Its been a long time since I've made a Top 5 list but while talking to my brother the other day about a non-game related top 10, ideas for games that would be great to see started floating through my head. We discusses much more than five concepts but while some ideas made perfect sense (Floyd Mayweather Boxing), others just didn't seem like they would be that interesting (The Office: The Game). We ended up with only about seven solid titles out of many ideas. We trimmed our list down to the best five. Here they are..
1. Star Wars: The Han Solo Chronicles - The Star Wars universe is a veritable potpourri of game franchise opportunities. A Star Wars game similar to Marvel Ultimate Alliance, where a wide range of characters from the Star Wars world could be playable characters, would be awesome. A game that follows the backstory of Emperor Palpatine would be just as fascinating as a Luke or Leia driven game. I could certainly get into a Simcityish title featuring Lando Calrissian (Colt 45 could be an in-game sponsor) and a Chewbacca game would be sweet and rife with opportunities for humor. My brother brought up a R2D2/C3PO game but I quickly shot it down.
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While all of these games would be cool, no character has been more overdue for a videogame than Star Wars bad boy Han Solo. The Jedi's get all the love but Han is easily the most interesting character. There are a number of books that cover Han's life before and after the movie series but imagine a Lucas licensed game that takes young Solo from his home planet to rebellion badass. Win the Millenium Falcon from Lando in a game of sabacc, make the Kessel Run in less than 12 parsecs, find out the back story behind his relationship with Jabba the Hutt, evade bounty hunters like Bobba Fett, and woo Princess Leia. What Star Wars fan wouldn't play this?
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2. Rock Band: iTunes Edition - Rock Band kicks ass and is easily the best rhythm game available. But one of the problems with both Guitar Hero and Rock Band are the limited amount of tracks. According to my wife, I've ruined a bunch of songs she used to like because I've played them so many times. I get pretty tired of singing or playing the same songs as well. Sure you can buy more downloadable tracks but even those are hit and miss. This problem can be easily solved by giving gamers access to their own iTunes library and letting us play any song we want through our consoles.
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This might sound impossible but it would be pretty easy to do. AudioSurf, a PC game from Valve, uses your own music library to play a music game that's a blend of Wipeout and Guitar Hero. So how would a console connect to iTunes? Easy, it already does...sort of. The Xbox 360 and PS3 can already be connected to your PC through their wireless network adapters. All that would be needed to play your own music would be a program on the game disc that could take new songs and quickly format them for the game. Then you could finally play along to all your favorite Wang Chung songs.
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3. ESPN's Monday Night Football - With EA renewing its deal with the NFL for another 5 years this is easily the one game on my list that is least likely to happen. But with the Madden franchise in a bit of standstill due to a lack of competition, someone needs to come out and shake things up. The best company to do that would be 2K, as long as it had a partnership with ESPN. Sega teamed up with ESPN for a series of pro football games that were great on content and presentation but wretched on gameplay. If 2K, who had some great ideas with All-Pro Football 2K8 and is easily the toughest competitor EA faces in the sports game market, could find some loophole to EA's NFL monopoly, maybe we'd find a pro football game that we could truly get excited about every year.
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4. Survivor: The Game - Television shows are a great source of material for games but somehow Survivor, the best reality show ever, has remained untouched. While Survivor has been a boardgame and a fairly generic PC game, I see the world of Survivor as tailor made for MMO's. A Sims-type title where you have to build relationships in a single player universe might be fun but where Survivor really excels is in relationships between real people, a strength of MMO games.
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Imagine joining the Survivor network and being randomly selected along with 16-20 other gamers to be placed on an online island. There'd be mini-games for rewards and immunities and all sorts of voice chat/text strategizing to see who would be voted off. There would be actions players could make to either earn peoples trust, play different factions against each other or just plain tick people off. An avatar would walk around each tribes virtual island and hunt for hidden immunity idols or food. Just like in the series, if you were always running around and not bonding with your other online tribemates you might isolate yourself. If you're too busy socializing and not contributing, you could be seen as dead weight and get cut loose. Games could vary in length depending on the amount of time a gamer would want to invest. One players game could last weeks, another a couple of hours. There are a ton of possibilities.
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5. The Phillip Marlowe/Sam Spade series - I've always been a big fan of writers Dashiell Hammett and Raymond Chandler and their detective characters Sam Spade and Phillip Marlowe. The movies The Maltese Falcon and The Big Sleep which star one of my favorite actors, Humphrey Bogart, still stand up. Hard drinking, wise cracking and tough, these two originals could be made into fascinating protaganists for a videogame. Games based on these characters would be similar to Mafia or The Godfather in setting but instead of playing as a crook you'd play as a badass private eye. This might sound old school but some of the best ideas have been around a long time. Why not take some of these great novels that haven't been tapped yet and bring them into a game?
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