The 10th Hour! 1.22.10: The Top 10 Greatest Games Never Sold

Posted by John De Large on 01.22.2010

Or....Here's Some Games Someone Should've Made Years Ago!



Hey all! It's JDL, on your computer screen, with my second edition of The 10th Hour. I'm back from a successful rehearsal of the new short film by Morgan Eschmann, In Company With Misfits, with David Arkema, but enough about me, here's a Top 10 list that I think is going to surprise most people. Once again, I know there'll be people chiming in with suggestions -- and the haters from last week will probably be checking in to see if I suck this week too ;)

So without further delay, take it away, myself!

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The Top 10 11 Greatest Games Never Sold
11. Fallout 3 MMO.

I got this idea while playing Fallout 3 and Final Fantasy 11 (both of which were gifts). I'd tried Final Fantasy last year and hated it, so I gave it another chance and – I still hate it! I hate that Final Fantasy 11 is so hard to figure out how to play and then they have the NERVE to charge a monthly fee on top of whatever you paid for the game. Granted, I paid nothing for the game, but still! A monthly fee of $10 or more is nothing to sneeze at! Even Xbox LIVE accounts are only $50! (or $20, if you're me and they give you the wrong card by accident)

Whatever, I tried Fallout 3 next and I loved it. In the end, I came to the realization that the bum game costs money to play and keep playing, while the good game is free, yet devoid of co-operative play, or the ability to interact with other Fallout players. Within Fallout 3 there exists the ability to recruit NPC's as backup, but they cannot competently defend themselves or heal unless a dialogue option about first aid exists (and with certain NPC's, it doesn't).

For a nominal fee, ($5, not ten!) you should be able to recruit other players with the other players themselves getting a certain amount of points for successful missions/odd jobs. At the end of the month (or even any time), these points can be traded for in-game cash or an out-of-game discount on the monthly nominal fee (what better way to keep a player playing than to reward him, amirite?).

And before you say it, YES, I know that a Fallout MMO is in development(al hell). I'm just saying that if they make it, they need to base if off Fallout 3, remove VATS and have the player sell his services.

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10. Harvest Moon meets the Chocobo Breeder mini-game meets Pokemon meets a good old fashioned Action RPG

A student of mine (remember, I work in a high school) told me how much he loved the Chocobo Breeder mini-game from FF7 and exploring the world looking for artifacts and treasures on his own, but he quickly lamented how few new things there were to find on his own.

I told him that if I could, I'd make a game where you could raise a Chocobo from infancy, tame more of them, breed Chocobo's full time, sell the ones you couldn't keep and use the ones you DO keep to explore the world around you.

Of course, Chocobo riding wouldn't be fun on it's own, so you'd have to train your Chocobos to prime physical fitness before taking them out for excursions.

So, just what are you looking for with these Chocobos? Whatever you want! Is it more money to expand your farm? Adventures galore and treasure to boot? Do you want to save the town or just settle down and get a girl (or a man, if you're into men)? Not all games with swords and Chocobos NEED a Big Bad to fight and neither does a game like this. I hope Square and/or Natsume read this and get to work on breeding a game much like the one I described here.

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9. An MMO with an ATB system

Final Fantasy 6 is one of my favorite games of all time. It's got everything, from the story, music, design, dialogue and especially the combat system. When I bought Final Fantasy 11, I thought it would be like FF6 in that parties would join up at a neutral location (like a bar, acting as sort of an in-game lobby) choose a designated leader or have one automatically assigned by level/experience and then you set out on a quest or two, with each character deciding what course of action they take during an ATB battle.

I was not pleased when I found out that this was not how FF11 worked. Can someone please get on making a game like this? FF6 style sprites as character avatars would be plus!

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8. A Family Guy RPG

The Family Guy game was not good, just face it. It involved PTV and Ernie The Giant Chicken – I dunno, I can hardly remember it that well, all I remember is that it sucked. After playing Mario RPG one day (and after my friend Melissa suggested it) I realized how awesome a Family Guy style RPG would be! Peter could be The Warrior, Lois could be The Monk, Meg could be The Tank, Chris could be a Mage, Stewie could be any number of things and Brian could be both a sweet back row mage and a mount. You could even use Peter, Quagmire, Joe and that-new-black-guy-that-replaced-Cleaveland as playable characters, instead!

Throw in a variety of villains, even friends as enemies, give the team some color coded pieces of whatever to collect and you've got a game that'll be even better than the piece of crap that the original Family Guy was.

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7. FPS meets Inglourious Basterds

If you're like me, you worship Inglourious Basterds. For you, the script is gospel and frankly, you think that the Basterds' role in the movie was too short. Shoshanna? Who has time for her and her unlike-ability?! Not I, you say! Shoshanna drags the whole movie to a halt. In fact she's the worst thing about the movie! Unsympathetic, boring and ax crazy at the drop of a hat, who needs her?

Getting back on track, there've been rumors that Tarantino is writing a prequel script for The Basterds that details their time in France -- if they make that into a movie, I'll go see it, probably three to five times. But what if they made that into a video game instead? What if they made Inglourious Basterds into an FPS where you collect scalps (100 Nat-zee scalps!) to earn stats, better weapons and power-ups? What if each Basterd had a different strength and all the lesser Basterds received character development? I've always wondered how Hirschberg, Utivich and the Italian kid from all the Fox KIDS PSA's got into the Basterds, considering their diminutive size and stature. Maybe a game like this could elaborate?

Last but not least, don't forget Basterds has a BIG fandom that would probably buy this game, no questions asked. Even if this game sucked, fans would buy it for the story or to scalp Nat-zees. I would.

