If Capcom wants to revive more dormant franchises, here are some suggestions

Capcom is officially ready to raid its vault of classics for new installments in long-ignored series, it announced on Dec. 13.

This news follows the surprise return of both Okami and Onimusha, two franchises that haven’t received new games in over a decade, at The Game Awards.

“In addition to regularly releasing major new titles each year, Capcom is focusing on re-activating dormant IPs that haven’t had a new title launch recently,” the Japanese developer said. “The company is working to further enhance corporate value by leveraging its rich library of content, which includes reviving past IPs like the two titles announced above, in order to continuously produce highly efficient, high-quality titles.”

Due to its 45-year history, Capcom has a lot of properties from which to choose for reboots and remakes. Earlier this year, the company asked fans to vote on which Capcom franchises they’d like to receive a sequel, and they overwhelmingly voted for Dino Crisis, a series of Resident Evil-like survival horror games that substituted dinosaurs for zombies. Mega Man and Devil May Cry rounded out the top three, while Okami and Onimusha ranked seventh and ninth respectively.

Capcom games, for my money, don’t get any better than Darkstalkers, although I’m unsure if the studio’s modern fighting game developers would be able to make a worthy successor after seeing how they’ve handled the Street Fighter series. Same goes for Marvel vs. Capcom. My wish is that Capcom somehow hooks back up with Shinji Mikami and lets him make a second God Hand, or at least something similar. Seeing as Clover Studio, the defunct team responsible for the wacky beat ‘em up, has been somewhat revived for the Okami sequel, we’re probably closer than we’ve ever been to that pipe dream becoming a reality, but not by much.

What’s your favorite dormant Capcom franchise? Viewtiful Joe? Breath of Fire? Lost Planet? Heck, while we’re at it, we might as well ask for another Demon’s Crest. The sky’s the limit.