Games you wish came to your favorite console?

[Malakai]

For the NES, Dragon Wars was an obvious game that I would have loved to have gotten, but it never went out of beta stages. One game was complete and only released on the NES arcade machines: The Goonies. Goonies 2, of course, was released on the console, but why the hell did they not release the first one. The goonies was probably made for an arcade experience, because it had only five stages, if I remember correctly. It still should have been released.

Goonies II was a super great, super fun, longer adventure game, with lots of hidden areas and action.

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Sega CD... No system that didn't make it successfully in the marketplace ever will live up to the gaming potential it has/had. Several games were suppose to be released for it: ninja gaiden iv, thunderforce v?, and indiana jones game I think, romance and the three kingdoms and nobunaga's ambition games. Dragon's lair 2, might and magic isle of terra, battletech, shadow of atlantis, phantasy star iv (suppose to have been different than the phantasy star iv we got), and brain dead 13, another laserdisc-type adventure game.

Some of the games, of course, came to the Japanese mega cd, like romance and the three kingdoms, isles of terra, and nobunaga's ambition. Dragon's lair 2 and Brain dead 13 had demo videos on the space ace game disc. So, it shows they were at least in the process of being made, if not ready for release. Brain dead 13 was later released on the 3DO, PS1, and Saturn.

There are more games that were unreleased, but the ones listed above are the ones I would have loved to have gotten.

It would have been nice to have a castlevania game, maybe even rondo of blood, on the system.

Devil World - I would have killed to have this game on the sega cd back then!
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gSRH2qXpcL8

Discs of Tron - another great one, which would have been neat on the sega cd
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qb147VefFKQ


The Sega CD had some of the most awesome scrolling 3D effects of its time. There should have been more games like Silpheed that used these capabilities instead all of the effort put into terrible FMV games, like Prize Fighter.

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Sega Saturn.. Successful in Japan, not to successful in North America. We didn't get the 1, 2, or 4MB ram/rom carts, nor did we get many of the arcade ports (x-men vs sf, metal slug, dungeons dragons arcade) that came out in Japan. What the Japanese version was known for was space shooters. If we got half what was released in Japan, the saturn could have been a hit. The saturn, with a 4mb ram cart, was almost as powerful as the neo geo arcade system and 3x more powerful than the PS1, its main competitor.

As popular games like Lunar Silver Star and Eternal Blue came out in Japan, actually getting two releases: regular and mpeg card, for better resolution video in the animated scenes. At least they came to the PS1.

The saturn had a huge amount of RPGs in Japan too. How could I actually wish for a game that wasn't released or planned, when there were so many Japanese games that could have been translated and released in America?

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TI-99/4a - this was my first computer system. The game selection was an assortment of originals, clones, and first party games and edutainment. One of the first rpgs to come out on a home console was tunnels of doom, which is a game you'd probably think would have inspired the first ultima games, There was one or two more rpgs for the system, but the way I remember things happening is that all of these programmers were in the middle or creating great games for the system, with high hopes for it, and then texas instruments sends out bad news, and all of the programmers are either fired or have to start working on other consoles, like the commodore 64 or atari computers.

Pool of Radiance and Ultima would have been nice games for this system, but also something original like a sequel to tunnels of doom. Tunnels of doom itself was made to have map or scenario packs, and the original author was in the process of making them for market when the TI market fell out. Apparently another company took over, made an editor, and released several scenarios for the game. The scenarios could only change so much from the game, however.

Obviously, there are a lot of SSI and Avalon Hill games that could have came to this system, but they did go to the c64, atari computers, and apple ii. Really, the commodore 64 was the best of the best in terms of game selection. I'm very surprised that the tandy coco didn't do better in the gaming world. Their game selection was weak though.

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Colecovision/ADAM... another system that wasn't able to live up to its own standards, most likely because it put too much money into the ADAM computer and licensing laserdisc arcade games that coleco backed out of building. If they would have made the ADAM computer without a mandatory/built-in printer, I think things would have been better for them. The cassette data pack drives they used were pretty state of the art for the time. Most cassette drives make you stop, start, and rewind cassettes, and they read the data pretty slowly. The ADAM, however, had a super fast reader and rewinded and fast forwarded (seeked/loaded data) automatically. That particular technology was chosen because it was a more cost effective solution than to add a floppy disk drive. It was a smart choice, at least in the short run. I don't know how well those drives and the tapes/games last when being used often.

The colecovision was an 8-bit system, obviously better graphics than the atari 2600. There were only a handful of data cassette games made, but it would have been really nice if they could have released the SSI and avalon hill games on it. The adam computer really could have been an awesome RPG, strategy, or war simulation system.

Even though Dragon's Lair is something they lost a couple million dollars on, I don't think it's that bad of a game for its time.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YSinFyg6Y5Q

[Matt]

Radiant Silvergun, more Myst sequels, Shin Megami Tensei series, SaGa series ported from Super Famicom, 7th Saga 2, Seiken Densetsu 3, and the rest of the earlier Mana series- all on PS1. I think that system could easily have handled those games.

