Summary
In cinema,sequelsdon’t tend to improve much on the original. For everyTerminator 2orAliens, there’s aCaddyshack 2orThe Exorcist 2: The Heretic. In video games, it’s often the other way around as duds likeDevil May Cry 2andCastlevania 64are the outliers next to entries that vastly improve the gameplay experience, likeDevil May Cry 3andCastlevania: Symphony of the Night.
That said, it takes more to make a sequel than to add a number or subtitle to the game title. Licenses may get taken away, rights get swapped around, and attempts to make spin-offs falter. Yet these games still managed to make it to store shelves, becomingunofficial sequels to their famous forebears.
Goldeneye 007has almost overshadowed the movie it was based on, as it showed consoles could produce PC-quality FPSs of their own instead of compromised ports. Rare was hoping to make an improved follow-up based on the next James Bondmovie,Tomorrow Never Dies. Unfortunately, EA outbid them and got Black Ops Entertainment to make a more forgettable stealth-action game for the PS1. Still, Rare didn’t mind too much.
Without the constraints of the Bond license, they were able to carry overGoldeneye’s gameplay to a newer, more sci-fi-based spy thriller inspired byGhost in the ShellandAeon Flux. The result wasPerfect Dark,where Carrington Institute agent Joanna Dark has to stop the rival corporation dataDyne and their alien allies from attacking Earth. WhileGoldeneyeis more famous,Perfect Darkhas better gameplayand has aged better overall.
Most people probably weren’t aware thatFootball Managerwas supposed to be different fromChampionship Manager. The former played like the classic games from the latter and were made by the same company with the same engines. Yet they’re now completely different things from each other, thanks to a legal dispute in 2004 as developers Sports Interactive lost the “Championship Manager” name to their publishers Eidos Interactive.
But they were able to keep the game engine and data. So, they formed a new agreement with Sega and continued their work under the “Football Manager” label. Legally and on paper, theChampionship Managername now belongs to Square-Enix after they acquired Eidos. To soccer andmanagement sim gamefans, the series’ soul is still with Sports Interactive viaFootball Manager.
While it wasn’t the first real-time strategy video game (Herzog Zweiusually gets that accolade),Dune 2: The Building of a Dynastyis perhaps the most influential, withWarcraftand others following its lead. Created by Westwood Studios, it continued on from the David Lynch movie adaptation of the Frank Herbert novel, where players picked either House Atreides, Harkonnen, or Ordos and tried to wrench control of the planet Arrakis from the others.
The originalCommand & Conquerwas also made by Westwood and resembledDune 2so muchthat fans and critics called it “Dune 3.” The studio could’ve reused the license but opted not to because, according toComputer Gaming Worldmagazine, “the programmers are tired of sand.”C&Cbrought in a wider variety of terrains, more military tech, andcheesy live-action cutscenesthat have defined the series to this day.
Parasite Evewas a great survival horror/RPG hybrid that’s still considered a cult classic today, thanks to its intriguing story and engaging lead character, Aya Brea.Parasite Eve 2had more horror and less RPG, but it still had its fans. Fans who, after 1999, were left with nothing. Aya’s story was seemingly done, but the fans wanted more. A sequel, remake, remaster, anything!
Then 2010 came around, and thePEfandom was intrigued when they heard Aya would return in a PSP game calledThe 3rd Birthday.There was nothing else connecting it toPE.No mitochondria, no survival horror gameplay, and no Eve. Aya didn’t even act like her old self, as she was now an amnesiac who could possess people. Square-Enix called it a reintroduction for the old character. Fans thought her name was being used as a label for a generic shooter. Either way, Aya’s since returned to obscurity, waiting for a true follow-up.
FromSoftware was onto something when they madeDemon’s Souls, an action game where players really had to calculate their movements carefully to defeat their foes. There were no cancels or instant blocks like inDevil May CryorBayonetta. They wanted to expand the series, butDemon’s Soulswas contracted as a Sony exclusive. So, FromSoft just did aFootball Managerand named their follow-upDark Soulsto give other platforms a shot.
That’s only half the story, though.Demon’s Soulsitself was following on from FromSoft’s earlieraction RPG seriesKing’s Field.Released on the PS1 and PS2, they shared a similar atmosphere to theSoulsgames with their gothic fantasy look. They even had stamina and mana meters. It was just played from a first-person perspective. For three series that are technically separate from each other,King’s Field,Demon’s Souls,andDark Soulsblend quite well together aesthetically.
6Rage of the Dragons
SNK made the arcades worth going to with games likeMetal Slugand theSamurai Shodownseries. Latin America certainly thought so, as the company and its games still have a dedicated Hispanic fan base to this day. Even when SNK was facing bankruptcy back in 2000, Mexican developers Evoga wanted to make games for them. Specifically, they wanted to make a sequel to SNK’sDouble Dragonfighting game.
Sadly, they didn’t have the rights to the franchise, nor to the Hollywood movie tie-in it was based on. But there was nothing stopping Evoga from making their own fighting game with leads called “Billy” and “Jimmy.” Thus,they createdRage of the Dragons, a fun tag fighter with some luscious animation. Evoga went defunct in 2004, but they live on through Angel, a character they got to design forKing of Fighters.
7Human Killing Machine
If people didn’t like playingStreet Fighter 1in the arcades, they would’ve hatedits microcomputer ports. The European ones, developed by Tiertex, had even clunkier controls and got rid of the special moves. However, they were successful enough for Capcom to keep working with them for more rough releases right into the early 1990s. They did refuse Tiertex’s proposal for a secondStreet Fightergame, as they had their own plans for that.
Instead, Tiertex replaced Ryu with a Korean kickboxer called Kwon and called their gameHuman Killing Machine.With the same dodgy controls came new features like racial caricatures and an unfair system that forced players to win up to 5 rounds to complete a match if they played poorly. Tiertex left the games business in 2003, then kept on trucking as a software company until its closure in 2021.
