Populous

The original God game, designed by the now legendary Peter Molyneux, would be an absolute blast on Live Arcade. It’s perfectly suited for multiplayer and would lend itself well to achievements and league play. Populous cast you in the role of a somewhat benevolent deity, allowing you to alter the isometric landscape and assist in guiding the lives of your tribe as it evolves rudimentary abilities in a quest to destroy the opposing deity who is up to the same hijinks. Populous was the original Black & White, and besides the obvious difference in graphics, was superior in all other aspects. A classic that deserves to be rediscovered by a new generation of players. Hell, while I’m at it, Microsoft might as well secure the right to Populous II and Powermonger.

Rip-Off

Waaaay back in 1980 I remember walking into an arcade with my brother and there sat a new game called Rip Off, designed by Cinematronics. It was the first co-op game we had ever seen, so we tossed in a couple of quarters and became immediately hooked, proceeding to spend our lunch money for the week. As any good gamer knows, you always sacrifice food before fun. The graphics were simple vector, no color, much like Asteroids. Rip Off found each player piloting a ship on the same screen. In the middle of the screen were triangular “eggs” that were the target of enemy ships that would appear from off-screen and attempt to steal an egg by picking it up flying away. Your goal was to kill the thief before it disappeared. In an interesting twist, Rip Off didn’t have three lives that you could waste. Instead, the game didn’t end until all the eggs had been stolen, and the longer you survived, the faster the enemy ships moved and fired. It was a frantic and hyper gem. It’s one of the games I can mention in conversation and receive nothing back but a blank stare. No one seems to have ever player it nor heard of it, and we never saw it anywhere else but at this one secluded arcade.

Tron and Discs of Tron

Based on the Disney movie of the same name, Tron was perhaps the only game based on a film that didn’t suck. It had four different stages of play, each based on key scenes from the movie, including IO Tower, a derivative of Breakout except the bricks actually moved, as well as a tank battle game and, of course, the classic light-cycle race. The only thing better than Tron was its inevitable sequel, Discs of Tron, that found you in a deadly laser-Frisbee fight with tricky AI while you tried not to fall off a suspended platform. Man, that was an awesome game. Its only drawback was that it was single-player. Microsoft could easily make a legion of older players extremely happy by securing the rights to Tron and Discs of Tron, and allowing for the multiplayer battles we’ve all been longing for.

With the Wii coming out very soon and featuring its own attempt at recreating past games, and little doubt that Sony will be following suit with the PS3, Microsoft is going to have to move quick if they want to secure the rights to some of the more obscure classics out there. Granted, there’s enough to go around for everyone, but I’m greedy and I want this stuff now. I want to be the official Speedball 2 champ of the world!