After breaking the news on VitaShell (which you should totally check out. Now. GO!) about a week ago, I think it’s time I continued the Rejuvenate Wishlist articles this week by talking about what we want more than anything on our Vita: games. This is a thorny topic to approach because some people are convinced that “the PS Vita has no games” even though this is blatantly untrue; not having all the games appeal to you personally is not the same as not having games. However, I feel there are some rules I feel I should lay down for this list so you know what you are in for here:

1. This is a list about games. That means no emulators because if I included those they would probably make up the bulk of the list. I thought about making an article about emulators but that seems a tad redundant since that’s what we’re getting most on Rejuvenate, mostly through RetroArch builds. If you guys really want one though, I can scrounge up something.
2. I will ignore things that are already being worked on, again, because that’s redundant. Quake and Doom ports are already out with sources available so people can work on those already.
3. I will always try to point the source code of a game if it is available, just in case someone developing with Rejuvenate wants to give it a look.
4. Some games may look unreasonable, but I will always try to have the specs of the Vita in mind when listing a game. There is no point in listing something like Wolfenstein: Enemy Territory if the chances of it working are slimmer than a top model.
5. I will try and not talk about games that are already available on the PSP via homebrew. Asking for a port that might already exist also feels kinda redundant and unless I feel there is an actual advantage to using the native Vita resolution I probably won’t talk about it.

With all of this said, how about we get into the actual list shall we? Remember the following won’t be listed by any order of preference, it’s just as they happened to show up/come into my mind.

Aliens vs. Predator (1999) – Source Code Here

Remember Fox Interactive? You don’t? I don’t blame you. Fox Interactive was the videogame publishing arm of Fox and it created some of the games I most fondly remember from my childhood: No One Lives Forever (and its sequel!) and Aliens vs. Predator. They also had a hand in Die Hard Trilogy but most of their publishing portfolio is mostly movie/tv-show stuff and really not that good – not LJN bad, but still not even close to good. With this in mind it’s amazing that Aliens vs. Predator was even created: a fun first person shooter that has withstood the test of time (to the point it was remade in 2010) in which you take control of either an Alien, a Predator or a Colonial Marine (but really, why would you play as a human?) in either Story Mode or Multiplayer. The campaigns are simple but the meat of the game is the quality of the gameplay. In 2001, the developers Rebellion decided to open-source the game so that the community could continue to update it, but this has also spawned a port to Linux of the game. Now that the Vita has more solid FPS controls than the PSP did (mouse is still better but a man has to make due) and I’ve seen how solidly games like Quake can play on the Vita… why not this?

Pros: Solid gameplay, good graphics, great multiplayer if we could get it to work.
Cons: Even if the graphics don’t look stellar I’m not entirely sure if we could get it to work on the Vita, but it would probably need a good deal of optimization/updated SDK.

NetHack/Angband – Sources here and here

You expected me to post another PC Classic/unreasonable looking game for homebrew didn’t you? Come on, I know you did! Alas, for this one I decided to go with something a little less known to most people. I also decided to cheat and include two very similar games just that just differ on their settings. One is probably the most well-known “roguelike” game (maybe more than the game Rogue itself) and the other is a Tolkien version of it; both games put you in the shoes of an adventurer trying to clear a randomly-generated dungeon and are excruciatingly hard. Nethack has been ported onto every piece of hardware ever created from SymbianOS to the PSP. Angband has also been ported and derived from a lot, including a game that I really liked on the PSP called ToME. Even though Nethack in on the PSP, that’s based on a very old version that doesn’t even sport the cool looking sprites you can find on PC and Android releases so an update wouldn’t be too shabby (plus, don’t you want to some of those amazing sprites at native Vita resolution?!).

Pros: Great replayability, good gameplay
Cons: The graphics are non-existent/basic so that may turn people off.

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Abuse – Source Code Here

Sometimes when making these sort of articles you find about games you never knew about that look and play really well; this is one of those cases. Abuse is a DOS side-scrolling platforming shooter that was released back in 1995. It was known at the time for its innovative use of the mouse as the aiming device for the character, much like we do now with twin-stick shooters. When it comes to the plot, you take control of an inmate named Nick Vrenna who finds himself needing to escape a prison where an experiment gone wrong has broken out and is turning everyone into monsters. I will admit I played the game just to see how it was so I could talk about it here and I found myself enjoying it more than I expected I would. It’s not mind-blowingly awesome but it is a game I could definitely playing on my Vita since emulating it on DOS is always a tad problematic.

Pros: Action-packed fun, good gameplay and a competent story.
Cons: It is not that well-known so I wonder how many people would play it.

OpenXCom – Source Code Here

With the release of the PC remakes incoming to the Vita one of these days, I decided that this would be as good a time as any to throw around the idea of creating ports of the original XCom and Terror from the Deep using the OpenXCom engine. For those of you not in the know, XCom is a classic PC strategy game where you have to organize the human resistance against those evil invading aliens. The original game was running on DOS but just like with Abuse, running them on DOS is not optimal because of all the quirks. It is known for being a hard game but the mechanics, for the most part, have stayed solid though the years; the engine did not however. The turn based strategy gameplay makes it perfect for handheld platforms, which is why the remake was also ported to iOS and Android. If you are worried about the viability of a strategy game on the Vita, remember we have a touchscreen and games like Open TTD were ported onto the PSP (and that was a real-time one).

Pros: Complex, fun and replayable.
Cons: Hard (and the graphics, if that is a turn off for you).

As I made this list, I found more and more stuff I wanted to talk about so I decided to split this into various articles so I can try and tackle all of them without writing a too long article that most of you won’t have the patience to sit through. As usual if there is anything you feel I left out mention it in the comments! I would also like to know if you guys want an emulator version of this wishlist. I honestly feel it may not be needed but you guys are the readership and if you really want one, I can try and do it. So until next game, sit tight and play on!