2/23/2017

Ideas for Sega

Take 'em for free! Just give the developers more than a damn week to make it, or just generally don't screw them over while they are trying to help you turn a profit. Here are some ideas for Sega game series that I think could really turn things around for Sega or at least make some great sales. The success of Bayonetta and Bayonetta 2 proves that it is possible. Yeah. I've heard people go "Bayonetta is Sega?" Yeah! Sometimes developers can make a good game for Sega if Sega stops rapidly sucking dick. Here we go!

Oh, and this is mainly just stuff that I would like to see happen or have any remote interest in, so if I didn't get to your favorite Sega franchise, you can go write about your own video game fantasy world. Leave me and my delusions alone!

Also no Bayonetta 3 because I feel that there would be no way to do it that would not be forced as hell. If you know the plot of Bayonetta 1 and 2 because you have beaten both games, there is my reasoning and that's basically it. If you don't know why Bayonetta 3 would be forced as hell, go play Bayonetta 1 and 2 and actually watch the cutscenes. Moving on.

Ecco Comes Back and then he um... beats all the alien sharks and such...
Ecco the Dolphin existed once! I was never that big of a fan of the game either but it was like Odell Down Under but you are always a dolphin, you're the smartest dolphin of all the dolphins, and you get to impale sharks with your own body so quickly that they explode. Turns out the dolphin had to fight aliens. It might be cool to see something like that go down today. 2D open world underwater isn't really the worst idea and there could be a lot of cool environments underwater despite the whole world being a water level. This actually almost happened, kind of, sort of. The guy who made Ecco was going to make some 3D game with a bunch of fish underwater but it failed kickstarter or something. Whoops. So maybe I'm the only one who thinks this could be cool. Honestly, 3D might not be the best fit for something like Ecco, since again, this is all underwater, but that doesn't mean a new Ecco game has to be bad by default.

Hatsune Miku with a party-based multiplayer mode that can be local and/or online
Wait, you guys still haven't done this yet? It's a rhythm game. You don't have to be a shut-in weaboo to enjoy the Hatsune Miku games because they are fun and tightly designed rhythm games. Make a mode where you can fuck with each other while a bunch of vocaloids dance on screen to implausible scenarios.

NiGHTS but it makes sense
I don't understand NiGHTS. I get the kids, NiGHTS, the basics of the vague plot, but how does this game work? To be fair, I think they tried to do this with Journey of Dreams, so I played that in middle school and hated it for some reason. So maybe I should just shut up and play Journey of Dreams. But also NiGHTS is mostly praised for its unique and surreal aesthetics, so why did they pick the console with the worst graphical capabilities to do a sequel on? Even if they make a Wii U NiGHTS, that has a lot of potential to look awesome and maybe have some actual learning curve so you know what the hell you're doing. Oh, wait, I forgot, the Wii U is already dead. Also make the plot more trippy and less kiddy. Nobody's dreams have a boring control tutorial in them and the dream-like presentation of the first game was one of the things that drew me to it in the first place.

Sonic but it doesn't suck ass, you can do cool things, and there's multiplayer... THE GAME!!!
This has pretty much been a dream game for me since I was very little: a Sonic game that doesn't have flimsy gameplay, preferably 3D, and you can play 4-players local in a bunch of goofy modes. The new focus in this game is not going fast, but wait! Sonic being fast is great, but going fast in a straight line with occasional curves is not so great. Sonic using his speed to do crazy mechanics that make a fun platformer and then you can go fast to explore overworlds and bigger stages or something? There you go! These mechanics can transcend to other typical characters like Tails, Knuckles, and Shadow (maybe some more of my favorites like Blaze, Metal Sonic, Fang on his hoverbike thing?) and make for a really silly but still mechanically sound multiplayer game as well. MMMMM!!!!!! Basically watch the Sonic CD intro, Sonic CD outro, some Sonic Battle gameplay, and then the Sonic movie from the 90's... and to a lesser extent look up Rayman Arena. Something like that but with actual content and spontaneity. My idea is a game where you can do all that stuff. So the game isn't "oh gee, look how fast I'm going." It's about using Sonic's speed to do cool stuff. To put in perspective: a game with The Flash wouldn't just make The Flash really fast. They use his superpowers in a grounded way that the player can still feel like they have control... and then comfortably control it without a record amount of glitches.

