The gaming industry moves at such a pace that it’s not surprising we’ve seen countless franchises fall into obscurity over the years, whether due to the publisher losing interest or sales not quite justifying the development. Some of these franchises are understandable, but there are franchises which genuinely influenced gaming as a medium which are in danger of being forgotten about entirely.
1. Medal Of Honor
Few games have fallen out of the mainstream quite as hard as Medal of Honor has. The original game’s release on PS1 was considered to be a landmark in FPS gaming, adding a cinematic and almost educational dynamic to the genre.
That cinematic edge was to be expected of course, considering the whole series was the brainchild of Saving Private Ryan director (among other things) Steven Spielberg. You might have heard of him. While Medal Of Honor was far from the visionary’s first dip into the world of gaming, Medal Of Honor was undoubtedly his biggest video game success story. I mean, he actually got to make MoH, which turned into a long-running franchise. It’s more than you can say about LMNO.
Medal of Honor did well transitioning from PS1 to PC and PS2 (among other consoles), but the quality of the games took a bit of a dip starting with Medal of Honor: Rising Sun. Meanwhile, another FPS series managed to gain quite a bit of groundswell in Call of Duty, which was started by ex-Medal of Honor devs, with CoD crucially being the franchise to make the move from WW2 to modern day combat. Yes, it also inspired the wave of brown and gray military shooters that plagued the PS3 and Xbox 360, but the point is that Call Of Duty managed to innovate first, leaving Medal Of Honor behind to pick up the pieces.
EA did try to pivot into modern day too, and while the first game in that rebooted series was a success, making over $100 million in its first week, the sequel, Medal Of Honor: Warfighter, was a massive flop. The series hasn’t recovered since, save for a brief VR revival in 2020 titled Medal Of Honor: Above & Beyond, which was made by Respawn, who used to be part of Infinity Ward, who used to make Call of Duty to kill off Medal of Honor.
Reviews weren’t great, but Above & Beyond did technically win an Oscar with its inclusion of the documentary short Colette. Still, we haven’t had a traditional Medal of Honor in well over a decade, and that’s too bad.
2. Resistance
Becoming a fan of PlayStation during the late PS2 and PS3 era must be heartbreaking, because you’ve essentially had to watch a lot of the Sony franchises you probably loved essentially be abandoned by Sony. We’re talking about the likes of Motorstorm, Jak & Daxter, Killzone and probably countless others, but there’s one series that’s been sorely missed more than the others: Resistance.
Developed by Insomniac, in between Ratchet & Clank games and way before they exploded with their take on Spider-Man, Resistance told a unique alien invasion story that saw humanity trying to deal with the oppressive might of an alien onslaught in an alternate history version of the 1950s. Instead of the World Wars, the Resistance world sees the Chimera aliens landing in Russia and spreading forth from there across Europe, with the first game set in the UK.
While the first game is perhaps notable for causing controversy with the Church Of England thanks to a level set in the Manchester Cathedral, all three mainline games in the Resistance series were considered to be fantastic shooters that deserved to be part of any PS3 owner’s collection. Admittedly, the story did offer a proper conclusion in Resistance 3, so it’s understandable why there hasn’t been a new game in the series for a decade, along with Insomniac’s massively increased schedule, but there’s enough room in the world of Resistance for spin-offs, prequel stories and more. The last game we got was the pretty not good Burning Skies exclusively on Vita.
What’s saddest of all is that Astro Bot, the game designed to celebrate the PlayStation brand as a whole, didn’t include any reference to Resistance. Come on guys, not even a little Chimera bot to rescue?
3. Driver
If you were to ask some people, you’d think that Grand Theft Auto 3 was the first game ever to offer a proper 3D open world, but the reality couldn’t be further from that. While the team that’d come to be known as Rockstar were busy making top-down open world games for the PS1 and other platforms, there were a few PS1 games with proper 3D cities to explore.
Urban Chaos is a solid example, but there’s also Driver, a series that’s been left to rot ever since the whipper that was Driver San Francisco. Of course, you might not remember there being an open world to explore in the first Driver game because you’re still stuck in that tutorial car park. Is that an easy joke to make? Yes. Have we made the joke too much already? 100%. Is it hard not to make it? Not as hard as doing a slalom, am I right, gang?
The Driver series might not have had the most consistent run of form during its lifespan, with Driver 3, or Driv3r if you’re feeling freaky, and Driver: Parallel Lines not quite living up to the same standards as the first two games in the series. Combine that with the runaway success of GTA 3 onwards, and it’s not hard to see why the Driver series hasn’t emerged from its garage for over a decade.
Still, Driver: San Francisco proved there was life in the series if it was willing to embrace novel mechanics and a more silly, b-movie style tone. The fact that San Francisco has since been delisted, and remains the last Driver game ever made, is a crime on two counts, but Ubisoft funnelling millions into Skull & Bones instead of a new Driver game is basically strike three.
