We may be living in a golden age of gaming, with new releases and next-gen consoles pushing the industry forward — but that doesn’t mean every great series has survived the journey. Over the years, countless beloved game franchises have faded into obscurity, even though fans are still eager for their return. With that in mind, let’s take a look at some forgotten gaming franchises that truly deserve a comeback.
Brothers In Arms
Much closer to the emotional and intimate spectacle of HBO’s practically perfect Band of Brothers television show, which chronicled the real-life escapades of Easy Company as they battled their way across World War II Europe, the Brothers In Arms series has been missing in action since 2008’s Brothers In Arms: Hell’s Highway – terrible mobile spin-offs notwithstanding. Encapsulating a highly compelling mix of squad strategy, first-person shooter goodness and emotional storytelling, a new Brothers in Arms game was apparently said to be in the works at Gearbox Software back in 2021, but we haven’t heard a peep since then. Hopefully, when Borderlands 4 clears the finish line, we’ll hear something. Please?
Burnout
Easily one of the best arcade racing series ever, Burnout delivered extremely high-octane vehicular thrills combined with some of the most outrageous crash physics and the best, honest to god soundtrack ever heard in a racing game. 2008’s Burnout Paradise, the last entry in the series, took that concept to an all-new level, thrusting players into an intricately constructed open-world which rewarded player skill and daring like no other racer on the market. It’s honestly a bit nuts to me that Burnout as a franchise essentially died, but Need for Speed continued for so many years, and nobody at EA thought that the two could co-exist indefinitely. Can someone sort this out?
Deus Ex
When it was released more than 25 years ago, Deus Ex was something of a revelation. Here was a full-fat, sci-fi RPG/FPS hybrid that gave vivid life to our imaginings of what a mature cyberpunk videogame could look like and boy did it overdeliver. Generously stuffed with interesting characters, a thoroughly engaging storyline which took in all manner of transhumanist concepts, corrupt corporations, and more – not to mention a hefty dose of the ol’ immersive sim goodness, Deus Ex marked the start of a legitimately fantastic franchise. Though somewhat sadly, the series was soon shelved after 2016’s Deus Ex: Mankind Divided. Although I’m extremely happy to see CD Projekt RED’s Cyberpunk 2077 finally complete its redemption arc, surely there’s room for more than one epic first-person cyberpunk adventure on the market, right?
Duke Nukem
With its comically ultra-masculine hero that felt like a brilliantly twisted hybrid of John Wayne and Arnold Schwarzenegger, Duke Nukem 3D was a genre effort which utterly separated itself from the first-person shooters of the time when it released in 1996, thanks in no small part to its wealth of cutting insults, savage pop culture references and surprisingly sophisticated level design. Though 2011’s Duke Nukem Forever, the last game in the series, was a critical and commercial bust, I still think there’s life in the ol’ foul-mouthed boy yet. Personally, I’d love to see Wolfenstein developer Machinegames take a run at creating a new Duke Nukem game. What do you reckon?
GUN
Before Rockstar’s Red Dead Redemption would strap on its repeater rifle and saddle up across the dusty, open world plains of the Wild West, GUN by Tony Hawk’s Pro Skater developer Neversoft would beat it to the punch some five years earlier in 2005. Though Neversoft’s singular open-world Wild West action adventure was hugely satisfying with some great gunplay, entertaining missions, gritty violence and an enticing world to discover, it never quite reached the heights of Rockstar’s much more famous equivalent. Given how popular the Wild West setting has become in video games since then, never mind the rampant success of the Red Dead series itself, I’d love to see GUN take a second bite at that particular apple.
