Seriously, This Needs A Sequel! Vol. 1

Sometimes it’s terrible to love, especially in the wide world of electronic entertainment.

It’s rare to find a game that doesn’t, at some point in the future, have a 2 (or 3 or 64) slapped after its name.  Venerated titles celebrated for their artistry and innovation even fall victim to industry sequelization (Portal 2, Super Mario Galaxy 2, Bioshock 2 just to name…just so few) and more often than not, if you loved it once, you can have seconds.

But there are those childless titles that stand apart with one game to their name and no one to inherit the digital throne. For whatever reason, the video games I’ll be highlighting today have yet to be given an extra life. And before you scroll down, Chrono Trigger ain’t on here. Let’s just leave that (flawless) one be. Please? Thanks.

POKEMON SNAP

This one surprises me most.

The concept for Pokemon Snap is one of the most unique ideas for a game I’ve come across. An on-rails…photography game where the point is to get the most expert shots of everyone’s favorite pocket monsters. Suddenly gamers went from being John Rambo to Ansel Adams, and Meowth was along for the ride.

If you missed out on this title when it first hit, it’s on the Wii’s Virtual Console.  I can’t recommend it enough, especially if you’re looking to step out of your gaming comfort zone and take it to a new level. Like I said, Pokemon Snap was (for me, at least) pure innovation. The way I was captivated by the first time I heard about Harvest Moon (a video game about FARMING? AWESOME.), Pokemon Snap (pun alert) captured my imagination something fierce.

Mario Paint, Little Big Planet, and Minecraft aside, it’s extraordinarily rare that in such an artistic…well…artfrom as video games we rarely get creative pursuits. Often we’re adventuring or shooting and while that’s all well and good, it’s nice to set aside the samurai sword for a paintbrush every now and then. Pokemon Snap enabled us all to take a journey into wildlife photography, giving us an experience that activated parts of our brains that usually lay dormant while gaming.

And artistic aspirations aside….IT’S FREAKING POKEMON. Slap that word on a glass of water and you can sell it for fifty bucks. The Pokemon games are among Nintendo’s most lucrative, and Snap was a much more well-received game than Hey You, Pikachu or other lesser Pokemon outings. And with the motion control technology of the WiiU this really seems like a no-brainer.

C’mon, Nintendo. I gotta develop ‘em all.

THE LEGEND OF ZELDA: THE FOUR SWORDS ADVENTURE

Blame the sunny slopes of long ago, but I can never forget this game.

Released on the Nintendo Gamecube, this adventure in Hyrule found Link teaming up with…Link. Three Links actually, each with their own uniquely colored tunic and cap, but all with the heart of the Hero of Hyrule. Armed with Link to the Past aesthetic and the Gamecube’s graphical processing power, Four Swords Adventure was a sight to behold, nostalgic and new all at once.

However, there really was only one way to play the game…and unfortunately it was ridiculously complicated and expensive.

You see, the game could be played solo (which I’ve done), but the best way to make your way through to Ganon this particular time was to grab three friends who all happened to have Game Boy Advances and GBA/GC link cables, hook it all into the Gamecube, and each of you take control of your own Hylian hero. Controls were handled by the GBA, and gameplay regularly switched from the screen of your TV to the screen of your handheld gaming system.

Yup, it was a big ol’ pain, and that’s probably why this game hasn’t been duplicated since, but for you lucky Unrealtors out there who got to experience it this way, you know how much unmitigated fun the game really is. I was lucky enough to have a group of buddies who were dedicated to making this work, and so we did.

And, quite simply, it was the greatest video game playing experience of my life. No hyperbole here, folks, I mean it.

I had never had a co-op experience like this, and I haven’t since. Playing Zelda with my friends like this was the most fun I’ve ever had with a single game in my life. The creativity on display here on Nintendo’s part is what will make the Big N my number one company for life. This game came out of nowhere with minor fanfare (and left similarly), but was still jam-packed with invention. You only think you’ve played a Zelda game.

Yeah, I’m sure I’m being blinded by nostalgia, but what a crime. This is still an A+ game, one of the most underrated LoZ games out there, and with wireless technology advancing so far finding a more cost-effective way to sequelize this game would be cake. Maybe…the Four Tingles Adventure…

HAUNTING STARRING POLTERGUY

I’ve yet to find another gamer that played this game. And that’s too bad because horror fans? Have I got a bloody good time for you here.

In Haunting Starring Polteguy you star as the titular Polterguy, a spirit who was once a teenage skateboarder who died in an accident involving defective skateboards made by shady businessman Vito Sardini and his despicable corporation. In the game you seek revenge on the Sardini family by haunting their home in an attempt to terrify them into leaving. To do this you possess multiple objects throughout the house and bring them to ghoulish, horrifying life.

For instance, you can possess a dartboard and make it turn into a giant bleeding eyeball. You can possess a kid’s doll and have it run around the room with a knife, Chucky style. You can possess a toilet and have a brown demon pop out of it to fling shit everywhere. Yup, the Wild West days of video game rating systems…

There was no lack of things to hop into and a slew of gruesome results. The game was addicting in that way. You had to know what would happen if you possessed the table or jumped into the TV or spirited into the chainsaw. Rarely were effects duplicated, and the houses just got bigger and bigger. As a kid I replayed this game countless times wanting to make sure I saw every itty bitty item come to “life”.

And this was on the freaking Sega Genesis. Can you imagine what could be done with modern graphics? Slap an M rating on this game and go bananas, developers. Seriously…put some bananas in there I can possess and then summon a gigantic monkey demon to eat them with his nine, flaming heads.

—

And that’s it for these three possible two’s. Any other suggestions, Unrealtors? Seriously, though, no Chrono Trigger…

—

Adam Esquenazi Douglas is a playwright who was born in Texas, grew up in Arkansas, was raised by a Jewish man and a Cuban woman, and, somehow, he doesn’t have an accent. His plays have been produced across the United States from Los Angeles to New York City, as well as in Canada and Japan.

He is co-host of two podcasts, The JimmyJew Podcast Extravaganza and Schmame Over Level 2, which can be found at http://jimmyjew.libsyn.com/ and  http://schmameoverlevel2.libsyn.com/ respectively, as well as on iTunes. He is a contributing writer to www.GamersSchmamers.com.

He currently lives in Brooklyn where he drinks far too much coffee.