The Year of the Defunct Game

What Is It? While the Game Boy products had Pokemon, SNK's Neo Geo Pocket Color was sporting a much better card-based experience, SNK vs. Capcom: Card Fighters Clash. Card Fighters Clash married everything that is fun about Magic: The Gathering with some of the most memorable video game characters of all time. The game revolved around you collecting various cards featuring Capcom and SNK characters from a bunch of difference franchises. You would use these cards in a one on one battle against either a friend or the computer. Like any good card-based game, the real fun of Card Fighters Clash is that you can spend a lot of your time just stressing about what cards to put in your deck and how you can acquire those cards you don't have. All the fun of this series has returned in Card Fighters Clash DS for the, you guessed it, Nintendo DS. The game will feature a wire-free multiplayer experience, more cards, and a easy to use touch screen option. Sounds like a good idea to us, let's just hope it gets the respect it deserves.

Why Should You Be Excited? Because Card Fighters Clash is one of the best games on the Neo Geo Pocket Color. Being able to use the touch screen should make playing this game a breeze. And let's not forget that because it's a Nintendo DS game there will be more people to actually play the multiplayer with, something that was sometimes difficult to do on the Neo Geo Pocket Color. So far the game is looking even better than it did on SNK's old handheld, but at the same time we would argue that this game is not about how good it looks.

What Could Go Wrong? Some of the key components of the game play have been changed for this Nintendo DS upgrade, and not all of them are for the positive. Some of the additions include having eight different cards on the table at the same time and a few other interesting (and somewhat troubling) game play tweaks that could keep this from being as enjoyable as the first two Neo Geo Pocket Color titles.

Bottom Line: We're guardedly optimistic about Card Fighter Clash DS. In our hearts of heart we hope that this game lives up to the potential and gives us something to cheer about, but at the same time we're not completely sold on the brand new game play tweaks, we really hope that this doesn't affect the pacing of the overall experience. We'll take a wait and see approach for now, I would like to give SNK the benefit of the doubt when it comes to this anticipated resurrection.

What Is It? While the game originated in the arcade, most American gamers will remember Crazy Taxi as being one of the many excellent games released for the Sega Dreamcast. You play a taxi driver who just so happens to be ... crazy! You drive as fast as you can narrowly missing other cars and making wild jumps. After hearing nothing about the Crazy Taxi franchise for several years, Sega is ready to resurrect the series for the Sony PSP. This port will feature all of the levels from Crazy Taxi 1 and 2, as well as a lot of new content that they will be throwing in for good measure. Unfortunately the PSP game will not feature the level from Crazy Taxi 3 on the original Xbox, but there will be a multiplayer component that you can sink your teeth into. As fans of the series we can't help but be excited about this collection, even if it is just another Dreamcast port for the PSP.

Why Should You Be Excited? The first two Crazy Taxi games are crazy fun, complete with crazy customers, real world advertising and all sorts of crazy things to do. Best of all, even if you've played the two games non-stop since they were first released, this PSP collection will feature some updates and cool extras. There's also a multiplayer mode, which may keep you going long after you've beaten your high score.

What Could Go Wrong? The problem is that this is nothing but a port of a Dreamcast game, and no matter how many extras you add it's still just the same game ported to a different system. We're also not sure how well the multiplayer games will be incorporated. While the game doesn't look bad, it's hard not to be a little disappointed at the way the game looks on the portable system. If you're going to make a Crazy Taxi compilation then what's with not including Crazy Taxi 3?

Bottom Line: Given the right price tag the Crazy Taxi Collection could be a must-buy, but we wonder if there's really enough of a game here to keep people interested in the long term. The first two games, while fun, were definitely limited and didn't hold up well over time. We don't want to doom this Crazy Taxi series, but so far we're pretty skeptical about this rebirth.