Kane & Lynch
I know that ‘edginess’ is generally something that causes eye-rolling and very often such responses are quite rightly deserved, but in the case of the Io Interactive-developed Kane & Lynch franchise, it was honed and perfected into a sadistically enjoyable art form. In particular, the second title in the series, Kane & Lynch 2: Dog Days, absolutely took this to heart, offering up a hard-bitten, third-person cover shooter odyssey unfolding on the streets of modern-day Shanghai as our titular bad dudes blasted their way through a gang deal gone bad. With its scratchy, pitch-perfect VHS-style filter, Michael Mann-style sensibilities and oodles of face-blurring ultra-violence, Kane & Lynch 2: Dog Days was the closest a video game ever got to feeling like a video nasty. I’d love to see what the Io Interactive of today could do with these two horrible lads.
Shenmue
Shenmue’s tale of young Japanese student Ryo Hazuki chasing his father’s murderer across Japan and into Hong Kong, and against the backdrop of a beautifully realised late 1980s world, captured the hearts and minds of gamers, young and old, when it was released for Sega’s ill-fated Dreamcast console back in 1999. If you can believe it, it has been nearly six years since Shenmue 3 was released and promised to continue the story of Sega’s legendary series, which had previously stopped, seemingly forever, with Shenmue 2 back in 2001.
The problem was, Sega’s threequel only moved the story forward by an inch and still left many, many questions unanswered, making series fans hunger for a conclusion to an adventure odyssey that has spanned more than four generations of console hardware. Nonetheless, I feel it’s time that a new studio takes up the mantle of Shenmue and gives us a definitive conclusion to the series, allowing Ryo Hazuki to finish his story in the process. To that end, I’d love to see Like A Dragon, Yakuza, and Virtua Fighter developer Ryu Ga Gotoku Studio take up that challenge, as I think their experience with open world adventures, combat systems and clear love for Japanese and Chinese culture makes them a perfect choice.
Sleeping Dogs
Despite Rockstar’s Grand Theft Auto ruling the open-world roost when it came to action-adventure crime spectacles, Sleeping Dogs from United Front Games was determined to do things more than a little differently when it released back in 2012. Rather than putting players in the shoes of a hardened criminal, Sleeping Dogs instead allowed players to direct the actions of Wei Shen, an undercover Hong Kong police officer who has returned to his old stomping grounds to infiltrate a powerful Triad family and must play both sides of the law as a result.
With an evocative open-world rendition of modern-day Hong Kong playing host to blistering car-chases and bone-breaking combat that allowed Mr Shen to break legs, slam people through windows, disarm firearms, and more besides, Sleeping Dogs provided an intoxicating blueprint for how other developers could meaningfully separate their own open world adventures from Rockstar’s juggernaut series. It’s just a shame that no other developers have seemingly read that blueprint, and all talk of a sequel has basically flatlined in recent years. Quite simply, Sleeping Dogs was a franchise that deserved better.
Ultima
One of the most popular Western RPG series of the 1980s and early 1990s for the then-nascent PC gaming platform, Ultima started life as an open-world, top-down RPG series that had players venturing across a fantasy world to save it from various big bads. Where Ultima differed quite a bit from its peers, however, was in how it framed its various adventures against the backdrop of a virtues system which would penalise the player if they diverted from the path of eight different virtues (the protagonist was supposed to be a goodness channelling Avatar, after all).
Further afield, the series spin-off Ultima Underworld, meanwhile, was effectively the grandfather of what we now know to be the immersive sim genre. Predating System Shock by a good couple of years (and sharing its game designer, Warren Spector) while offering up the same sort of deep exploration and adventure beats that fans of titles like BioShock and Dishonored would come to appreciate, Ultima Underworld was years ahead of its time, and a new entry would be manna from heaven at this point.
As gaming technology races forward, it’s easy to get swept up in the excitement of new releases and next-gen innovations. But the magic of the medium doesn’t just lie in what’s new – it also lives in the classics that shaped the industry. From the explosive chaos of Burnout to the emotional storytelling of Brothers in Arms and the cyberpunk depth of Deus Ex, these forgotten franchises still have untapped potential waiting to be rediscovered. With the right vision and a little love from developers willing to take a chance, these series could make a comeback worthy of the golden age of gaming itself.
