Tag: crossovers

#oneaday Day 84: The Crossovers That Will Never Be

There’s a ton of untapped potential in the world of the crossover. Comics have been wise to this for a long time, with DC and Marvel in particular being highly aware of the fact that all their superheroes are running around disparate parts of the same world and might just bump into each other on occasion.

But what would happen if some of the more bizarre crossovers came to fruition? Well, let’s explore that, shall we?

Castlevania: Deep Space Nine

The most modern the series has got was with Soma Cruz, and even then it was still all bats and caves and swords and whatnot. Castlevania should go to space, and specifically to Deep Space Nine. Why? Because I had a dream about it so therefore it must be a good idea.

Benjamin Sisko discovers that as well as being the Emissary he is also a descendent of the Belmont clan and—horrors!—Dracula has found a way to harness the power of the Bajoran wormhole to summon forth the forces of Darkness into our reality. Fortunately, power of said wormhole also manages to summon Alucard, with little to no explanation as to why (this is Castlevania, you don’t ask silly questions like “why?”) who very carefully passes Sisko the Vampire Killer whip. Thus begins an exciting and thrilling co-operative adventure throughout the many decks of Deep Space Nine, culminating in a thrilling showdown with Dracula, who reprises his famous “What Is A Man?” speech in zero gravity.

Features narration by Patrick Stewart, as is the law for all new Castlevania games.

Dragon’s Den: Origins

The Archdemon is rising, and the world needs a hero. But heroes don’t just come out of nowhere. They need to be found.

Enter The Dragons: Peter Jones, Deborah Meaden, Theo Paphitis, Duncan Bannatyne and James Caan. A series of aspiring Heroes of Ferelden climb the stairs of destiny and pitch their ideas with which they believe they’ll be able to take down the Archdemon. Only by securing a Dragon’s investment in their expedition will they have a chance of success, otherwise they’ll be doomed to wandering the land in rusty chainmail using swords that fall apart as soon as you hit a log with them.

Superman: The Krypton Factor

A brand new gameshow featuring Superman attempting to overcome a variety of physical and mental challenges, all of which are laced with kryptonite. Will Superman survive this episode? Will he finally succumb to kryptonite’s influence? As the series finale, Superman has to defeat Gordon Burns in single combat, as it turns out that Burns, too, is also a superhero, but one who draws power from kryptonite instead of being weakened by it. WHO WILL PREVAIL?

Total WipeOut HD Fury

A combination of futuristic racing and people falling in the water repeatedly, the twist is that the courses which the high-speed anti-grav racers and the people running around have to follow are the same, causing significant risk to life and limb for anyone hopping over those giant Super Mario mushrooms whilst the pack bears down on them at approximately 700mph. The winner is the team whose antigrav racer and panicking human both survive.

The Hairy Bikers in: Road Rash

The Hairy Bikers have had enough, and have decided to take on a gruesome, brutal world tour atop their throbbing motorbikes. Along the way, they smack the shit out of anyone unfortunate enough to cross their path, collect the meat from the smouldering corpses and cook it into a delicious recipe between each stage of their journey.

#oneaday, Day 276: Age of the Crossover

The Internet was left reeling yesterday with the news that Professor Layton and Phoenix Wright were to star in a game together, news which left me in a state of semi-orgasmic shock, and yet slightly disappointed that they hadn’t also included Trauma Team and Hotel Dusk in the mix. But no matter; as my Jaffa Cake-loving friend Jasmine Maleficent Rea pointed out, the idea of Edgeworth and Layton sitting down together and discussing tea is too awesome for words.

So it seems we’re in the Age of the Crossover. We’ve had the odd crossover title before, of course, Marvel vs Capcom being one that springs immediately to mind, as well as Square Enix’s bizarre 3D fighting game Ehrgeiz that featured a number of characters from the Final Fantasy series. And Kingdom Hearts, of course, which almost ignores the fact that floppy-haired J-protagonists are interacting with Disney characters presented in a completely different art style and is all the better for it.

But what else would work well as a crossover? Well, a short while back I suggested that a Call of Duty and Call of Cthulhu crossover might be a good idea. I still think that would be awesome. Particularly as there’s already been a first-person Call of Cthulhu game that was pretty good, if a bit buggy in places. In fact, I’d be more than happy with a multiplayer FPS version of awesome co-op board game Arkham Horror, although we’re kind of getting a bit off the crossover point there. Drop in the, erm, memorable Call of Duty characters, maybe?

But what else? As I suggest in today’s comic, doing interesting things with cars is always a good thing. Split/Second proves that you can make a cinematic, exciting driving game that uses a dynamic movie-like soundtrack rather than a boring licensed one. So why not take that to the next level and combine the already-epic-and-explosive action of Split/Second with the utter nonsense that is a JRPG boss battle? Let’s have racing around giant Shadow of the Colossus-style enemies, setting off environmental effects to attempt to take them down whilst they do their very best to throw the player off course. All the while accompanied by a full orchestral score and a choir of people singing loudly in Latin, naturally. (Incidentally, if you’ve never played any driving game with a custom orchestral soundtrack that involves a choir of people singing loudly in Latin then I can highly recommend it. It makes the whole experience considerably more exciting. Try the soundtracks from Castlevania Lords of Shadow or The Matrix Revolutions.)

Or you could go completely wild. Rockstar already seem pretty determined to do very odd things to Red Dead Redemption what with the zombie DLC and whatnot, so why not go the whole hog and do a Firefly crossover? It would be stylistically appropriate, after all (more so than bloody zombies) and provide an interesting twist on the Western formula, something which Firefly already does rather ably. Not to mention the fact that Nathan Fillion and the gang have already pretty much reprised their Firefly roles in Halo ODST. Shiny.

There’s plenty of scope for all manner of nonsense if you start pushing different franchises together in the name of entertainment. And I’m not talking about Alien vs Predator here. Let’s see more of these big names in gaming coming together to produce something beautiful.

So what would you like to see?