VGamingNews

Games For The Percolator

1 May, 2011 - 3:01 pm by
About 13 mins to read


Sequels. They are standard practise in all entertainment industries, from films to books, books to games we see them everywhere. In most industries the producers are very keen to capitalise on the success of a product, Saw, Jaws, Twilight and Friday the 13th are all products of the sequel. However, in the gaming industry we either see too many sequels or no where near enough, with the coming of Project Café, we at VGamingNews have sat down and thought over what needs to see a reapperance in the Café.

Joe: I would love to see a new StarFox game. Since 1993 there has only been 4 games on the Nintendo home consoles and one on the Nintendo DS. Each game is based around the leader of StarFox – Fox McCloud and his team of animal based lifeforms on a quest to keep peace around the Lylat System. Using an Arwing – a space jet fighter type plane, you battle through levels to stop the evil forces (mainly in the form of Andross) to restore the natural order of things.

The exception of this coming in the form of Star Fox: Adventures where it is more action/adventure as you take Fox on foot to explore what is going on in a foreign planet filled with mysterious dinosaurs. This was due to the fact the developer – Rare – was working on a standalone game “Dinosaur Planet” for the N64 and after presenting to Nintendo were asked to replace the main character with Fox and bring it forward for the GameCube.

Andross’ enemy is MY enemy

However the majority of fans wanted to see Fox and Co back in space blasting everything in sight again. Enter 2005 and Star Fox: Assault again on the GameCube. A return to what Fox was known best for – shooting things. This time you had the Land Master (a cool looking tank) and missions on foot. The game was met with an average reception with the main criticism coming from the flawed control system when Fox wasn’t driving a vehicle.

Early 2007 saw the Star Fox team for the first time on the Nintendo DS in Star Fox Command. This was a best seller from day 1 selling 20,000 on it’s first day in Japan alone. This again had Fox battling through the Lylat system however unlike the previous games, which were primarily on the rails, this was more of an open plan game where you were free to explore the surroundings.

With the return of Lylat Wars (Star Fox 64 if you are outside of Europe) on the 3DS I do hope Nintendo are planning on kick starting the series once again. After all what is more fun than a fox piloting a space craft through his own solar system to defeat a giant monkey head!?

Luigi’s Mansion is a game many people loved while playing it – it’s a shame it only lasted about 10 minutes! One of the shortest games I have ever played but it was utterly brilliant. A game made purely to show of what the GameCube can do from launch day it really did set the standard and bridge the eternal gap between Super Mario 64 and Mario Sunshine.

The story was a simple one, Luigi “won” a contest he didn’t even enter. The prize – a free mansion set in a spooky set of woods. Upon arriving he found out he had been tricked by King Boo and not only that he had captured the green lanky one’s brother – Mario!

Somehow Luigi found courage and with the help of Professor E. Gadd and the Poultergust 3000 (a hoover strapped to Luigi’s back) he had to battle through a mansion filled with ghosts and boos questing to save his brother all the while collecting the gold left behind by the ghoolies after they were sucked into the hoover. It also made use of every single button on the GameCube perfectly, I can see that the developers over at Nintendo either have a big sense of humour or ran out of ideas when you pressed the B Button – as all Luigi would do is call for Mario in various voices!

Maaaaario??

Recently Nintendo came out and spoke how Luigi’s Mansion as well as the GameCube were 3D Stereoscopic ready, it was just too expensive at the time to produce. This fuelled the internet rumour mill that a remake will appear on the 3DS at some point. I think that giving Luigi a bigger mansion or even a small town to explore on the big screen. I adore the original so much and would love to see him looking for his big brother on the big screen once more. The calls for Mario still ring in my head even now!

My final choice is a simple one. Fans of the original have been screaming for another game and produce a sequel. I have three words. Super Mario RPG. Back in the days of the SNES Nintendo and SquareSoft were best friends. So much so that Nintendo let Square loose on their most treasured possession – Mario and the Mushroom kingdom. Of course Shigeru Miyamoto was looking over Square’s preverbal shoulder to make sure Mario wasn’t butchered but what they did with it was just fantastic.

The game was an isometric view with fully three-dimensional characters think Flickies Island on the Mega Drive but on a much grander scale. It brought inspiration from Final Fantasy and Chrono Trigger and coated it in Nintendo magic. It used the RPG elements such as turn based battling to give a completely different point of view on the Mario story.

You start the game with Mario on a quest to rescue Princess Peach from the evil Bowser however during the battle a sword smashes the Star Road in 7 pieces. Mario finds himself at the Mushroom Kingdom where he is told he must restore the Star and save the princess. As the story unfolds you must join forces with Bowser and for the first time he is a fully playable character.