They even tried to make it into a TV show, but somehow messed that up too. How hard are cars, guys? Cars. Cars and men driving them cars.
4. Time Crisis
For a certain time there, it felt like you couldn’t move for all the lightgun games launching on consoles. Sure, they were all ports of arcade games you could usually play at your local Cineworld (or Dave & Buster’s for the Americans in our audience), but for those who had the disposable income to buy some plastic guns, they were a great way of recreating part of the arcade experience from the comfort of home.
We could just list off a bunch of different lightgun game franchises and wonder why they haven’t had a proper revival, including The House Of The Dead, Virtua Cop and Point Blank, but Time Crisis is probably the one series that’s become synonymous with the entire genre. You see a picture of one lightgun, you’re probably immediately thinking of Time Crisis.
Besides, the first House Of The Dead had a remake semi-recently, so we can’t really include it here.
Developed by Namco, the Time Crisis series was lightgun action at its finest, as you moved through various shooting galleries of terrorists and criminals across a handful of levels. The mechanics were basic, but easy for anyone to understand: point the gun, shoot the gun. Time Crisis formed a key part of PlayStation’s library even up to the PS3, but Time Crisis 5, the most recent arcade release from 2015, hasn’t had any kind of console port.
With the increase in VR availability, along with the use of motion controls as part of gaming, it feels bizarre that Time Crisis hasn’t been released on consoles for years at this point, especially considering arcades are really more dead than our website. Would a modern console port of Time Crisis come with plastic guns too? Probably not, but still. Give us a new Time Crisis, please.
5. Bloody Roar
Usually, it’s Capcom who are leaving their fighting game franchises in the past, with Power Stone, Rival Schools and Darkstalkers all waiting for a dedicated follow-up for at least two decades at this point, but at least Capcom have been reviving their older fighting games pretty regularly with HD collections and the like.
The same can’t be said for Eighting, who have released a new Bloody Roar game in about 20 years. This injustice surely cannot stand any longer, as while Bloody Roar was far from the most technically proficient fighting game franchise ever made, there was plenty of button-mashing fun to be had, especially with the wild character concepts that haven’t been explored in fighting games outside of Mortal Kombat’s Animality finishers.
Originally known as Beastorizer in North America, which is the most metal name of a game ever, Bloody Roar follows a cast of Zoanthropes, a group of people who have the ability to transform into half-human, half-animal hybrid, a power that apparently also makes you sick at doing martial arts.
They say that the brightest flame burns quickest, and the Bloody Roar series burned pretty quickly, as Eighting managed to release five different games in the series between 1997 and 2003, but for whatever reason, the series hasn’t returned since. Is that partly due to the negative reception of Bloody Roar 4? More than likely, but the 2013 version of Killer Instinct proved that retro fighting game revivals can produce magic. Get someone to make a new version of this, it’ll be a bit of fun, won’t it?
6. Thief
Some gaming franchises being abandoned makes sense, even if we’re going to be incredibly sad about it. Despite often being some of the most well-reviewed games with loyal fanbases, immersive sim games don’t tend to sell well, causing most publishers to be gunshy about making or supporting them. Look at the Dishonored series for instance, which is pretty much universally beloved but everything after the first game failed to hit expectations, or even Prey.
Of course, both of those games owe a lot of inspiration to Thief, the collection of stealth games designed to simulate being a poacher in a fantasy steampunk inspired world. While there’s only ever been four games in the series, the first three of them have left an incredible mark on the industry, inspiring waves of single player experiences afterwards. The less said about that fourth game, the better.
Again, stealth and immersive sim style games have become such a hard sell these days, so it’s understandable why a new Thief game hasn’t been immediately greenlit by whatever company owns the rights at this point. On top of that, reviews and sales of that fourth game barely even touched mediocre, as Eidos Montreal and Square Enix attempted to reboot the franchise while robbing much of the magic in the game’s level design and structure.
Still, even if Thief (2014) is considered to be a bit of a stain on the series’ legacy, the fact there’s been no HD collections or celebrations of the first three games is wild. Is it too on the nose to say “we’ve been robbed”? Probably for other outlets, but we’re proud of our crappy little jokes.
7. Ultima
If the DNA of Thief is still being felt in other games to this day, then Ultima is arguably the Genghis Khan of RPGs. No matter how far you go, you’ll be able to find some kind of relation or influence to the Ultima games, whose legacy dates back nearly 50 years at this point.
Starting out with Akalabeth: World Of Doom, the spiritual predecessor to the Ultima series, back in 1979, the Ultima series sprung forth in 1981 and appeared on pretty much every retro platform under the sun at the time. The series would extend all the way up until Ultima 9 in 1999, also including the two-parter that was Ultima 7. Then there’s the spin-off series entries like World of Ultima, Ultima Underworld, Runes Of Virtue, Ultima Online, Ultima Forever and Ultima Forever: Quest For The Avatar.
