Recently, I started to think about old games, specifically how some of them will get another shot at life after a few years away and it made me think about all those series that have not had that.

To be clear when I say another shot at life, I don’t mean via a remaster or a remake, but rather a from the ground up, original entry in that series. A prime example is F-Zero, that series saw a number of games released over the first 14 years of its life, with F-Zero: GP Legend being the last one to release in the West. But then it went 19 years before it got a new game, or really any game.

So with that in mind, I wanted to have a look through the big publishers to see what series they are leaving behind. There are a few conditions for this list:

There must be at least 2 games in the series, so one off releases are not included.
There must be at least 2 console generations between the last game and now, so if a game was released on PlayStation 4, but there is no entry on PlayStation 5, that does not count. The exception will be for games that released very early within the previous generation.
We are not including Game of the Year, Deluxe, Complete or any other word used to describe a re-issue of the game with DLC or other extra content.
Finally, remakes and remasters do not count, they must be original. If a game has had a remaster or remake released, the series will still be included, as it is not a new game.

This time we are taking a look at Activision, the studio you either love or hate. You will also notice that we have included many of the games boxes in with each title, so should you want to see them in detail, you can click on them to enlarge them.

Spyro

First Release: October 1998 | Last Release: November 2008 | Total Number of Games Released: 13

From the first release in 1998, to the last original release in 2008 13 games that starred a little purple dragon were released and most of them were good. The series of course began on PlayStation, created by the folks at Insomniac Games and while they would be done after 3 titles, the series kept on going, finding homes on more platforms and building quite a rich lore.

The series of course evolved into Skylanders and while the first one had the Spyro name, that didn’t last beyond that. So what made this series so beloved, mostly it was down to how charming it all was, as it was more about saving your fellow dragons than it was collecting money or bashing enemies. As the series grew, different developers put their own spin on the dragon and the last game offering up free flight, along with a cast containing Elijah Wood, Gary Oldman, Christina Ricca and Mark Hamill.

Soldier of Fortune

First Release: April 2000 | Last Release: March 2008 | Total Number of Games Released: 3

Long before Raven Software were forced to make Call of Duty content and before they picked up their lightsabres, the studio had Soldier of Fortune, a military focused shooter that gained plenty of attention for its system that let you shoot arms and more off your targets.

The series began with players attempting to find out who stole nuclear weapons, with the second being connected to germ warfare and finally the last main game being a revenge tale. The first two games were developed by Raven, but the third game was not, which may have been the reason why it was not that well received. The first game was made using a modified Quake engine and the second was built upon id Tech 3, the developers would also make a Wolfenstein game. In a funny twist the last game, the one people didn’t like, was refused classification in Australia, but a modified version was released around 4 months later.

Police Quest/SWAT

First Release: December 1987 | Last Release: March 2008 | Total Number of Games Released: 12

If there was ever a series that showed how things evolved over time, Police Quest might just be the one, as when it first released, they were produced by a former police officer and were adventure games. After the first Swat subtitled game, Swat 2 title took the gameplay into isometric tactics and from Swat 3 gave you direct control and become more of a tactical shooter.

What made the original games so compelling was the fact that they were created by actual police officers, so things were fairly realistic, as you needed to have some sort of understanding of actual police procedure in order to progress. The series becoming tactical made sense as it gave players more of an action filled experience, but the Swat shooter games lost a lot of the good will that the series had built up. In a strange twist, the last game released was for mobile and took the action back overhead and gave the series a nostalgic look.

Mat Hoffman's Pro BMX

First Release: May 2001 | Last Release: October 2002 | Total Number of Games Released: 2

There are very few games that spark an entire genre into existence, Tony Hawk did that for sports games and Activision released a number of sports titles that attempted to replicate the success, Mat Hoffman’s Pro BMX was the most successful. For those curious the other sports they tried were Wakeboarding, Pro Surfing and Snowboarding.

Much like Tony Hawk, the Mat Hoffman games require players to do tricks on the bike, in order to score points. The series was even built on the same engine from the Tony Hawk games and 2 of its 10 levels were remade from Pro Skater. Basically the games were identical to the Pro Skater games, except you were on a bike instead of a board, but the objectives, goals and multiplayer were basically the same. Both games featured a level editor as well, letting players create the levels they wanted and would support street, vert, and dirt track-oriented courses.

