Similar in vein to Patrick’s post about what unexpected sequels we would want, I’m curious about what SPIRITUAL SUCCESSORS folks would be like to see. Those games that had neat ideas, core concepts, but typically had a theme or even a brand attachment that doesn’t get you exactly jazzed about a direct sequel. Maybe there were bad politics, dumb humor, or something simply off.
YuGiOh Duelists of The Rose - Okay, so I’m bad at actual card games that force me to play against other humans. It is a recipe for stress and embarrassment, things I don’t need to fill my days with. DotR though essentially stole the YuGiOh cards to put together a board game that doesn’t explain itself well but lets me perform FUSIONS which is what I am here for.
What I Would Want Out of A SS: Not YuGiOh. Better explaining the systems. Improve game flow because despite the battles looking neat, they were LONG.
The Movies - I did a whole seperate thread on this but come on now. Mixed very light elements of The Sims, Zoo Tycoon, and Windows Movie Maker. There were so many things that could have been improved but now we can’t even play it on a modern machine wtihout hopping through hoops.
What I Would Want Out of A SS: More biz strategy. Seemed like there was definitely a preferred course of action in the original. My favorite tycoon games allow me to sort of find success, even if it is a niche success if I want to build around a certain aspect of my park/studio I can as long as I do it “well”.
Buzz! Quizz World - I love trivia games. I am not smart but a nice casual pop cultural trivia game that involves some twists is FUN! The death of Scene It still brings a tear to my eye. Each game had little twists on the formula each round. The presentation was wacky and rad.
What I Would Want Out of A SS: Bigger and more boisterous. More consistent trivia. Free DLC that works. I got DLC for this thing and the formatting was botched to bits.
Buzz! Quizz World - I love trivia games. I am not smart but a nice casual pop cultural trivia game that involves some twists is FUN! The death of Scene It still brings a tear to my eye. Each game had little twists on the formula each round. The presentation was wacky and rad.
Have you tried the Jackbox games? I feel like they scratch a similar itch, and the novelty of playing a multiplayer game on your phone is pretty enduring.
For me, I would kill for a new Magic: The Gathering RPG. Witcher III with the Gwent combat mod was pretty close, but nothing beats the mechanics of Magic in my eyes.
Alpha Protocol. The thing is I don’t think Obsidian is currently set up to make this game successfully. I’d like to see a Dev like Arkane work on something like this though!
Alien 3 for SNES. Sure, a lot of that game’s appeal was/is in the aesthetic, music and refreshingly laissez-faire approach to the source material. Still, I would love to see a current-day side-scrolling shooter-platformer built on that same kind of level design and mission structure. It offered up a feeling of freedom and exploration most commonly associated with your metroidvanias, in the more tightly designed and finite environment of a level-based platformer.
I’ve always been fascinated by the Lionhead’s Black & White series.
I loved both games even though they were full of game ruining glitches and a very very annoying creature. However, the amount of powers that were given to the player did really make you feel like a mad god.
Any company that can pick up on those ideas and give me a sandbox where I can fulfill my guilty pleasure of being a divine ruler would be fantastic.
For me, Jack feels more like a party game where what I want is a game that my dad gets slightly disgruntled with me after beating me at Tribon, great game, for a decade. Where the core is trivia and the outside stuff is window dressing on the whole. Fun dressing, might even make things taste that much better , but still dressing
Evil Genius (PC) Protect your base, à la 60s-Bond-villain-lair, with booby traps and circuitous death trap corridors. The game was rather clunky, but it had a very similar vibe to Team Fortress 2 in that someone was constantly yelling at you over a PA system about intruders infiltrating the base.
The Dark Cloud series and the SaGa Frontier series! Ni No Kuni 2 scratched the itch for a JRPG with real-time combat and city building but I don’t want a forced isometric view whenever I feel like walking around the city I built. There have been a few games that seem SaGa inspired that have come out in the last few years but they’ve never looked interesting enough for me to actually pick up.
I’ve wanted this for so, so long. I genuinely don’t get how we got a remake of Theme Hospital before this. It was such a good game, and I feel an even deeper, almost Football Manager deep dive of a game could be hugely successful.
For example, imagine actually managing staff. Like, I’m making a war movie. Do I hire a historian to research the actual battles? Can I pay survivors for their stories? Are there any books I can chase the rights to? Who can find me all of this? I need actors too. What agencies have people on their books with some clout who aren’t already booked out right now? What are their requirements on set and monetarily? Imagine having to think about who people will and won’t work with, what they expect of facilities on site, having to manage scandals, and so on. You could do a serious, deep game, using The Movies as a starting frame. And it would be great.
As for a choice of my own, I’d love a spiritual successor to Exhumed. I was oddly obsessed with the Saturn version of the game as a kid, and it was hard as balls. More weird, pseudo-historical shooters, please.
y’all, what i wouldn’t do for a spiritual successor to Mega Man Legends.
it doesn’t even have to be a Keiji Inafune joint – after the uh, debacles, of Mighty No. 9 and Red Ashe, i’m not sure that would pan out so great. but something about the world and ruin aesthetic are so compelling to me.
every few years I go back and play Dragon Force for the Saturn. It had a sequel released only in Japan, but which finally has a great fan translation, but still… I’d love a newer take on it. I seemingly have not been able to find anything else in its vein. Though something must exist.
A spiritual successor to Seaman narrated by Morgan Freeman in Leonard Nimoy’s place haunts my dreams and even some waking moments.
edit: uhhhh just found this out (tw: sexual harassment, sexual assault) so…how about Patrick Stewart instead, he’s got a nice soothing voice and it keeps up the ex-Trek vibe
