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Top 10 dead franchises that should find new life on PS Vita

Featuring robots, wireframe rabbits, and fishmen

Top 10 dead franchises that should find new life on PS Vita
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With new Sony hardware on the horizon comes new opportunities for game developers, plus new technology to create fresh gameplay experiences that takes advantage of all the gizmos stuffed inside the PS Vita.

Uncharted: Golden Abyss will have touch-controlled climbing, steering ships in Wipeout 2048 can be handled with a tilt of the console, and Little Deviants will have you flinging characters about the screen by pinching both sides of the handheld.

What we really want to see, though, are titles from the archives brought back and adapted to make full use of the Vita's new bells and whistles.

So, here's our top ten list of the series we want to see return on the Vita, with the ways in which they might incorporate the fresh tech included for good measure.

Vib-Ribbon
By NanaOn-Sha (PlayStation, 2000)

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If you shell out for the more expensive model of Vita on launch day, you'll have the most connected handheld gaming device through the use of its 3G connection and wi-fi. This means quicker and more convenient access to DLC: perfect for a new Vib Ribbon.

Imagine you're out and about with your shiny new portable and decide to dip into this bite-sized Bemani puzzler. But, oh, no! You've run out of new music to guide your vector graphics rabbit along to.

Not a problem. With an always-connected portable, you could just open up the in-game store menu, choose a delightfully bizarre J-Pop number, and within moments, the titular Vibri would be skipping, hopping, and cartwheeling through new landscapes created by your recent purchase.

Moho
By Lost Toys Limited (PlayStation, 2000)

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The coolest thing about the sorely overlooked Moho was its world deformation. When an explosion rocked its toxic arenas – in which criminal robots duked it out to the death in gladiatorial combat – its blast would ripple out from the epicentre like waves of malleable concrete. This level of terrain modification was uncommon back in 2000 and undoubtedly its biggest attraction.

Take this central idea and fast forward over a decade to the Vita with its back-mounted touchpad, ideal for prodding the levels into life. The title could take on a more cerebral feel, requiring you to not only steer your combatant through each area, but to also temporarily change it.

Create giant hills to roll down for an added speed boost, form earthy blockades to sneak past motion-detecting enemies, and roll opponents off edges to their dooms. Moho Vita would be the oily scrap fest alternative to Marble Madness for the 21st century.

Micro Machines
By Codemasters (NES, 1991)

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Why no one's released an updated HD version of Micro Machines is a travesty in itself, yet on the Vita it could be something truly special, doubly so if the capacity for augmented reality came into play.

Sony has shown off the WAAR (Wide Area Augmented Reality) tech in titles like Reality Fighters, using a series of card markers to define specific points in an environment upon which the game engine can draw virtual objects. You can see where I'm going with this, can't you?

The cartoon kitchen, billiard table, and bathroom environments of the previous titles would be replaced with their real-life counterparts to race over - the only limit on the courses would be your imagination, as you create tracks that span your entire home.

Cosmic Smash
By Sega Rosso (Dreamcast, 2001)

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Released right at the end of the Dreamcast's lifespan, this little-known arcade gem is an intriguing mixture of Virtua Tennis, Breakout, and Rez.

Challenged with seeing how far you might progress, you dove through level after level of a neon-future squash court, attempting to destroy blocks as they appeared with a bat, a ball, and an android-like avatar.

This makes the list for two very simple reasons. The first is that it's still an utter delight to play in smaller bursts: there's that same coin-fed, one-more-go mentality of an OutRun or a Time Crisis, with the compartmentalised structure of a traditional Arkanoid-alike.

The second is that the crisp visuals can now be done justice on the Vita's OLED screen. Every line would be as crisp and sharp as Sega Rosso's original vision with this fancy visual hardware, including a gorgeous widescreen to surround you in high-contrast minimal loveliness.

Bishi Bashi
By Konami (Arcade, 1996)

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Some people have criticised the Vita for being too large to conveniently carry around on a day-to-day basis. However, its giant size could well work in its favour for a revamping of the Bishi Bashi series.

Though superficially nothing more than a mini-game collection, Bishi Bashi possesses a charm that acts as a subtle critique of everyday life by pouring banal events through a filter of mind-warping crazy. Eating at a restaurant, going to the loo, asking a girl out on a date: they're all twisted and gamified for your pleasure.

