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Ten games that deserve to be remade
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Where does Wing
Commander rank?
Every year, I am amazed at how sophisticated, complex and downright cool games are becoming as advances in graphics, artificial intelligence and the art of creating games progress. When I sit down to a game of Call of Duty: World at War, I remember the days of playing Rambo on my Commodore 64 and how clumsy the 2D 8-bit graphics would look when compared to modern games.
But I also look back at some of the classic games and miss certain gameplay aspects, such as the difficulty of some of those games. While we've grown used to having our progress in games saved, and many games like Star Wars: The Force Unleashed play out more like an interactive movie than a game, there is something to be said for a challenging level of difficulty and the sense of accomplishment when you overcome the challenge.
There are many innovative games coming out these days -- like Spore and LittleBigPlanet -- but there are also many innovative games of years past that have fallen by the wayside. Which leads me to wonder how cool some of these games would be if done with today's graphics and sophistication? Here are a list of 10 great games of the past that would be totally cool if they were remade today.
10. Archon
Archon was like chess on steroids. The board was set up similar to chess, with a line of pawn-like pieces in front of some more powerful pieces. You moved around the board similar to chess and the goal was to defeat enemy pieces. But, instead of having a piece automatically defeat the opponents piece when moved on top of it, the game switched into a combat level where the pieces did battle with each other.
What really made the game cool was the number of cool pieces, like the unicorn that could shoot rays at the opponent or a shapeshifter unit that took on the shape of whatever it was fighting.
9. Front Page Sports: Football
EA Sports has tried twice to create a true football sim, but compared to the Front Page Sports: Football series, they've failed horribly. Granted, the graphics in NFL Head Coach 09 are pretty good even if they are based on the Madden 08 engine, and the offseason in NFL Head Coach 09 -- especially the draft -- is awesome. But where EA Sports failed was in appealing to what the football sim audience wants -- a full control, stat-based football sim that incorporates the strategy of football and allows the player to design plays with a sophisticated play designer.
The laughable joke of the play designer in NFL Head Coach 09 isn't even as good as the play designer in some of the older Madden football games. It's not even close to what FPS: Football provided. Add in the ability to create a detailed gameplan, true simming according to that gameplan and the focus on stats, and EA Sports could learn a lot of things from FPS: Football.
8. Everquest
Everquest captured excitement better
than most MMOs
It seems like just the other day that each new MMO was met with the question, "Will this be the MMO that kills Everquest?" The MMO genre has come a long ways since the days when we had to wait 20-30 seconds for a zone to load, downtime was taken to such an extreme that you could read a book while waiting for your mana bar to fill back up, and the most popular use of the elven forests was to auction items.
But Everquest also captured a level of wonder and excitement that doesn't exist in modern MMOs. The death penalty -- as much as we hated it at the time -- made each battle more fun. The word "train" took on a new meaning when you really didn't want to die, and exploring new areas was done with a trepidation unmatched in today's MMO where you oftentimes might find yourself diving off a cliff to your death simply because you didn't want to walk back to your bind spot.
And, while it wasn't the most balanced MMO, it was that imbalance that sometimes made it all the more fun. Today's MMOs sometimes seem too balanced -- overanalyzed to the extent that some of the fun has been sucked out of them. Even Everquest 2 suffered from the 'we are so worried about balance that we'll forget about fun' issue.
Every few years, we see a game based roughly on some of the concepts pioneered by games like Elite and Wing Commander, but very few do justice to the legacy. Wing Commander stands out because it took the concept of Elite, added in a detailed story, littered the story with fun missions and had you flying as part of a squadron.
Among the coolest things about Wing Commander was its replayability. Because the mission path was determined by how well you did in previous missions, playing back through the game could lead to new surprises. Also, being based on semi-realistic physics, it allowed cool maneuvers like afterburner slides that let you strafe past an enemy ship and light them up with weapon fire. (While it isn't the same as playing the old games, you can get a taste of the action with the Xbox Live Arcade game Wing Commander: Arena).
6. Ultima IV
Ultima IV might be the most
innovative RPG ever
Another title by Origin Systems, Ultima IV makes the list because it is an RPG unlike any other RPG. Your standard role-playing game consists of a world-saving mission, a series of quests, some baddies to beat up on, some neat items, and after completing that series of quests, a showdown with the bad guy.
Ultima IV broke new ground by adding a moral structure to the game with a free-form quest of becoming the Avatar by following the eight virtues: honesty, compassion, valor, justice, honor, sacrifice, spirituality and humility. The player attained enlightenment in these virtues based on their actions throughout the game, thus the major focus of the game was in allowing the player freedom to do what they wanted and tracking their behavior based on these virtues.
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