10 Amazing Video Game Franchises That Were Abandoned
Seriously, why do these franchises get no love?
While 2023 in video games is a veritable buffet of choices no matter your preference in genre, game mechanics, or narrative, we still can’t help but miss some of our old favourites that got left by the wayside.
For every Final Fantasy and The Legend of Zelda that carries forward seemingly until the end of time there are plenty of fantastic franchises that aren’t so lucky. These are the series that, whether they got well under way or barely began, were unfortunately left to rot long before their time.
No genre is big enough nor publisher popular enough to escape the video game franchise cemetery that inevitably swallows up some offerings that truly don’t deserve it.
10. Suikoden
Konami is known for a number of massive franchises but not all of them lasted as long as they should have.
One such franchise is RPG series Suikoden whose first entry arrived in 1995 in Japan and ran until 2006 in its mainline series with Suikoden V and until 2009 in its spin-off titles. While JRPGs of all shapes and sizes boomed in the late 90s and early 2000s, after that point it became apparent only the strongest would continue to receive support from their publishers. Despite the love the franchise developed for its epic narratives and fascinating characters, ultimately Konami disbanded the Suikoden team, reallocating them onto its numerous other titles and essentially leaving the franchise for dead after its fifth instalment failed to meet Konami’s commercial expectations.
Though a number of unofficial entries in the franchise would crop up and there is both a spiritual successor and a remaster of the original two games slated to come out this year, Suikoden VI is unlikely to ever grace your gaming library.
At the very least those who care about this iconic JRPG franchise are trying to keep it alive however possible, even if the mainline series has been dead in the water for over a decade. If you were a fan of this one, keep an eye out for Eiyuden Chronicle: Hundred Heroes, a crowdfunded JRPG made by the original creator of Suikoden, Yoshitaka Murayama.