I’ve been playing video games since I was about six or seven and I’ve always wanted to create my own video game. Seeing that my programming skills are rubbish and my artwork isn’t much better, I’d think that for certainly a career path, that ship has sailed. However, that doesn’t stop me commenting on them all the time, hence the website. The games industry now has evolved a lot since the halcyon Mega Drive days, with such a huge emphasis on graphics and multiplayer, which is all good by the way, but with the market flooded with everyone trying to be the next Call of Duty when they’re not trying to break EA’s monopoly on sports games, only the odd game once in a while comes along and grabs your attention. There’s so much other media out there which could be used to make a fantastic game, albeit not have the niche as some of the huge titles, but still I would love to see them turned into a title for the Xbox360. So here is my list of influences which I feel would make a great game. (Apologies if there are games based on the following already, it’s just that I’m unaware of them)

7. The Crystal Maze

The Crystal Maze was one of those programs which you used to watch when you were younger and really wanted a go at it as it just looked awesome. I loved the fact that each of the four zones were themed, personally I always liked Industrial Zone but that got replaced in Series 4 for Oceanic. They had four kinds of games, Physical, Mental, Mystery and Skill. This could be made into an awesome game if it was incorporated with the 360 Kinect for example. Plus you could have Richard O’Brien’s monologue throughout the game, harmonica and all! And Mumsy! The games were very doable per se, usually hampered by idiots who couldn’t work out what to do! Amateurs!

 6. Maxim Tsigalko’s Ultimate Football

As previously stated, FIFA games during the season mode have a really crap transfer system, i.e. no one buys your players and players just don’t seem to improve over the seasons at all. Players also never get unhappy so you have top players sitting on the bench with no game time, but this is completely unrealistic as you can’t get decent deals for top players from top clubs as a result leaving the top clubs with a total monopoly of good players. Championship Manager however was the total opposite. The transfers were amazing, very realistic player moods and development, and you could actually get youngsters come through the ranks and be quite good, rather than FIFA’s randomly low assignment of skills. But CM couldn’t see any of the matches. Later iterations of it did have a dot running around with the yellow ball but it wasn’t the same, but FIFA’s graphics were quite good. Why can they not just combine the best parts to make the ultimate football game? So ultimate, that it has to be named after the greatest player of all time….MAXIM TSIGALKO! To me this makes sense!

5. Underworld / Lost Boys

The Lost Boys was one of my favourite films from way back when and while all my favourite childhood films have been made into games (with the exception of Young Guns, which is pretty much covered by Red Dead Redemption now), we’ve seen all manner of decent sandbox games in recent times, but having your own gang of youthful vampires. The only thing which would work better than that would be based on the Underworld films; i.e. gun toting vampires armed with silver bullet ammunition fighting the lycans (werewolves). In an open world environment I believe this would work really well. But I suppose like Operation Raccoon City is pitching two sides against each other in co-op so could the potential of this idea be. Plus Kate Beckinsale was possibly the hottest vampire in cinema history, so surely everyone is a winner here?

4. Knightmare

Going back to mis-spent childhood, the other kids “game show” as it were which was just brilliant was Knightmare. The premise of this was to have one dungeoneer traverse the perilous dungeons with an opaque helmet while they have three other cohorts telling them where to step by watching their progress on a monitor. They were also responsible for spellcasting by spelling out the words of the spell their character had picked up. This of course was back in the 1980s so the graphics and special effects were rather limited, but good for the day. But think of the possibilities with today’s technology, for a start the Playstation Move or the Xbox Kinect could be used to navigate your adventurer around the dungeon and with the Kinect’s voice recognition abilities you could actually spell cast like on the show. I’m sure with a few intuitive tweaks here and there bringing Knightmare back could be a reality. Plus a virtual Hugo Myatt reprising his role as Treguard would be a welcome bonus!

3. M.A.S.K.

Sticking with the 1980s here, after seeing such success with the resurgence of Thundercats, Ghostbusters and Transformers, and even a Voltron game, everyone seems to have forgotten about my favourite cartoon which was Mobile Armoured Strike Kommand (M.A.S.K. for short). It was the coolest having a lot of civilian vehicles transform into battle stations and war machines to fight VENOM, the criminal organisation who had the same capabilities. But not only that, they also had masks which when energised, had different powers and abilities, such as Hondo MacLean’s Blaster mask which fired a beam of destructive energy, Bruce Sato’s Lifter mask which created anti-gravity fields or Matt Trakker’s Spectrum mask, which did, well, everything. Think of this in a game like Prototype or Infamous. Plus adding the element of multiplayer or better yet giving you the player the opportunity to customise your own MASK vehicle. That is a game I would rush out and buy in a heartbeat. Having the classic fight between Thunderhawk and Switchblade in HD would be the ultimate!

2. Hellsing

For those of you who have never watched Manga or any kind of anime then this will probably not make any sense. For those of you who have watched the anime OVA or series of Hellsing will know that Alucard is totally awesome. Sure he has the same name as the protagonist of Castlevania: Symphony of The Night but I can’t think of any other ways of spelling Dracula backwards. The Hellsing anime was a series which was about a sect of vampire hunters sent out to vanquish other vampires, ironically having the most powerful vampire of them all as it’s secret weapon. It also shows the secondary character Victoria Seras having to compe with being turning into a Nosferatu by Alucard to save her life. Throw iconic enemies like Incognito and Alexander Anderson into the mix and you have a very awesome over-the-shoulder cover shooter like Gears of War, with the option of a two player if someone wants to play as Seras. But Alucard is a badass. If you’re still not sure, go out and watch it. It’s so cool! Gungrave, which was a similar Manga, managed to get two games on the PS2, yet Hellsing appears to have been overlooked.

1. The Matrix

I know back in the day there was a couple of Matrix games, but they really weren’t any good. I only played the PC versions are they are so forgotten I nearly forgot they existed until a friend reminded me of them as I’m writing this list. But after watching Matrix: Reloaded the other day, it reminded on how awesome the concept of the Matrix really is. Yeah in the second film it got a bit boring and tribal in the middle, but the actual fighting scenes and stunts in the Matrix are quite simply amazing. Whether it’s the scene where they resuce Morpheus in the first game, or the entire motorway sequence in the second one, my mind transposed that into Liberty City, wishing that I had all of Neo’s powers in a Grand Theft Auto game. And then I began to salivate. Could you imagine a sandbox Matrix game? A game where you and your friends are just trying to survive the onslaught of the Agents by jumping across buildings and performing impossible feats of skill and combat? Sure you could jump across buildings in Crackdown but it’s just not the same. The Matrix had a fantastic atmosphere and transposing that to an interactive HD medium for me would make a game I would pre-order instantaneously in the event that it was announced. The Path of Neo was a crap game, do the Matrix justice with a sandbox game on the HD consoles dammit!