10 Incredible Video Games You Can't Buy Anymore

One of the great tragedies of colossally popular franchises is that, no matter how incredible their peers might be, they'll always be compared to their bigger brothers as nothing more than copycats or homages.

And yet, some films, games and books do arrive to challenge this notion - with No One Lives Forever being a great example. A smart 1960s spy tale starring the razor-sharp Cate Archer, an intelligent and resourceful spy who should stand toe-to-toe with the fiercest and most influential female leads.

And yet... she doesn't, because nobody's heard of her.

No One Lives Forever, a shooter which some regard to rival even the Nintendo 64's GoldenEye, released to a fairly lukewarm market - the sassy, irreverent dialogue and saturated palette wasn't quite what the market wanted (with Sony's PlayStation 2 pushing harder on games with a more "mature" and "grittier" edge). At a glance, it was assumed to be nothing more than a cheap James Bond parody, which did its unique and clever design a massive disservice. On top of this, with Fox Interactive being absorbed into Vivendi-Universal and subsequently bought out by Activision, the IP's ownership got... well, lost.

Yes - lost. Nobody knows exactly who owns the intellectual property, with even Warner Interactive staking a claim in Cate Archer's adventure.

According to NightDive Studios' Steve Kick (a rad name which also sounds like his special move), "I'm never going to stop [trying to get the rights back]- it'll happen one way or another".

So... Cate may yet Live Forever, after all.