Over the years, we’ve enjoyed terrific games from developers large and small, on platforms popular and obscure. Many of the biggest hits received numerous sequels and spawned franchises that endure to this day. Others were never revisited, despite the strong impression they left.
Sometimes, there’s no obvious reason a series fell apart. Things just didn’t work out. And not every sequel or remake can hit as hard as Resident Evil 4. Whatever the case of their premature demise, here are 10 games that need modern-day remakes to revive their fortunes and reach a new audience the second time around.
1
The 7th Saga (1993)
Known as Elnard in Japan, The 7th Saga came to North America with increased difficulty (and, like many of the best SNES RPGs, never made it to Europe at all). Unfortunately, the higher difficulty led a lot of players to grind extensively, dampening the appeal among a broad audience. But the game’s core concept – seven adventurers separately wandering a grim fantasy world in search of the same crystals – was terrific. It also featured some impressive visuals for the era, and neat features like a crystal ball that made it possible to see and (in theory) avoid incoming enemy encounters. Each protagonist interacted differently with the other lead characters, allowing the player to recruit some of them and battle others, which encouraged multiple playthroughs. Original developer Produce! has long since folded, but a properly balanced remake from some other capable studio might easily secure the broad success that eluded the original release.
2
Populous (1989)
Peter Molyneux is known for a lot of great things, and one of them is creating Populous while working at Bullfrog Productions. It’s considered the first “god game,” and allows players to guide civilization as it gathers sufficient might to conquer some other growing society elsewhere on the map. Players shape the landscape, giving their people more room to build, which in turn provides “mana” that makes further manipulation possible. There’s more to it than that, of course, and players enjoyed learning the game’s nuances while playing on a wide variety of platforms. Unfortunately, there hasn’t been a proper new installment since a DS port in 2008. Before that, the last new entry was Populous: The Beginning in 1998. In 2012, Molyneux attempted a revival with a related game, Godus, but it had a troubled release that even prompted an apology after a troubled Kickstarter campaign that failed to deliver on the team’s lofty promises. The best hope of the return to form fans crave is likely a reboot of the original, which can’t come soon enough.
3
Ogre Battle: March of the Black Queen (1993)
A lot of the RPGs released on the Super Nintendo during the ‘90s played out very similarly: turn-based adventures centered around a group of unlikely heroes saving the world from an ancient or otherworldly evil. Some of us wanted something a little different, though, and Ogre Battle: March of the Black Queen filled that void as the start of one of the greatest Japanese RPG franchises. Players built huge armies and sent out units to scout sprawling maps before eventually facing off against a general at their fortress. Alignment and other numbers determined which events occurred, ensuring there were reasons to play through the lengthy story campaign more than once. The battles themselves didn’t require constant commands, instead playing out automatically based on the placement and class of units. There was a lot of depth to the gameplay, and direct follow-ups in the form of Tactics Ogre (which more closely resembled Final Fantasy Tactics) and Ogre Battle 64: Person of Lordly Caliber. But neither the original release nor its Nintendo 64 follow-up have seen a proper update in literal decades. That needs to change.
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