More so than fans of any other entertainment medium, gamers are notoriously nostalgic. When we aren’t digging through our old consoles to replay games from our childhood, or passionately defending Sonic Adventure in YouTube comments (it was great at the time, okay?!) we’re whooping and hollering at announcements of reboots, and falling over one another to play remastered editions of video games that are barely even 4 years old. We appreciate our past, and that’s not necessarily a bad thing.
But there are some series that have somehow drifted into obscurity which, considering how much we love it when old game franchises are brought kicking and screaming into the 21st century, is more than a little baffling. The following series featured in this list have all failed to make it to current-gen consoles despite us protesting for their return, though we still hold out hope that someone, somewhere is listening to us and they’ll each make a wondrous comeback.
Here are 10 dead video game franchises that we desperately want to see resurrected:
Image Credit: Ariel Flores
10 Video Game Series That We Desperately Want to See Revived
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Burnout
As the racing genre continues to veer more and more into simulation, with there being very few arcade-y titles being produced in among the Forza's and the F1's and the Moto GP's, now seems like a perfect time for EA to tap Criterion Games on their collective shoulders and ask them to get back in the studio and create a new Burnout game.
We haven't received a new entry in the beloved series since 2008's Burnout Paradise, and truth be told we haven't played a racing game that has matched the excitement we felt playing Burnout 3: Takedown since that game was released way back in 2004.
It's incredible to think that Burnout 3 would lead to the series facing a downwards trajectory in terms of its popularity, with neither of its sequels managing to achieve the same sales or acclaim as Takedown. Since then Criterion has been busying itself with the Need For Speed series and the recent Battlefield Hardline, but we long for them to return to the franchise that first made them famous, utilizing the power of the latest gaming hardware in order to create an experience that will rival our memory of Burnout 3.
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Conker
There are other Rare properties that people would rather place on this list, with many longing for a new Banjo-Kazooie or Battletoads. But here's the thing: there already is a new Banjo coming out (sort of) in the form of Yooka-Laylee, which is being developed by former Rare staff and is a successor to the Nintendo 64 classic in everything but name. As for Battletoads, well... it's difficult to be excited for a sequel to a side-scrolling platformer that was massively overrated in the first place. Battletoads was decent, sure, but it's known more for its cruel difficulty level than it is for its great level design or gameplay. A sequel would only stand to remove those rose-tinted glasses.
So instead we have Conker, a series that would be more at home in this console generation than it was back in 2001, with it achieving mediocre sales initially but then going on to become a major cult hit. Conker's Bad Fur Day only inspired one "sequel" in the form of Conker: Live and Reloaded, which remade the single-player component of the first game but added online multiplayer modes.
Microsoft has teased us with a Conker sequel before, introducing levels based upon the expletive-spewing squirrel's adventures to Project Spark, though we have yet to see the true, M-rated successor to Bad Fur Day that we desperately want.
With the platforming genre all but dead outside of Nintendo's contributions, a new entry in the Conker series could surely fill a gap in the market, and as we learned from South Park: The Stick of Truth there are a large number of gamers who are more than willing to embrace profane toilet humor.
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Fight Night
The lack of a new Fight Night game is a direct result of boxing as a sport going down the toilet in recent years. The good will for the sport that could have been generated by the Mayweather and Pacquiao fight was unfounded, as both competitors engaged in arguably the most expensive yet most dull main event fight in boxing history, and so EA are continuing to focus more on its UFC titles.
That's unfortunate, because Fight Night was always one of the very best sport game franchises and the last release in the series, Fight Night Champion, represented the pinnacle of boxing games. Boasting an impressive and engrossing single-player story mode, hugely impressive visuals and tightened gameplay, Fight Night Champion absolutely deserves a sequel regardless of how poor boxing as a professional sport is in 2015.
EA Sports UFC was underwhelming, following in the footsteps of the mediocre EA Sports MMA rather than the vastly superior UFC Undisputed series, and we're not all that excited about EA taking a third stab at a video game recreation of mixed martial arts. We'd much rather them come out swinging with a new Fight Night game, so hopefully interest around the sport itself increases in order to convince EA that doing so would be a viable decision.
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TimeSplitters
Have you played a TImeSplitters game recently? Yeah, they don't hold up so well. With the FPS having received the biggest overhaul of perhaps any genre over the years, games such as TimeSplitters and GoldenEye really don't cut the mustard anymore. But that's not to say that a new TimeSplitters game, one that features a few tweaks to the format in order to help it compete with other shooters, wouldn't be welcomed with open arms.
TimeSplitters 4 has been teased for years now, but it's never managed to make it onto store shelves. This is likely because the increased popularity of military shooters has led to FPS's that deviate from the formula to be left by the wayside, and also because developers Free Radical Design were acquired by Crytek who, as you can imagine, set them to task on Crysis 2 and 3.
But those of us who favored the more over-the-top shooters in the vein of Unreal Tournament are clamoring for more games cut from the same cloth, so if Sony were to announce a new TimeSplitters, we'd throw our money at them immediately.
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Chrono
Considering the SNES's vast library of classic games that Chrono Trigger, a game not developed nor published by Nintendo, is considered one of if not the best games on the console is a tremendous achievement on behalf of Square (now known as Square Enix).
