Your favorite TV shows, movies, and even video games go in and out of popularity throughout the years and some, although never forgotten, may never have a new story told. Megaman, Banjo Kazooie and Castlevania are considered by many gamers to be classics and even revolutionary to the platform gaming genre as a whole. If these games mean anything to you, then you will be happy to know that, even though their respective companies have no plans as of now to make any more games of those series, their creators do. Their creators' desires to continue the stories they have created through these characters has resulted in a spiritual successor for each game. A spiritual successor is a character meant to represent another character for legal or other reasons.
Keiji Inafune, the creator of the Megaman series, insisted that Capcom allow him to make another Megaman game. However, after shutdown of the highly anticipated Megaman Legends 3 Inafune decided to create a Megaman game in his own way. Using Kickstarter, a crowdfunding website, Inafune created Mighty No. 9., a series very similar to his Megaman series, yet different enough to avoid a lawsuit. The Kickstarter resulted in an overwhelming success, having been funded within two days of its launch. The game has made close to four million dollars in funding by the end of its campaign.
This resulted in the creation of Yooka-Laylee and Bloodstained, which respectively became the spiritual successors to Banjo Kazooie and the Castlevania series because their respective creators also could not create the game they wanted.
Yooka-Laylee is the spiritual successor to the Banjo Kazooie series: games in which you control two different characters to beat the games' platforming challenges. It is remembered as one of the most influential gaming titles in the platforming game genre, created under the company Rare Ltd. However, as time went on Rare Ltd. was not creating as many games as they used to. Steven Mayles, one of the designers of Banjo Kazooie, wanted to continue making platforming games using the two character system, and eventually decided on creating Yooka-Laylee in hopes of continuing to create the games he loved.
Castlevania, the widely successfully game developed under the Konami label was designed by Koji Igarashi. After working for Konami for years, Igarashi, having been influenced by Inafune's successful Kickstarter with Mighty No.9, decided to leave Konami to start his own company as well. He has stated the reason for his leave was because his fans wanted him to continue to create games for physical systems (Playstation and Xbox) and, with Konami's decision to move towards mobile games for Iphone and tablets, he could not continue to make the games that he and his fans wanted. His Bloodstained Kickstarter was launched from that desire to continue to create games for his fans and himself.
Why should we care? We should care because the success of these games will show that there is still a want for different styled platform games. While in the world of gaming, platform games as a genre haven't gone anywhere, no one can deny that each of these three games represent a different way in which platforms can be put to use without the games becoming boring copies of one another. Their diverse set of moves, characters designs, and skill created by industry veterans is needed in the platforming genre. For those who are not gamers, you should also care because a spiritual successor can also be applied outside of gaming. There are many creators of books, games, and TV shows who expressed their want to continue their work but were stopped due to unexpected low sales or the product did not reach the intended audience the executives wanted it to. By the success of spiritual successors, it shows that money came be made off of a well designed product loved by fans even if the companies do not believe so.
