I’ve been kicking this silly idea around for a while (over 10 years), but I’m no game developer at all, just an old gamer and sometimes “idea guy” with a lot of thoughts about how to make good games better and better games even more fun. By the way, game companies DO NOT HIRE IDEA PEOPLE (trust me, I’ve asked). So er, don’t get any wild ideas about becoming that person who thinks it’s a good idea that Nintendo or whomever will want you and your notebooks full of Mario or Metroid levels just because you and your friends think they’ve never been done before. Now, where was I? Oh, right.

Since Fumeta Ueda and company are so great at making beautiful worlds and combining them with thought-provoking stories that don’t use a ton of words to express a wide range of emotions, I’d actually love to see them remake an old favorite of mine that, while not a “classic” at all, is a very intriguing game that has a number of similarities to their work.

(thanks, ArthurDWolfe !)

That game would be Götzendiener, a 1994 PC-Engine adventure game from Gainax that in a few ways is very close to ICO in terms of gameplay, pacing and design elements. In the game, you need to guide a hapless maiden to safety through a crumbling castle and dungeon after her heroic rescuer dies from his wounds as he reaches her in the opening cinema. Like ICO, the game revolves mostly around solving navigational puzzles and occasionally defeating enemies that try and stop your progress. While there’s a deliberately slow pacing that means it’s not for all tastes and controlling the character is a pain thanks to the isometric viewpoint and diagonal movement with the hard plastic PC-E game pad, the game does have its issues . However, if you can imagine it as a fully 3D game done for today’s consoles, who else would you pick to make something like this?

If Team Ico doesn’t take my idea and run with it (he said, laughing at the impossibility of it all), an even more interesting idea (and something I’ve mentioned elsewhere) would be for Nintendo to take the game’s basic story and rework it into a new Legend of Zelda game with Zelda as the lead character for a change. Think about it for a minute. Instead of the usual adventure where Link is the hero and Zelda is relegated to a secondary character that looks pretty but doesn’t do much other than make moon eyes at her guy, giving her a chance to shine in a game where she’s the lead would be a nice kick in the pants the franchise needs. It would be a fantastic way for the Wii U to show off what it could do as well as support some sort of 3DS functionality (and yes, I have a ton of ideas about both, but I won’t post them here). Granted, I doubt anyone will read this and get any wheels in motion, but should someone pass this up a few ladders to folks who CAN make it happen, feel free to knock on my door, as I have a few other innnnnteresting ideas under my hat for potential winners.

*Of course, Team Ico and Nintendo can do whatever they want, including NOT listening to a guy like me who’s been gaming for 39 years and has too many ideas cramming his brain pan. That said, this one’s a game I’ve shown to people and more often than not, they agree that SOMEONE should remake and expand upon what’s here.