Should We Be Worried About the Spyro Reignited Trilogy?

     Nostalgia has hit us hard like a tsunami this week. We're getting a Spyro game. Not a brand new game, but a remaster anyway. There was an apparent leak that revealed that Toys for Bob was going to give Spyro the remaster treatment, just like Crash Bandicoot and the N. Sane Trilogy, and now everything has been confirmed. We will be getting the new, yet old, Spyro Reignited Trilogy this September, if it doesn't get delayed. It will be published by Activision who published the remastered Crash games and if that doesn't get you running down memory lane like it's an marathon on your childhood, Tom Kenney who voiced a majority of the old Spyro games will reprise his role as Spyro for the entire remaster.

      So for the millennials out there Spyro was platformer that came out during the golden era of 3D platformer games like Banjo-Kazooie, Conker, Super Mario 64, and another series that we've gotten the remaster treatment Crash Bandicoot. With this remaster everything should be cool right? Right?

       I'm sure lot of people had their nostalgia goggles as soon as they heard the news and thought back to days playing the game when they were young and how awesome the game was back then. I'm not saying that the series suck, it did everything but suck. I'm saying that maybe the gameplay could come off as a bit dated as in most cases things do not hold up as time passes. Things may not be as awesome as we remembered it and time has a funny way to make us aware of that by showing us how outdated things can be.
     We've seen this with Yooka-Laylee. Yooka-Laylee isn't what you call an old game, but Playtonic, the studio who developed the game, treated as a spiritual sequel to the popular Banjo-Kazooie series and got us all in the nostalgia feels.We were partially disappointed as we were treated to old and dated gameplay that gave the game a stale taste.
     Luckily this wasn't the case when remade Crash Bandicoot N.Sane Trilogy where Vicarious Visions did much more than just give the first three Crash games a facelift with updated graphics. They tweaked gameplay mechanics a bit that made it a bit more challenging and felt new. Hopefully that is what Toys for Bob has in mind for remastering the Spyro games as well.

What are your thoughts?

Maybe Rare Is In The Right About Not Revisiting Past Franchises

     Rare dropped a bit of a bombshell on us recently in regards to fans asking to return to old franchises. In an interview with DK Vine, head of Rare studio Craig Duncan has said that they are not interested in going back to old franchises, even going as far as saying that it would be "the worst thing for Rare to do." He further stated.

 "I don't think it's OK to just go make the same game that people loved before but with up-to-date graphics, audio and all those things [...] Just making them again with whatever technology's available today - that's not Rare," Duncan said. "I think that what Rare is, is doing the kind of games that only Rare would go do."

He continues to say:

"If I went and said to Rare, 'hey, go remake all of the stuff that was kind of successful at the time but make it up-to-date,' I don't think it would be good, and I don't think it would be relevant, and I don't think people would really want it. I think they might think they do, but I don't think they would."

     This kinda upset fans who probably were looking forward and hoping that Rare would dust off old franchises like Banjo-Kazooie and Conker and get new games. I kinda understand where people are coming from being upset, but strangely enough I'm on the side of Rare.
     Yeah, it could be nice to see more Banjo-Kazooie and Conker games but realistically, not every old franchise can be like Mario or Zelda where you can do tweak the standard gameplay and keep the old fans happy and mostly everything works wonderfully. Making these games with out trying to improve on the gameplay and just relying on better graphics just so that we can live in a wonderful world of nostalgia™ would be a disservice to the series that we loved when we were kids.That's what happened when Rare gave us Banjo and Kazooie: Nuts and Bolts where it did have its great parts like its inside jokes and story, but left us with a sour taste in our mouths when they almost completely ditched the classic platformer gameplay and in Banjo's spiritual successor Yooka Laylee made by Playtonic, former Rare developers, which was a basic former shell of its predecessor with a lot of old, but not enough new to keep us satisfied. Also don't get me started on the Sonic series.
     It seems that Rare is interested in giving trying out fresh and new game mechanics, but in new games which it isn't a bad thing. In closing let the past be in the past where we love it and accept that, and probably get a really good emulator. What are your thoughts?