Walking through the fields on my Dinosaur, as you do.

The game was not released in Europe for a number of reasons, firstly the year was 1996 and Nintendo was focusing on the next home console – N64 where they thought Super Mario 64 would over shadow the SNES game. Also after shortly after completion Square announced that they were no longer supporting Nintendo consoles until they moved from cartridge games to CDs and with that they moved to Sony.

When Square announced support for the GameCube my heart skipped an I wished for the next chapter for Super Mario RPG. It was not to be. However another glimmer of hope came in 2008 when Europe was treated to the original for the first time! I know Paper Mario exists but for some reason to me it isn’t the same game. Sure there are the similarities but it lacks that sparkle that Square – masters of the RPG and Nintendo brought to the table an absolute must for any RPG or Nintendo fan!

Ian: The Legend of the Mystical Ninja, otherwise known as Goemon or Ganbare Goemon is an amazing game that takes itself none-to-seriously. The first outing of this crazy game was on the SNES in 1992 and then we later saw two further games released on a home console in the likes of The Legend of the Mystical Ninja: Starring Goemon and The Legend of the Mystical Ninja 2 on the Nintendo 64. There was also the odd game on the PlayStation 1.

However, the series is much more than a four or five game franchise. In Japan there’s cartoon series, slot machines, websites, mobile games, GBA, PS2 and all matter of games and history behind this popular and imaginative series. We’re talking of 33, yes, 33 games across a 26 year history back from it’s humble days as a Arcade game, right the way through every major Nintendo console to the N64, with a brief outing on the DS and the PS1 and PS2.

Gamers outside of Japan actually like us!?!

For some reason Konami, Nintendo, Sony or someone in the upper echelons of the localisation world have decided that the series is far too complicated to translate. I dearly want this changed for the next Nintendo console, Goemon is a game that challenges convention, doesn’t take itself too seriously and is a joy to play. This exact same description can be used for all Nintendo consoles to date, so it makes sense for the two to pair.

Goemon for Nintendo – 2012!

Plants. Flowers. Weeds. Batteries. Yep, it’s a game that many people disregarded as being a nothing game, yet another creation from the mind that brought us Mario and Zelda – yes, it’s Pikmin. Pikmin was released on the Gamecube and was one of the consoles early and most memorable titles. When it was announced it was essentially disregarded, but since it’s release the Pikmin franchise has been incredibly popular with those who played the game. With a very simple gameplay mechanism and a gradual learning curve, Pikmin grabbed the hearts of millions and sold very well.

So well in fact that Pikmin 2 was released a few years later, incorporating a multiplayer mode and changing some of the more fiddly dynamics it looked like the formula was right and we were about to see another franchise make millions for Nintendo. Yet, after the success of Pikmin 2, the franchise has seemed to die.

I know I left my keys around here somewhere…

There’s been plenty of speculation over the years as to Pikmin 3, on the GBA, the DS, the Wii, the 3DS and yet there’s nothing. Still. There have even been promises by the great man himself that the title is being “worked on” and will be released but even as we start to see the end of the Wii’s lifespan there’s still no Pikmin. Not a fake mock up screenshot, not a leaked development memo.

Pikmin is a great game and even now it’s something that’s had some attention on the Wii as there was the re-release of the games a few years ago. But nothing on Pikmin 3 and this is something that needs to be fixed. Another pillar of great games is always welcome and Nintendo needs to make it.

Space. The final frontier. These are the voyages of the Space Channel 5. Yes, yes, Space Channel 5 isn’t officially a Nintendo item, it’s not even a game that’s been released on a Nintendo home console; however, this is another game that really needs to see a return to life. It predates Wii Fit, it predates Samba De Amigo and the development even predates DDR, even though DDR came out first. This insane space game is something that no title has managed to achieve since – not even the mini games in Pokémon Stadium.

Space Channel 5 manages to achieve something even the most skilled of typists can’t achieve, a dance with your fingers. The main aim of Space Channel 5 is to move the controllers in time with the music and in time with the direction on screen, it really is DDR for your fingers and it’s time we started to see this again with the next Nintendo console. If the rumours are to be true and the next system will have a touch screen controller, then it makes even more sense to be able to touch different parts of the screen to make Ulala dance her little heart out.

From here, the view rating is a lot more than 14%

Yes, Space Channel 5 Part 2 existed in Japan on the Dreamcast and the PlayStation, but it never made it’s way across to Blighty and it’s certainly not going to have aged well. Few games of that generation did, so with the invention of touch screen technology, motion sensor technology and whatever else our friends at Nintendo have got up their sleeves, a revisit to a Space Station would do our dexterity and finger muscles good.