7 Spiritual Sequels that Embarrassed Big Publishers

not every game that deserves a sequel gets one usually because whoever publishes that particular game has analyzed its profitability Market potential and whether loot boxes can be added to it and decided they can't be asked all too often this means a great series Withers on the vine but not always sometimes players are treated to what's known as a spiritual successor a game that is completely separate to the one that inspired it but has the same Spirit the same design DNA and sometimes these spiritual sequels end up kicking so much but we have to think the big publisher who neglected to give the original series the attention it deserved ends up ruing the day they decided not to continue the series themselves here are seven spiritual successes that surely provoked a great deal of ruing oh they rued it all right they rued it big time I don't know what Ru [Music] means [Music] if you want to know how deeply ingrained castl Vania is merely consider how long it's been since it last occurred to you that its name is deeply stupid Castle Vania that's nothing what's even weirder is the way publisher Konami spent nearly three decades furiously crafting a dizzying number of Castlevania games then abruptly stopped 10 years ago after Castlevania Lords of Shadow 2 Konami has never since returned to the castania well even as the 2D Metroid Vania genre continues to host some of the greatest video games in recent memory from Hollow Knight to Metroid dread when Nintendo is more up for revisiting classic series than you that's a problem Konami what probably will have given Konami pause for thought is the fact that when ex Castlevania lead producer COI igarashi took to Kickstarter in 2015 to ask for half a million bucks to make a spiritual successor to Castlevania the project was back to the tune of $1.5 million within 24 hours when it was eventually released in 2019 it was to similar enthusiasm with critics swooning over bloodstained ritual of the knight's razor sharp Castlevania Vibes in September 2023 publisher 505 games boasted it had sold 2 million copies proving that there had always been an appetite for smashing apart a castle while a heavy metal String orchestra Goes Ham in the [Music] background even if it doesn't feature an official Belmont or canonical alard now let's move on before I have to successfully say canonical alard ever again canonical Al Canon no it's gone [Laughter] forever puzzle Platformers were all the rage in the late '90s and one developer in particular Rose to prominence rare making Donkey Kong titles for Nintendo and conquer's Bad Fur Day for weirdos they Prov themselves to be pretty Adept at making 3D Puzzle platforming Adventures but their most successful title was of course Banjo Kazooie with varied levels fun gameplay and rare's unique sense of humor the game received critical Acclaim millions of fans a couple of spin-offs and a couple of sequels yes we are including the weird Xbox 360 car one but since the outing in 2008 nothing has been heard from this musically named Duo outside of a Smash Bros Cameo and why this is most likely because the company was brought by Microsoft in 2002 from then on rare was somewhat at the whim of Xbox doing whatever they tasked them with and eventually that became mainly making Xbox avatars and connect games forcing one of their best Studios to make connect games sounds like a financially sound move that Microsoft won't later regret gradually frustrated members of the original Banjo Kazooie team left the company one by one until years later a new developer platonic arose and announced its plan to make a spiritual successor to the classic '90s platformer and The Game's name ukulele get it like the musical instrument like banjo kazui you get it this announcement came in the form of a Kickstarter that showed off the new Duo and some initial gameplay there were so many x-ray Legends working on the project such as character artist Steve Maes and programmer Chris southernland aka the voice of Killer Instinct com at composer Grant Kirk hope and people threw money at the idea even though this early build committed the crime of using Comics Sands it reached the needed £175,000 within 40 minutes of launching and raised over 2 million by the end of the campaign proving that there was indeed demand for a nostalgic platforming Adventure most importantly it sold well and sparked the very positively received 2D spin-off ukulele and the impossible [Music] Lair and while nothing has been heard from the lizard and bat in a while it was reported in 2021 that platonic were working on a sequel so we may be hearing from them again soon still it gives me plenty of time to play one of these great connect games before it comes out the black hiy pe's experience Hulk Hogan's Main Event grease dance [Music] smash Victory as a young man I thought it was impossible for trading card games to be cool and exciting except for Yu-Gi-Oh who taught me to believe in the heart of the cards imagine my surprise and Delight then upon becoming a grownup and finding out that deck building battling games are actually pretty kickass a lot of the time and none was such a mega hit as Hearthstone the surprisingly accessible but extremely deep competitive 1v1 card battler that blizzard released in 2013 as a free-to-play spin-off of World of Warcraft by 2016 Hearthstone was making publisher blizzard about $400 million a year which is about as much of a surprise as it is to see a face Hunter play unleash the hounds turn four