The 10 Greatest Video Games to Never Spawn a Sequel

We live in an era of sequels. Movies, video games, books, and even laundry detergents have sequels (e.g., Clorox 2). Originality seems to be at a premium these days, partially because the forces funding the products we use are hesitant to put up money for something new and potentially unpopular. They would rather stick with a sequel to something with proven success.

This tends to have (in my opinion) a rather numbing effect on the creativity of society as a whole. In video games, this can be downright sickening. For every great video game sequel like Street Fighter II or Ms. Pac-Man, we have ten low-quality, cash-grabs like Asteroids Deluxe or Joust 2: Survival of the Fittest.

Since it seems video game makers are hell-bent on producing sequels, I have decided to list what I believe are the ten best video games that have never spawned a sequel.

10) Eternal Darkness: Sanity's Requiem - GameCube. The first game produced by Nintendo to ever receive an "M" rating (1), Eternal Darkness was one of the finest titles on the GameCube. I remember playing through this game and thinking that it compared fairly well to the uber-popular Resident Evil.

Eternal Darkness combined a Lovecraftian mythos with stellar fighting, intriguing puzzles, and a dark story to produce a title still fondly remembered by many. The "sanity meter" was a unique gameplay element and fooled me on many occasion into thinking that my TV was on the blink.

9) Plok - Super Nintendo. A side-scrolling platformer based around a character (Plok) who can throw his arms and limbs as weapons. I loved this game because it was very funny, had a lot of challenging bosses, and was quite original. The only downside: You couldn't save your game! You either had to leave your console on if you wanted to take a break or play all the way through to the end at one sitting.

8) Renegade - Arcade. This 1986 game was the first brawler I ever played. Unlike seminal brawler Double Dragon, Renegade did not scroll endlessly. Instead, the action took place in a limited area of roughly two or three screens in size. The fighting was cool for the time, and the game had a gritty edge to it. I especially liked the girls with whips! There were a couple of unofficial console sequels (2) but no official sequel in either arcades or consoles.

7) Skies of Arcadia - Dreamcast. Sega's ill-fated Dreamcast system produced many good games, this being one of the best. Skies was a turn-based, role-playing, epic adventure with a huge world, excellent character development, great graphics, and fun story. There was a port to the GameCube (Skies of Arcadia: Legends) that added a few differences, but it was in no way a sequel.

6) The Temple of Elemental Evil - PC. Before you go gasping and cursing this choice, I will heartily agree that the game had some major bug problems. I cursed many a time when my computer froze or the sound went haywire. That being said, many bug fixes have been made available since the game's launch in 2003 (3). While still not perfect, it is still the most faithful recreation of a Dungeons & Dragons pen-and-paper experience. It is not fast-paced and requires a great deal of strategy to complete, but I would love to see more games made like this.

5) Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy - Various. This 1984 game from text-adventure legends Infocom was one of their greatest. Picture the maddeningly difficult challenges of Zork, a great sense of humor, and wacky science fiction based on the famous Douglas Adams book, and the result is a great text adventure. I still recall the sense of exultation I felt after finally getting the Babel fish! A sequel to this game was planned, but never saw the light of day (4).

4) Michael Jackson's Moonwalker -Arcade and various home systems. This side-scrolling adventure (which was how it appeared in the Sega Genesis version, the early home computer and arcade versions were different (5) was ahead of its time graphically and was one of the first to feature dancing as an attack. Given Jackson's enduring popularity as a performer, I have never understood why this game never spawned a sequel.

3) Machi - Sega Saturn, Sony Playstation, PSP. Before there was Heavy Rain, there was Machi. Machi is not exactly a video game per se, but more like an interactive novel (6). You make decisions for characters that affect the outcome of the story, and you are able to see the intertwining elements of the story from several different character's viewpoints. Virtually unheard of outside of Japan, this is one of the most unique and compelling video games ever made.

2) ICO - PlayStation 2. An action-puzzler of the highest order, ICO had graphics, music, and puzzles that were beyond anything of its of time. Your character has to help a girl (Yorda) who speaks in an unintelligible language escape a castle. As much a work of art as a video game, ICO seemed destined for a sequel. It was very short in terms of length of gameplay and spawned a prequel, Shadow of the Colossus (7), but never a true sequel.

1) Gladius - GameCube, Xbox, PlayStation 2. One of my all-time favorite games, Gladius was a turn-based RPG where you assemble a team and fight in arenas against other teams. It had an awesome story, excellent voice acting, a wide range of characters to choose from, cool skills for your characters to learn and great graphics.

Of note, the battle was not simply selecting an attack and letting your character perform it. In Gladius there was a controller input for every attack that required you to input certain button presses at correct times on a meter (similar to many golfing games). The better your input, the more powerful your character's attack would be.

Not all of these games are capable of spawning sequels at this time. A text adventure sequel to Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy would be 25 years too late. However, some of the games on this list are fairly recent and would make excellent choices for game designers looking to build upon an excellent game of the past.

Sources:

1) http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eternal_Darkness:_Sanity%27s_Requiem
2) http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Renegade_%28video_game%29
3) http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Temple_of_Elemental_Evil_%28video_game%29
4) http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Hitchhiker%27s_Guide_to_the_Galaxy_%28computer_game%29
5) http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Michael_Jackson_Video_Game
6) http://www.1up.com/do/feature?cId=3174946
7) http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ICO_%28video_game%29