EA Looking Into Reviving Classic Games? 142
Gamasutra reports that Electronic Arts has filed for trademarks on several popular old franchises: Populous, Wing Commander, Theme Park, and Road Rash. This, along with comments from Harvey Elliot of EA's Bright Light Studio, have led many to suspect that we may see new titles for those IPs in the near future. Elliot said, "If you remember all the old classics you played, if you go back and play them now, they're not the same. They were right for their time, and the trick with those games is coming up with what's right for the time now. I'm going to look at them at some point; I think there's an opportunity to bring those back in the future, but only if it's right for the time and not just a 'remake' or something. We'd need to do it in a way that's true to the original values, but would still make a great game today."
Theme Hospital 2 (Score:4, Insightful)
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You are aware who you're asking, yes? What you'll get is basically the same game with a few new graphic tiles and a 50 bucks price tag.
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I'm seriously hoping that they don't go through with it because I'm completely unwilling to buy anything from them any more. I'm always puzzled that they can feign outrage at piracy even as they make it less and less tenable to buy their products.
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But of course they're outraged at piracy! Fewer and fewer people buy their products, so it has to be due to piracy! It can't be that people refuse to rent software at buying prices.
Re:Theme Hospital 2 (Score:5, Funny)
Are you telling me a 50 bugs price tag is too high to watch people suffer from both Bloaty Head and The Squits at the same time in high definition 3d?
Heathen.
Re:Theme Hospital 2 (Score:4, Funny)
50 bugs price tag
50 bugs?
Any restriction on what breed they have to be?
Do ants count?
What a novel way to pay for your games. I can now afford *millions* of games
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I'm a programmer, I can afford billions. I'm rich. RICH!
Re:Theme Hospital 2 (Score:4, Informative)
Reality check... (Score:1, Interesting)
"We'd need to do it in a way that's true to the original values, but would still make a great game today"
And you expect that from EA? They've been losing a lot of popularity for a reason.....
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They've been losing a lot of popularity for a reason.....
Bestsellers in Video Games [amazon.com]
3 Madden NFL 10 XBox
4 Madden NFL 10 PS3
16 EA Sports Active Wii
18 The Sims 3 Windows
58 Madden NFL 10 Wii
60 Dragon Age Origins XBox
64 NCAA Football 10 XBox
68 Madden NFL 10 PS2
70 Beatles Rock Band XBox
The Amazon list ranks bestsellers in hardware and software. With the exception of The Sims, all titles are pre-orders.
It should be obvious at a glance that fans of Madden and the Sims are loyal.
Or... (Score:5, Insightful)
Or, they are just renewing their trademarks? Or they are planning to pump some old stuff out through Steam, etc.?
Why does "trademark application" have to equal "writing a sequel"?
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Because it's EA...
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Hell, I even buy some old games that I already own through STEAM just because I am willing to pay for the service of always having the game when I want it.
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Same here. I've went through my history the other day and, including my original Half-life / Counterstrike purchases way back when it was still a new game (I used the CD-Keys to activate my Steam account), I've spent about £300 and I currently have 59 games sitting on that account. Now, about 10-15 of them I'll never, ever play again (they were bundled for free, or limited technology demos, etc.). About 20 of them I owned previously and played to death. But just my L4D stats (ONE GAME) show that I
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They just did Populous for the DS in 2008 (with XSeed handling a lot of the programming).
I think this is just "renewing in case" and nothing special.
Oh, and no thanks on the Steam. I'll just grab the games, throw them in Dosbox, and not have the SteamDRM problem.
Re:Or... (Score:4, Insightful)
As far as I am concerned, the more stuff that gets pumped out through STEAM, the better. I pretty much refuse to buy games these days unless its through STEAM, because I am afraid that I will lose the discs or CD-Keys but STEAM will likely at least outlive my game-playing days.
But if STEAM does fall you get screwed over backwards. I can't believe that people that hate drm so much love STEAM, because its still a form of drm.
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It's worth pointing out that a new Wing Commander game was released just last year on XBox Live Arcade so I think you're probably right. They're just ensuring protection of existing trademarks I'd guess.
Still, I'd love a nice revamped 3D HD version of Desert Strike and Jungle Strike though personally! I wouldn't say no to a new Theme Park/Theme Hospital either. Oh, how about bringing Syndicate back whilst we're at it ;) ?
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Syndicate should stay in its hallowed ground of excellence, standing on the rotting corpse of Syndicate Wars. Remaking that game (and especially in 3D, not matter how "ground-breaking" at the time) should be deemed blashpemy.
DOSBox re-release? YES! Crappy remake/sequel? No.