True Crime

First Release: November 2003 | Last Release: November 2005 | Total Number of Games Released: 2

For quite a while, it seemed everyone wanted to make their own Grand Theft Auto series, Electronic Arts were doing it with the Godfather games, THQ had Saints Row and Take Two were working on Mafia again, but Activision had a plan, they wanted you to be a good guy that was pretending to be bad. True Crime: Streets of LA was unique as it offered up a recreation of Los Angeles for players to explore and while it might have had a number of similarities to GTA, it tried to add its own flavour to things.

The first game was also unique in that it had a packed Hollywood cast bringing characters to life like Christopher Walken, Gary Oldman and Michelle Rodriguez. Walken played a role in the sequel and was joined by Lawrence Fishburne, Mickey Rourke and Mariska Hargitay of Law and Order: SVU fame. The second game recreated most of Manhattan, which had more detail than Spider-Man 2 that released the year before. There was meant to be a third game, but it was cancelled, but Square Enix bought everything that was made except the name, which is how we got Sleeping Dogs.

Gun

First Release: November 2005 | Last Release: November 2006 | Total Number of Games Released: 2

For the longest time, developer Neversoft were known for one thing and one thing only, Tony Hawk Pro Skater and while they had success with other games before and after, the outlier in between skating games was Gun. The game released a little more than a year after Red Dead Revolver and while both were western games, they had their own flavour on things.

While the other western had similar elements, it was more linear based, Gun let people explore the world and the actions you take can make people love you or hate you. The PSP release of the game is mostly the same, but it added a whole bunch of side missions to the game, but also multiplayer, something the console release did not have. It is technically the same game at its core, but I am cheating and including it here. It was also one of the first titles to release on two generations of consoles, being Xbox and Xbox 360.

Pitfall!

First Release: September 1982 | Last Release: October 2008 | Total Number of Games Released: 7

The Pitfall series is one of the older ones around, having kicked off in 1982, the original game had Jack Black in a commercial for it, and while it got a sequel two years later, the series would mostly remain history until the Super Nintendo release in 1994.

The last big game that the series has seen was released first in 2004 during the PlayStation 2 era, but it got a Wii port in 2008. While most games in the series were side-scrolling in nature, The Lost Expedition was a 3d adventure game and while it was not the most well received game, it still did ok. The last game made is no longer available as it was a mobile game that was made for 32bit devices and as such is no longer supported, but Pitfall! was an endless runner type adventure and one that did not contain in-app nonsense, so there were no pitfalls to worry about there.

Zork

First Release: October 1977 | Last Release: September 1997 | Total Number of Games Released: 11

For the longest time I just though Zork was a made up Hollywood game, but little did I know it was a real product and most things, it was created on the sly by a bunch of school kids, ok college kids but still. All the games in the series, minus the last one, were text based adventures, meaning you had to type your actions into the game, like the command ‘open mailbox’.

In the game Zork, players delve into the forsaken Great Underground Empire on a quest for treasures. They navigate through numerous locations and engage with various objects by inputting commands in natural language, which the game processes. Serving as a narrator, the program details the player's surroundings and narrates the outcomes of their actions. Zork is renowned as a quintessential example of interactive fiction. The last game released is more like Myst than anything else and fans were not happy with the end result.

Hexen/Heretic

First Release: December 1994 | Last Release: December 1998 | Total Number of Games Released: 4

The second series from Raven Software in this list, goes to show how much was abandoned to focus on another series, but I digress. Depending on where you were in the world, you might know the series as Hexen or Heretic, they are the same game, but names were moved around about as the games released. Developed as part of the Serpent Riders trilogy, the three games all brought new aspects to games, like the first game Heretic being the first game that had a first-person view, to let you look up and down.

The second game added hubs to the game, letting players use them to access many levels and it got console ports, but those were not done by Raven or considered to be that good. The final entry in the trilogy was Hexen II and brought destructible locations to the series and while the trilogy was done, a fourth game Heretic II released. What is interesting is that the first three games were co-developed by id software, but the final game was not and as such Activision own the last one outright, but only own part of the first three, as they are the owners of Raven. Which is all a mute point now that Xbox owns id software, Raven Software and Activision.

Vigilante 8

First Release: June 1998 | Last Release: December 1999 | Total Number of Games Released: 2

Part arcade game and part story adventure, the series came soon after Carmageddon, but where that series was all about causing death, this one was about fighting to survive, the method just used vehicles loaded up with guns. The games were set in the 1970s in a time when fictional companies were controlling the oil supplies of the world, which made people a little crazy.

Both games offer up multiplayer for when you just want to let loose from the story mode, with a few variations on the standard modes, including a free-for-all deathmatch. What made the games worth playing was that each of the playable characters in the story mode, all had their own endings and in order to discover them all, you had to play them all. While the first game did ok, the second game failed to match the numbers of Twisted Metal and a year after its release, the series was seemingly killed off.

