Editor's note: Daniel's got some interesting ideas for an update to the Seaman series, and Evan pines for a Legacy of Kain game made by Naughty Dog in this edition of Splitscreen. -Demian

Bitmob Splitscreen is a one-on-one discussion conducted over email on a single topic. For the third installment, Daniel Feit and I sat down (at our computers) to discuss the dead game franchises we'd like to come back. Read on for shameless begging, fanboy fever dreams, and two kinds of seamen.

Daniel Feit: I have so many fighters to choose from it's not even funny, but I'm going with Darkstalkers (aka Vampire here in Japan). Originally released during the long wait between Street Fighter 2 and 3, Darkstalkers really dazzled me. The characters were big, colorful, and all based on classic monsters and the supernatural: You've got a vampire, a succubus, a mummy, a werewolf, etc. This lack of humanity freed the creators from any semblance of verisimilitude and let them flex their imagination. I don't think we'd have air blocking without Darkstalkers' particular brand of crazy to thank for it.

Fighting games have never been about realism (when was the last time you saw a Hadouken in a street fight?), but they've always tended to stick to the basics: jump kicks, uppercuts, the occasional rubbery limb. Darkstalkers embraced the absurd, and the result was pure candy. Characters fly, shapeshift, transform, even change gender when needed (long story!), and I loved every minute of it. Sadly, there hasn't been a new game in the franchise since Vampire Chronicles for the Dreamcast (later ported to the PSP), and even that was little more than a compilation of characters from the first three installments.

Still, the characters do surface in other Capcom games from time to time (Morrigan is in Tatsunoko vs. Capcom, for example) and the company has seen success with cheaper, downloadable versions of old franchises. Couldn't Darkstalkers get an online, HD facelift one of these days? Pretty please?

Evan Killham: I haven't played a fighting game since Mortal Kombat 3, unless we can count War of the Monsters, which I played the shit out of. But Darkstalkers sounds interesting, and eerily similar to how I play Scribblenauts when I don't feel like actually making progress.

So would you be in favor of an HD remake of the first game over a true sequel, or are you just being realistic? One of the sad things we have to come to terms with when we're talking about franchises like these is that we will probably never get everything we want; developers might have to do something a little more conservative/financially viable, like Capcom did with Mega Man 9. Would you be happy with a new Darkstalkers game that maybe didn't "progress" the franchise, but just gave you more of what you enjoyed about it in the first place?

DF: Of course, I would love to play an original Darkstalkers game with new characters and online play. I'd also love to seduce Hikaru Utada and take a year off to travel the world with her. (In case my wife is reading this -- I love you, honey! Honest!) These are all the same level of possible-yet-extremely-unlikely, however. An HD remix is a more feasible wish and I would welcome the opportunity just to play one of the older games on my big screen TV. Perhaps if something like that was a success, Capcom might consider a true sequel.

Mega Man 9 is an interesting case, actually, for it was a rare convergence of fan interest and corporate interest. Making a game with 2D animated sprites is a lot of work and not cheap. A Mega Man 9 that looked like part 7 (on SNES) or 8 (on PS1) would have been time-consuming and costly, two risky propositions that would have likely killed the project. At the same time, Mega Man fans are more interested in the series' glory days on the NES rather than the 16- or 32-bit-era sequels. So a dirt-cheap retro revival was perfect for both parties.

Most 2D fighters aren't so lucky. They've got all the risks I mentioned above with the added burden of online play, minus the name recognition of a Mega Man. Throw in the steep learning curve of a fighting game (as opposed to a platformer) and I doubt Capcom is willing to open their wallets just to appeal to me and my friends.

How about you, Evan? What series would you like to see make a comeback? And would a remake be a worthy revival in place of a sequel?

EK: The series way at the top of my list is Legacy of Kain. The most recent game, Defiance, wraps up a lot of the "business" of the series, but then it ends on a pretty big cliffhanger. It's especially annoying because it looks like they could have wrapped everything up with just one more game, but that game (Dark Prophecy) was cancelled pretty early in development.

