Feature: The 49 Best Sequel-Less Games Subscribe to this RSS feed
Games 30 to 21!
30- The Seven Cities of Gold (Amiga, Apple II, Atari, C64, Mac, PC)
As a Spanish explorer making first contact with the New World, players could trade with indigenous peoples or slaughter them outright. The king didn't much care as long as gold continued to flow to the throne. Massive random maps made every replay a new world to discover.
There's no reason to expect a sequel, but the payoff for a sequel or remake could be huge. Sid Meier's Pirates! huge.
29- Alien Hominid (PS2, Xbox, GC, PC, Xbox 360)
This cute yellow alien with a vicious bite started as an online Flash game, but soon made his way onto consoles, and is currently trying to escape the FBI on Xbox Live Arcade. Alien Hominid skins seriously strenuous side-scrolling arcade action with clever, cartoony art, great sound and mocking humor.
There's no sign of an Alien Hominid sequel, but developer The Behemoth is hard at work on Castle Crashers, a four-player beat-'em-up with a medieval theme but a similar art style.
28- Loom (PC, Amiga, Atari)
The early graphical adventure Loom was a clever tale of serious high fantasy that mixed weaving and music into the magic system. Different difficulties allowed players of all levels of musical talent to enjoy the terrific tale. It even came with an audio prologue.
Loom was planned as the first game in a trilogy, to be followed by Forge and The Fold, but designer Moriarty wanted to move on to other projects.
27- Sacrifice (PC)
Sacrifice was a real-time strategy game played from the perspective of a wizard on the field of battle, waging war with souls instead of wood or gold. Following a gleefully tongue-in-cheek story, players win by siding with certain gods and desecrating their opponents' altars.
There's no sequel in sight, and no reason to hope for one. But if you overlook the older graphics, Sacrifice is still fun to revisit.
26- Ikaruga (Dreamcast, GC)
Everything really is black and white in this scrolling shooter where polarity is your prime persuader. Surrounded by a flurry of bullets of both colors, your ship absorbs shots of the same shade, but is destroyed by the other. The trick is, you can switch at will!
Ikaruga is so hard it doesn't need a sequel. Succeeding on anything nastier than "Easy" is an accomplishment. Scrolling shooters are niche enough now that if Ikaruga returns, expect it as a downloadable title rather than retail release.
25- The Last Express (PC, Mac)
The Last Express is one of the most remarkable must-play adventure games around. As a doctor on the Orient Express in 1914, players are embedded in a web of political and criminal intrigue that plays out as a slew of non-linear events occuring in real time.
The game cost a pretty penny and suffered a series of publishing events and blunders that left its sales sorely lacking. With the rights resting in the hands of another near-defunct publisher, don't expect a sequel. Besides, a sequel would require a serious budget and incredible talent to do justice to the original.
24- Xenophobe (Amiga, Atari 2600, Atari 7800, Atari ST, Lynx, NES, Xbox, PlayStation 2, GC, PSP, PC)
Plenty of games let you shoot aliens, but not with Xenophobe's sense of humor, poking fun at every flavor of sci-fi from Alien to Star Trek. It was a side-scrolling shooter, but split the screen to allow three players to cooperate without restricting everyone to one area.
Xenophobe was so popular it was ported to nearly every system. And while we want a sequel, we don't need fancier alien gore. We want more of the original's ironic humor.
23- Legend of Dragoon (PS)
Dart and his allies gain dragoon spirits, giving them special abilities with which to destroy the Black Monster, in this game whose story is as generic as the cut-scenes are beautiful.
Legend of Dragoon was clever and enjoyable, but also just generic enough compared to Square's games that a follow-up seemed unnecessary. We'll probably never revisit the world of Endiness.
22- Moonbase Commander (PC)
A few simple choices and a gauge like that in golf games were transformed into a brilliant turn-based strategy game of combative planetary colonization. By launching modules from colonization hubs, players gained control of a planet's resources and stymied the competition
Moonbase Commander received little attention, was badly stocked on release and sold poorly. To re-release the game as anything other than the original would be to risk changing it into something like Outpost.
21- Killer 7 (PS2, GC)
Killer 7's jarringly non-linear plot mix with disturbing psychological, sexual and violent content to make a compellingly bizarre game that riffs on every possible genre. Love it or hate it, Killer 7 can't inspire indifference and is a must-play for anyone with an opinion on the art of games.
Too horrifyingly odd to sell well, Killer 7 isn't likely to spawn a sequel (unless you count the Killer 8 replay). It does, however, share a deep connection to creatures and items in Resident Evil 4.