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I dunno, I even found Syndicate Wars quite fun, although as you say it wasn't really Syndicate.
Being able to throw nuclear hand grenades in Syndicate Wars to dig holes in the ground which you could then surround with razor wire to make yourself a little trench was kinda fun. Just not as fun as indoctrinating about 100 civilians, jumping into a vehicle with them all, getting it blown up and watching them all run out of the vehicle in a nice circular ring of burning bodies.
Those were the days, when games were
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I enjoyed Syndicate Wars ... but that last mission was just unreal.
Syndicate was a proper game and an original one at that, I don't think it has been bettered.
It goes up there in the hallowed hall of fame alongside such giants as System Shock and Chaos.
Why the Syndicate Wars hate? (Score:2)
What the hell? People actually hate Syndicate Wars? What is it that people don't like about it? Personally it's one of my all time favourite games, and I like it much more than Syndicate. True 3D, destroyable buildings, a much more convincing cyberpunk atmosphere, what's not to like? Even more, what's to hate?
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"True 3D" for a start - it was horribly blocky from what I remember and added little to the game. Syndicate does need a "view from N/S/E/W" button, though, it has to be said. It was 3D for the sake of 3D.
Not at all sure about the more convincing atmosphere.
Destructible buildings? Okay.
But Syndicate Wars was such a distraction in terms of the leap from the previous episode that it was always going to be disliked. Give me 2D isometric anyday. Syndicate wasn't about "atmosphere" - it was about a quick, si
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Yeah but my point is that it still used the Wing Commander IP meaning they had to keep their trademark valid. I get what you're saying though :)
Sequels (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:Sequels (Score:5, Insightful)
I'm particularly sceptical about sequels to titles like Populous which were originally interesting because they did something that was a pretty new concept in games at the time: in Populous, for example, it was the modeling of behaviour of relatively large populations, and giving the player seemingly great powers to drive those. (SimCity did something similar in that sense at around the same time, but I don't know of many other mainstream games that did.) Many of these games relied pretty heavily just on those novel ideas.
If you tried to make a new game now based on the same idea, it wouldn't be novel or exciting anymore. You'd have to make up a new and different concept in order to achieve a similar "wow" effect, but if it's going to be based on an entirely new concept and idea, why would you call it with the same name as an older title with a different concept, except for marketing purposes? That's a paradox -- you can't both be novel and retain the old idea. The only way it would make sense would be to use the original concept and develop it further so that it brings in an additional concept that is compatible with the original spirit but still novel enough *today* that it brings a new "wow" effect. I'm sure that's not impossible, but it's rarely seen, and probably rarely in the mind of people thinking up sequels.
I've seen really good sequels. System Shock 2 comes to mind, as do Civilization games. These sequels did exactly that: took parts of what was central to the spirit of the original games and built a game on top of it that brought in something else that made the combination interesting.
On the other hand, Populous 3 wasn't particularly interesting, IMHO, probably because it didn't have any particularly novel ideas anymore. It just shared the name and a loosely connected background story, neither of which made the original games interesting.
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I just started up Civ 4 again in the last day or two - it is I think a particularly interesting "sequel" because it's not just about new concepts - it also tries to offer the central ideas of the past games with improvements based on experience since then. A lot of items are redesigned to offer smoother and less annoying gameplay. All previous Civ games had myriad things that were genuine annoyances in the game. Civ 4, almost none. And, on top of all of that it's got modern 3D graphics and nice animations w
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Civ III is the only real dud of the four Civilization games, and apparently, if you play Alpha Centauri you get Civ II improved.
Even Civ III wasn't too bad, but it didn't improve on Civ II in the same way that Civ II had improved on the original.
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... in Populous, for example, it was the modeling of behaviour of relatively large populations, and giving the player seemingly great powers to drive those. (SimCity did something similar in that sense at around the same time, but I don't know of many other mainstream games that did.)
Another game that comes to mind is Ascendancy [wikipedia.org]. That game had a lot of ideas combined into one. It wasn't as battle-driven as Warcraft/Starcraft, but it did follow a similar notion of "build my species up" and conquest of solar systems. In that regard it was similar to Populous and SimCity, allowing for very diverse arrangement of factories, starports, farms, etc... and every decision you made impacted everything you did. You would put resources into research instead of colonization, for example. For those t
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Populous spawned a whole genre, god games. And since it had used up most of the good ideas, the competitors had to divert from the core model to differentiate themselves as other than a Populous clone. Which few of them could.
The whole genre more or less died when the horrible Black and White came out. It was hyped up (after all, it was made by the same guy who made Populous), so it initially sold well, but that didn't stop it from quickly ending up in the bargain bins. That they even bothered to come o
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They'd better just rerelease the old classics or give them new graphics and rerelease them like Lucasarts did.