when there's a hyena already on the board [Music] anyone no well that's not a surprise it's the it's not a surprise it's not surprising Hearthstone wasn't perfect though over the years heaps more mechanics were added making the game more complex cards got retired from competitive play making them feel like less of a worthy real money investment and in the midst of this the game's director Ben bro left blizzard to start a new studio and oh look here's Marvel snap on absolutely everyone's smartphone in the ear of Our Lord 2022 rock slide that's only six power doubled it's not enough to to defeat my Neymar with decks built of just 12 cards and games lasting just six turns Marvel snap took the basics of hearthstone and crunched them down to unpredictable mind-bogglingly quickfire card battles featuring a large number of Spider-Man and all the other ones you know while blizzard was probably never in the running to make Marvel snap it will certainly have smarted to see the trading card Crown snatched by the former director of its own offering and especially the praise heaped on Marvel snap's relative Simplicity and quickfire gameplay a word of mouth Buzz that saw it downloaded 22 million times as popular as playing Carnage when Deadpool is already on the board yeah see you get it I chose something different I chose the impossible I chose [Music] Rapture when looking GL Studios released a space themed firstperson Adventure in 1994 they blew people's minds you could say it was a System Shock it was a critical success and even sparked an also beloved sequel developed with a spin-off team at developer Irrational Games but sadly the sequel didn't sell well enough to help fix the financial problems facing Looking Glass Studios at the time on the 24th of May 2000 they had to close their doors for good while the studio was gone the IP was not but it was stuck in a kind of limbo during Looking Glass Studio's complicated Financial history of sales and Deals publisher Electronic Arts was left with the name System Shock but not the right to make new games in the series which instead ended up in the hands of an insurance company who surprise surprise didn't make games or maybe I'm wrong an insurance shock will be coming out next year set on a space station without adequate contents Insurance oo and so it sat unused like that one Posh bottle of Fizz your family have been saving for a special occasion for the last 15 years but you simply haven't done anything special it did Inspire other titles like de X directed and produced by System shocks producer Warren Spectre to similar critical success but then in 2007 the world got Bioshock all right I see what's happening here set in the underwater city of rapture and developed by System Shock 2 dev's Irrational Games Bioshock did not hide where its inspiration came from while the aesthetic was different the unsettling Fallen Utopia Vibes were very similar to those found on System Shock Citadel station it took system shock's idea of a now ruined society and made it steampunk with art deco style even some of the puzzles were the same like searching out codes to unlock new areas or get to hidden items Bioshock proved so successful that it spawned two sequels in a DLC popularized multiple game mechanics and is often mistakenly credited with the origin of the 0451 code regularly hidden in other games as Easter eggs when actually it was referencing System [Music] Shock but despite how beloved it was Game director Ken LaVine stepped back from the series after the stress of managing bios infinite development so we have not seen another BioShock game for a while what's Ken LaVine working on now anyway Judas a firstperson science fiction shooter set in an unsettling Fallen Utopia in space after a bloody Revolution I guess he couldn't stay away for [Music] long you perhaps forgot that Wario used to do more than show up for golf tournaments release miname Collections and call the Mario Brothers crazy eyeball men give me crazy eyeball man time was Mario Sinister doppelganger had his own platforming series to rival that of his crazy eyeball Nemesis the warand games were a perfect side dish to the Mario series offering a brand of platforming that was fastpaced acrobatic and all about keeping up Wario's momentum as he rolled and smashed his way to financial gain all wrapped up in plot lines so baffling we don't dare even try and describe them because they're about Wario for instance chasing a cat into a pyramid and no no no no we cannot get into it sadly Nintendo has ditched this platforming series entirely probably thinking there was simply more appetite for the warrior Weare micro game series perhaps they were right but we like to imagine a few Yoshi plushies got hurled angrily into walls at Nintendo HQ when they saw the breakout popularity of pizza Tower this bizarrely animated ruthless Pizza Centric platformer took the r dashing block bashing momentum Gathering gameplay of warrior land and arguably took it to Greater Heights with polygon's reviewer calling it The Rare homage that is actually better than the things that inspired [Music] it one of the most fated games of last year we can only hope Nintendo sees the popularity of pizza Tower and returns to warand or doesn't I mean they' only fill it with scenes of Wario having to battle a nightmarish clown called Rudy because the music box he was trapped in was you know what we really cannot get into it you deserve the best so join us at twoo hospital we're open for new staff new patients and a new you can I go play