I Covered E3 and All I Got Was This Lousy Reboot

How Long Has It Been? It's hard to believe that it's been nine long years since we've seen a brand new Twisted Metal game on the home consoles. You can cut the absence in half if you include the Sony PSP. Twisted Metal: Head-On was a launch game for Sony's portable in 2005, though it was more of a best-of collection of Twisted Metal cars and levels.

Why Should You Care? It may be easy to dismiss it now, but the original Twisted Metal was a fantastic game. So was its sequel. How good were these games? Electronic Gaming Monthly named Twisted Metal the best game of 1995, quite a feat considering strong competition from Super Mario World 2: Yoshi's Island, EarthBound and Chrono Trigger. When Twisted Metal Black hit the PlayStation 2 it was hailed as one of the best games on the system, perhaps even the first must-have game of the 21st century. Unfortunately, this darker, M-rated sequel didn't win over the audience and Sony's seminal car combat franchise spent the next nine years waiting for the perfect time to make a comeback.

Apparently 2010 is a good enough time for a full-fledged Twisted Metal resurrection, complete with much of the original team and director. The fact that this game will have robust online support should pique the interest of anybody who couldn't get enough of Sweet Tooth and the rest of the Twisted Metalheads. So far the brand new multiplayer modes really extend the idea of what Twisted Metal was all about, giving objectives and first-person shooter-style game types. Even if this game ends up being more of the same, the online modes should be more than enough of a reason to support David Jaffe's newest action game.

What Could Go Wrong? Want to know the real reason Twisted Metal was such a revelation 15 years ago? It's because at that time there were no must-own first-person shooters on consoles, the car combat genre was the closest the PlayStation got to Doom or Quake. Fast forward a decade and a half and all three of the consoles have triple-A first-person shooters, which makes me wonder where Twisted Metal's place is in the 21st century. Worse yet, the general consensus about this PS3 announcement seemed to be indifference. Could it be that Twisted Metal's days are numbered?

How Long Has It Been? There's a reason it feels like we've been demanding a Kid Icarus sequel for decades, and that's because we have. Not counting his cameo in Super Smash Bros. Brawl, Kid Icarus has only been in two games. The first was an early generation NES game, while the second came out in 1991 for the black and white Game Boy of all things. While neither game was the well-crafted masterpiece of a Mario or Metroid game, they were memorable enough to keep us wanting more nearly two decades later.

Why Should You Care? Look, I'll be honest with you; the first two Kid Icarus games were not the triple-A titles everybody seems to remember. The NES game is a mess, with frustrating level designs and cheap deaths from start to finish. The Game Boy title was a marked improvement, but it is in no way a must-own platformer. Yet year after year we see game journalists (including myself) demand Nintendo revisit this classic franchise.

The fact remains that Kid Icarus had a great theme and a lot of untapped potential. We've seen Greek mythology through the eyes of a serial killer in God of War, but there's something cute and innocent about exploring this world with the cartoony Kid. Everybody knows how good Nintendo is at making great games, so it stands to reason that they would finally give us a Kid Icarus game worth getting excited about. What's more, it feels like another installment is long overdue. We've had sequels to practically every other Nintendo franchise, why not Kid Icarus? Now we can finally stop asking for a sequel and enjoy what will hopefully be the installment we've all been waiting for.

What Could Go Wrong? Given how many years we've been demanding this game, there's no way Kid Icarus: Uprising will live up to our lofty expectations. It's also a bad sign that the Japanese version of the game isn't even using the classic name. If the game follows the originally too closely it will be a disaster, yet if it strays too far we'll all wonder why anybody bothered in the first place. It's a fine line that Kid Icarus is walking, one that is far from a sure bet.

How Long Has It Been? Despite being based on a 1995 film, Rare's GoldenEye 007 didn't hit the Nintendo 64 until two years later. A few years ago Electronic Arts attempted to sucker mindless gamers into buying their newest Bond game by liberally using the name "GoldenEye." It didn't work and therefore I say that the last true GoldenEye 007 game was released 13 years ago on a cartridge-based console.

Why Should You Care? GoldenEye 007 is not as good as you think it is. Don't get me wrong, I'm no hater. I loved the game as much as the next guy when it was first released on the Nintendo 64. It was the game that finally proved to me that first-person shooters were not some passing fad. But this is a game that does not hold up upon closer inspection. After 14 years of first-person progress, it's hard to go back to a game that employed only one analog stick and makes you stand in one place to aim.

