Talking Point: What Games Would You Like To See Given The 'Gold Master Series' Treatment?

Yoshiki Okamoto truky deserves one of these. Gyruss, Time Pilot, 1942 and others from the early arcade days… then Street Fighter 2… then his work on some of the PlayStation platforms (Genji: Dawn of the Samurai).

Really a fascinating career spanning decades. And a interesting personality as well. There is a great video on YouTube about him called “Big Dudes” or similar.

Infocom stuff. Like the Zork series. Enchanter, Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy, Planetfall, Quarterstaff, etc. These games came with loads of physical bits and photographs of these items would be a tasty morsel. Of course, these titles would be a rough go on Switch, without the keyboard, but still i think, with their legacy and unique trappings, would benefit from being Eclipsed. Plus, it would be ironic since the games themselves were eclipsed by games with ya know, actual graphics.
Also, SSI’s gold box Dungeons and Dragons games. There’s a nice collection on Steam, but i feel a more thorough treatment could(and should, these are the first dnd games to use the official ruleset and many of them are excellent(though not without problems that time has revealed, much like old school dnd itself) is warranted.
P.S. Sierra

@sfb Good call! Yoshiki Okamoto is a shmup legend! Time Pilot and Gyruss are both personal favorites.

Flat out, I'd love to wait 5 years to have a "50 years of Nintendo in videogaming" type of thing.

I would like a David Crane/Activision compilation.

> Nobody is clamouring for a Time Twist localisation.

Another bold faced lie from the scandalous curs at Nintendo life. Not only are several people besides myself willing to commit any act possible for this seminal work of the text adventure, but we also know it to be MORE IMPORTANT AND OF HIRE QUALITY than Mother 3

Despite living in the states, i never played Oregon Trail either. But my friends all did. The lot of them despise the game simply because it was the only game they were allowed to play in school. Overexposure.
I was lucky as in my school, a classmate of mine snuck in a game called Telengard. It was an rpg and i imagine, put Oregon Trail to shame, and we played it every chance we got. It was a better to reason to cut class than most and turned computer class from an exercise in excruciating boredom to an adventure. The thrill of subterfuge no doubt added to the excitement.
I’ve looked it up on the internet and apparently Telengard hasn’t held up well.
Though it served me sufficiently long ago.

I think King's Quest should get the Gold Masters series treatment next!

The history of those games is amazing.

Rush 2049… just because I want to play it all of a sudden. Lol.

@SepticLemon Great pick. I had 4 & 5 on pc I think back in the day. Thank god for strat guides though. lol.

I'd really love to see them tackle 32-bit platform stuff. They've already done more for the Jaguar's legacy with Atari 50 than Atari themselves in its lifetime. A comp or separate releases for the myriad of early life 3D obscurities and their histories could be wild.

I'd love this treatment for Xenogears. I guessit's just a cult classic, but it has a fantastic story behind it. I love this idea of a husband and wife team at Squaresoft working together on a very mature and deep RPG (that changed my life, and many others)

A deep dive into Treasure

OH WAIT!

You know what we REALLY need! An Alexey Pajitnov Gold Masters Series game!

It'll have the very first Electronika 60 version of Tetris, and a bunch of other games that Alexey made such as Wild Snakes, Hatris, El-Fish, Knight Moves, and Hexic HD!

I was going to have my own opinion until they mentioned Rebel Assault, I don't know if it was any good but man did I play the heck out of that game as a very small child.

How about Lemmings? Used to be ported to EVERYTHING and then sort of vanished one day. I want to know the whole story.

@MeloMan that would be the dream!

The Hewson/Graftgold Years. The works of Braybrook, Turner, Phillips, Tapanimaki et al are almost demanding of it.

Obviously, no Super Off Road or Rainbow Islands, but Uridium, Paradroid, Gribbly, Alleykat, Nebulus and Zynaps would make this essential for me. Stone cold classics, Sizzlers & Gold Medals abound.

@Pak-Man Well, DMA, the company that developed Lemmings would turn into RockStar, but Psygnosis, their publisher, had the rights to Lemmings, and they got bought out by Sony. So Sony has the rights to Lemmings, even though the last Lemmings game was made on the PSP.

I would love to see Buggy Boy get some love!