Yeah, like what they did with Tomb Raider: Anniversary. I felt that Anniversary was a rare case where the remake was better than the original. Though, I doubt EA is innovative enough, and we'll just end up with Road Rash 2010.. Road Rash 2011 and so on..
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Good old Lords of the Realm...
Somehow I liked more than twice as many games in then 90s than in this decade. I wouldn't mind seeing GOOD remakes of them either.
Starflight please!!! (Score:2)
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Starflight [wikipedia.org]
Oh please, I haven't found a game that lived up to it or its sequel since. Hell some of what they did still doesn't appear in games today. What they managed in 2 360k diskette drives seems beyond many DVD filling titles.
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Oh EA runs out of ideas and want to make sequel? (Score:1)
Road Rash (Score:2)
So what's the yay factor? (Score:5, Insightful)
Let's assume that in each case, we're talking about a bona-fide sequel or franchise reboot, rather than just a port of the original to Steam/Xbox Live/PSN. Just how much of a gap in the market is there for the games named in the summary?
Populous: This might work. However, the god-game genre has been through quite a few evolutionary steps since Populous kicked things off. I think a game that stuck too closely to the formula of the original (or Populous 2) would feel a bit dated and lacklustre now. A new installment in the series would need to either reflect the advances we've seen over the last couple of decades, or else have enough brand new ideas of its own that it could stand out from the crowd. If you're looking at old Bulldog franchises, I'd much rather they try to resurrect Syndicate.
Wing Commander: Yes please. The space-combat-sim genre has been sadly dormant for many years now and this is one franchise where a full reboot would be highly desirable. Take it back to the Kilrathi war, spend a fortune on the FMV cutscenes and recreate the sinking "I'm going to need a new PC" series that the old games were known and loved for.
Theme Park: This one I'm really not convinced by. There's been an absolute flood of Theme-Sim-Tycoon games in recent years, many of which have focussed around Theme Parks. The quality has varied wildly, and I'm not sure the genre's standing is particularly high. I'm really not sure that there's much room to reawaken this franchise without a distinct feeling that you're flogging a dead horse.
Road Rash: Fun enough games in their day, but I'm not really sure the old Road Rash titles really stand comparison to the other 3 franchises named above. Still, if they want to make a fun, arcadey motorcycle combat game and stick the Road Rash name on it, it certainly wouldn't do any harm.
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Syndicate
I wholeheartedly support that request.
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Wing Commander: Yes please. The space-combat-sim genre has been sadly dormant for many years now and this is one franchise where a full reboot would be highly desirable. Take it back to the Kilrathi war, spend a fortune on the FMV cutscenes and recreate the sinking "I'm going to need a new PC" series that the old games were known and loved for.
I'll just wait for X4.
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Populous could go either way. Done wrong, it'd just be EA sodomizing the corpse of a once inspiring series. Done right, it could be the game that Black & White never managed to be.
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Wing Commander: Yes please. The space-combat-sim genre has been sadly dormant for many years
You should check out Eternal Silence [eternal-silence.net] then, I think you would enjoy it. Very fun./p.
A little refreshing (Score:1)
I have to say that's a refreshingly astute observation coming from a large entertainment corp, one that like so many entertainment companies so often takes the safe option of flogging a concept, genre or property to death.
In my experience he's right about revisiting old games. I've fired up a few of my old favourites, and still play some arcade games with MAME, but the memories and feelings of nostalgia almost always are far better than playing the actual game. Among other things, taste changes with age.
If
System Shock (Score:3, Interesting)
(I'm aware that DX isn't technically an LG game, but its development was heavily influenced by Shock and Thief to say the least.)
Plus Shock 2 just turned 10 this week
Sadly it will probably never be done. EA may have some trademark but the whole Shock licence is scattered among people who probably don't know or care that they have it. Even Levine back in the day couldn't trace it back.
Sucks.
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Complete the trinity? I don't understand? Three good Thief games, sure. But there is only one Deus Ex game.
Seriously, there is only one Deus Ex game.
Don't make me come over there.
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EA published System Shock 2. They just didn't design it. I guess that's the key.
I don't think anyone should try making another System Shock game just because they want to make a sequel to the series, though. If someone were to do that, it would have to be because they happened to get a great idea and vision for building new things on top of the spirit of the original games. That's the only way I could see a sequel to System Shock succeeding, and you can't force such a vision, so "we want to make a sequel be
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A sequel just for the heck of it would be a terrible idea.