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6. Apples to Apples on XBLA or Facebook

Apples to Apples has become one of my all time favorite games (card, game, etcetera). For the uninitiated, when playing Apples, you get a handful of red cards that describe nouns. Your job is to match the red cards to a green card in the middle that has an descriptive word printed on it. The person whose red card best matches the green card will earn that green card. Stock enough green cards (usually 5 to 8) and you win.

So how hard would it be to make a program that picks the green and red cards at random and assign them to players? Shoot, I took computer programming in high school and I can almost manage a program like that as is. People who love Apples, but are separated by distance could really use a game like this on their 360's or FB's (preferably the latter, so it could be free!).

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5. Chzo Mythos HD Remix

Once upon a time, Yahtzee Croshaw made some awesome games that kicked the crap out of Silent Hill. You want a the best story ever, a good soundtrack, tense atmosphere and the best hero of all time, all of for free? Get these games.

Unfortunately, said games went un-noticed by most, but ended up a hugely popular cult classic. The only thing about the games that anyone could conceivably complain about are the graphics, which were made in primitive MS Paint. The game could hugely benefit from an improvement in graphics and even a soundtrack remix. New fans will be intrigued by the sparkly "new," product with Yahtzee's name on it, while old fans will get to see Chzo and Cabadath in HD. Win-win for everybody!

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4. Mirror's Edge meets Typing Of The Dead

I hated Mirror's Edge. I liked the graphics and the idea the game went with, but ultimately, I felt that the execution.... well, it sucked. There was too much bloom and lens flare, not enough head on confrontation and worst of all, it was short, yet felt like it took an eternity to get through!

Instead of making this game a first person shooter runner, why not remake it as an action game in the vein of Dragon's Lair? You could have the screen show the main character, Faith running over buildings with quicktime events determining her jumps, fighting prowess and actions.

However, having regular quicktime events such as "Press X to jump building and get a cool cutscene," wouldn't be as cool or as fun as typing in words to get your stunt cutscene, so rather than press X, you would have to type "jump," as you reach the end of platform and need to – well, jump! It won't always be "jump," that you have to type though, in order to make a jump. "Leap," "bound," "vault," "dive," "spring," and other synonyms may need to be typed in, possibly more than once! Failure to type the correct word leads to death, either by falling or by getting rifle-butted in the dome, depending on the situation.

Fans of Mirror's Edge would enjoy a new way to play the game, while everyone else (see also: me and my friend Danny Kim) might give the game a second chance.

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3.An FFX prequel – on the 10th Anniversary of FFX.

I love Jecht, you love Jecht, we all love Jecht. You wanna know more about him though, right? You want to know about his drinking habit, how much he really cares for his kid, what he was like traveling around with his friends and just how many people fell to his sword. In fact, I think Jecht s so bad-ass, that he deserves his own button masher prequel with back story and epic soundtrack. Coincidentally, FFX's 10th Anniversary is late next year. If Square were to release a 10th Anniversary prequel for FFX, like they did with FF7 (you know, their other big name game with the ridiculous fandom), then they might have another best selling game on their hands.

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2. GTA in the Marvel universe!

Grand Theft Auto needs some new life breathed into it. How do I propose to do this? By adding a splash of Marvel Comics, of course. Instead of fighting for honor or revenge, have the (created) player fight for the Kingpin. Commit any number of crimes, ranging from drug deals, to assassination, to simple wire-tapping. In addition to AK's and RPG's, you get Sonic Disruptors and Freeze Rays (hi, Dr. Horrible!).

Eventually, you can move onto bigger and better missions, like bank robberies and standing in on city-wide meetings. While on these missions, you run into superheroes who force you to abort your plans and escape with whatever you were trying to steal or whatever money/weapons you obtained. Later on, while on one of these big missions, you get confronted by a big time name (Spidey, Wolvie, Thor) and manage to defeat them in combat, sending them packing. This alarms the Kingpin, so he tries to have you killed! It fails and now the game turns into a revenge quest, with you murdering and inheriting the Kingpin's title in the end.

Anyone who says they don't want to play this game is either lying or no fun.

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1. A Fable game where your family doesn't get killed.

I love Fable, but I'm tired of trying to sympathize with the hero who lost his family or sister – who the player has the privilege of knowing for all of 10 seconds before they get offed. The next Fable needs to feature a system where you choose a girlfriend via custom creation.

Then during the opening, how you woo the girl when you meet her will determine what stats you have when you grow up (impress her with a show of strength and strength goes up, talk her into a date and charisma goes up, etcetera).

By the time your character grows up (because in Fable, heroes always get to go through childhood first, then a flash forward to adulthood) your girl dumps you. In this game, heartbreak is the impetus that drives you to heroism, villainy or neutrality, not revenge. Maybe your girl broke it off for an unknown reason, maybe she moved away, maybe she found someone else, that much will come into play later, but the fact of the matter is that the romance interest that you picked is gone and now your character has sufficient motivation to be the hero or villain.

Think about it. Have you EVER been through a bad break-up? Chances are good you'll say something like this at one point or another:
"I need to do a bunch of stuff to impress her and get her back!"

Or maybe you say:
"Why that little....! I'l show her....!"

For myself (and others) it was:
"I'll always help people so they don't feel as alone as I did."

See that right there? One believable and relate-able event spawned three different and believable character motives! Rather than have a "family," you don't know forced upon you, you can choose the character who sets your entire game in motion.

Love and heartbreak are powerful forces that anyone can identify with. If you couple a deep game with a beautiful soundtrack, then you've got yourself a game for the ages.

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UNTIL NEXT TIME.....
Leave questions, comments, corrections, criticism, anything you want in the comments box below!
I'm not sure what to do next week (teetering on the top villains, but not too sure), so leave a suggestion if you want!

PEACE!

Screenshots
All 9 The 10th Hour Screenshots