Fire Emblem "Collection" for GameCube- would have translated and released the 1990's Fire Emblem games from NES/SNES.

Mother 1 and 2 (Earthbound in the States) for GBA, which actually was supposed to arrive here.

Castlevania Resurrection, Half Life series, more Sega Smash Packs- all finished and released for Dreamcast.

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Several strategies would have let Sega CD, Saturn, and Dreamcast succeed here:

1. Abandon any and every form of FMV "technology" that killed those systems.

2. Endorse the RPG greatness that enabled the Japanese Sega systems to succeed. Learn from them, and introduce new RPGs to Americans, who I'm quite sure would have accepted and loved to play them- even back then.

3. Utilize the 2D features of Saturn and Dreamcast- Sega's bread and butter- a lot more often than they did.

4. Stop making upgrades of every damn thing released. 32X never should have happened.

5. Had Sega of America been run by competent employees and stopped doctoring the US releases of games like Bare Knuckle (SoR), Sega would not have fallen on their faces every generation like they did.

[Malakai]

If I remember correctly, Sega didn't even consider their genesis/megadrive to be successful. If you go by that logic, they have never had a successful system in North America, probably making most of their profits from arcade systems.

In terms of home users, I however remember the people I knew that had a pretty even split as far as who owned an SNES vs Genesis. I only knew one person that owned a TG16 (other than me) and only one person who owned a 3DO, which was made to compete against the SNES but failed miserably.

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So, what made the master system fail? I believe it could have been something as little as the controller design and lack of buttons, vs the NES, which was technologically inferior but had better marketing, and had two extra buttons. The master system had its pause button on the console itself. The NES had a start/pause button on each controller. The master system was 3D-capable from the start, which should have made it sell more. I personally liked the master system, but just like the atari 7800, which only had two buttons, the feeling of not being able to be in control or to do as many things as you need to do is a major issue for me.

I use to love playing shinobi, altered beast, double dragon, ghost busters, hang-on, rambo, rocky, space harrier, alex kidd, and zaxxon on the SMS.

[Malakai]

Although the master system was superior to the NES as far as processing power, with the NES still winning out, it's hard to believe that the ti-99/4a was kind of in direct competition with the commodore 64. The ti-99/4a only had 16k ram, while the commodore 64 had 64k. The vic-20 only had 5k ram, with only about 3k useable.

The vic-20 sold over 2.5 million units
Ti-99/4a sold 2.8 million units
C64 sold 17 million units

Although the c64 is the obvious winner, I am impressed by the vic-20 and ti-99/4a units sold. The TI-99/4A was considered a market failure despite those sales. I guess they went all out on the bill cosby marketing, but the unit itself was probably too expensive to manufacture, and upgradability was a concern. They had these massive sidecart options, where you can string a dozen of them along a 10' stretch (not very convenient, space-wise) or you could get the very expensive PEB, which was huge and weighed a ton. A better floppy diskette interface and options would have helped. I guess because of the cpu, ram, or video chip in the system, the screen didn't have a very high refresh rate either. Extended basic and the Editor/Assembler cartridge were basically required too when you messed with the floppy drive. The good thing was that the PEB had 32k ram expansion, still not quite as much as the c64.Commodore floppy drives just didn't stand the test of time.

[Matt]

I'll go out on a limb and petition an all around classics compilation revival. Atari, C64, TI99/4A and even the freaking calculator games. Throw in DOS and text based adventure RPGs I never saw- all for that very same reason.

All these games you talk about I never got to play, and they are hard to find. That's my whole point with the hardcore classics and the disadvantage of being an 80's baby instead of an 80's kid.

Those are games I wish were on my favorite consoles. There just are not enough of them on Wii VC and their download service shelf life will expire soon.

[Malakai]

One thing I'll say about text adventures is that virtually every single home computer system, no matter how 'slow,' had the ability to have those. Scott Adams adventures probably sold the majority of the Vic-20 systems, at least to the gamer market. His adventures were on the ti-99/4a, the commodore 64, atari 400/600/800/xe/xl, and just about every system out there at the time.

They even have a text adventure based on the tv series Dallas, called Dallas Quest. I remember playing and beating one called Pirate Cove. There was a Star Wars text adventure on the atari 800 I use to play. Some of them were so frustrating and easy to die in. You didn't have hi points or anything. You just make the wrong move and that's it.

[Malakai]

You don't hear a lot about unreleased games on the 7800, not as much as other systems, but here is a prime example of what the 7800 could have been:

Plutos - 7800 Prototype Video

Unfortunately, Plutos didn't have any music, and apparently, it was really unstable, but I think people pieced together stuff from source code and released it as a homebrew cartridge, but that was long after the 7800 was off the market.

Another cool looking game which had light gun support is one called sentinel:
Sentinel
I couldn't find a video for this game.