The good news is that Activision is bringing this franchise to the present, all while keeping the best elements from the classic Nintendo 64 game. What is keeping me from fully embracing this quasi-remake is the unsettling nature of watching Activision recreate levels made famous by another developer. I have no doubt that Activision is up to the task, but part of me wishes they would have come up with an original game. It's not the GoldenEye 007 name that made this game so memorable; it was the core mechanics and great multiplayer mode that put it over the edge. It also didn't hurt that this Rare game was the first of its kind on most game consoles.

What Could Go Wrong? Let's be honest, Nintendo's console isn't known for its amazing online multiplayer support. Games like Monster Hunter Tri and The Conduit prove that you can make good things happen online, but not without a lot of trouble and friend codes. Perhaps this game would have been a better fit on the PlayStation 3 or Xbox 360, two consoles with better online infrastructure. Bad online multiplayer will only emphasize the fact that not much has changed in the last 13 years.

How Long Has It Been? Believe it or not, Marvel vs. Capcom 2 came out years before all three of the Sam Raimi directed Spider-Man movies, either Hulk film and well before Stan Lee asked, "Who Wants To Be a Superhero?" The original Marvel vs. Capcom 2 came out in, gasp, the year 2000. Of course, you may know this game from the 2002 PlayStation 2 and Xbox ports.

Why Should You Care? I don't care who you are, you should be excited every time Capcom announces a brand new fighting game. This is a company that singlehandedly created the 2D fighting genre, while also managing to create some of the best fighting games of all time. We're talking about Street Fighter, Darkstalkers and even Power Stone. If you like beating your friends up, then getting excited about a Capcom fighting game is just part of your day to day life.

But this is not just another Street Fighter game, this is the one game fighting fans have been praying for. This is a brand new Marvel vs. Capcom game, the only franchise that pits Capcom's greatest against all of your favorite comic book characters. What's amazing about this franchise is not just that you get Spider-Man, the Hulk and Iron Man to mess around with; it's the fact that you can see classic Capcom characters fight for their lives in a classic 2D fighting game. We're talking about characters you normally don't see next to Ryu and Ken, like Strider, Mega Man and Frank from Dead Rising. Couple that with amazing tag-team gameplay and you have a recipe that can't fail. It doesn't hurt that Capcom is coming off successfully resurrecting the Street Fighter franchise, no easy feat by any stretch of the imagination.

What Could Go Wrong? One of the best things about Marvel vs. Capcom 2 was its gigantic roster. Between the Capcom and Marvel characters the game offered more than 55 playable fighters. Now with the shift to 3D we shouldn't expect anywhere near that number, but what will the final total be? It will be disappointing if we only see 20 or 30 combatants, especially if some fan favorites (Strider, for example) are left off the list.

How Long Has It Been? Unlike most of the games on this list that have been out of commission for a decade or more, we've had a steady supply of Contra games over the past few years. It hasn't even been a full year since Konami uploaded Contra ReBirth to the WiiWare. And don't forget 2007's Contra 4, the Nintendo DS that gave hope to action gamers the world over. But this is no ordinary Contra sequel; this is the sequel to Contra: Hard Corps, the 1994 Sega Genesis exclusive.

Why Should You Care? It's being developed by Arc System Works, a company that knows a thing or two about making a compelling 2D game with amazing visuals. Whether it's making the countless Guilty Gear sequels or branching off into unexpected areas, Arc System Works is the right team to head up a Contra: Hard Corps sequel. With its interesting art style and great use of colors, we're finally getting a Contra game that looks as good as it plays.

Contra: Hard Corps was always different enough from Contra to warrant a look. At the time of its release some journalists openly wondered if this was the future of the Contra franchise. Unfortunately it wasn't, as the company took the series on a miserable tour of 32-bit Hell. But now Hard Corps is back, so maybe this time around Konami will capitalize on the potential of this game.

What Could Go Wrong? The original Contra: Hard Corps was a little too strange for its own good, which may be one of the reasons nobody remembers this Genesis game. It was also extremely hard, which prevents a lot of modern gamers from having a good time with it when they revisit it on the Virtual Console. Arc System Works is great at making amazing 2D fighting games, but do they know anything about shooters? I guess we'll find out later this year.