As far back as I can remember, there has been a plethora of amazing titles that somehow fell short of notoriety despite their level of quality and uniqueness. Some games were hits, others while amazing in their own right, were crushed the marketing weight of larger franchises, while still others were simply before their time. In many cases, these titles created or introduced new styles of gameplay that have yet to be properly acknowledged. I mentioned a few of them in an earlier post:
Retro Revival Part 1: @mikedynamo/retro-revival-game-ideas-the-games-i-ll-kickstart-myself-unless-you-beat-me-to-it-and-i-hope-you-do-part-1
These days, thanks to crowdfunding platforms like Kickstarter and a robust retro gaming scene, many forgotten titles have received seconds chance at life. Indie developers will acquire the rights to a now classic franchise and develop a long overdue follow up.While the results can be mixed, sometimes it results in something even better than what came before.Regardless of how tired a game type may seem, there are always new ways to reinvigorate or recreate a work into something amazing. Here's a few title I’m dying to see revived, rebooted, and re-released the future.
If any of these have been remade already and I missed it, let me know!
Trap Gunner
Platform: PS1
Release Year: 1998
What it is: Trap’em Up Spy Action
While there were a lot of couch competition games in the bad old days of ’99, few were as unique and difficult to master as Trap Gunner. For about 3 weeks in the spring, my friend Johnny and I spent hours trying to outfox each other with traps and bullets while cranking the brand new album by Eiffel 65 with “I’m Blue (Da Ba Dee)” on it. It took some time to figure out, but eventually we’d have intense one on one battles thanks to game mechanics perfectly tuned for cat and mouse matches that ebbed and flowed into real nail biters.
You’d set traps of gas, bombs, and pitfalls while using your character’s unique gun attack to harass or corral your competition into your murderous web all while avoiding their attempts to do the same to you. Trap Gunner hosted split screen play and 6 different characters with varying stats, ranged and melee attacks, and trap abilities. With a strong, anime-influenced style (down to its terrible translation) and seldom duplicated trap setting and shooting mechanics, Trap Gunner basically played like an ARPG (Diablo or Gauntlet) for sneaky people who didn’t like their IRL friends.
Why It Really Rules: Spy Versus Spy
Way back in 1984, there was an amazing game developed called Spy vs. Spy based on the comic strip characters from Mad Magazine. It was one of the first instances of a small genre called “trap-em-up.” I played it as a little known “sleeper hit” on the NES where it was ported in 1988. In this game, you as the titular white or black spy would take on your counterpart while searching an embassy for documents. You would leave booby traps to hinder your opponent (with hilarious murder!) while avoiding theirs in order to buy enough time to get the documents and escape to the airport. It’s probably the best game translation of a comic strip ever produced, though I’m dying to see what someone would do with a Calvin and Hobbes video game.
At its core, Trap Gunner is an updated version of Spy vs. Spy. Faster, more kinetic, and based on fighting rather than escape, the special thing about both Trap Gunner and Spy vs. Spy was that the games felt like it was literally made to be played by 2 people at all times. Single player practically made it seem like you still had a split screen active even as you took on single computer opponents. What really makes a game based on traps and guile stand out is it’s designed to vex and confound other players in real life. Single player is great, but it’s the battle mode that makes Trap Gunner a special kind of fun.
Trap Gunner Intro:
So very very 90's anime.
How To Bring It BackIn my opinion, what makes Trap Gunner sing is its devotion to fun multiplayer. It’s a trap game that’s set up like a fighting game. With the internet available, it’s easy to bring back a modernized experience where you couldn’t watch the other player's screen and could focus on traps and movement. In the rebooted game, traps can still be set and disarmed, but now you could have more environmental hazards to be set off like animal pens holding vicious animals or volcanic pressure valves that are part of chain reactions when explosions happen too close. You could also add character trap diversity and build more elaborate traps including ones that can’t be seen in order to control battle ground. Add upgradable weapons, armor, and explosions in fight and you could really bring in some diversity into the game.
New Trap Gunner would be great for a mobile experience as a sort of fighting game alternative. Quick games against other players online and a local option could really create some fun matches amongst colleagues and friends. Throw in the innovative stuff you could do with today’s technology like augmented reality or VR, and it’s easy to imagine uploading layouts of the buildings you’re in, building your own stages, and even playing the game with your actual body in the real world as your phone allows for setting, seeking, and disarming traps. You could also use augmented reality to scan in new weapons, obstacles, and trap types. What really matters for this game is keeping the action as tight, personal, and contained as possible.
