With development costs spiralling out of control and the banking sector destroying the economy, many publishers find themselves needing safe projects to ensure stability and entertain the prospect of profitability. The Guitar Hero cow can only produce so much milk in a year, and Madden NFL is a once per season occurrence, so how does one make more money? The answer can be found in one’s dormant IP; franchises like Ultima, Final Fight and Pitfall which haven’t been used in some time, but have powerful brand recognition.

This week The Warp Pipe will examine a few IPs that we’d like to see revived in the near future.

Franchise Necromancy

Breathing new life into a dormant yet formerly successful IP is a tricky challenge. The world of video games never stands still, and sometimes these older games will function in a way considered obsolete when compared to contemporary games, and modernising these older designs can go either way. The few good ones are heavily outweighed by the bad ones, and a bad one can harm any goodwill previously built by the series. Metroid, Prince of Persia, Ninja Gaiden and Banjo-Kazooie were all successfully revived in recent years, but Wing Commander, Golden Axe, Alone in the Dark and Rampage all seemed to go horribly wrong.

Syndicate Developer: Bullfrog Publisher: Electronic Arts Last seen: Syndicate Wars, 1996 A fantastic Blade Runner-inspired futuristic world and heavy violence made Syndicate one of the most popular games of the early 90s. That popularity didn’t extend to sales for its sequel, Syndicate Wars, and Electronic Arts has let the property sit idle for the last 13 years. Bullfrog’s futuristic gangland simulator seems like obvious bait for revival, particularly given the huge success of open-world crime games like the Grand Theft Auto series. Nobody has really done a futuristic open world game well yet (only American McGee’s Scrapland comes to mind). One could take a Syndicate revival in many different ways, but the ones that immediately come to mind are a direct update of the original game or the combination of something like the Grand Theft Auto formula and Syndicate’s existing squad-based action and upgrading systems. I personally think the second one would provide a unique and undoubtedly exciting action/RPG experience. Electronic Arts is fishing around for new ideas, and rumour has it that they’ve charged Starbreeze Studios with the task of bringing Syndicate back to life – we’ll see if that comes true in the coming months.

Hopefully we won’t need a persuadatron to get a new Syndicate game

Dino Crisis Developer: Capcom Publisher: Capcom Last seen: Dino Crisis 3, 2002 Capcom’s dinosaur battling survival horror series had an excellent debut and a successful second entry before a taking a massive misstep when the series departed from its standard formula and the PlayStation format to a weird space based shooter on the Xbox, with one of the worst cameras in video game history. There’s still a lot of promise in the Dino Crisis formula, but the series would probably need to undergo a serious rebooting. Capcom really could just repeat the steps it took in creating the original Dino Crisis game – that is taking the current Resident Evil formula, and replacing the Ganados/Majini with dinosaurs. There just aren’t enough T-Rex battles in games, and I think Capcom could deliver on this front.

Dinos in space sounded amusing, but it went horribly wrong

Star Fox Developer: Argonaut PLC/Q Games/Rare/Nintendo Publisher: Nintendo Last seen: Star Fox Command, 2006 It’s seen as one of Nintendo’s major franchises, but let’s be realistic; Lylat Wars (or Star Fox 64 for our NTSC friends) was the last good game in the series. Since then, Nintendo has outsourced development for the series, and none of these three entries have stuck to the series bread & butter, attempting to branch out into different genres. Nintendo needs to bring Star Fox back into the fold, and position it as one of their top tier titles for the Wii. The Wii Remote control lends itself well to the Star Fox formula – boot up Wario Ware: Smooth Moves and play the 9-VOLT stage if you need proof. Like Dino Crisis, Star Fox could benefit from a complete reboot – plot hasn’t been central to the experience, and nobody has really followed what has come before. Heck, Lylat Wars was for all intents and purposes a remake of Star Fox. The concept of fluffy animals flying space ships isn’t going to make for the most compelling of space operas, but they can easily do better than they have been for the last 10 years.

Star Fox needs to go back to basics

Rocket Knight Adventures Developer: Konami Publisher: Konami Last seen: Sparkster, 1994 Hoping to cash in on the success of Sonic the Hedgehog, Konami produced their own cuddly animal-cum-action-hero in Sparkster, the hero of Rocket Knight Adventures. Produced by Contra-alumni, Rocket Knight Adventures was one of the finest platforming games of the 16-bit era, with excellent stage design and highly detailed, smoothly animated sprites and backgrounds. After moderate success at retail, a sequel called Sparkster was made, with separate versions for the Super Nintendo and Mega Drive, but neither version experienced the same degree of popularity, and the Sparkster has only been seen in minor cameo appearances since. The fluffy animal mascot-driven platformer has long since died, and no matter how cool the concept of an armour clad, jetpack wearing, sword wielding opossum is, it’s not the sort of thing that could carry a full retail product in this day and age. On the handheld consoles or downloadable services though, a Rocket Knight revival, carefully developed and promoted, could experience great success. One would want to keep the game in two dimensions and more in line with the second game than the first. WayForward Technologies did an excellent job with Contra 4 – perhaps Konami could give this one to them.

[b]There is still demand for quality 2D platforming action

Police Quest Developer: Sierra Publisher: Sierra Last seen: Police Quest SWAT 2, 1998 The Sierra-published Quest series were powerhouse franchises in the late 80s and early 90s, but they suffered at the hands of the adventure game decline. The Police Quest series only received four entries before going off on a crazy tangent with the FMV driven Police Quest SWAT and its strategy-focused sequel Police Quest SWAT 2, before the moniker was dropped and the series expanded out into first person action. Adventure games have experienced a bit more success in modern times, and I think that there’s potential to branch back into more serious endeavours. Police Quest required players to stick to actual police procedures when investigating crimes – a stark contrast to the usual pixel hunting method. In a time where there is increasing demand for more serious and mature stories in gaming, a new Police Quest game would work well. You might need to include a little extra action to meet the needs of the current gaming audience, though, but a mix of old-school adventure and modern gameplay could be what this series needs to come back. Well, that and the support of Activision-Blizzard, who are a bit preoccupied with milking Guitar Hero to death.

There could be more to crime games than riddling people with bullets