Ultima (Score:3, Insightful)
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Ultima died years ago. If brought back with the panache found at its pinnacle (IV-VII), it would far surpass any current-day RPG.
Hah! I'd actually say that while Ultima series was still going, it was leading the way for others to follow. When it was, ahem, brought to conclusion (to put it politely), all other games were left on their own, and started to slowly overtake the Ultima series. And now, we've gone beyond.
Seriously - among the first few conclusive thoughts I had about The Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion was "okayyyy, now they've finally surpassed Ultima VII, far and wide, on every possible area." Better graphics, better music, be
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Oblivion didn't actually surpass Ultima VII in a few important respects.
Interaction with the environment in Oblivion consisted entirely of trying to pick stuff up and accidentally sending it flying across the room instead. It hardly compares with a game where you could bake your own bread, weave your own cloth, or forge your own sword.
Oblivion's interface consists of computer-like menus, with everything stored in lists of words; Ultima's interface looks like the real world, where you flick through a book t
Cinemaware (Score:3, Insightful)
I was a kid when I played them, and the storylines were pretty linear, but I loved "It came from the desert", and "wings". It would be nice if they could be given an updated retelling...
I will pay 50â for a good remake of Wing Comm (Score:2, Interesting)
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I'm actually playing through WC on Dosbox right now. It's fucking hard!
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Honestly...WC was great for mind blowing graphics. I remember installing all 13+ disks taking over an hour and waiting patiently to get the thing going. The story was pretty cool, but what sucked me in were the incredible graphics. The story was pretty cool, but it always came down to how cool it looked to be flying around capitol ships and dog fighting such nice looking things. That is what WC sold me on.
But then I started playing tie fighter much later, then freespace 2. Sorry guys, the space combat in th
Donkey Kong (Score:1)
Milliways, Infocom & risking being eaten by a (Score:3, Interesting)
Anybody else read the Choose Your Own Adventure series? I used to have the whole collection, I just wish they were longer. Would love to see something more along these lines for adults. (My gutter-fabulous mind can only start to envision some of the more 'adult' "tails" that could be chosen. *starts chortling to self*
I think also would be great to see a revival of the old games we used to play on BBS'. Still to this day trying to remember the title of this one, it simulated hacking, sort of like GIbson's Johnny Mnemonic, pre-Shadowrun sort of era. Turn based, only got so many a day, and I believe it was interactive with the other players as well, as you rose up in levels.
Well, probably enough nostalgia for now... Should get back to social-notworking....
How about Zero Wing (Score:5, Funny)
I could get into some of these (Score:3, Informative)
A new Wing Commander would be nice, that entire genre doesn't seem to exist anymore. I'm not sure what happened to cause that.
I could go for a new Populous too, depending on how it's done.
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First person shooters. Everyone has been busy making those, or trying to cash in on MMORPGs.
an old Sega game (Score:2)
Hey, can EA get the Spore team to make a new (Score:2, Interesting)
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You might be able to get somewhat of a dungeon keeper fix with evil genius or even dwarf fort (free). I recall waiting endlessly for dungeon keeper, only to be somewhat dissapointed in it, I just couldn't figure out how to play it correctly. I think I was just too young, I had trouble defending my place and usually ended up just picking up a ton of monsters then dropping them on top of the bad guys to slow it down.
But yeah, the theme of this game was pretty amazing, and would like to see this one go farther
Heeeello! This is EA... (Score:3, Insightful)
Wing Commander remake (Score:2)
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All they need to do is upgrade the graphics/engine to modern standards. Otherwise the game is fantastic. Even by todays standards the game itself excels.
Old / Early PC Games - Think Cross (Score:1)
I have a great puzzle game called Think Cross that's simple and fun. It's a decently done application, fits on a 3.5" floppy, yes I still have those and the machines, and I just enjoy the game.
Mission Based Road Rash? (Score:1)
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Mission based Road Rash wouldn't really be Road Rash. Road Rash is arcadey motorcycle racing with weapons. If I have to think about where I'm headed, it's not Road Rash. Not that there's anything wrong with a mission based motorcycle game. I just don't think they should revive a franchise and make substantial changes to the formula that made that franchise a success.
Crusader: No Remorse/Regret series (Score:3, Interesting)
Starflight 1 and 2 - (Score:2)
I still find it incredibly fun to play, and can waste hours with them both.
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Time to move... (Score:2)
I'm sure they see a cash cow here by going with established material. Older gamers will buy on name alone, and the game will be sufficiently flashy and dumbed down to appeal to younger gamers. I even find myself conflicted, seeing the appeal on some of these remakes while at the same time wanting to make a stand against never-ending, often subpar remakes.