Too Many Spiritual Successors, Not Enough Predecessors

Once Upon a time, in the last post, I talked about Yooka-Laylee and how it was officially the spiritual successor to the popular Banjo-Kazooie series. I talked about how in the short time its Kickstarter was opened it met its goal in just under 40 minutes and continued to raise over 2 million dollars USD in the short time the Kickstarter page was created. Along with Yooka-Laylee, another spiritual successor has come out of the woodworks. Bloodstained: Ritual of the Night the spiritual successor to Castlevania and created by the series' former producer Koji Igarashi has, just like Yooka-Laylee, reached its goal and then some. Just like Yooka-Laylee, it has also made over two million since its Kickstarter page was created in almost the same time period.
     2015 is starting to be the year of Spiritual successors. We have the work on Yooka-Laylee and Bloodstained: Ritual of the Night starting off to extremely well starts and we even have another spiritual successor on the way. Mighty No. 9 was a game made by Mega-Man creator Keiji Inafune which is suppose to be the successor to the Mega-Man franchise. It has met the same fate as the two previous games mentioned earlier. While this is all great and exciting, the question is what about these games' predecessors? What will happen to them?
     As much as it is nice to see these games, Yooka-Laylee and Mighty No. 9, being made it's almost bittersweet that we haven't gotten anything new from their predecessors. People are still clamoring for another Mega-Man game and people are still waiting for a true Banjo-Threeie.With the demand from fans, why isn't studios and developers trying to make new games from these franchises?
    What's the problem as to why most if these games haven't had anything new is that the studios and development teams have moved on and don't want to take a chance on these old franchises. After what happened with Nuts & Bolts, Rare just seems like it wants nothing to do with another full-fledged Banjo-Kazooie game. Mega-Man hasn't fared well either. Capcom has tried to make some Mega-Man games in the past but were met with poor sales. Capcom has tried to take the series in new directions, but they have yet to figure out what direction to put the series in and has cancelled project after project.
     What could be done to get studios to try to revive these franchises and start making games for these franchises again? What do you think needs to be done in order to see new games again?

Yooka-Laylee: Why People Still Care About Banjo-Kazooie?

     Yooka-Laylee is a game being developed by Playtonic games, former developers of the video game company Rare. Yooka-Laylee is being hailed as an official spiritual successor to the popular Banjo-Kazooie series meaning it is being made in the same mechanics and feel. Yooka-Laylee looks and feels like playing Banjo-Kazooie in every way except for the lead characters. This is enough to get people interested and invested in the game. Just in 40 minutes of launching funding for the game on Kickstarter, it has met its goal of $270,000. In less than 4 hours it has reached over one million. The current funding is over one million pounds (over two million in USD). People are excited to play this game as well as relive some nostalgia playing Banjo-Kazooie years back.

     I wouldn't blame them. Banjo-Kazooie was a phenomenal game when it came out. During Nintendo and Rare's golden age with the Nintendo 64 it was a great year in gaming. Rare and Nintendo was a match made in Heaven. Banjo-Kazooie was a success and it seems that almost every game Rare came out followed its format. Banjo-Tooie seemed like it was a bigger success. Aside from a couple of hand held titles like Grunty's Revenge and Banjo-Pilot, the franchise went dark and left a hole in our hearts. That was until we got Banjo-Kazooie Nuts & Bolts which left us shocked, in a bad way. I'm going to defend Nuts & Bolts a bit by saying it was a good game, it was just a complete 180 from what we expected from a Banjo-Kazooie game. It wasn't what we were used too and what we wanted. It was like seeing your best after losing weight, you didn't recognize it. Rare tried to do something fresh and new and they failed. They failed at recognizing the main rule of game development, if it isn't broke, don't fix it!

    But why is it that we are so invested in this so called new spiritual successor? Why is it why we love Banjo-Kazooie so much? Banjo-Kazooie gave us what we wanted to as children. We wanted to explore and have adventure. We were exploring different worlds as well as exploring the evil lair of a witch to save the day. It was fun not only getting all the Jiggies and notes and exploring the secrets if Grunty's lair, but also fun discovering all the secrets in the game like Bottle's picture game and finding out about Stop and Swop (points if you actually figured out what Stop and Swap was). Banjo-Kazooie was almost better than Super Mario 64 almost giving you more adventure and fun. With Banjo-Tooie, we had that idea magnified times 100. Hopefully Yooka-Laylee and Playtonic can keep this in mind when making this game and understand why we loved the predecessor in the first place. And also learn from the mistakes of Nuts & Bolts.