Games that SHOULD have been a series, but weren't?
 

I can think of several off the top of my head.

1. Soul Blazer for SNES. Awesome game and mechanics. Like a more involved Zelda, kind of.

2. Altered Beast for Genesis. Why didn't this take off with sequels? Everyone I knew was playing it, back in the day.

3. Chrono Trigger for SNES. Yes, we got kind of a pseudo sequel in Chrono Cross (which I actually love) but it's not quite the same thing. Everyone loved this game and yet... almost 30 years later and no sign of #2. Instead, Square is only worried about pumping out a ton of bad Final Fantasy games and a new Kingdom Hearts every 10 years. Occasionally, a Dragon Quest when they get around to it and they're not too busy on bad Final Fantasy games.

4. Astynax on NES. Seemed like a cool take on just a side-scrolling actioner in that you're a guy from the real world pulled into this fantasy land. I dug it. Played the crap out of it.

5. Blaster Master on NES. Yes, there was Blaster Master 2 on Genesis (which was appallingly bad). They technically tried something new with Blaster Master: Blasting Again on PS1 but it was kind of a half hearted measure. Every other Blaster Master game has just been a pseudo remake of the original NES game. In 2020 we should have already gotten several sequels to it, evolving the formula instead of just copying it.

6. Vice: Project Doom on NES. 3 games in 1! Part side scroller, part top-down car driving, then 1st person shooter... way ahead of its time. Neat story, unique delivery. Had a lot of potential.

Soul Blazer is considered to be part of a sorta-trilogy. Altered Beast has two sequels.

An actual followup to CT would be nice, sure. Radical Dreamers kind of is, I guess. But not exactly what anyone wants from a CT continuation. That goes at least double for Cross.

Astynax is indeed a solo game, you could try the Arcade version though?

There were like...three? or more Blaster Master sequels and just as many remakes, yeah. Zero and Zero Two are pretty rad games. There were also novels that later games considered as canon material.

Vice: Project Doom...got nothin'. Seems that, Blaster Master Boy, and Astynax were made by the same developer though, that's neat. Maybe check out more Aicom games!


I think my one-shot games I'd like more of would be The Guardian Legend (also a sequel, oops) and Clash at Demonhead. Good potential in those, could have evolved, I think. Could probably think of some more but that's some NES ones off the top of my head anyway.

It does...?

((Checks Wikipedia))

Son of a bitch, you're right. :lol: I'll be damned.

If I had to guess why it didn't have a stringer run, I'd guess it's because the original hasn't aged terribly well. It's "fine" but very, very clunky. Arguably the worst of the "big name" Genesis-era beat-'em-ups.
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The only thing that comes to me off the top of my head is "Justice League Heroes". Between the X-Men Legends and Marvel: Ultimate Alliance games that series had five games altogether, but they never did another DC action/RPG and that's a real shame because "Heroes" wasn't by any means bad. It was just "lesser than" the X-Men games, but I have no doubts a sequel would have given people everything that those games had, and what IS there is perfectly fine. I had a lot of fun with that one and was very much looking forward to more; instead they just stopped making DC games for 10 years. :roll:

I'm sure I could think of more but that's all that pops in my head right now.

Not a "series" specifically, but I was always annoyed that the "Dark Knight" video game never came out for nebulous reasons. It was definitely being made and the "Batman Begins" game was good, so I was very annoyed that they didn't follow up with any more. I mean, they did three movies so if each movie got a game that could have been considered a "series", I guess. I can see how those would have led to good games.

Conker, I know it started at as a GB game
Ristar, from Sonic Team
Vectorman, had a sequel but also a canceled PS2 game

Think I mentioned these in another topic.

Blaster Master got a few sequels but none were successful so it never became a series. That is until recently, Blaster Master is actually better than ever. We got blaster Master zero like 3 years ago which seems like a remake but it's really a re-imagined game taking elements from all the previous sequels and having a hybrid of the Japanese and American stories of the games which are rather different. It got a sequel Zero 2 just recently which is also great and completely original and I'm sure s Zero 3 will happen. Franchise had never been more relevant then today.

I mean, it kind of did...