Perhaps it's time the game industry moved out of California because it seems they're being infected by the same lack of imagination that has afflicted Holl
I can think of a few possibilities (Score:2, Funny)
or when those fail to take off...
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Populous the MMO?!
Heresy.. and I mean that in the literal sense.. because my god shall smite your god!.. ..
i think MMO it'd be terrible.. as something like a browser-based game, it'd be pretty neat.
Civilization 2. (Score:1)
Can you make a new version of Civ 2 with updated graphics? All the ones since then are only about half as much fun, at best.
iPhone Games? (Score:2)
Whoever has the license should revive Carmageddon (Score:2)
It was really fun and could be awesome with today's tech.
(Maybe I'm sick ... :) )
These ARE right for the times (Score:2)
Populous, Wing Commander, Theme Park, and Road Rash.
If you remember all the old classics you played, if you go back and play them now, they're not the same. They were right for their time, and the trick with those games is coming up with what's right for the time now. ... there's an opportunity to bring those back in the future, but only if it's right for the time and not just a 'remake' or something. We'd need to do it in a way that's true to the original values, but would still make a great game today.
What was the last Real Time Simulator, Space flight Simulator, or Motorcycle "quote" racing "unquote" game? Personally I haven't played Theme park myself.
I mean, yeah, they do keep remaking games to death and I would hate to see that happen. Resident Evil was once a good series. But the real issue is the games that get Remade that don't NEED to be. Like any sports title. Or they redid a Monkey Island special edition - which was a great game and still is, but to be honest I enjoyed it more in its classic gra
Privateer, Syndicate and Dune 2000 pretty please (Score:2)
It seems LucasArts was on to something...people do like the old stuff they just need them updated graphically (though im still waiting for my Xwing vs Tie Fighter), its good to see EA come around. Now that Activision is trying to replace EA as the most evil game company EA seems content to try and make amends, bringing back the classics will only help.
Privateer with modern internet multiplayer would be amazing, ditto for Syndicate and Dune. Now if we could only get Infogrames/Atari to update Star Control.
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Privateer with modern internet multiplayer would be amazing
See Eve Online [wikipedia.org]
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Please see Jumpgate Evolution [wikipedia.org] instead then.
Finally after nearly 20 years... (Score:4, Funny)
My Hope (Score:2)
This is such a no-brainer. It's the perfect family game. It would be huge.
"Right for their time"? (Score:2)
If someone managed to create a truly timeless and, excuse the use of an overused term, epic tale and forge that into a game, you can _always_ enjoy playing it.
In related news, Chrono Trigger is available for the DS. Waiting for Secret of Mana (and Seiken Denetsu 3), now.
Some games unmatched since (Score:2)
Re:More Like... (Score:5, Funny)
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Bigot.
Not just graphics. . . (Score:5, Insightful)
There are great reasons to make new games in 'old' franchises, or to re-do earlier games. Graphics is only one of those. There's also issues of the ability to do much more with sound now than some of the early games were able to do with the PC speakers, but even more importantly. . .
* Network/Internet multiplayer (ok, for some games multiplayer would make no sense, but for others, there's great potential
* More memory and faster CPUs means that not only can you update graphics, but you can create universes/worlds populated by more planets, stations, NPCs, ships, etc (how many of those really old games which were supposed to have 'epic' scope, ended up feeling a bit small or empty because of the memory and processing constraints of having 4M or less of memory? There's great opportunity to go back and have much 'bigger' worlds now that most 'gaming' machines have >= 1G of RAM.
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Oh right. The old games had limited worlds because of memory. Like Ultima 4, or Elite....
I find it's the modern games that have much more constrained worlds.
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A game such as Road Rash in an updated format may not be such a bad idea. Update it to the a style of world similar to GTA. You walk around and interact with other players to set up races. You can shop for gear, bikes, clothing and what not at various stores through out the city. And to add more enjoyment, you have the ability to mug NPCs or just throw a beat down on the cry baby who can not handle losing the race. I can see a fair amount of playability in that. Mainly the last part of throwing a beat on th
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Check out UFO Alien Invasion. It's still in progress, but it seems a fantastic spiritual successor!
http://ufoai.sourceforge.net/ [sourceforge.net]
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Gemini Gold is a pretty decent Privateer remake, if you can cope with the whole borderline-copyright-infringement thing. And Ascii Sector is pure genius in a different way.
And no, Privateer 2 was quite good in some respects. The gameplay sucked, but the setting wasn't bad. Some of those FMV sets were amazing, and the acting, script, and effects were way better than most video-game material of the era. Shame they ruined it with that horrible and totally unnecessary interlacing effect.