This is one case in which an HD remake simply will not do; I want to see the rest of the story. And what's more, I don't think I'd want Crystal Dynamics to develop the sequel, even though they've been involved with the entire series. The reason for this is that the series' plot is pretty dense and presented in a very distinctive way. I'd really like Amy Hennig to come back to it, since she directed both Soul Reaver games, as well as Defiance. She did a lot of the writing, too, but obviously she's not at Crystal Dynamics anymore.

This is where my extreme fanboy tendencies take over, because how cool would it be to get a Legacy of Kain game from Naughty Dog that uses the same engine as Uncharted 2? If you're me, that would be very fucking cool. But since that's just this side of impossible, I'd be interested in seeing what Rocksteady could do with the license.

DF: That's a tough spot to be in as a fan, one that I assume is uncommon among gamers. All of the dead franchises I can think of are ones I want revived so I can play more games, not resolve outstanding plot points. The closest I can come to that would be Eternal Darkness: Sanity's Requiem, ironically another Denis Dyack/Silicon Knights game like Legacy of Kain. In that case, it's less about open-ended story issues as it is overall setting and gameplay elements like the infamous sanity meter. I don't need another adventure featuring the Roivas family, but I would appreciate a second chance to face off against the Ancients while struggling to maintain my (in-game) mental composure.

Compounding your fan's desire with a wish that someone other than the original creators pick up the ball and run with it takes even more balls, sir. I guess I admire that, but that's a tough position you've staked out for yourself there. Out of curiosity, since this want is more about storytelling than aesthetics, what other methods of resolution would you accept? I agree that an Uncharted-engine revival would be a hell of a way to march back onto the scene, but how would a smaller format work for you? Say, something on the Nintendo DS or PSP, where at least the story could continue? Or, and this is really a stretch, would you accept a Legacy of Kain story NOT in game form?

EK: Hey, I didn't say any of that was likely. I kind of insist on a game, although at this point I don't really care which system it's on. I don't think a CG movie/graphic novel wrap-up would do it justice, since the rest of the series is so fun to play. And it's a little bit like saying, "Sorry they cancelled Shenmue 3, but here's some fanfic!" Sure, it's probably better than nothing, but Legacy of Kain is a game series, and that's how I prefer to experience it. And I don't want to cause a panic here, but the last I heard, Uwe Boll had the film rights to Legacy of Kain. I'm pretty sure if it came to that, we'd never get another game.

And of course, you had to bring up Eternal Darkness. I'd want to see a new one, too, but apparently Nintendo kinda-sorta "owns" the sanity system. This might make it difficult, especially if Silicon Knights wants to develop for 360 or PS3, which is probably the best way to go considering the fates of so many M-rated/horror titles on the Wii.

Did you have another one, or should we talk about Eternal Darkness some more?

DF: I doubt we'll ever see another Eternal Darkness game on any system, seeing as how the original was a flop despite the Nintendo logo on the box and critical acclaim. It's a cult classic, kind of like Fight Club or Office Space, except cult movies tend to recoup their losses through DVD sales while a failed video game is always just that: a failure. I do think Nintendo should try re-releasing the game some time, unchanged (no waggle, thank you), just to test the waters. All GameCube games work on the Wii, and the install base is much larger now than it was in 2002. How much money could that really cost?

Your Shenmue mention reminded me of another Dreamcast "franchise" ripe for revival: Seaman. If you've never played it, Seaman was a Tamagochi-style virtual pet, but rather than just feeding the creature or picking up its poop, you had to talk to it, and it talked back, often with surprising insight.

A PS2 sequel never left Japan, but now that games and the Internet are such good friends, I think a new Seaman game could have real potential. Instead of static, prerecorded responses, updates could add new conversation topics. Imagine coming home to your virtual pet and having it discuss the World Series or current events. Or how about some Spore/MMO functionality, where Seamen interacted with one another? One evening you'd discover that your pet had found a mate, raised and nurtured by someone living in France or Korea. That'd be an awkward conversation. "So, our virtual pets are in love, how about that?"

