Dead and Buried: Gaming Franchises That Deserve to Rise Again

Every few years, some executive at a major publisher decides the safest bet is another sequel to a franchise already on its fourteenth entry, while genuinely beloved series with passionate fanbases get quietly shelved and forgotten. It's one of the most frustrating patterns in the games industry, and if you've been gaming long enough, you've got your own personal list of casualties.

This is ours. Six franchises that went dark for reasons ranging from studio closures to corporate indifference, and why — with the right team and today's technology — each one could not only come back but actually sell.

Shadowrun (1993 / 2007)

The Shadowrun universe is cyberpunk noir with magic and trolls, and it has been criminally mishandled for decades. The original SNES game was a genuinely ahead-of-its-time RPG. The 2007 Xbox 360 title was a multiplayer shooter that alienated everyone who loved the source material. The Harebrained Schemes trilogy (Returns, Dragonfall, Hong Kong) from the 2010s showed the concept still had life — those games were excellent — but they stayed small and the license has been quiet ever since.

Here's the thing: the appetite for deep, narrative-driven RPGs with morally gray choices has never been higher. Cyberpunk 2077 proved the aesthetic has mainstream appeal. A full-budget Shadowrun RPG with the depth of Baldur's Gate 3 and the visual style of Blade Runner 2049 would be a genuine cultural moment. Microsoft owns the IP. Someone needs to make a call.

Dino Crisis (1999)

Capcom has been on a historic run with Resident Evil remakes, and fans have been screaming the same thing for years: do Dino Crisis next. The original was survival horror with dinosaurs instead of zombies, and it was terrifying in the best possible way. The sequel leaned into action and still worked. The third game went to space and is best left unmentioned.

A modern Dino Crisis remake using the RE Engine — the same technology behind the stunning RE2, RE3, and RE4 remakes — would be a slam dunk. The tension of being hunted by a Velociraptor through tight corridors, rendered in photorealistic detail with modern sound design? That's a day-one purchase for an enormous slice of the gaming population. Capcom clearly knows how to do this. The only question is why they haven't pulled the trigger.

Skies of Arcadia (2000)

Sega made a JRPG about sky pirates exploring floating continents, and it was one of the most joyful, adventurous games ever created. It released on the Dreamcast — which means most people never played it — and a slightly expanded port hit the GameCube in 2002. After that, silence.

The tragedy of Skies of Arcadia is that it didn't fade because it was bad. It faded because Sega's hardware business collapsed and took a lot of great IPs down with it. The world-building, the characters, the sense of discovery — all of it holds up conceptually. A modern open-world reimagining with a living sky full of islands to explore, rival crews to encounter, and a proper orchestral score would tap directly into the same emotional space as games like Sea of Stars and Octopath Traveler that have proven the market for heartfelt RPGs is absolutely still there.

Tenchu (1998)

Before Sekiro existed, there was Tenchu. The original stealth-assassination series set in feudal Japan was doing what FromSoftware later perfected, just with less punishing difficulty and more emphasis on pure stealth mechanics. You played as a ninja. You killed people quietly. It was extremely cool.

The franchise drifted through multiple studios and publishers, lost its identity, and eventually stopped releasing altogether. But consider the current landscape: Ghost of Tsushima proved that Western audiences will absolutely buy a prestige samurai game. Sekiro proved the setting has hardcore appeal. A new Tenchu that threads the needle between Ghost's accessibility and Sekiro's depth, with a modern stealth system built around vertical movement and environmental awareness, would fill a gap that genuinely exists right now.

Onimusha (2001)

Another Capcom property, another franchise that went quiet for no good reason. Onimusha was feudal Japan meets demon slaying with action-RPG mechanics, and the first three games on PS2 were legitimate classics. Onimusha 3 had Jean Reno in it. Jean Reno. Time travel. It was unhinged and brilliant.

Capcom remastered the original in 2019, which was a nice gesture, but a full-scale revival hasn't materialized. Given that the RE Engine has already proven it can handle Japanese historical settings (Resident Evil Village's castle sequences are essentially proof of concept), and given that the action-RPG genre has never been more commercially viable, the business case for a new Onimusha seems obvious. Maybe Capcom is saving it. Maybe it's just sitting there. Either way, the wait is getting old.

MechAssault (2002)

Here's one for the Xbox heads. MechAssault was a mech combat game exclusive to the original Xbox, and it was one of the most purely fun experiences that console generation produced. Giant robots. Explosive battles. A sequel that added more giant robots. Then nothing.

Mech games have had a quiet resurgence — Armored Core VI: Fires of Rubicon was a critical and commercial hit in 2023, proving the genre can still move units. Microsoft owns the MechAssault IP. They also own Xbox Game Studios and need exclusive titles. The math isn't complicated. A modern MechAssault with online multiplayer, deep customization, and a bombastic campaign would give Xbox something genuinely different on their first-party roster.

What Needs to Actually Change

The pattern across all of these franchises is depressingly consistent. Either the studio that made them closed, the publisher lost interest, or the series made one bad entry and got abandoned rather than course-corrected. Meanwhile, the IPs sit in legal limbo while fans age out of hope.

The good news is that the current market has demonstrated, repeatedly, that nostalgia-driven revivals work when they're executed with genuine care. Resident Evil. Crash Bandicoot. Tony Hawk. Demon's Souls. The audience will show up for quality. The question is whether publishers are willing to take the swing.

For every franchise on this list, there's a passionate fanbase that never fully moved on. That's not nothing — in an era where marketing budgets are astronomical and organic enthusiasm is worth its weight in gold, a built-in community of devoted fans is a genuine asset.

Somebody needs to start making calls.