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Shared-screen couch co-op games like:
- Double Dragon
- Bubble Bobble
- Contra
- Chip & Dale
- Secret of Mana
- Balloon Fight (of course)
Crawl, Speed runners, Tools Up, Plateup, Death road to Canada, Streets of rogue, Unrailed to name a few
Looking at Double Dragon, it looks like they still have a 2023 entry, Double Dragon Gaiden: Rise of the Dragons. It appears to be out for console, so I assume that it supports local multiplayer, and it sounds like they had a release that added and online cooperative multiplayer.
Bubble Bobble 4 Friends apparently supports local multiplayer.
I wasn’t that impressed with the last Contra game I played, but Contra: Operation Galaga says that it supports local multiplayer.
It looks like the most-recent game in the series containing Secret of Mana is the 2024 Visions of Mana, which doesn’t have multiplayer. However, there is a 2014 Rise of Mana, which does (albeit not on a single shared screen). I’m also pretty sure that some SNES emulators support remote multiplayer, though I’d guess that on anything other than a pretty low-latency connection, you’re going to inevitably feel the latency, as I don’t think that it’s likely technically viable to do reasonable client-side prediction without support from the game.
kagis
It looks like there are SNES emulators that do apparently provide support via some sort of save-state synchronization. I expect that this is probably not the best-performing system, but it does exist.
Bring back versus puzzles. This genre should’ve flourished with the rise of online multiplayer, but somehow that was when this genre started to fade out.
Today, nearly everything is dead. Dr. Mario and Puzzle Fighter both got turned into mobile gacha games and then shut down. Panel de Pon isn’t coming back because Intelligent Systems is too busy making dating sims. There was a brief moment where it looked like Puyo Puyo was set to make a comeback, but then Sega sold the game’s soul to sell more Tetris. And it feels like the only thing less likely than a proper main series game would be for a new IP to ever emerge today.
City builders. Now I know it’s a though genre to get right, it’s hard to strike balance between simulation and “arcade” but it’s still weird to me that modded SimCity4 offers a more complete experience than Cities Skylines, 1 or 2 (random examples: industries in CS1 doesn’t allow you to define freight management between cargo stations, you have to use mods for that, and it still doesn’t completely work, CS2 doesn’t have bikes)
I still play Caesar III from time to time, it has aged very well to this day, especially thanks to Augustus/Julius mods. Maybe we just peaked decades ago.
I really don’t get the focus on graphics, especially in Cities: Skylines 2.
I don’t play games like that to look at pretty pictures. I had a lot of fun with the original lincity, which has very minimal graphics, and the original SimCity. What I do want is interesting mechanics and lots of levers to pull, and good UI.
Foundation is great on that regard: 5 GB of storage for the whole game.
Anno 1800 on the other hand is 100…
I loved the original SimCity, as well as 2000 and 3000. But I thought SimCity 4 was too complex and had too much micromanagement.
I’d love to see more modern urban jrpgs like Earthbound or Pokemon. Where you travel between relatively safe towns and take down dungeons in between. I just love meeting people and buying health potions at convenience stores.
Edit: I forgot Undertale! Same sorta vibe.
The only RPG I actually enjoyed happens to fit this description: South Park: The Stick of Truth.
Does Like a Dragon count?
Kind of? Unless I’m misremembering that game is just the one big city rather than traveling between multiple towns.
Action games and shmups.
Luckily, people who played classic action games on the PS2 growing up are old enough to start making their own games now, so we’re getting a bunch of indies like Genokids and Spirit X Strike, but except maybe the once-in-a-decade KOEI TECMO or Capcom release, big studios turned their back on the genre over profitability concerns, I assume, even though Devil May Cry 5 sold over 10 million copies.
Shmups: you know you’re fucked when even the most legendary shmup developer—CAVE—moves on to make gacha mobile games. Other than the occasional Touhou release, it’s all in the hands of indie developers now. Going from a time when companies as big as Capcom were making shmups to now is difficult to stomach.
I’m tempted to throw fighting games in there, but the genre is bigger than ever, TBF. I’m just bitter it’s moving in a direction I don’t like, which’s a personal gripe more than anything.
I can understand there being somewhat limited “modern” shmups in terms of using 3d hardware and having high framerates and stuff like that, but the shmup library is also freaking huge, as the genre’s been around for a long time and has had a lot of entries. Like, I cannot imagine playing through all of the decent-and-above games out there. Not to mention that some of them are damned hard and would take a lot of work to really master.
Yeah, but a lot are missing on Steam… hell, what I would consider to be the best two of all-time, Ketsui and DDP DaiOuJou, aren’t on there. I would love to have ESP Ra.De. and Guwange on there as well.
Even a lot of the Touhou titles are missing… it’s 2025, and I don’t think there is one legitimate place to legally acquire Imperishable Night digitally on PC (Or probably anywhere)
Yes, abandonware copies and ROMs exist, but they’ll never compare to something as nice as the Mushihimesama Steam port, for example.
I’d also love more new exciting releases along the lines of Crimzon Clover and Hellsinker. Yeah, we have others like Graze Counter, Gunvein, and Sophstar, but the more the merrier because not everything hits the same for everyone.
Huh? Isn’t every FPS an action game?
It’s a controversial topic and no one really agrees on what they’re called, but the genre I’m talking about in my comment is commonly referred to as “character action game” or “stylish action game”—more examples: Bayonetta, Ninja Gaiden II, and The Wonderful 101.
The drug-addled amnesia detective solving crimes genre for sure.
I was going to say couch co-op or couch multiplayer in general, but I guess with Hazelight’s A Way Out/ It Takes Two/Split Fiction the genre has a standard bearer keeping it alive. Could still use more attention though, in my opinion.
For setting, it always amazes me that there is such a dearth of games about mesoamerican cultures. There is such a rich mythology and history to tap into, and yet we barely have any games. We’re finally getting an Aztec Assassins Creed after 20 years of the franchise, but give me more. Give me a character action game in the Mayan jungles, give me an introspective journey along the Andean Inca roads above expansive vistas. There’s so much potential.
Genre wise what comes to mind first is stealth games, which seem to be very out of fashion. I’ve been pleading into the void for a new Splinter Cell for seemingly eons by now. Or maybe dream bigger and a Nightdive style Thief 2 remake?
I would love to see more Mesoamerican games! Never considered it before but there are so many possibilities!
Not a specific genre, but any game by EA needs more games in the same genre, not made by EA.
For example, The Sims series, FIFA Series, Dirt Rally Series.
I’m not a gamer (at least not so much anymore, in part because I suck at them), but I’ll stick my nose in here to say anything multiplayer that is casually easy to pick up & play, yet challenging/addicting enough to keep interest while also somehow encouraging socializing. I still unwind with simple addictive games like match-three style games, but have absolutely no social life unless I come here to the Fediverse.
It might be a bit daunting at first, but a casual game combined with audio chat (preferably with an optional voice changer for privacy) could be rather appealing to me at times. Maybe with tags on users that indicate subjects of interest so it’s easier to find people to talk to (or avoid) about various topics.
I can’t think of a decent RTS since Total Annihilation. (1997)
Yeah, I really enjoyed that in single player. Long range artillery, sensors, good automation of units, interesting naval combat. I did not like the later games in the series, because they tended to encourage you to zoom out all the way and I was just staring at a bunch of unit icons.
If you’re not familiar with it, there is an open-source implementation of the TA engine (Spring RTS), and some games that were built on it; you may enjoy Zero-K.