I think it's telling that I want to see games resurrected and updated to include Internet-enhanced features. I'm not a deathmatch kind of guy, but the online capabilities of modern games are extremely exciting to me. That, and the financial benefits of digital distribution, makes this sort of thing more feasible than ever before. Would you like to see any old franchises get a does of the Internet? Or are all your retro-dreams offline affairs?

EK: I hope that the link to Seaman was through the Dreamcast, and not Shenmue's unresolved search for sailors.

I'm not really a deathmatch kind of guy, either, and I'll admit that I resist the whole "online play for the sake of online play" movement. My gaming proclivities stem from the fact that I am fairly antisocial, and I think a lot of games lose something by forsaking the offline single-player experience. For example, I don't think that Bioshock 2 needs a multiplayer mode, but then again I said the same thing about Uncharted 2 until I played online. So I could just be old and resistant to change.

Having said all that, this leads to my second franchise: Star Wars: Rogue Squadron. Not all of the Star Wars games in my collection are good -- I own Star Wars: Bounty Hunter, for crying out loud. But the first two Rogue Squadron games were excellent, and captured some of the most exciting lightsaber-free parts of the universe.

The third game, Rebel Strike, was just heartbreaking. They still had the cool ship-to-ship fighting, but then they threw in all of these on-foot sections and platforming -- you can guess how that turned out. So I'd want to see a next-gen, ship-only game. I don't even care in which era it takes place.

Two things make this series a bit more likely for a comeback than any of the other games we've talked about: Star Wars: The Old Republic and online multiplayer. The former because there is obviously still a lot of interest in Star Wars, despite George Lucas's best efforts, and the latter because that's been such a compulsory part of game development lately.

DF: How different the gaming world might be if even one native English speaker had been on hand to tell the makers of Shenmue that incessantly asking about sailors is socially awkward! And I love the idea of George Lucas actively trying to undermine his creations. "George Lucas Can't Believe You Still Like Star Wars" sounds so much like an Onion headline, I had to look it up to make sure it wasn't real.

Believe me, I wouldn't want developers to focus on Internet features at the expense of the single-player experience, whether it be reviving an old game or making a new one. It's just that fighting games, at this point, demand the inclusion of online play against other humans. It's the main reason I haven't invested in any of the Capcom/SNK PSOne classics, because they're strictly ports of PlayStation games that lack any network functionality. I may have spent hours playing these games by myself when they were new, but that was back when my video game time was virtually limitless. These days I'm lucky to get an hour to play at night, and as I learned last spring with Street Fighter 4, I can't stand wasting that time against endless A.I. opponents.

I don't think age has anything to do with skepticism concerning possibly superfluous multiplayer modes, but I generally assume that such modes are optional. I'm very excited about Bioshock 2, but the multiplayer isn't a priority in my mind -- it's merely a bonus. It's not like I finished that game and said to myself, "Boy, I want to shoot bees at other players online." Indeed, the other 2010 game I'm salivating over is Heavy Rain, which has no multiplayer that I'm aware of, and I'm perfectly OK with that.

Ultimately, I look at online play and digital distribution as extremely promising avenues for reviving titles from gaming's past, even if a non-physical medium carries inherent risk. All of the titles we discussed are available in used bins and on eBay, and many of them work on current consoles. The same can't be said of Super Street Fighter 2 HD Remix, Castlevania Adventure Rebirth, or any other XBLA/PSN/WiiWare offering. Even disc-based games with online components run the risk of obsolescence -- just look at the recent shutdown Madden NFL 09's servers. Still, I'll accept that in exchange for more publishers taking a risk by digitally dipping into their back catalogs.

Thanks to Daniel for his time, and also for his patience while we conducted this conversation over five days. It was tough! He's in the future!