With the Vita boasting plenty of inputs, a massive screen, and the brevity of loads that games on flash-based memory cards will bring, the only issue is ensuring Sony's handheld doesn't get tapped to death by overly zealous rounds of "Pie Toss".

Majestic
By Anim-X (PC, 2001)

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If you've played Majestic, then, first of all, congratulations -
very few people have.

Since most readers won't have done so, here's a very rudimentary synopsis: it was a game that broke the mould by sending your email account messages, faxing you in the middle of the night, having you visit real websites, and asking you to call actual phone numbers.

While it was a commercial failure because it cost too much to run, on Vita things could be different. If all interactions were automated and confined to the device (reading email, surfing the net, instant messaging, and location-based gaming), it could retain the spirit of the original without running the project into the ground financially.

Majestic was a distinctive title on a large scale which very few companies have attempted to replicate. Now is the time for that to change.

Colors
By Indie Studios (Gizmondo, Unreleased)

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From a game that did poorly in sales to a game that was never released: Colors was to be the Gizmondo's saving grace right up until 2006 when the handheld finally bit the dust.

A Grand Theft Auto clone to all intents, it looked to present a darker, seedier tone for the free-roaming crime sim genre.

So, why bring it back? Colors's unique selling point was that it would allow for pitched gang warfare based on real-time location data. You would initiate turf wars with other players if they happened to wander into your hood in real life, or spray paint their streets in-game with your own user-generated tags.

With the Vita's GPS and online capabilities, plus a much larger potential uptake of the hardware itself, this type of gameplay could easily be reinvigorated on the platform.

Seaman
By Vivarium (Dreamcast, 2000)

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Seaman and its sequel were life simulators in which you raised, interacted with, and spoke to the Seaman, a human / fish crossbreed voiced by Leonard Nimoy.

It was a curio, for sure, but Vivarium's Seaman was ahead of its time. The ability to directly speak with an on-screen "life form", have it understand what you were saying, and reply with (sometimes) sensible responses was an astonishingly complex feat for the 128-bit Dreamcast to handle, yet when it worked it truly was silicon magic.

Voice recognition has progressed massively since 1999, so now is the time for the series to make its glorious return with a third outing.

There's a decent quality microphone on the Vita, a camera for tracking player expressions, touchscreen controls for more direct interaction, and more than enough processing grunt to handle the audio input wizardry. Creator Yoot Saito has even hinted that he's at work on a new fish-based game, so surely this has to be a good fit for the Vita?

Kuri Kuri Mix
By From Software (PlayStation 2, 2001)

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While some see the Cross Play capabilities between the Vita and PS3 as "just" the chance to take your home console games out with you or to participate in cross-platform multiplayer, the gameplay possibilities run much deeper.

How about a co-operative title in which players have access to specific controls depending on which hardware they're playing on?

From Software needs to step up to the plate and show how thoughtful co-op multiplayer can be done with two different inputs by releasing another version of Kuri Kuri Mix.

Playing as Chestnut or Cream, you have to work out how best to use them together to navigate the hazardous levels ahead.

The player with the Vita could have access to gesture- and motion-based abilities to solve puzzles, while the PlayStation 3 owner would have more traditional controls to handle combat. Only together will they see the credits roll. Now, that's a novel use of Cross Play.

Sky Odyssey
By Cross (PlayStation 2, 2000)

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This is the pinnacle of flight sims on consoles. Yes, it is. Whatever game you're thinking of that's better than this, you're wrong.

Sky Odyssey flew by early in the PS2's life and never got another chance to soar. This sole release blended heavy simulation and arcade challenge beautifully, while its controls worked perfectly on the console, transposing the complex movements of aircraft flawlessly to the DualShock 2.

Vita's Sixaxis would take the realism just one step further, acting as the yoke with which to guide a variety of wildly different plane models through canyons and raging storms.

The dual analog sticks would be confined to engine power and yaw, and the dashboard in the cockpit view could be flicked through via the touchscreen. Chuck in location-based weather, custom soundtracks, and Near-based part swapping to upgrade your wings of steel, and you've got a perfect fit for the new Sony system.

Peter Willington
Peter Willington
Die hard Suda 51 fan and professed Cherry Coke addict, freelancer Peter Willington was initially set for a career in showbiz, training for half a decade to walk the boards. Realising that there's no money in acting, he decided instead to make his fortune in writing about video games. Peter never learns from his mistakes.