Every once in a while a seemingly good game franchise will sour it's reputation by drifting away from the original core. The developers, often with good intentions, fail to see the key reasons why their dedicated fans loved the original classics. And what do you get? Zelda II: The Adventures of Link.

Yet Nintendo learned from this failure. In EPIC fashion. Four years later, with the release of Zelda: A Link to the Past, fans could once again rejoice as the series restored it's original bread and butter top down RPG gameplay. And since then they've taken a conservative approach to intelligently evolving their games throughout each generation of gaming.

ZELDA LIVES ON while other game brands DIE. No longer at the top of their game niche, these "dead game brands" have strayed to far away from their successful formula. And have inadvertently dismantled their dwindling fan base into a useless heap of smoking dust.

Yet rather than just bashing the game devs for killing their own brands we'll offer new solutions. And ideas that can be adopted into a broader strategy to rebuild the franchise image and return it to the forefront of the gaming world.

Profiled below are the five game brands that are dead AND our proposed solutions.

 

#5. Need For Speed

What happened to the Need For Speed? Long ago, perhaps the mid 1990's, every gamer new that Need For Speed was the best racing franchise. Games like Hot Pursuit and Porsche Unleashed offered the perfect blend of simulation and arcade style gameplay. The games were packed with customizable cars and intelligently designed tracks.

Yet the series has never been the same since the "Fast & Furious" era. Kickstarted by the release of Need For Speed Underground, it was at that point the NFS developers (EA executives more accurately) abandoned a realistic racing simulation style gameplay and ventured into the realm of trendy arcade style racing.

Need For Speed: Underground (or NFS 7) was a good game. The innovative new, street style racing was impressive. And while this image may have been successful short term, this "Fast & Furious" racing became a fad faster than you could say Vin Diesel is a douche.

Yet for some reason the NFS developers still insist we are all gangsters who drive cars late at night with neon ground effects. With the latest game, Need For Speed Pro Street, the franchise has literally hit rock bottom. Across the board the game has received piss poor reviews primarily because it's plagued by sluggish controls and poor gameplay. How, after 10+ years of making racing games, could you possibly fail at the most fundamental elements of a racing game?? It's like having a 13 year old kid who suddenly shit the bed, it doesn't make any sense.

And now, after releasing it's worst title yet, the competition to NFS rages on stronger and better than ever. In comparison to Burnout, any NFS game is simply an embarrassment. The Burnout developers have created a polished brand image of a game that blatantly dominates NFS effort's at every turn. Wicked crashes, damaged vehicles, insane frame rates. After playing Burnout, Jumping back into Need For Speed is like going from a Porsche to a Geo.

While the NFS game brand once dominated the racing market, it now has a serious identity crisis caught up in competition with the likes of Burnout, Gran Turismo, and the newly released GRID.

Solution: Need For Speed Undercover

It's time to write off all those trendy street racing clones and take it back to the core formula that was so successful in the first series. A rewarding career mode featuring powerful sports cars & super cars, semi-realistic racing dynamics, large open ended tracks with beautiful scenery and varied weather conditions (including daylight for fuck sakes), the occasional traffic and the highway patrol cops.

This "proposed solution" is, in actuality, an existing idea in motion being developed as we speak (hopefully). EA Games President Frank Gibeau has indicated that for the upcoming Need For Speed: Undercover title the franchise will go back to its "roots".

Publicly acknowledging that Pro Street was garbage, the NFS team has made a significant change to their development strategy. They'll continue to release a new game every year however they've split up the development team into 2 so that each group actually is on a 24 month cycle. This should make for more polished, better quality racing games.

 

 

#4. Medal of Honor

The first and greatest Medal of Honor on the PC, Allied Assault, was an intense run-and-gun shooter with surprises at every turn. Anyone who has played this game will remember the excitement of storming the banks of Omaha beach. This game excelled in every aspect: gameplay, graphics, and incredible sound. It single handedly established a new standard in World War games, one that would inspire countless other new titles such as Call of Duty.

Since Allied Assault was released over 6 years ago, EA released two expansion packs, two new Medal of Honor games and a bunch of console exclusives too many to mention. And for each of these releases... EA has essentially repackaged the same game while at somehow managing to make it even worse every time.

EA put another nail in the coffin with the latest installment "Airborne". With such a blatantly crappy grame is there anything they could do to regain ground?

Solution: Stay Dead

This series is over. EA needs to adopt a more quality driven approach to game development and it starts by killing off a few franchises that they refuse to let die. At this point, if the Medal of Honor franchise is to have any chance of making a comeback, it is best to put things on hold, and instead focus on strengthening their other intellectual properties, while keeping the next Medal of Honor game on the backburner.

 

 

#3. Sonic the Fucking Hedgehog

This one really pisses me off. Sonic is one of two primary reasons for Sega's failure in the console market. Why did SEGA's console manufacturing business go bankrupt? The two reasons are that the DreamCast was piece of shit and that Sonic did not deliver.

It's amazing how Sega dropped the ball on what could have been their massive success. Sega missed a window of opportunity they will NEVER get back. If you allow me to re-write history for a moment, here is what could have been...

