Coming Soon: Retro Revivals You Didn’t Even Realize You Wanted

The newly emerging downloadable game space was breathed new life into once dead franchises. Much like how a company might shrink in order to survive, old and once viable 2D console games of yesterday are swallowing their pride and releasing new installments through services like Xbox Live Arcade, PlayStation Network, DSiWare, and WiiWare. But with the market becoming larger and larger, even games that have slightly lower-profiles compared to “Bionic Commando: Rearmed” and “Megaman 9” are getting a second chance. Case in point these three recently announced retro revivals planned for release in 2010.

Bonk: Brink of Extinction

Who can forget Bonk, the mascot of the ill-fitted TurboGrafx 16, a third horse in the two horse 4th generation console race. The lovable young caveman who loves meat and kills his enemies by crushing them with his forehead, was the star of several TG16 platformers as well some handheld re-releases and a bizarre shoot’em up spin-off named “Air Zonk”. But with the TG16 dead and buried Bonk would remain in relative obscurity until his original adventure was released early on in the lifecycle of the Wii’s Virtual Console. Now he is coming back on all three major platforms in the new downloadable game “Bonk: Brink of Extinction”. Based on screenshots released by Hudson, the game harks back to the 2D side-scrolling gameplay of the originals while adding spiffy new polygonal graphics. Prehistoric jungle backgrounds have depth and lighting while Bonk’s caveman cranium now has some shine to it. Between this and the already available “Adventure Island” revival Hudson seems to be digging into the vault for their downloadable games to complement their monthly Bomberman releases.

Shantae: Risky’s Revenge

Released at the tail end of the Game Boy Color’s life span, Shantae was a clever well-made platformer published by Capcom and developed by WayForward (developers of the upcoming, beautiful hand-drawn Wii remake of “A Boy and his blob”). The game starred a “half-genie” named Shantae who used her hair to attack her foes. That sounds familiar, maybe Platinum Games saw this before they split from Capcom to make Bayonetta. It was a critical success and while sales were not great, fans have been asking to see a sequel for years. The result, a 3-part episodic sequel will be released over DSiWare. Earlier this year, WayForward put out one of the standout games for DSiWare, Mighty Flip Champs. Perhaps the success of that has inspired them to choose the service as the means to release their new Shantae game. 

The graphics look like updated versions of the original cartoon sprites. In fact, it would not be too hard to believe that the game is based on the rumored Game Boy Advance Shantae prototype. The first part is slated to come out in late 2009. Hopefully WayForward is modeling their episodic release calendar on the one Telltale Games (makers of the monthly Sam & Max games and the new monthly Monkey Island series) uses, not the Half-Life one. Hopefully Half-Life 2: Episode 3 will get here in less than three years after episode 2.

Castlevania Adventure: The Rebirth

Currently this game is a rumor based on an ESRB leak. However, Konami has already released similarly named retro revivals like “Contra: Rebirth” and “Gradius: Rebirth” through WiiWare. So a Castlevania Rebirth is not too hard to imagine. What is interesting is the word “adventure” in the title. Castlevania the Adventure was the first attempt at a Game Boy version of Castlevania and the results were mixed at best. However, maybe remaking it for WiiWare would give them the chance to fix it as well as introduce it to new Castlevania fans that have already beaten “Order of Ecclesia” for the DS and their downloaded copy of “Symphony of the Night” for Xbox Live Arcade. The current head of Castlevania canon, Koji Igarashi, was involved in the making of “Contra: Rebirth” hopefully he has something to do with this project, a new game in the franchise he loves and helped reinvigorate. After all, Kojima already has the upcoming “Castlevania: Lords of Shadow”, the full 3D console game coming next year, under control. As long as both games have Dracula and whips I will be satisfied.

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- Jordan Minor

Posted by admin on 09/29 at 11:02 AM
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