Yesterday we took a brief look back to 2013 by listing our family friendly video games of the year. Today we are going to look forward. 2014 is shaping up to be a very interesting year, but I have some very specific things that I would like to see happen.
Without further ado here is my 2014 video game Wish List! (I’ll do a wrap up article towards the end of the year to see how well I made out!)
1.The Virtual Console service on WiiU and 3DS needs an update.
Nintendo’s biggest strength is its extensive catalog of amazing games that have released over the last several decades. Many of these games are timeless and some of them are regarded among the best games ever made. Sadly, Nintendo has yet to capitalize on these titles to any real degree on the WiiU.
I sincerely hope that they wake up and recognize the potential income from this service and start a regular cadence of releases. They could very easily hire and assign a team of developers tasked with the job of porting as many of their older titles as possible over to the newer platforms. They don’t even really need to think too hard about what games to bring. I am certain they have HUGE amounts of sales data that they could mine to determine the most commercially viable games. Simply compare those numbers versus the amount of effort to port the games… and voila. Why does this matter for parents? Its simple. Older games are often JUST as good as newer titles and their lower price point and digital availability makes them great purchases on a rainy Sunday afternoon.
Please Nintendo. Take my money.
2. Mario Kart 8 needs to blow the doors off of this joint.
Look. I know that I could sit here and say that I “wish” for every game to be good. But, this is different. Mario Kart Wii is one of the best selling titles in Nintendo history. This franchise has mass appeal, and if any franchise has the chance to push more people over the edge into buying a WiiU it is Mario Kart. So…. the pressure is on Nintendo. Don’t let us down.
3. Skylanders 2
We have seen two iterative updates to Skylanders: Spyro’s Adventure in the last two years, but with Toys for Bob (the original developer) back at the helm we have a chance to finally see some real innovation. I would love to see them release a full on sequel to the game that still makes use of the same figures, but uses them in different ways. If you think about it, all of the toys we’ve purchased are basically memory cards. Toys for Bob knows everything that they could ever have on them. There is no reason that they couldn’t come up with some new and interesting ways for those stats to matter.
Another option (and one that would likely be very lucrative for Activision) would be to develop a series of smaller games to be released digitally at a smaller price point that make use of the portal and the figures but with completely non-standard game play. What about a Kart racer or a soccer game? Perhaps a side scrolling platformer a la Super Mario Brothers. The options are endless, but I could see some of these smaller games are automatic purchases in my house in an effort to squeeze every ounce of game out of this massive pile of figures we have been building.
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What about you folks? What is on your wish list for 2014? Sound off in the comments!
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[…] wrote about my video game wish list for 2014 last week. One of my biggest wishes was for Nintendo to update the virtual console to include more […]