Top 5 Games That Must Have Sequels

I guess The Dark Knight has affected me more than I realized. All I can think about is how badass that movie is, and how it shows that not all sequels are crappy. Growing up I remember so many games that I played for hours without stopping for days and days on end. But whatever happened to those IP’s?! Why did they disappear? So I’ve decided that I have a top 5 list of games that have to have sequels made because their first versions were so badass.

1. Double Dragon. As I’ve said previously, this was one of my favorite games to play as a kid. It makes me wonder what is up with all these FPS games flooding the consoles and PCs. I mean, back in the day, when you were shot by a gun, your ass was grass. You didn’t get back up from a bullet. These days though, you can take a shotgun blast to the face and walk away to pick up a health packet that makes it all better. Games need to get back to the days of chain maces and baseball bats. Billy and Jimmy Lee were master martial artists, sure, but bullets could still take them out in one hit. This IP needs to be resurrected. Yes, it had sequels, and an awesome one at that, but we need a 3D fighter that doesn’t suck dong. So, let’s bring back the Double Dragon series just like it was in the ’80s. Make it era specific a la the Cohen brothers with the big hair and cheesy music.

2. SimAnt. My brother had the first Apple I had ever seen. I don’t know for the life of me which Apple it was, but I do remember playing all the old games he used to have. I spent hours on Escape Velocity, but the game that got me most was SimAnt. That game was one of the coolest sim games I have ever played. Not only did you have the ability to manage an entire colony of ants, but you could take over any one of the ants and go make a stealth assault on the rival colony. You could even play the queen, which was pretty badass… if you’re a cross-dresser. Bring this game up to date and into 3D, please! When you’re playing the young queen you could fly from one plot of the yard to the next… yes, I’ve cross-dressed before. (It was for money. That makes it all okay.)

3. Earthworm Jim. Oh yeah! I went there. Yes, it had sequels. And they all sucked. But there was nothing better than whipping somebody up the side of the head… with your head. Earthworm Jim was pure win, and should come back to make some bad fart and booger jokes. Yes, it’s been about 10 years since I played that game, but I still have solid appreciation for cow patty humor. There’s really nothing worthy to bring this game back from the dead other than the fact it was funny. And that’s all I got for ya.

4. EVO. Does anybody even remember this game? I played this game one weekend when I rented it from Blockbuster. For years after that, I never saw it again. I swore I had created this game as a figment of my imagination. I thought since I was some kind of nerd that I had hybridized Super Mario World and an Earth Science class. But this game was incredible. It was like an early version of Spore, but without all the simmy-ness. I think Spore rules, but I really liked the individual character running through the world and developing traits that allowed the character to transform into any creature it wanted. Put this in a 3D environment with multiplayer capabilities, and we’d have T-Rex’s battling Raptors all over the world. Where else could this science experiment take place beside EVO II and Jurassic Park.

5. Kid Icarus. I have no idea why Nintendo refuses to bring this game from the Virtual Console to the Wii. There have been rumors for each successive Nintendo console that a new Kid Icarus iteration would be out before the end of the year… but no. For some strange reason, the most anticipated game since the original NES never comes out. Kid Icarus was incredibly hard to play, and is definitely one of the features I was looking forward to in the future. Only, this time, Pit needs to actually be able to fly. Perhaps he could even fly by the very sun his father did.

These are my most anticipated sequels that should come out from the good ole’ days of gaming. Keep an eye out for the next in my series of sequels: Top 5 sequels that never should have been made.