Super Monkey Ball That Isn't For Fucking Babies Extreme
This actually is not a simple request. I understand that. I love Super Monkey Ball and Super Monkey Ball 2, but every other game I have played or seen in the series blows. The levels in the first two games are not levels as much as they are self-contained puzzles. Super Monkey Ball 1 and 2 were not platformers, they were puzzle games that doubled over as party games. Other games in the series have "puzzles" but they really aren't hard to figure out and aren't fun or exciting whatsoever. They are absolute baby games for babies and that is an absolute disgrace to the original games. Also Super Monkey Ball 1 and 2 had great graphics and soundtracks, which could easily be done in the current generation. My PS4 library is still pretty low, I wouldn't mind adding Super Monkey Ball 3 to it. I'm not saying make an overly hard Super Monkey Ball game for the sake of being hard, but make one that has a welcoming and rewarding single-player and outrageous multiplayer like it was 16 years ago.

Vectorman but it doesn't make you want to kill yourself
This is more just "I suck at Vectorman". Vectorman was a really cool character and his world was a genuinely fun and pretty one. I think an HD tune-up, even if it was still slightly pixelated for sake of style, would be an instant cult classic in the 2D platformer world. I played Vectorman 1 and 2 when they were fairly recent games, but that is unfortunately as far as I've thought into a sequel.

Billy Hatcher 2
I love Billy Hatcher. I shouldn't because it really is not that great of a game and my YouTube channel focuses on imperfections in game design, but my channel also focuses on fun and the validity of opinions, therefore Billy Hatcher might just be my ultimate guilty pleasure game. There has only been one game in the series. I don't think Billy Hatcher and the Giant Egg sold very well. He has made cameo appearances in other games a few times, but nobody knows who he is. I always have to explain to my friends on the couch who he was and it is always an embarrassing experience because I don't know Billy Hatcher from intensive Sega research, I know the game because I have beaten it at least twice (my current file has every emblem except for the S-rank emblems, for those who know anything about this game). The things that make Billy Hatcher an "okay" game could be fixed with a large handful of small tweaks, so even a Billy Hatcher HD or something that was an actual remake and not just a remaster would be fine in my book, but I think revisiting the world of Morning Land with a fresh new take with some new designers and whatnot could be interesting as well, while still keeping the original template somewhat intact.

Vanquish 2
Vanquish was an overlooked third-person shooter developed by Platinum where you played as a guy in an experimental robot suit and could do cool robot suit stuff. The game was really arcade-y in a lot of ways, but it also had a post-pandemic plot kind of thing where Earth had to live in a tube in space basically. Sam Gideon, your character in the robot-suit, was one of the only people with such a suit, or at least one at its level, because he was kind of a guinea pig for it. Vanquish's narrative was all about taking that technology to its limits. Well. Now we know its limits. What else can it do? Vanquish 2! Now with upgraded suit that can maybe walk on walls (but not like Overwatch, like defying gravity with magnet boots or something) and get even bigger, crazier explosive weapons. Vanquish also had a really well-designed theme of what weapons to use in certain situations as well as which weapons to keep equipped in said situations, which was something that I think they could do more puzzle-based and secret-objective stuff with. Oh, and again, robot suit that can do cool stuff. Sold? Yeah, I thought so.

Ristar 2
For someone out there, I'm sure this made someone's day that I mentioned Ristar. For the rest of you (most of you), Ristar was a platformer for the Genesis about a star kid named Ristar who has stretchy arms. You had to do a bunch of grabby puzzles, including swinging from stuff and scaling walls. I just feel like it wasn't fully explored and Ristar himself moved too slow. As in his walking speed was fine but you stop everything to do the grab move. Then when it comes to swinging around, the game is super fast-paced. Maybe a bit more action on the ground. I don't know. Ristar had a great soundtrack and awesome visuals too. So I would want it to probably still be 2D, and not necessarily pixel art, just pretty. Ristar looked super impressive for its time. It would look even cooler running 60 FPS. The world looked pretty unique too. It was kind of Kirby meets Sonic in terms of art style. Um. Anyways. Ristar 2 would be cool.

I know there's more I could have mentioned but I'm out of ideas and couldn't think of a sure-fire way to improve Crazy Taxi. If you have anything to add to this, let me know in the comments. This could bring up a lot of fun and creative ideas for people. Maybe. That or we can just acknowledge that this blog post is just me fantasizing about games that even if they came out next year, I might not even buy half of them. I wonder if the developers of some of Sega's games feel that way too... that explains a bit...