Jonah is in LA, TJ is at EVO, and who knows where Scott is.
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Episode 497: Only Three More Til 500Episode 497: Only Three More Til 500
The podcast slowly inches towards the magic 500th episode of Gaming Podcast, representing over 11 years of yakking about video games. For a Gaming Flashback, the gang looks at arguably the last good Mario game, Super Mario Galaxy. They also discuss the phenomenon that is Fortnite.
As for the gaming news, this week includes:
- Atari reveals Ataribox, renamed Atari VCS
- Ys: Memories of Celceta will arrive on PC this summer
- Fortnite is already the second highest grossing game on iOS
- Top Fortnite streamer Ninja earns $500,000 per month
Do you play Fortnite? Let us know.
Sierra’s Franchise Titles Fade Into HistorySierra’s Franchise Titles Fade Into History
One of the great downfalls of an acquisition or merger, in the game industry, is the loss of great franchise titles. Sierra, or Sierra Online, once stood on its own as a company with great gaming titles but later fell into the depths of Hades under many different company names.
Sierra’s last stop on the acquisition highway was Vivendi, years after much of Sierra’s steam had slowed. Now, they’re part of Activision Blizzard so we had high hopes they’d find a great use for some of the old Sierra properties long since collecting dust. Space Quest, Kings Quest, Leisure Suit Larry and especially Gabrielle Knight were some of our favorites, but times have changed.
“We are retaining only those franchises that are a strong fit with our long-term strategy including Crash Bandicoot, Ice Age and Spyro, as well as Prototype and a second game that has not yet been announced. We will not publish any other titles that previously were part of the Vivendi Games portfolio and we are currently reviewing our options regarding those titles,” says Activision Blizzard (joystiq)
This is unfortunate news, Activision Blizzard now has a large set of franchises on their hands, many of which have collected dust for years. Those dust collecting franchises could rise from the dead and reinvigorate their old fan base… or be dropped to the earth as unwanted scrapes after a big hunt with the vultures awaiting their take (sorry, too much watching of Animal Planet)
A reworked Kings Quest or Gabriel Knight could have seriously awesome potential in this time and age, imagine a dark comedy version of Gabriel Knight or a huge scaled world in King Quest using todays graphic engines. Although, these titles could also go the way Atari has gone and taken a well remembered franchise and made mud of its great name (*cough* Alone in the Dark).
Unfortunately, we’ll probably never know the distance an old franchise could go in this new world. We’ll have to pull out an old copy of our prized posessions and remember just how great they once where.
We Need Another Ikari WarriorsWe Need Another Ikari Warriors
In 1986 SNK released Ikari Warriors, it had all the makings of a classic title. Cool weapons, time strategies, two player action and a great challenge. We’re now seeing folks reproduce some of the essence of classic games by creating platformers like Little Big Planet and Mega Man 9, where is the love for the top-down scrollers?
Ikari Wariors was one of the first game titles to use a rotary joystick along with a directional system. Looking at the current generation Xbox 360 and PlayStation 3 it’s plain to see the joystick is equipped with this design. We’ve seen Geometry Wars utilize the analog stick to create a 360 directional attack, so it’s possible to utilize this behavior for Ikari Warriors.
Given SNK is still alive under the name SNK Playmore the intellectual property must still exist to breath fresh life into an Ikari Warrior remake, with about six to eight months development time a classy title could be re-developed using old concepts brought to the current generation hardware.
Blast grenades, RPG’s, smart bombs, air strikes the options are limitless and the concept has been proven to work. Given the gamer demographic of 18-34 it’s plain to see old gamers of the Arcade and NES would recall and rebuild their love for the title while attracting younger audiences whom have never seen an Ikari Warriors title; if it worked in 1986 are we so adverse to it working again?
Games do not have to implement full 3D perspective graphics to be cool, we’ve seen proof in that with the Wii and the demand for titles like Little Big Planet. We neeed another Ikari Warriors.