Whatcha think. How many of these were good, and how many were just riding the coattails of their legendary predecessors?
Anyone have strong opinions about Super Pitfall? How 'bout Pitfall: The Mayan Adventure, which shockingly appeared on the Genesis, Sega CD, and 32X??
Space Invaders had Genesis and PC Engine installments that no one talks about.
The Atari Jaguar was home to Breakout 2000, Defender 2000, Missile Command 3D, and Tempest 2000.
Then there's stuff like Galaga '90, Pac-Attack, Pepenga Pengo, Zaxxon's Motherbase 2000, Asteroids Hyper 64, Centipede: Infestation, those terrible-looking Frogger games, really I could go on forever.......
(I've heard that Donkey Kong and Mario Bros. got some sequels that turned out fairly decent. Any confirmation?).
This is a great question and I'm having a hard time thinking about some good examples.
Pac-Man comes to mind, the pac man world series is very good, they also had pac man dx which was fun and extremely popular, and I personally enjoyed pac man and the ghostly adventures.
I hated super pitfall, I thought pitfall the mayan adv on SNES was ok, I never played the gamecube one but I do want to give it a shot at some point.
I actually can't believe we never got a modern twin stick version of berserk, I feel like that is a game just waiting to be made.
I know that during the PS1 era they remade a bunch of old IPs such as frogger, breakout, pong, space invaders, and I think even missile command but I never played any of them to comment on their quality. I still think I own all of them and some of them are still probably in their shrinkwrap.
I'm interested to see what people come up with in this thread, if I think of anything else I'll re-post
Pong: The Next Level is pretty entertaining (I recommend the PSX version). Classic ping-pong gameplay, but with a multitude of environments for the matches. Your mileage may vary, depending on how much of a Pong fan you are, but anyone who likes the original will probably find this fun too.
Lode Runner has a downright criminal number of sequels, and I'm terrible at just about all of them. I'm most curious about Lode Runner 3-D, a N64 exclusive.
And yeah, PC-88 Super Pitfall looks intriguing, and quite different from the other versions (I actually own the CoCo version of the game, but it plays just like the one on NES except with worse controls and big black borders around the picture). Hail Pony Canyon.
Ms Pac-Man had upgraded ports to SNES & Genesis that scrolled the screen (bad) but added in a variety of upgrades including 2-player co-op or vs, multiple mazes to choose from, and 4 levels of difficulty. Pretty impressive upgrades IMO.
I also really enjoy Pac-Man Championship Edition DX. The gameplay in it is so well refined.
I'm wasn't too impressed by Galaga 88 (tho reviewers have high praise for it) - I've never even bothered to play it enough to gain the triple-ship, but I absolutely love Gaplus with it's enemy ship tractor beam. I find it very satisfying to selectively amass my own army of enemy ships to take on the horde. I never liked it's prequel Galaxian.
I never really cared much for any official sequel but the original Atari 2600 pong (actually called Video Olympics) with analog paddles, but there's a fangame called Plasma Pong that adds in fluidic physics that I find to be fun and impressive.
Of the many official Donkey Kong games/sequels, I consider Donkey Kong (94) for Super Gameboy, and Mario Vs. Donkey Kong for GBA as the top games that I've played which truly seem to be sequels and not spin-offs.
Asteroids for PS1 is pretty neat. I still prefer the Windows 95 shareware clone Comet Busters (freeware now).
Space Invaders Extreme is an excellent game, I haven't played more than a few minutes of Space Invaders Infinity Gene, but it's AI learning seems cool, at least in concept.
Tempest 2000 was both fun and visually impressive. I played it a lot in DOS on my 486.
A fan-made open-source 3D remake of TRON called GLTron is pretty impressive.
The Qix sequel Volfied was an impressive and fun upgrade to the visuals and gameplay.
Robotron 2084 sequel Robotron X was cool for bringing the gameplay to 3rd person 3D.
Xevious 3D/G has some impressive visuals.
Elevator Action Old & New for GBA is a great sequel.
_________
The following games have sequels and remakes that I consider to be completely inferior to the original.
Missile Command, Berzerk, Defender (never played the Jaguar sequel), Centipede/Millipede, Frogger, Vanguard, Burger Time, Dig Dug, Joust, Zaxxon
I did/do spend an ungodly amount of time cramming my arcade cab full of improved sequels and remakes. Maybe I should spend a couple of hours making an article for the site.
Some of these games are shockingly solid and <gasp!> better than the originals. My favorites include:
Arkanoid vs. Space Invaders - an amazing remix of two Taito classics, and a love-letter to Taito game’s generally
Ms. Pac Man (Genesis) - best version of Pac Man’s best sequel
Pac Man Championship Edition - trippy fast-paced reimagine of classic maze gameplay
Space Invaders Extreme (NDS) - awesome shmup that makes great use of the dual screens
Space Invaders Infinity Gene - even awesomer shmup than Space Invaders Extreme, somehow
Tempest X3 (PSX) - a game that’s actually as good as you think the original Tempest should be
Also, the first few Bit.Trip games are pretty much love letters to second gen paddle games, and they are both really good.
I forgot to mention Space Invaders: Fukkatsu no Hi (Space Invaders: The Day of Resurrection) for PC Engine. It's also an incredible remake. Your turret is a tank with treads, and the invaders are all chrome. Multiple weapon upgrades & shields etc.
Yeah, those bit.trip games were flipping fantastic! I know they ain’t true sequels, but they really do show you why so many people lived second gen games.
I tracked down a list of Super Nintendo games from the Nintendo website about a decade ago and was surprised to find that even they had forgotten about the late Frogger port for the SNES. That pretty much says it all right there.
The Space Invaders SNES port was better.
Also, do we need to talk about how Pac-Man got turned into a point-and-click adventure?