The UK Speccy scene would be very cool. I’d go for the tycoon scene or Sid Meier if I could pick though. All the wonderful tycoons like Railroad Tycoon, Transport Tycoon, Theme Park, Railroad Tycoon etc. If licenses aren’t a problem then Populous, Dungeon Keeper, SimCity etc as well.

As long as I can actually buy it physically with no lrg and their ilk in sight:
Faxanadu
Maniac Mansion
Gargoyle's Quest and Demon Crest
Living Jigsaw
The 7th Guest
Spot the Videogame
Whomp Em
Battletoads Collection

@Tempestryke That would be really strange to see a game dedicated to the making of Whomp Em.
Preordered

@Zeebor15
Its similar to when something is announced and you get people asking the question "who asked for this?".....

chances are not only are there those who "asked for it" but are also very passionate about said thing, its why im happy to see things like retro releases, localizations etc even when they have a very niche audience.

@Pak-Man
would be also interesting to have those different ports playable, since i love it when collections offer different versions of a game especially back in the day when a "port" could be a very different game altogether (i remember initially playing it through the acorn computer version but also played the mega-drive one a bunch at my aunts)

also would be interesting to have the different expansions, sequels and spinoffs available since while i played the sequel and was aware of the existence of "oh no more lemmings" but never new there was a third lemmings game by DMA design (thought that the third game was lemmings 3d) and certainly didn't know about lemmings revolution, though was aware of the 2006 game on playstation systems (apparently it was a remake of the original with aditional levels and a level editor)

I don't think a SCUMM collection would be so insane if it stuck to pre curse of monkey. It's only 11 games

Would love to see something like this for the original Pokemon (Red/Blue/Green). It was quite a tumultuous 6-year development cycle apparently. Unfortunately, Nintendo seems to be pretty tight-lipped about its development cycles, other than the Iwata Asks / Ask the Developer interviews.

Re: Myst, here's an interview on it with Rand Miller that's quite detailed and entertaining, at least if that's your thing. https://youtu.be/5qxg0ykOcgM?si=kO5k52lEM7z3F6b8 So I'd really rather get something like this for Riven. I hope the new remake of it includes some detailed commentary track.

I know he’s a divisive figure, but a Peter Molyneux retrospective would be brilliant. We’d get to hear how he came to believe all his promises during the development process for games that sometimes never quite delivered - but are still among the most interesting of their day.

I’ll take it for Populous and Syndicate alone.

Nothing really from the article itself would grab my attention, from the comments section however, I would definitely buy:

• Alexeij Pajitnov
• The 7th Guest
• Lemmings

I was never wowed by Myst lol. I had more enjoyment from my aunt's slide show projector! Anyhoo, I would love a Gold series edition of Midway Arcade Classics. Defender, Gauntlet, Joust, Marble Madness, Rampage, Super Sprint...soo many! But if anyone can do this golden age of gaming justice, these guys can.

My Switch feels so incomplete without Defender etc

I would love a Jeff Minter Part deux! (Including Space Jiraffe, moose life, tempest 4000 and polybious)

Every American knows Oregon Trail because it was the one of the only games that every single elementary school with a computer lab had access to. The other game, obviously, was "Where in the World is Carmen Sandiego?"

Dang those are some fine choices. Most have far reaching influences that would be on the same level as Karateka to explore. For sure PoP would be a likely candidate for nearly the same reason as Karateka was. But, that might also be the reason not to do it.

Of the ones mentioned in the article, and any one of them would prove interesting, I think I would be most interested in SF2 and Yu Suzuki. The making of for Karateka was interesting about what went into making the game. But, for these two I think there's more beyond just the developer. There's also the hardware, more about influences leading up and how ports changed the industry. SF2 and it's mega sized cart had a lot of ripples that most kids weren't aware of.

But really any of them would be fascinating.

@chickje Buggy boy is great still play it now on A500 mini I would love an updated version

God, there's so many. I can't even choose just now to be honest, especially given all the real-world considerations that come into play, like licensing and such. I doubt Nintendo would let them do anything officially, so any Nintendo games probably go out the window right away. I'd have to think about it.

The three that I've had in mind for my wishlist are Prince of Persia, Test Drive II: The Duel, and Pitfall: The Mayan Adventure. Quite an interesting and varied selection of ports of each of these, although I love the idea of an Outrun deep dive.