Return Fire
Platform: 3DO/PS1
Release Year: 1995/96
What it is: Capture The Flag /Strategy
Return Fire is an ultra-light war simulator that pits you against a bevy of AI controlled turrets to locate and retrieve the enemy flag. Sounds simple, right? For this challenge you have access to four vehicles; a helicopter, a tank with rotating turret and aerial firing capability, a heavily armored mine laying truck, and a jeep as the only vehicle that can actually pick up and return the flag. Bigger maps, more turrets drones, a limited amount of each vehicle make things complicated very quickly before your conniving friends even pick up a controller.
With an intense classical soundtrack that ratcheted up the tension (and alerted your opponents to whatever vehicle you were using), Return Fire matches could be short and sweet, or long, brutal campaigns that lasted hours. As soon as you bring the jeep out of your base and Flight of the Bumblebee starts playing, you’d watch your friend’s screen to see them frantically self destruct their land vehicle, hurriedly bring out a helicopter, then stalk the beach to find and murder you with an aerial assault. They would then use their jeep to drag their flag to the ocean somewhere just so you couldn’t have it.
Why It Really Rules: Fake war. Real stakes.
These days, we have some real massive war shooters and simulations available to play. The Battlefield Series is one of the most popular games in the world that allows you control all the same vehicles Return Fire offers but in a first person view with pristine graphics inside of a churning, digital meat grinder of a campaign that make you feel like you’re really in the suck. That’s why when you get blown up seconds after figuring out how to make the tank go forward, you viscerally feel how ineffectual you are in your giant 24 vs 24 player match. The futility of it all is the most realistic thing about modern war games.
Return Fire feels more like 2 kids playing with micro machines than actual war. With a closer scale and no human faces (other than the skull that laughs at you when you die), it’s so much easier to have fun because your movements and actions really determine whether or not you win. Sure it’s small and even silly looking at times, but small matches for small groups of players are why we love board games and drinking games and um… drinking in general. Games that take advantage of small scale tactical action definitely have an audience today as we’ve seen in much of the mobile fare available now.
How To Bring It Back:
With online play, you could still keep the matches no larger than 4 players, and even giving players the chance to save their progress and continue the same campaign. This one doesn’t have to be a major departure from what the game already is, outside of making it available for mobile where something like Return Fire could be fun for quick matches to pass the time.
I believe there’s a lot of gas left in Return Fire’s tank. Imagine a similar game type of capture the flag game, played out in different theatres in different eras past and future. Each would take advantage of a myriad of different vehicles all balanced to one another and controlled in real time. We could go from horseman to motorcycles, to mechs. We could broaden the amount of vehicles in a modern day campaign, adding submarines, jump jets, and jet skis to move the flag over water. We could shift the turrets to cannons, employ siege machines, and catapults. We could fight in fictional places like Atlantis, Cibolo, or The Moon. We could return fire in the stone age, the nuclear age, or even with different IP like the Marvel Universe, Gundam, or… get really nuts and just slap a G.I. Joe license on the thing and let you have some fun blowing things up and screaming “COOOOBRAAAAAA!!!” at the top of your lungs.
Honorable Mention: General Chaos
Platform: Sega Genesis
Release Year: 1993
What It Is: Real Time Squad Based Commando Strategy
General Chaos is that special sort of early 90s console game that seemed bigger and more bombastic than typical console fare of the era; so much so that the game seemed like it would be more at home on the PC than the TV screen. You controlled squads of 5 soldiers (or 2 multipurpose commandos) for a skirmish of bombs and bullets across an obstacle-packed battlefield. General Chaos took the smallish battlefields, isometric viewpoint, and point and click interface, and wove them together in a symphony of cartoonish violence that was as much a blast to watch as it was to play. My friend Billy and I spent countless hours just bombing each other to hell before teaming up to take on the real General Chaos as the most badass commandos since Arnold Schwarzenegger.
Like Arnold, Soldiers in General Chaos don’t run out of bullets either
General Chaos gets honorable mention because the original developer, Brian Colin of Game Refuge, is still trying to get this game made. They had a failed Kickstarter campaign back in 2013 that fell 100,000 short of their goal… of 125,000. Yeesh… My thinking is that the message was the problem. I hope people are as excited as I am to see a new version of this game; nevertheless, the following video was released a year ago, so it seems there’s still some life in the project! Luckily, Brian Colin also developed Rampage which is in production as a film starring The Rock in 2018. So hopefully his profile will rise a bit and we some General Chaos love too. Check it out and send a message or maybe some Steemit!
