Be Excellent To Each Other

I can't help but feel I've started this thread before, but I couldn't find it - apologies if it does already exist

What classic game(s) of yesteryear do you most wish would make their triumphant return?

For me, an obvious one would be Syndicate. Syndicate Wars never happened, and that was over a decade ago anyway. Oh, how I long for a game that is basically just the original, but with real 3D, a decent adjustable camera, and net play. I'd gauss you all into kingdom come for many a happy hour.

Otherwise, I'd love to see an update of the Everyone's a Wally series. Quite bizarre to think that there's not been a game that's essentially just about a family helping each other out to get through a scrape, in recent years - seems like perfect post-Sims 'casual'-friendly fare. It'd be perfect fodder for the Wii - do a tie-in with the TV series 'Shameless' and you've got a perfect license to boot.

etc.

I believe Charlie Brooker's already said it, but PLEASE, give us UFO: Enemy Unknown on the DS. A straight port would do me fine, although a multiplayer option would be a bonus.

It depends on how far back you are going. I would love Elite to be done properly, like a cross beteween itself and EVE. Wierdly I think Werewolves of London would make a good modern game if anyone cared to bother.

Indeed. A hugely under-rated game. It's actually a 2D game that would be fantastic in 3D rather than the usual shoe-in where they just convert any old 2D game to 3D.

For anyone not familiar:



CPC version, natch, for it is the best.

A 'Rogue Squadron' of the Defender licence

Elite. Just regular Archimedes Elite with modern graphics, much improved AI and so on, just shine everything. Graphically, interface wise, gameplay, etc. Don't get me started on the DEMO that is oOlite.

Frontier - same again, plus a modern remake.

Chuckie Egg with the Crackdown engine

Your mind is a terrifying but fascinating place.

I'd have to say Syndicate as well. The potential is ridiculously obvious. To be honest, I'll be surprised if this isn't done eventually.

K240 / Fragile Allegiance. The original had me hooked for absolutely ages, both when I got it for christmas in 1994 and ten years later on WinUAE. Even the remake, Fragile Allegiance, had me playing for a long while before I realised its couple of fatal flaws (the most significant being the lack of a missile attack warning, even when two of your colonies have been totally wiped out while you were faffing about in a submenu somewhere at the other end of the sector. Grr). Shame really, as the remake was genuinely innovative with its introducion of espionage and proper trade. There's sacks of potential in it, and it wouldn't be that difficult to do.

If anyone is interested, there's a Nintendo DS port of OpenTTD (Transpot Tycoon) available... it's far from finished.

So it's a bit like Sim British Rail?

Magic carpet, would surely be a multiplayer winner.
I still occasionally struggle with DOSBox & slomo to play this, curses to bullfrog for not putting in any frame rate/movement linking code.

A second world war shooting game.

That's just crazy talk!

Carrier Command.

Malc

Bloody Roar! And Colony Wars!
(They're not that old, I guess, er...)
Oh, Laser Squad!

Alien Breed. Essentially Gears Of War, but with the setting of Tower Assault, etc.

I'd also be up for some more Colony Wars - them games were fantastic! And decent modern Elite and Frontier!

I quite enjoyed Syndicate Wars on the PC. What did people dislike about it (just curious)?

Never quite got it running properly in Vista, should really go back and try again. A new Syndicate would be AWESOME.

A micromachines remake would be a great little multiplayer game, XBLAH style.

I thought the atmosphere in Syndicate was far better than Syndicate Wars, the colours in Syndicate Wars were just too... blue and purple.

I always found the graphics on Syndicate Wars to be very "messy" compared to the original Syndicate.

That too. The lower resolutions on computers at the time meant that, to me, 3D graphics came out looking very pixelated and blocky.

Not meaning to sound like an arse, but you did all press 'S' (I think it was) to toggle SVGA mode, didn't you? I thought the graphics were crap until I did that. Not that they were super brill-o afterwards, mind, but a fair bit better.

Yeah, I did do that and although there was an improvement it still wasn't a patch on the original game. I've often thought that the move to 3D harms more games than it helps. In fact, the only one I can really think of that was improved was the GTA series.

Worms 3D was utter shash, for example.

Syndicate Wars had rubbish weapons - the stupid touchy-feely electro-tickle gun for one.

It had a 'quasi-religious cult' as an enemy, which is always a bad thing.

Making money was too hard... you were expect to know to go around robbing banks and such to actually get anywhere.

The rubbish graphics engine ran terribly, looked terrible and you were constantly rotating the camera to see where you were going.

The drugs system from the original was nerfed into two virtually identical drugs (both of which just made your guys go nuts and attack everything)

Stupid, hard to destroy flying APCs would constantly appear and force you to shelter under buildings to pop out and slowly wear them down.

Satellite Rain, however, was pure concentrated gnawesome.

Eeesh, I'd forgotten about those, and how whenever I had a vehicle it was always destroyed very quickly indeed, but the enemy vehicles seemed super-tough.

The nuclear hand grenades were nice and destructive too.

Aye yes. K240 was one of my favourite Amiga games - spent hours playing that. A bit like an electronic 'battleships' with asteroid bases and advanced resource/fleet management. Nothing like building up a fleet of battleships and fighters and sending them off to blatt a newly-discovered enemy asteroid, or watching a hail of your nuclear missiles rain down and splatter them completely...

Never played Fragile Allegiance though, or indeed the prequel Utopia.

Yeah, upon starting every level I'd usually go and find a building I could hide under, so when the damn things inevitably arrived I could shelter all my guys under it except one who'd pop out and shoot at it until it wore his shield down. After five minutes of utter tedium, it would crash to the ground and ANOTHER would arrive. I think there were only ever two, but still... absolute cack. So I just watched all the Ghost in the Shell (bewbs!) and Judge Dredd stuff on the billboards, and then turned the game off.

I wanted to blow up buildings so badly in Syndicate Wars but I never got anywhere near far enough

Best thing was to coax something to crash into it, like a car.

I liked the giant metal spider thingys though, they were cool.

I know what you mean about the dashing out and returning to cover - the big rocket tanks were a pain in the ass but lucily very very slow. I never did finish the game. I really wanted to but got terribly stuck on on level with a handful of tanks and a number of punk 'regiments' that would just swarm in on me. I tried setting traps, sniping, all sorts but never cleared it. Maybe I needed better weapons (I thought I had most of them, but maybe not).

Utopia was lovely, probably the strategy game i spent most time on the amiga besides King's Bounty. Amazing music as well