We’re all about the nostalgia on the PV, so here’s a soft-ball for all you flower children who grew up cutting your teeth on the SNES or Genesis (sorry, the TurboGrafx doesn’t count).

What beloved 16-bit hit would you love to see given a current-gen treatment on the system of your choice?

Dave: I am resisting the urge to go with Streets of Rage, which is the correct choice, obviously, so how about one of my other favorite games from the era: Pit-Fighter.

Granted, this proto-digitized brawler objectively sucked in all value categories (gameplay, graphics, sound), but if you went in with the right attitude and had a like-minded cohort willing to go the two-player route, there was much entertainment to be siphoned from this fighter.

Let’s get an updated version that retains the brutality (you hit people while they’re down, throttle bystanders in the crowd, suck down “Power Pills,” piledrive fools on the hoods of cars) and anything-can-happen tomfoolery, which was more or less a byproduct of shoddy coding, and add top-tier graphics, bloodletting and a costume for The Masked Warrior that leaves a bit more to the imagination.

Your time has come.

Steve: Gotta go with what was probably my favorite game for Super Nintendo - SHADOWRUN. Yes, i was a pen-n-paper geek who had played the dice-rolling variety a few years before the SNES even existed, but the game was everything i could have wanted in a videogame based on that particular property. You play amnesiac Jake Armitage, who awakens on a Morgue slab after being gunned down by former employers and healed at the last minute by the shapechanging fox/pop singer named “Kitsune”. You’re tasked with regaining the fragments of your memory, finding out what the data in your head is, and taking down the powerful Drake Corporation. But first you have to get that damn cortex bomb in your head disarmed, learn the ways of the Dog Shaman, and kill everyone in the Caryard arena. Fun Times! It was a pretty deep and involving RPG that managed to engage and tell a pretty awesome story with some trippy music, intelligent puzzles, and awesome dialog.

Might not look like much , but it's got it where it counts...

A modern day re-make, or hell, direct sequel could be amazing given the right treatment. Look at Mass Effect or Alpha Protocol as your guiding lights, and somebody, somewhere, give us a real Shadowrun video game for the current gen systems (instead of that Counterstrike rip-off that Microsoft tried to push on us a few years back… ugh.)

Tags: 16-bit, genesis, snes, Symposium Ad Nauseum

This entry was posted on Tuesday, October 13th, 2009 at 10:46 am and is filed under Symposium Ad Nauseum, Vintage. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.