The DreamCast. This was the do or die moment. The console itself needed just 3 revisions. 1) Make the system black 2) add DVD playback and 3) change the fucking name

If you recall, the DreamCast was the first of three next gen systems during an era involving also the PS2 and the GameCube.

Like today, there were "the big 3" console manufacturers. The biggest winner of this era was by far Sony and it's PS2. For three reasons: it was black, it had DVD playback, and backwards compatibility with previous titles.

The combination of these factors gave justification for every dude and his brother to buy one. It was the "cool system". And this was key because at the time gaming was not quite as mainstream as it is today. The PS2 changed all of that because it was black. And it had DVD support. And the middle aged man could buy it for his living room and not feel like a kiddy gamer.

This could have been SEGA. Being the first system out, along with a dark black look, DVD playback, a cooler name like "Xcube" and an epic Sonic game as a launch title - Sega would have held all the cards in the console deck, and would go on to rise to the top of gaming. Even surpassing their glory days of the Sega Genesis.

BUT, instead SEGA died. And so to did Sonic.

Yet all is not lost. Sonic can be revived. His reputation restored. Here's how.

Solution: Sonic 2D

Ever since Sonic ventured beyond the Sega Genesis era he has failed to deliver a quality game.

Sonic should be 2D... forever!

Sonic was never destined for the 3D platform. It's time to return him to his glory days of side scroller action.

SEGA is forgiven for trying a 3 dimensional sonic. At one point it was the "cool thing to do".

And just as the Zelda series hit a dark age with Zelda II, Sonic can also make a glorious comeback. It has just taken Sega a little longer to realize their fuckup.

The new "Sonic 2D" will succeed not only because of fast action, addictive gameplay, but because it's a bold statement by SEGA to the gaming world. It says "hey bitches, we made a new Sonic and it's Two-fucking-D. That's right, he's back the way you love him. And he's as badass as ever."

 

 

#2. James Bond

The best James Bond game ever made is GoldenEye 007.

With GoldenEye, a new standard was established that defined how to make a First-Person-Shooter game for the console. And since it's release to the N64 over 10 years ago, the game has been key inspiration to hundreds of other console shooters including Halo.

Unfortunately there has never been a worthy sequel. For Goldeneye fans, the last decade of Bond games have been one disappointment after another. Until now.

Solution: Goldeneye Source

The solution at first seems tricky. Ideally, Rare would simply make the next Bond game. However, Rare, now owned by Microsoft, does not have a license to develop James Bond games.

In fact, Nintendo & Microsoft/Rare cannot even work out a deal to bring the now ancient Goldeneye 007 to Wii Virtual Console.

And Rare's unique intellectual property Perfect Dark is the unofficial yet implied follow up to GoldenEye. However, a "new Perfect Dark" game isn't exactly a satisfactory solution because while the two Perfect Dark games have been pretty decent, they obviously do not bring back that feeling of the original Goldeneye.

That's why the solution IS Goldeneye Source. This Half-Life 2 mod has the potential to "bring back the memories and experiences form the original GoldenEye 64." In fact, with a little more time & continued development progress this mod will be better.

 

 

#1. Chrono Trigger

Now here is a franchise that is dead because it has just been so long since a sequel ! So many die hard Chrono Trigger fans have been waiting for eons for a new installment to the Chrono series. Even with over 10 multiple endings, fans can only play the original SNES game so many times.

Chrono Trigger was, and still is, considered one of the greatest games ever created. A dream team of game developers created a masterpiece of innovation in graphics, sound, and RPG gameplay. One of the biggest features was the battle system which enabled the player to see and avoid enemies rather than having to put up with the annoying random-encounter battles in every other RPG at that time.

The official sequel to Chrono Trigger, released on the PSX as Chrono Cross, is another example of a game developer abandoning it's roots. Though it was hailed for its impressive presentation and original design, many fans were disappointed and the fan base was divided over whether or not Chrono Cross was a true sequel.

It was considered by many a step backwards, in particular because of the return to traditional random-encounter battles.

 

Solution: Chrono Trigger: Resurrection

There is a fan project called "Chrono Trigger: Resurrection". They're objectives are spot on: to recreate the original Chrono Trigger in high resolution 3D.

Besides the fact that they will get sued, it's a great idea!

It's a nice dream for those fans working on the project, and they should be commended. Yet it just is never going to happen unless Square-Enix are the developers. In the end, Square-Enix is in control of Chrono's destiny.

Yet if this fan project has accomplished anything, it is that Square-Enix will have taken note about what fans are looking for. Hopefully Square-Enix recognizes how cool it would be to see a new, improved 3D world for Chrono Trigger.

The biggest advantage of a graphically impressive, updated Chrono Trigger is that it revitalizes interest in the 13 year old game AND it shows gamers new to the series how epic the Chrono Trigger story really was.

In the meantime, fans will have justification to play the original Chrono Trigger one more time as the game has an upcoming re-release to the Nintendo DS. Although there won't be any graphical improvements, the game will take advantage of dual screen for menus and inventory. The game is expected to be out before 2009.