were the shit back in the day, 3rd one was a colossal failure that killed the series and its developer. They are very old, though (Empire Earth 1 was released in 2001, its sequel - in 2005) and have some technical issues on modern PCs.

Spoiler

Empire Earth 1:
The future campaign was quite cheesy - it was about how Russia, led by such true-to-life characters like Grigori Ivanovich Stoyanovich (sic) and his AI-controlled giant robot successor Grigori II (!), conquers the world with an army of Japanese-esque mechas. This picture from the game describes it perfectly.

Empire Earth 2:
Less cheesiness, more pathos. The modern campaign was about America - after the Spanish-American war (a novelty), the World Wars and the Cold War, the missions of the campaign were about preventing some renegade US general and his private cyborg army from launching a coup d'état (later on - nuclear war). Future units became more Battlemech-like.

Empire Earth 3 suffered from the lack of campaigns (replaced by a Rise of Nations-like 'conquer the Earth' mode), excessive streamlining (all numerous civilizations were merged into 3 - Western, Eastern and Middle Eastern; the number of ages were shortened to 5, etc.), AI and balance problems, and unfixed bugs. Don't bother with it.

All of them can be found on GOG or torrents.

 

[Army Burger]

The game you describe is called Empire Earth - it has more or less the same game mechanics, except it goes from the Stone Age into the far future. That's both its best feature and its main downside - AoE-style game mechanics that work well for ancient and medieval times feel awkward in the late game modern era.
The 1st one and 2nd one were the shit back in the day, 3rd one was a colossal failure that killed the series and its developer. They are very old, though (Empire Earth 1 was released in 2001, its sequel - in 2005) and have some technical issues on modern PCs.

Spoiler

Empire Earth 1:
The future campaign was quite cheesy - it was about how Russia, led by such true-to-life characters like Grigori Ivanovich Stoyanovich (sic) and his AI-controlled giant robot successor Grigori II (!), conquers the world with an army of Japanese-esque mechas. This picture from the game describes it perfectly.

Empire Earth 2:
Less cheesiness, more pathos. The modern campaign was about America - after the Spanish-American war (a novelty), the World Wars and the Cold War, the missions of the campaign were about preventing some renegade US general and his private cyborg army from launching a coup d'état (later on - nuclear war). Future units became more Battlemech-like.

Empire Earth 3 suffered from the lack of campaigns (replaced by a Rise of Nations-like 'conquer the Earth' mode), excessive streamlining (all numerous civilizations were merged into 3 - Western, Eastern and Middle Eastern; the number of ages were shortened to 5, etc.), AI and balance problems, and unfixed bugs. Don't bother with it.

All of them can be found on GOG or torrents.

I'll have to check that out. Thanks for the suggestion!

 

[Billy_Sama]

I like to think Sega would let Camelot Software Planing to make a new Shining Force game instead of producing inferior weeaboo Shining titles, but Sega always let their franchises rot away as usual.

 

[sasazuka]

^ Speaking of Camelot, I'd love it if a new Golden Sun game could be released on 3DS. I don't think it's too late, the previous Golden Sun game got a release late in the DS's life cycle.

 

[Hypodermic Johnny]

I'm going to echo similar thoughts re: Golden Sun. Dark Dawn was terrible. It gave us too much and too little at the same time in regards to too much info/elemental abilities/Djinn/characters and then not nearly enough development of those characters. *coughAmitiandAlexcough*

And this might be my bias towards Lost Age, but I'd love to see them release a new GS game that tells us what the hell happened to Felix and Piers and pretty much EVERYONE ELSE WHO WAS IMPORTANT in The Lost Age that they just wrote off as having 'gone away'. DD felt like a crappy sequel to GS itself more than the series as a whole, to be honest.

Also, the Mother series. I know there's no sequel planned to Mother 3. I've come to accept that, because Mother 3 had a pretty decent ending. But why it's never been released in the US, I don't know. It's got all the things that made Earthbound itself great and an emotional punch that can't be beat.

 

[Fulda's Gap]

Dropship: UPF and G-Police.

 

[c-no]

Shogo: Mobile Armor Division. Granted, I started playing it yesterday and finished it today but I honestly love to of seen more come out of it as a series. The credits in the game literally said be on the look out for more of the Shogo saga but that never really came to be aside from an easter egg in FEAR 2.