Sequels I'd like to see

IGN has a story about PC games that cry out for sequels. I totally hear them on Grim Fandango. This is one of the games I associate with people from an old job--with Ian it was Homeworld, with Greg it was Grim Fandango. Great game, well done, totally ignored by most of the public.

There are a few games that I always wanted to play more of. Starflight, for example. Starflight was OK, but its sequel, Starflight 2, took everything that was great about the first game and turned it up to 11. Josh and I used to spend hours researching the puzzles in that game, trying to figure out what in the past had made the Cloud Nebula what it was. And it had the Humna Humna, one of the best alien races ever. They'd sell you fun stuff and they were funny to boot.

RoboSport was one of the early titles of Maxis. One of their only non-Sim games, perhaps their only non-Sim game. Unless you count SimAnt, which... um... had a good manual but was not much of a game.

Maxis sorta didn't know what to do with Robosport, despite it being one of the first networkable multiplayer games ever. TCP/IP, Modem, or AppleTalk. It's a pity that it was 16-color only, or I'd still be playing it now. (I gather there's a patch to make it 256-color, at least, but I've never been able to get it to work.)

You could have five separate types of robots on your team, and the art style was fairly fun. (I once worked with the lead artist on this title on a bunch of projects. She was amused that I had such fondness for this game.) Back in the day, I sat down and plotted all sorts of things for a possible sequel, though Maxis returned and said, "We're never developing anything else along these lines." Now that they are all-Sims, all the time, they'll probably stay that way.

Some titles that I liked may eventually see a sequel. One of these days Blizzard will get around to StarCraft 2. I'd settle for Total Annihilation 2, actually. But Cavedog is no longer a company. Square has turned Final Fantasy 7 into its own franchise, but what I'd like from that is a remake with better graphics, maybe not a sequel.

Note that I am ignoring the games that don't need sequels, as they have too many or never really needed one in the first place. The infinite supply of Army Men games speak to the former, and Ico is one of the latter. Well, I would have liked that game to never end, so it is good the team is still working.

DSL through Speakeasy arrives tomorrow. I'm looking forward to it.