XBOX 360 Wire

50 games Xbox Live Arcade deserves

Xbox 360 Wire presents 50 old school games begging for a come back. The list was compiled with Xbox Live Arcade in mind, however most of these titles would be well at home on any of the digital distribution services be it XBLA, PSN or the Wii’s Virtual Console - after all, if any of these appeared on the PSN, we’d be more likely to see it on XBLA as well. You can of course get some of these titles right now from the Wii’s VC but people are still asking for XBLA or PSN conversions.
The list covers titles from way back in the BBC Micro day’s right through to some of the latter consoles. Hell, there’s even a couple of arcade and web based titles in there too. I’ve scoured forum posts and message boards checking to see what games people are still fond of and would like to see again in some form or another so it’s not all based on my opinion. There happen to be a few here that I happen to disagree with, but this is for the masses so I digress.
All of the games listed here are entirely possible to bring back today. Certain first party titles had to be excluded due to either publishing or legal reasons - you won’t be finding Mario Kart on XBLA any time soon I’d wager.

Where a title was released on multiple platforms, the preferred ‘version’ is the console named in brackets after each entry. Each entry has a ‘plausibility rating’ out of 10.

Feel free to agree, disagree, discuss or suggest in the comments section - what would you like to see?

1. Wiz ‘n Liz   (Mega Drive)   7/10
2. Theme Park   (3DO)   6/10
3. Populous   (Master System)   8/10
4. Vector Man   (Mega Drive)   9/10
5. Star Wars : Tie Fighter   (PC)   7/10
6. Metal Gear Solid   (Gamecube)   6/10
7. Dune II   (Mega CD)   3/10
8. Sonic the Hedgehog CD   (Mega CD)   4/10
9. Monkey Island 3   (PC)   6/10
10. Panzer Dragoon Saga   (Saturn)   7/10
11. Panzer Dragoon Zwei   (Saturn)   8/10
12. Johnny Bazookatone   (3DO)   2/10
13. Syndicate Wars   (PC)   6/10
14. Yar’s Revenge   (Atari 2600)   9/10
15. Gunstar Heroes    (Mega Drive)   9/10
16. Zero Wing   (Mega Drive)   4/10
17. Dr Robotniks Mean Bean Machine   (Mega Drive)   6/10
18. Fantastic Contraption   (Web Based Physics Puzzler)   5/10
19. Wizards Lair   (Spectrum 48k)   2/10
20. Raft Away River   (BBC Micro)   1/10
21. Snake Rattle ‘n Roll   (SNES)   5/10
22. Unirally   (SNES)   6/10
23. Star Fighter   (3DO)   8/10
24. Pitfall II   (Atari 2600)   7/10
25. Moonwalker   (Mega Drive)   2/10
26. River Raid   (Atari 2600)   4/10
27. Daytona USA   (Arcade)   7/10
28. Wetrix   (Nintendo 64)   6/10
29. Banjo Tooie   (Nintendo 64   9/10
30. Daedalian Opus   (Gameboy)   2/10
31. Fighting Vipers   (Saturn)   6/10
32. Grandia   (Saturn)   4/10
33. Aladdin   (Mega Drive)   7/10
34. Crazy Taxi   (Arcade)   7/10
35. Tekken II   (PS)   4/10
36. Rayman   (Saturn)   5/10
37. Comix Zone   (Mega Drive)  8/10
38. Sonic & Knuckles with lock-on enabled   (Mega Drive)   1/10
39. Toe Jam & Earl   (Mega Drive)   7/10
40. NiGHTS Into Dreams   (Saturn)   7/10
41. Fantastic Dizzy   (Master System)   5/10
42. Boogerman   (Mega Drive)   7/10
43. SEGA Rally Championship   (Arcade)   7/10
44. Turican II   (Amiga)   4/10
45. Desert Strike II   (Mega Drive)   3/10
46. Fantasy Zone   (Master System)   2/10
47. James Pond II : Robocod   (Mega Drive)   5/10
48. The Lawnmower Man   (Mega CD)   1/10
49. Micro Machines II   (Mega Drive)   6/10
50. Magic Carpet   (PC)   4/10

Posted by Bleem - August 25th, 2008 -