Yet another unreleased space shooter, Sirius:
Sirius 7800 Video
Like Plutos, Sirius was very similar to many NES space shooters. These two games really could have changed the playing field for the 7800 system. Instead, we got the same old arcade conversions that we've been getting from the 2600, 5200, colecovision, intellivision, c64, ti-99/4a, 400, 600, 800, 1200, xe, and xl, just with improved graphics. Just imagine how well the 7800 could have done if we had titles like r-type, gradius, and life force.

The 7800 did officially release an RPG-Esque game called Midnight Mutants, which features grandpa from the munsters, who gives you advice in the game:
Midnight Mutants 7800 Video
I had the 7800 during it heyday, but I never saw or heard of this game until recently. It's suppose to have three bosses and be almost impossible to beat.

There were probably only 50 or 60 official games released on the system. So, it wouldn't have even lasted as long as it did if not for the backwards compatibility with the 2600.

There were only probably 20 or so planned but unreleased games on the system, including the ones mentioned above, as well as alien vs predator, klax, pit fighter, elevator action, rampart, rampage, gato (submarine simulator), and a few others. Since we didn't have a burger time on the system (surprisingly) someone actually homebrewed a port of the arcade and called it Beef Drop LE.

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I'd also like to mention one more thing about Atari in general. In the 2600 days, there just wasn't enough rom space for long games, and games like swordquest, which I believe was suppose to be one game (called adventure II) was split up into three games: earthworld, fireworld, and waterworld. Miner 2049er was split up into two games. Dragon stomper wasn't a complete game, despite being released commercially. When the 2600 trasnitioned into the 5200 and 7800, things didn't seem to change much, as far as how long the games were. A lot of games just ran on an endless loop, and some games would freeze or crash if you got too high of a score, etc.

The commodore, atari computers, dos pc, apple ii, NES, gameboy, and sega master system had games that were extremely long. So, when Atari came out with the Jaguar, they should have known that they needed games that would last more than 10 minutes. Instead, they just improved the graphics of many of their releases and had basically the same releases as the 2600. As far as I can recall, the jaguar didn't have any RPGs.

A lot of the things behind the previous atari systems was probably that some of the games were pretty difficult. So, it may have taken a long time to master them, but as soon as you master the games, you can beat them in 10 minutes or less. It's kind of like the laserdisc arcade of dragon's lair. You may spend tens or hundreds of hours trying to master it, watching yourself die in fifty different ways, but once you got the hang of it, that's it. The same goes for the 'adventure' or rpg-esque games of the 2600. Once you've figured out ET, Superman, and Adventure, it was just a quick runthrough and had no challenge at all. When I beat superman on the 2600 the 2nd or third time, I basically said to myself, "this game sucks."

[Malakai]

I'll also have to add 'Lord of the Dungeon,' for the colecovision. A very limited number of these cartridges were released, and it was the first battery-backed cartridge to exist. Lord of the Dungeon was basically a wizardry-type game, released in 1983.

The game didn't get a wide-scale release, because they had a lot of bugs in it, due to the battery backed save system.

There is a thread on atariage, with screenshots, the rom image, and even information on how to run it in an emulator (bluemsx?) below:
Lord of the Dungeon - Thread, Atariage

There is also a website about unreleased colecovision games:
Unreleased colecovision games

Several of the listed games were either homebrews or ports from other systems (ones that have collectorvision or opcode games) but there were some legit unreleased games. Some of the ones I would have loved to see in the list: escape from the mind master, masters of the universe I and II, dungeons and dragons IV, dragon stmper (that famous atari 2600 cassette drive rpg), astro chase, pac-man, joust (one of my favorites), wizard of war, tunnels and trolls, sword and the sorcerer, and dracula.

[Malakai]

Speaking of the ti-99/4a and its '10' stretch' with all of the sidecars, here's a perfect example:
'

Here, we have a ti-99/4a computer (first model), a speech synthesizer, printer, probably a memory sidecart, an rs-232 sidecart, floppy drive controller sidecart, a 5 1/4" floppy drive, and a telephone coupler aka modem, when modems required manual dialing and were probably 150 or 300 baud.

The floppy drive and modem I don't believe are sidecarts but are just made to look like they belong in a chain. The modem most likely hooked into the rs-232 port and the floppy drive, into the floppy controller.

With the invention of the PEB, most of this stuff, with the exception of the modem could be put inside of the peb. It came with a floppy drive controller (which could control 4 drives, although the peb itself only had room for 2 half height drives), 32k memory upgrade, and an rs-232 (2x rs-232 ports, 1x parallel) card. You could even buy a card that would allow you to put the speech synthesizer in the peb. Although there were prototype 1200 baud modems made for the PEB, they were released in a very limited quantity.

Other things that could be added to the ti-99: ide hard drive controllers, scsi controllers, writing tablets, more memory upgrades, the rave99 XT keyboard adapter, real-time clock card, printer buffers, video cards (allowed more columns to be displayed), home security cards, dual cassette drives, and there was even a peb card that would transform the peb into a full-fledged computer; the geneve card.

The RS-232 ports actually support 9600 baud speeds, which is excellent for the time, but terminal programs cap out at 300 baud, because when they were made, there apparently wasn't 9600 baud modems.