Transferring some Wii Wishes, to this forum, from the Wii forum. That could best be done as a WiiWare title. Main problem in developing remakes is finding programmers to do this! I received word from 'http://www.solar-ray.org/' who is the last one to try and make a remake for the game Rocket Jockey for the PC. Since the fanbase won't work, I'm trying to put these ideas online and see who supports them, who does see the potential in the game experience Nintendo is so famous for!
On the website Wii Rally I have found someone who shares my love for this game: Rustopher Hashonah a.k.a Rocket Man. Since he already wrote this Wii wish, I just thought I post it here.
Rustopher Hashonah’s Wii Wish: Rocket Jockey Whenever I see reminiscence about fun, yet somewhat dated PC games, the same group of popular gems like X-COM, Fallout, Star Control II, and Syndicate get the most attention. During these conversations, I always bring up a small lost gem, but very few have heard of it and even fewer have played it. This diamond in the rough is known as Rocket Science’s “Rocket Jockey”.
Published by SegaSoft back in 1997, Rocket Jockey lived a short life between being too powerful for some machines and yet incompatible with next generation PCs. Rocket Jockey is a game about a future sport; rocket… jockeying. As a Rocket Jockey, you straddle a rocket and ride it around a gladiatorial style arena at high speeds. Armed with a grapple on either side to steer, you can enter any of three modes of play:
1) Rocket Racing: speed around an obstacle course to be the fastest competitor (or solo for a time trial). 2) Rocket Ball: a polo-style sport involving snagging balls with the grapple and whipping them appropriately into goals before your opponents can stop you or score more. 3) Rocket War: a gladiatorial battle against other competitors which involves ramming other rockets, snagging jockeys off their mounts with the grapple, tying various items (jockeys, rockets, poles, bombs) to other items (jockeys, rockets, poles, bombs) for style points.
Simplistic as they sound, this was an incredible and intuitive game, pure unadulterated genius. Besides the addictive game-play (oh, the screams of a competitor jockey ripped from his rocket and swung into a pole), what also stood out with Rocket Jockey was the classy style; down-home 1950’s Americana sensibilities reminiscent of Interplay’s. Fallout series combined with snarky, nihilistic future ad designs. And the music. Oh, the music. The game was accompanied by a surf guitar soundtrack from none other than Dick Dale himself.
No game I know of has even come close to being anything like Rocket Jockey (Jet Moto?). And that’s the clincher; it would be so simple to recreate today. To not give this game a proper revival would be a crime. And that’s where the Wii comes in. The controls are a near-perfect match.The rocket is controlled by leaning; left or right and you drift in that direction. Up or down were the same, though there wasn’t much of a height radius (rockets only went, at most, ten feet from the ground, just enough to ram an opponent off his/her rocket). This basic guidance could be controlled with the WiiMote, with emphasis based on increasing the angle the WiiMote is titled. Being a PC game, speed and launching and releasing the grapples (left and right) were all keyboard based. Velocity (speed, braking) could be handled with A and B, and the Nunchuk could conform to a nice grapple. Aiming was originally nonexistent; it was based on the rocket’s angle of lean. With a slight adjustment an aim factor could be a variable handled by the analog stick. This game was way too short lived and was so good it cries to be remade for the modern day. Fan attempts have been made to bring it to Unreal Tournament and other platforms. In a recent attempt to get in touch with one of the former developers, I was informed that lawyers constantly botched earlier attempts to get this game properly licensed for a remake. With my prodding, said contact did put forth the idea of porting or re-developing Rocket Jockey to the few remaining Rocket Science alumni. So far, nothing yet has come of this. If anyone out there can do anything for this game, I implore you to try. With the additional promise of online multi-player (or at least split-screen local), an update of Rocket Jockey has the potential to be a future solid gold hit.
2) Sensible World of Soccer (96/97) Quoting Prosody: You know what, I would love a Wii-bound Sensible Soccer game: what a great call that is. Keep it quick, simplistic (Remote sideways, please) and put in plenty of silly team names and cups and I'd grab that. Perhaps a WiiWare release..?
Yes, I would really like a classic Sensible Soccer (great FANbase: http://www.sensiblesoccer.de/) port to WiiWare, with an update option for the most recent players for every new season. Shouldn't be too hard to do? Since Xbox Live! is going to stop, this might be a way for Sensible Soccer (please give us online play!) to survive on Nintendo because of the gameplay experience!!!
3) Black & White / Black & White 2 (playing god; much like the game 'Godfinger' who recently put the same concept to work on the iPhone) Mostly because you ARE the hand of God in this game, and well with the WiiMote you really got the Whole World in your hand, if this could be ported just right.
Black & White on WiiWare? LOL, not with the 40MB limit. The first game requires +/- 600MB and the second game is like +/- 800MB. I want to see it on Wii as well, but it's more likely to be a disc release if it goes to the Wii.
Edit: What do you mean "Xbox Live is going to stop"? As for Sensible Soccer, it is selling quite a bit on Live right now. Plus, WiiWare doesn't do updates, if you want an updated roster you'll most likely have to pay for DLC.
Sorry 'bout that. Xbox live for the old Xbox is gonna stop. Not for the Xbox360 off course. And yes, then I am wrong about the games Rocket Jockey / Black & White. Can't be done on WiiWare. Still Sensible World of Soccer remains .
Too bad, WiiWare isn't providing updates. Guess, I'll just have to switch platforms then and add an Xbox360 to my collection . And I think I did see Sensible World of Soccer on the Xbox360, right? That is what you mean???
Forums
Topic: WiiWare wishes for remake of (old) games?
Posts 1 to 5 of 5
This topic has been archived, no further posts can be added.