Re: audiogames that deserve remake?
Interesting topic.
One question I wonder though, is where is the line between sequel, remake, and expanded contend?
Games like Superliam and lone wolf are still no problem to run on modern windows. That they could do with some expansion or a sequel I certainly agree, Albeit lone wolf is a game I've never done too well with myself, however it seems a bit strange to start talking of direct remakes, IE, the same game redone with a different programming languages and perhaps some different decisions made, such as happened between the old and new versions of Egg hunt, beatstar or great toy robbery, when the originals are still here.
So, while I'd certainly be up for a superliam 2 or a lone wolf expanded operations, whether you'd need a complete tear down and remake I honestly don't know.
here however are a few of my suggestions for remakes;
1: Entombed! This actually started to happen with Entombed ii taking into account a lot of the things people wanted expanded in the first game, front/back ranks for more tactical combat, the ability for magic to miss, a slightly less ridiculous system for material hardness, and in built customisation options, a shame development stopped. Entombed just had so many cool little systems, from auto created weapons and monster heroes to the body part damage system, to the creation of corpses and skeletons, it'd be great to see these worked into a different game which ironed out the bugs and class imbalances, as well as added a bit more variety.
Really, even now with Manamon and A hero's call and so on, there've been no audio games quite like entombed for pure tactical dungeon diving fun and having to work with what adventurers you find to form the best party.
2: Galaxy ranger. When I think back on all of Vipgameszone's titles, galaxy ranger is the one which stands out to me the most, even compared to lords of the galaxy with it's richer soundscapes, cute minigames and entirely %100 imbalanced gameplay .
Of course, real time strategy games have advanced a long way, but Galaxy ranger had so many fun little systems, like the need to play stereo targeting with your robotic units, and physically take control in battle, and the really fun way you had to balance unit's strengths and weaknesses (especially when you had only a limited maximum number of each unit available).
A remade, and indeed expanded version, with perhaps more emphasis on production rather than taking all of your robotic workers off the map, not to mention a better online system would be awesome, using the best of what has been learned about designing strategy games in the intervening years to make something special, since wow I have so many fond memories of sitting their in my space cruser, having already blasted away the enemy's defences, counting down the squares until I could hit delete and drop the bomb .
3: Pipe 2, blast chamber. While it is possible to run the BSC titles on modern windows, it's far more problematic to do, and this one I've never got to run at all.
thinking about the BSC games now, I think for me, pipe 2 is the most inervative.
Hunter had fantastic soundscapes and was almost a proto crazy party in terms of different minigames, but each game individually was comparatively simple, while troopanum 2, though undoubtedly one of the most polished examples of a space invaders game we've seen, is still at rock bottom a space invaders game.
Pipe 2 however took the simple, and indeed rather dull idea of the original pipe, and just added factor after factor after factor, so that rather than just playing one arcade game, or indeed several arcade games, you were effectively playing three or four minigames at once.
Hammering the pipes, dodging electricity, stereo targeting the rats, playing lock pick with the chests, even sticking in the occasional superliam style side scroller, playing memory with the spiders, not to mention the swapping numbers bomb defusing and the fact all of this was on a timer. Pipe 2 is one of the best examples I've seen of how to increase the difficulty of an audio game without either overloading the soundscape, or simply having a faster reacting boppit, which made it in turn a more rewarding game to play.
Even though I did like the actual environments far more in hunter, if we're talking a total remake and I had to pick one bsc title, I think it'd be pipe 2.
4: Freefall.
Okay, picking a doss text adventure is probably cheating a wee bit here, but honestly Freefall is one of the most unique things I've played. Frustrating as hell, with a clunky parser, staggering travel distances and brutal resource management, and yet rarely have I played a game, even counting muds like clok, where I really feel like I'm preparing for an epic fantasy journey in the wild quite like this, with the need to manage food and water, and even reaching the next town over an achievement.
I also absolutely loved the way that Fallthru introduced it's world, with the need to type "help" and then a word to get information about something, meaning that even when you found a sign about a distant city, you could hear about it.
Yes, the parser was clunky as hell, and the game had a few systems that were just plane brutal, like those felvern that would eat you every moonless night if you didn't have a light source, and some mazes that made me want to tear my hair out.
But, in a game which made you earn every bit of progress, where even buying an oil lamp felt like a victory, where you actually had! to hunt in the wilds to avoid death, even counting learning to use the weapons and getting better at them, even the frustrating parts had their virtues, and it didn't hurt that the pure descriptive prose, even the randomly generating descriptions of the wilderness, were just plane pretty.
I've often thought if I ever learned enough programming to write a game, it would be something like this, a game which just tasked you with exploring and finding things, letting you survive in the wilderness, get better at your skills, and had you complete epic quests by small steps.
It also is incredibly nice that Fallthru is a single player game, meaning that it has a distinct beginning, middle and end, albeit accompanied by some rock hard puzzles and lots of travelling, since for me, I think this style of game is more fun when it's just you against the wilderness, rather than as part of a mud or mmorpg community.
With Eamon Deluxe mantle nicely taken up for the modern era by Eamon remastered, i think Fallthru, or something like it is what I'd most like to see remade.
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