What Is It? There was a time back in the early 1990s when both the game players and the game critics couldn't get enough of Earthworm Jim, Shiny Entertainment's mega-popular 2D action hero. Jim was not only a popular game character, starring in two different games for the Super NES and Genesis, but also a television hero in his own animated cartoon. After two successful 16-bit games, Earthworm Jim made a misstep when he entered the 3D arena. It's there that our story comes to an end ... until now, that is. Last year Atari (who currently owns the Earthworm Jim license) announced that they were going to resurrect Shiny's most popular hero and give him his own PSP game. The game will be inspired by the original 16-bit games, but feature brand new polygonal graphics. Will this be enough to put Jim back on the top of the charts? Only time will tell, but I would be lying if I said I wasn't a little bit excited to see what my old friend is up to.

Why Should You Be Excited? I don't care who you are, it's great to have a new 2D (albeit it 3D polygons) Earthworm Jim games. If you're not somebody who loved the Super NES/Genesis games back in the day then either you're too young or you might want to check your pulse because you may be dead. Make no mistake about it; Earthworm Jim is one of the funniest games of all time and a stellar experience from beginning to end. Some may say that this is nothing more than a Contra clone, but it's hard not to love a worm trying to kill a crow. It's also exciting because we don't get a lot of 2D action games anymore, especially on Sony platforms.

What Could Go Wrong? It's being developed by people who have never worked on an Earthworm Jim game before, something that may or may not be a good sign. It's troubling that we haven't seen or heard anything about this game since late last year, especially since it's been almost a year since it debuted. The levels we saw at E3 were fantastic, but we hope that the whole game isn't just rehashed Earthworm Jim 1 levels. And on a sad final note: the game won't feature those cool 3D rocket levels.

Bottom Line: As exciting as it is to finally have a new 2D Earthworm Jim game to look forward to, we would be lying if we said that we aren't just a little worried about this project. If the team can pull off this massive feat then we're in for one hell of an amazing (and funny) experience. But I can see a lot of ways for this to go poorly. We'll keep an open mind about the game for now; we're just antsy to get our hands on the game again.

What Is It? Thanks to the Xbox Live Arcade, Nintendo Virtual Console and PlayStation 3 store, pretty much every other classic game is getting a second shot at life. So far this year we've seen the rebirth of Castlevania: Symphony of the Night, Excitebike, Jetpac, Tecmo Bowl, Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, Beyond Oasis, Splatterhouse, Mortal Kombat II, and dozens more. And that's just within the first four months; just imagine how many more classic games we'll see in the next eight months. Now that everybody has some sort of downloadable service it's not hard to imagine a time when you can buy nearly any game you remember at anytime of the day or night. And that's not even taking into account GameTap, a PC service brought to you by Turner Entertainment. While it's cool that every other game on this list is getting some sort of major make over, it's nice to be able to play the original classics the way they were intended, with clunky graphics, crummy sound and boxy graphics. If this isn't the year of the defunct game then I don't know what is!

Why Should You Be Excited? Because every week we're being overrun by classic arcade and console games that are generally cheap and still a lot of fun. If it wasn't for the Virtual Console and Xbox Live Arcade most American gamers would never have found such gems as Military Madness, Jetpac Refuelled and Dragon's Curse. All of these services makes a story like this (and a website like the one you're reading) even more relevant, something that I am very happy about.

What Could Go Wrong? Some of the Virtual Console games are overpriced, usually to the point where they aren't impulse purchases. The Virtual Console doesn't allow you a way of testing out the games before you buy them, which buying games you've never heard of all the more risky. At the moment there are a lot of classic games and consoles that are being left out, something that breaks our Jaguar loving heart.

Bottom Line: When Defunct Games was founded six years ago nobody had any idea that all of these games we talked about would return with a vengeance. Although I complain about some of the pricing, I couldn't be more proud of Nintendo and Microsoft (and Sony to a lesser degree) for having the foresight to bring back these classic games. We may not get everything we want (See: The 24 Games We Will Never See on the Virtual Console), but these new consoles are certainly making it easier for us older gamers to relive our youth and younger gamers to discover the classics they missed out on the first time around. So get out there and support these downloadable services, even if they aren't perfect.