Dark Reign

First Release: September 1997 | Last Release: July 2000 | Total Number of Games Released: 2

In the mid-1990s, it seems that real-time strategy games were the hot ticket item, because its when many appeared and did quite well, Dark Regin being one of them. The series had a lot in common with other RTS titles of the day, but managed to stand out by giving units more of a role in the game, like the Freedom Guard being able to hide from the opposing side and therefore be more effective in combat.

The first game got one major expansion, which doubled the count of playable sides, as well as offering up a new campaign, maps and units. A second expansion, though not official, was also released that added almost 80 multiplayer maps to the game. The sequel that was released 2 years after the expansion was numbered as such, but was actually a prequel for the story, because that was not confusing. The sequel also had a 32 player online mode and a map editor, which helped keep it going for years, but the sequel never quite got the sales that the first game did, which is still supported by fans to this day.

Prototype

First Release: June 2009 | Last Release: April 2012 | Total Number of Games Released: 2

In 2001 developer Radical Entertainment released The Simpsons: Road Rage, which got my attention, a few years later they did The Simpsons: Hit & Run, Scarface: The World is Yours and then The Incredible Hulk: Ultimate Destruction and all games did very well, so when they finally announced their own IP in Prototype, I was keen to check it out.

What could have been a generic open-world action game, Prototype stood out from the rest as it let you consume humans for health, but also wear their form as a disguise. The game got a prequel comic from DC, which helped explain the world and events that lead to the game, the sequel arrived a few years later. Prototype 2 had players take on a mission of revenge against the first games protagonist and it offered the same gameplay, plus a few new abilities, but drew negative attention for being quite similar to the first game. Another comic series was released by Dark Horse comics that connected the two games.

Guitar Hero Series

First Release: June 2006 | Last Release: September 2010 | Total Number of Games Released: 7

When Guitar Hero hit PlayStation 2, it kicked off a craze like the world hadn’t seen before, soon everyone had plastic guitars and was rocking out. The first game was released for one platform, but by the time the 3rd main entry released, it was hitting everything and the series seemed unstoppable.

There were 6 main entries in the series for consoles, 3 entries for the Nintendo DS, and 3 band specific releases - Aerosmith, Metallica and Van Halen. The series expanded beyond single instruments with Band Hero for consoles and DS, and there were mobile phone games as well. With the six main entries, band specific releases and all the rest, some 2500 songs were playable across the series, but a good number of them are covers. If you are curious we are not counting Guitar Hero Live here, as the gameplay is slightly different and not as fun as the original series.

Call to Power

First Release: April 1999 | Last Release: November 2000 | Total Number of Games Released: 2

There is a series that has been given the tag, just one more turn and it is not the Call to Power series, even though the first entry used the Civilization name. Released for PC and ported to other platforms, the series played very much like the other series that inspired it, but added elements to the mix like pollution and keeping time moving into the year 3000.

18 months after the first game released, the sequel arrived without the well known name attached as Activision lost the right to use it. While the first game had done ok, the sequel attempted to fix most of the issues that players raised with it, like making the user interface useable. The sequel did fairly well, but after Activision ended support for the game in 2003, a fan group kept the series alive with patches and mod support, many of which were given legitimacy when the fans were given the source code by Activision. Even now fans are creating tweaks for the game and you can still buy the game.

DJ Hero

First Release: October 2009 | Last Release: October 2010 | Total Number of Games Released: 2

With the success of Guitar Hero, Activision were keen to expand the series and thus the DJ Hero series was born. Much like the Guitar Hero games, players had to press coloured buttons in time with a track on screen, but rather than strum a guitar players had to spin a turn table. Of course as a DJ game, you were able to crossfade between two tracks, which could result in some great new music.

While the first game did well, the second game expanded its offers by including a freestyle mode, let players get creative when it appeared. One of the modes missing was that players could no longer have someone play the guitar in select songs, like in the first, but the game did add vocal support. There were plans for a DS release, but that was scrapped and there was a web based promo game released as well. What set the series apart was that you had famous artists like DJ Jazzy Jeff, Daft Punk, David Guetta, deadmau5, DJ Qbert, Grandmaster Flash, RZA and Tiësto, giving the series a lot of cred from the outset.

So there we go, the titles from Activision, how many of them did you know about? There are some games that I have fond memories of from this list and it annoys me to no end that Activision basically killed off all unique game creation in order to keep Call of Duty games the focus.

Did we miss any series from the company, if so let us know in the comments below.