golf yet I'm teeing off at 3 while this list has likely already triggered some wonderful memories for ' 90s Gamers watching there is one shared experience we have not yet mentioned putting a bunch of food stores next to a huge roller coaster and then seeing everyone throw up as they exit the ride we're of course talking about theme park a simulation game so successful and iconic that British developer bullfrog created many more in the theme series such as the similarly iconic Theme Hospital this humorous take on running a hospital was full of comical diseases and ailments so as to keep everything light-hearted and not dampen the mood with the brutal realities of running a real Hospital although they could have told the people animating the game's intro and now about buch of Millennials are remembering where that recurring nightmare came from you're welcome but the game itself was actually very funny and memorable in a good way its Unique Style caught a lot of attention including from The Daily Telegraph newspaper who called it a sick computer game used by British Medical Association to train Senior Management ah yes I almost forgot the '90s Press pretty much hated all video games but lots of people didn't hate Theme Hospital and it sold extremely well over 4 million copies sadly we never saw an another installment as bullfrog were absorbed and closed down by their new owner's Electronic Arts oh them again I wonder what they did with the IP oh yeah nothing so we never got a sequel to this tongue-in-cheek Hospital management Sim then in 2018 Sager announced twoo Hospital a tongue and cheek Hospital management Sim two of theme Hospital's developers Mark webbley and Gary Carr got tired of waiting for EA and decided to make a sequel of their own twoo Hospital ticked the boxes of many a theme Hospital fan even featuring diseases they had cut out from the original game and bringing in over 5 million players to run their very own hospital where people's heads can turn into light bulbs he suddenly developed lightheadedness it was so successful in fact that the studios were able to create its very own successor twoo campus which sees you running a university that has courses such as night school yes okay we SP the Invaders with the regular release of free updates and purchasable content packs we can bet that EA are kicking themselves that they let the theme games disappear still they're making a killing off The Sims ah they've just announced a new Sims 4 expansion pack dumpster diver find suspect furniture and forgotten food in your local garbage after all one Sims trash is another SIMS treasure admit it you're not even sure if that's real or not [Music] people don't usually find military strategy games to be that cute unless you have a particular fondness for the Starcraft Zerg or something and if that's you hey I'm not here to yuck anyone's young strategy has rarely been cuter than the Advanced Wars games developed by intelligent systems and published by Nintendo for the Game Boy Advance and DS handhelds beloved war games in which anime friends embark on on a brutal land war that sees regiments under their control vying for Supremacy by land sea and air sweet games that you can find in chero Moto's office at Nintendo HQ in the big bin marked no longer any given no given for publish a Nintendo that is who aside from a remaster of the first two games haven't published any Advanced Wars since 2008 but a great many given by chucklefish a British developer who in 2017 revealed Advanced Wars alike Warg Grove saying as big fans of those games we were disappointed to find that nothing in this genre was available on current generation platforms and set out to fill the Gap ourselves Phill it they did upon its release in 2019 Warg Gro made back its development costs in three short days and garnered glowing reviews across the board fight me Warg Grove's triumphant debut even led to a sequel proving there really was still an appetite for this genre of cutesy strategy Warg Grove nailed the Advanced Wars gameplay and Vibes and even surpassed it in some areas EG by having a playable dog stick that in your big bin Nintendo although of course being released on the Nintendo switch both wargroove games will still have made mamoto and Co a good deal of money you have to imagine you cannot beat mamoto so don't even try is what it says on the door to his office and what he said to me on the day of my wedding and what will be written on my gravestone canonical alard canonical alard canonical alard it's quite it's quite easy it's quite fun to say actually canonical alard canonical alard you know what would be really fun to say is the outro to this video canonical alard you can watch maybe maybe we'll put a canonical alard up here yeah one of these yeah I'm out of here well if you enjoyed this video um we've got more here to watch give this video a thumbs up you can support further by subscribing if you haven't already or even further by joining our patreon where you can then join our Discord and ask us questions like how easy is it to say canonical alard quite easy actually um but yeah thank you so much for watching let us know your suggestions of spiritual sequels that you uh really really liked all those amazing successes that Publishers are like girl I wish we'd made um but yeah see you next time bye can damn it

Channel: Outside Xtra

Views: 825,322

Keywords: Ellen Rose, Luke Westaway, Outside Xtra, video games, gaming

Id: bOzgcMikN4A

Length: 18min 55sec (1135 seconds)

Published: Tue Mar 19 2024