The third one - Terranigma - is one of my favourite games of all time. It had these fun adventure mechanics (you could develop villages into cities) and the post-apocalyptic story was surprisingly creepy for its time

TMNT Tournament Fighters: I say this not just because we're on a TMNT board but because this is a legit great fighter and in my opinion better than the original Snes release of Street Fighter II. Obviously it came out when the TMNT fad was on the wane but maybe it's a regional thing but here in the UK it was very well received by all the gaming press and seemed popular. I tried to rent it several times but every place I went had lent out all their copies. Even when I bought it the guy at the store said "everyone wants this game". It would have been interesting what the TMNT franchise as whole would be if this had become a series given that it used them deep cut characters rather than the standard Fred Wolf ones we might have had a more healthy franchise now that didn't rely on the '87 characters so hard.

Pop n Twinbee: The Rainbow Bell Adventures: I know there were more Twinbee games but none in the sub genre. It's a neat little platformer that with some of the kinks worked out could have been Konami's answer to Sonic The Hedgehog.

Alien Soldier: Maybe it's for the best as they might have forced a move to 3D when they went to next gen consoles but a series in it's original 2D style would have been just great.

This is a cool thread.
Leo's post made reminded me of the awesome SNES Batman Returns game that ran on a sort of "Final Fight" style engine. So if this works in reverse, a follow-up to that game but set in the first Batman movie would've been super cool......

And yeah Astyanax was a really cool game. When it came out it was graphically great -with big sprites moving around on-screen.

I would like two different TMNT games:

Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: Vacation in Europe A hack and slash game with 13 levels, based on the Vacation in Europe sideseason. It would allow new environments.

Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: Red Sky An action-adventure game based on seasons 8–10.

Ristar never got a sequel. I don't understand why. Did it not sell well enough to justify one?

I also think Blast Corps could use a revival. Imagine that game with modern day graphics.

I agree. If the game didn't come out near the end of both the SNES and TMNT lifelines, I would have loved a TMNT TF2. I'd imagine new added mechanics here and there, have Rat King and Karai be selectable, have at least 2 new characters (I'd like more but this is the SNES we're talking about) and a new boss. Maybe Null or someone. That woulda been bad-ass.

1. I-Ninja for ps2 and gamecube
2. Brave fencer musashi (it's one sequel was mediocre and not very similar aesthetically) for ps 1.
3. Tomba (it got one sequel then the franchise died) for ps1.
4. Biker Mice From Mars for the snes (sure it was a tv show but they could have came out with more games.
5. Spike McFang for the snes
6. Cuphead
7. Wario world (sure there are plenty of wario games but there is only one 3d wario game which is wario world) for the gamecube.

All of these games had winning formulas.

To be fair though, it's too soon to see if Cuphead will ever get a sequel or not. Give it like 10-20 years after the franchise dies off to see if it ever got sequels or not.

Fun fact: in Italy it was called Tombi, probably because in Italian "tomba" means "tomb".
That was a cool series, I still have to watch the 2006 new episodes. It actually also got a Tiger LCD game in 1993, a Nintendo DS/Playstation 2 game (only released in Finland, Australia and the United Kingdom!) in 2006 and a mobile game in 2015.
Fun fact: the European version of the SNES game was sponsored by Snickers, the maker of the candy bars and so Snickers ads can be found around the racing tracks.
What bug me is the absence of new Warioland-like 2d platforms. The ones on Game Boy/Color/Advance were great, the first one was actually a proper sequel to Super Mario Land 2 and it is probably one of the best games on the platform. Then in 2008 we got Wario Land: Shake It! on the Wii wich also was very well crafted but after that nothing.
There's also a Wario Land on the Virtual Boy and it's surprising it never got released/remade on other platforms.

Glad to see that someone else knows some of these games. In my opinion biker mice from Mars was the best racing game on the snes. The warioland for the virtual boy is the only one that I don't have.

Ones that cone to mind would be Battle of Olympus, Chrono Trigger, Crystalis, Digital Devil Saga, Dragon's Crown, Lollipop Chainsaw, and Muramasa.

I wish Eternal Champions would have gotten more love. I loved the original and the sequel on Sega CD. It had an interesting concept with cool characters but it wasn’t the smoothest gameplay and suffered from being lost in a crowded field. The overkill’s were cool and imagine what they could do today with it. Oh well