Chrono Trigger was a landmark RPG, boasting all of the qualities that exemplify the greatest games in the genre: an engrossing story, a detailed and huge world world to explore and one of the best soundtracks ever featured in a video game. Its sequel, Chrono Cross, was also well-received, though it is the first game in the series that many remember so fondly.
Square registered a trademark for Chrono Break back in 2001, though it has never been utilized and we have yet to see another entry in the series. Though Square Enix mostly busies itself with Final Fantasy these days, we'd still love to see them return to Chrono and deliver a next-gen follow-up to the RPG classic.
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F Zero
In terms of Nintendo's home-brewed franchises F-Zero has pulled in some of the worst sales, so it's no major surprise that the a new entry in the series didn't make its way to the struggling Wii U. However, that we haven't seen a new F-Zero game since the GameCube is a travesty, and we hope that this issue will be rectified come the release of the Nintendo NX.
If the NX has improved online capabilities then a new F-Zero could make for a perfect multiplayer racer, offering up a more competitive and fast-paced alternative to Mario Kart. While we love WipeOut (which is also a series that we'd love to see revived), F-Zero holds a special place in our heart thanks to the countless hours we spent with the SNES classic, F-Zero X and the underrated F-Zero GX.
If the NX's hardware manages to compete with the likes of the PS4 and Xbox One, a series such as F-Zero - which is all about recreating that feeling of being catapulted around loop-de-loops at breakneck speeds - would benefit greatly from it, and it might convince Nintendo to take another stab at making the series as popular as its other in-house releases.
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Twisted Metal
A lot of people would try to convince you that 2012's Twisted Metal was a bad game, but that simply wasn't true. Sure, it had its flaws, but so did all of the Twisted Metal games and that didn't prevent them from being any less fun. Series creator David Jaffe has stated that he isn't working on a Twisted Metal game for the PS4, and he left the company who created the game, Eat Sleep Play, in order to pursue free-to-play releases.
But despite Twisted Metal being a lot of fun, there were a number of things holding it back. For one, the game had to contend with PS3's sub-par PlayStation Network, which has since been greatly improved and allows for much better online multiplayer. Twisted Metal was a game that needed a dedicated online community in order to thrive, and in that regard it failed - but with the mammoth success of Rocket League proving that people want to do things in virtual cars other than race them, a PS4 Twisted Metal with a strong focus upon its online component would give gamers a new multiplayer experience other than sports and shooting games.
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Legacy of Kain
Legacy of Kain was a weird series that had a sporadic level of popularity, though most will argue that Legacy of Kain: Soul Reaver was the greatest of the bunch. The Legacy of Kain series was split between two separate narrative in the form of the Soul Reaver, which starred protagonist Raziel, and Blood Omen, in which the player took control of Kain, both of these deviations within the Legacy of Kain universe saw two different teams working upon them, with both the Blood Omen and Soul Reaver sub-series receiving a sequel each.
The last entry in the LoK series, Defiance, saw both teams join together to combine various successful elements from both Soul Reaver and Blood Omen, though it didn't perform as well as other games in the series. With that being said, gameplay footage from the canned Soul Reaver successor, Dead Suns, recently surfaced and highlighted how the Legacy of Kain series has certainly not been forgotten, with its lore also having been utilized in the upcoming free-to-play multiplayer game Nosgoth.
But we want to see a true return to form for Kain and Raziel with a brand new Legacy of Kain game, and hopefully developer Crystal Dynamics will eventually fit it into their busy schedule alongside the rebooted Tomb Raider series.
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Power Stone
There are very few games that even try to compete with Super Smash Bros. in terms of offline 4-player brawlers, which is a shame considering it's a sub-genre that is rife with potential. One such series that recognized this potential was Power Stone, released on the Dreamcast in a period of time when developer Capcom could seemingly do no wrong.
Only two games were released in the Power Stone series along with a PSP collection of them, and it's baffling that Capcom hasn't returned to it since. People who don't own a Nintendo console are clamoring for an alternative on the PS4 and Xbox One, so much so that PlayStation All Stars Battle Royale managed to pull in decent numbers despite being a woeful clone of Nintendo's own mascot beat 'em up.
If Capcom were to revive the series and introduce a variety of online multiplayer features, something which Nintendo's series has always sorely been lacking, then finally PlayStation and Xbox gamers would have a great alternative to Nintendo's popular franchise.
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Dino Crisis
Dino Crisis was a very silly game, but so was Resident Evil and if that can still be one of the hottest franchises around despite the last two entries in the series being notably sub-par, then Capcom can certainly revive its dinosaur survival-horror series after 2003's woeful Dino Crisis 3, which had the ludicrous idea of sending the prehistoric beasts into space.
The Dino Crisis series never quite garnered the critical acclaim of Resident Evil, but its off-the-wall concept was enough to warrant it achieving an admirable level of popularity among PlayStation owners, who have continued to push for the release of a fourth entry in the series.
With Capcom failing to maintain the quality of the Resident Evil series it seems unlikely at this point that they'd produce a Dino Crisis game that would live up to expectations, but we hope to see a new entry in the franchise released at some point in the future.
Image Credit: Ariel Flores