I don't see how Adventure would work. There's only the original Atari 2600 game, a lousy NES port of it that was done by a Chinese developer for Legacy Engineering's NOAC based Atari Flashback 1 (the one in the mini 7800 styled case), Cafeman's excellent Adventure II homebrew for the Atari 5200 and Atari 8-Bit computers, and the Adventure II port for the 2600 that Legacy Engineering commissioned for the excellent 2600-on-a-chip based Atari Flashback 2 (before AtGames took over with their infamous emulation boxes) that I believe was based around Cafeman's world map.

I'm not sure there's enough meat on the bone there to sell a $30-$40 collection centered around a single 2600 game, no matter how excellent, groundbreaking, and well remembered it is. I'd buy it and love it, but commercially I think it would need to encompass a broader vision to sell well enough to encourage further entries in what so far has been an excellent line from Digital Eclipse.

I like The Oregon Trail idea, too. But with how short of a game it actually is, perhaps expand upon the idea to include some of the other iconic MECC games like Lemonade Stand, Odell Lake, and Number Munchers (not to mention some of the Oregon Trail sequels like The Yukon Trail). It's definitely a publisher worth remembering. They're one of what undoubtedly is a short list of companies that have made educational games that gamers actually have fond memories of. I bet their employees that are still around would have a lot of interesting stories to share.

at this point I'd gladly take just straight ports of OutRun 2006 (minus the Ferrari badges) and Shenmue 1 & 2

Well, it would be interesting to see them tackle Spyro (especially since they worked on three of the GBA titles back in the day). But it would also be interesting to see them tackle Frogger.

This is literally so hard to think up because there's literally endless possibilities for the Gold Master series but the fact there's so many stories in the world of video games that need to be told it's hard to know where to start. I personally think that maybe doing a game that has a focus on some Japan only computer games from the MSX or Sharp X6800 that are super influential but the western gaming world have no context for. As for DE making a huge company or series celebration title for the Gold Master Series, I would be really hoping for something like Hudson Soft, Konami, or Midway. I feel like they're super important to the early days of video games and laid many different foundations for quality and standards in the video game industry, but they all might be hard to get based on if any of them don't think a collection like that is unviable

Yu Suzuki would be pretty high up there for me. Honestly, I would love a Master System(s) compilation, much like ATARI 59. Or Intellivision.

I'm more interested in studios or creators than games, I think. A Treasure collection would be my dream come true. Or even arcade board collections. So many of Sega's great arcade games are lost to so many people. Whatever they get up to, I will be paying attention.

Yu Suzuki and Making of Myst, as well as “The Story of SCUMM” would be really cool.

Honestly, anything in the Japanese realm would just be interesting to compare to their other works, simply because for a lot of these games from the early ‘90s and before, there was a lot of obfuscation on lead developers and contributors. So seeing how well DE could surmount that problem, plus the language barrier, would be an interesting benchmark for foreign works. It might be too soon, but a “Suda51: The Early Years” would be interesting, though a lot of work since a lot of those games are still not officially translated. Just the first thought though.

I would love to see them team up with Farsight Studios for an entry on Gottlieb pinball. Farsight was making one of the best historical documents in gaming with The Pinball Arcade, so digging into these classic EM pinball tables with full historical context would be a dream. Most of these early pinballs were not based on famous properties, so it wouldn’t be the licensing nightmare of modern pinball collections. Gold Master Series: Gottlieb Pinball, please!

I love the focus on an authpr like jeff minter, rather than a series/// candidates include gunpei yokoi, miyamoto, the smash bros guy., sensible software...

Castlevania all the way.

The OutRun series would be a dream come true.

Right when I get busy and get behind on the site, my article idea comes out, but I only discover it two weeks later! Thank you for making it!

The commentary could be used not just to provide historical context but also cultural context. As such, it could be a good chance for some lost in translation ports. For example, I've thought of Parodius as a good candidate for popularizing the cute em up and Goemon with an explanation of how he relates to the mythological figure.

Nintendo pretends they don't exist, but if Atari 50 gave us a warts-and-all perspective, Nintendo's CDi games really deserve to be explained and appreciated a la Limited Run's recent release of Plumbers Don't Wear Ties.

The 3DS Guild Series would put those games on physical for the first time ever, save them from the eshop grave, and would involve interviews with tons of luminaries. They could call it the Guild Master series. 😆

Ultimately, I'd love it if they did modestly priced DLC for lots of already released popular games. I think enough people would buy them for the industry to see how important preservation is.