For a series that was as prolific as the Ultima series, the fact that it’s now dead and buried is kind of sad. Sure, Paul Neurath, designer on the original Ultima, successfully launched a Kickstarter to bring the series back in 2018 with Underworld Ascendant, as EA refused to give permission to actually use the Ultima name as part of the deal. Truthfully, that was probably for the benefit of the Ultima name and legacy, as Underworld Ascendant received some of the worst reviews on Metacritic.
Admittedly, we have no idea what a new version of the Ultima series would look like, as the RPG space has become so crowded these days that it’s possible there might not be enough room for a legacy series like Ultima in this day and age. So long as any new Ultima game isn’t turned into another Soulslike, we’re fine with it.
8. True Crime
We’re not trying to hand out medals for cunning and bravery about a series that essentially saw the GTA formula and said to itself “gimme that”, but the True Crime series was arguably the first to prove that Rockstar hadn’t just captured lightning in a bottle.
Open world action games weren’t some kind of fad, they had genuine merit, and 2003’s True Crime: Streets Of LA also brought its own martial arts flavor into the mix. Instead of playing as a criminal, you play as a cop who can also perform sick combos, who has to get to the bottom of a huge conspiracy. Quite why the conspiracy involves one of the most stacked voice casts in gaming history, including Gary Oldman, Ron Perlman, Michael Madsen, Michelle Rodriquez and Christopher Walken, we don’t know. We also can’t explain whatever was going on in Chapter 6.
Streets of LA earned decent reviews and success, warranting a sequel, New York City, that didn’t quite do so well critically or commercially. Plans for a direct sequel to NYC were put on hold, but a Hong Kong based game did start production, turning into what we now know today as Sleeping Dogs. Leaning more heavily into the martial arts influences, Sleeping Dogs was a brilliant undercover cop tale and a shining example of a PS3 and Xbox 360 open world game.
Naturally, it sold under Square’s expectations, and the series has been dead in the water since.
With United Front no longer a thing, and Square Enix moving away from publishing Western games, we’re not entirely sure who would be able to get Sleeping Dogs 2 off the ground, but we’ll give them as many coins as it takes to make it happen. We can spare at least two, maybe three.
9. Bionic Commando
We spoke earlier about Capcom’s neglected fighting games, but it’s not just fighting games they’ve forgotten about. We could, and have, made a list on that more dead than Lost Planet website of ours on the various Capcom franchises that could do with a revival, and while most would love to say Dino Crisis or Onimusha, there’s something to be said about re-exploring Bionic Commando.
A series of games about dudes with the sickest “Go Go Gadget” looking arm you’ve ever seen, Bionic Commando helped redefine 2D platforming by taking away their ability to jump and replacing it with a grappling hook, giving players more verticality while playing.
Despite only releasing a handful of games between 1987 and 2011, the legacy that the series has left behind is massive. Granted, the two pillars of that legacy these days happen to be a) the arm in the 2009 3D reboot happened to be the main character’s wife (or something) and b) said main character, named Spencer, has become a core part of the Marvel Vs Capcom roster ever since. Granted, that’s only two proper games, but he’s been in both of them, that’s all we’re saying.
If nothing else, Bionic Commando deserves an opportunity to live again just to give the series one last chance to forget about Spencer being shoulder deep inside his wife. He should be shoulder deep in Liquid instead. Not like that.
10. Breath Of Fire
When you think of Capcom, your first thought probably isn’t of turn-based RPGs. Any RPGs they do make, such as Dragon’s Dogma or Monster Hunter, are all about the action, with Capcom leaving the turn-based stuff to other Japanese developers. However, even Capcom had their fun with turn-based RPGs with the Breath of Fire series.
With the first game originally released in 1993 on the SNES, Capcom would release five total games in the series until 2002 with Breath of Fire V: Dragon Quarter on the PS2. At the time, Capcom would remark that Breath Of Fire was their most successful RPG franchise, though that was obviously before the release of Dragon’s Dogma and the rampant success of the Monster Hunter series.
It’s clear now why Capcom has never chosen to go back to the turn-based RPG well, considering their action RPG franchises are selling way more than the Breath of Fire franchise ever did. However, that doesn’t do much to explain why Breath of Fire lay dormant from the release of Dragon Quarter in 2002, all the way up until Breath Of Fire 6 in 2016, a now defunct online RPG that encouraged people to join together and complete missions across PC and mobile. The game never made it out of Japan, the response was pretty awful and the whole thing would be shut down in about 18 months. We haven’t really seen or heard of anything from the Breath of Fire series, aside from a themed event in Teppen. What even is Teppen? Tekken for tapdancers?
Make a new Breath of Fire that’s the proper official sixth game and we’ll forget that all of this ever happened.
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