A long time ago, James Jones, staff Theodore Cleaver impressionist and resident box hunter, asked me to write up an article about my dream game. After thinking about it for a while, I decided on a Mesozoic version of the PlayStation 3’s photogenic Afrika. Think of it as Pokémon Snap with Daspletosaurus. That article was written, but never edited. It has sat, unused, to this very day. Recently, this dream game topic has cropped up again, but my game’s scope has since greatly expanded and morphed into something entirely different. Come, readers, on a journey through my warped mind and experience my dream game—I think you might get a kick out of it. And before we get started, don’t worry—it has nothing to do with Shantae.

As has already been established, I am obsessed with Pokémon. Like a yearly onslaught of influenza, every new entry in that storied franchise stirs in me some primitive yearning to collect them all. Days are lost wandering through tall grass, searching for elusive, yet adorable, Pokémon. Even now, Pokémon White again inspires this unconscious desire in my reptile brain. Helpless to quell its magnetism, I find myself once more enslaved by its narcotic formula. However, the series’ central RPG conceits do exhaust me after a while. My game would be much faster-paced, in a genre I far prefer: Metroidvania-style platformers. I can’t get enough of the new-style Castlevania games or the 2D Metroids. I love the exploration aspect of both, but I also love the equipment of the former. I think my dream game would have to edge into that territory while simultaneously, somehow, retaining the collectable aspect of Pokémon that so captures my imagination.

But wait—there’s more! My dream game would not be comprised solely of gothic castle exploration. As you readers are no doubt aware, I’m very well acquainted, too, with matters prehistorical; I understand the orders both Crurotarsi and Ornithodirial. *Ahem* Hence, two of my bookshelves are filled almost exclusively with technical volumes and journals, and my filing cabinet (and external hard drive) groans under the weight of hundreds of papers. As if that weren’t enough, I make laughable attempts to actually restore the ancient beasts on paper and, tenuously, Wacom. I have been involved in two local art shows that have focused exclusively on dinosaurs or the larger group to which they belong—Archosauria. “Well,” you say, “didn’t you play Dino King or Fossil Fighters, which are basically Pokémon with dinosaurs?” I’ll have you know that I reviewed Dino King and am currently playing through Fossil Fighters. Neither game is as engaging or deep as Pokémon itself, but their efforts are appreciated. Yet still, my appetite is not satiated. My dream game requires something else…

A second, perhaps longer glance at my bookshelf reveals the other kinds of tomes I read: Power Girl, Danger Girl, Liberty Meadows, Shanna the She-Devil (the new one), and lots of books about pin-up art, both old and new. If you wandered further into my bedroom, you’d see lots of statues of comic and gaming heroines lining my dresser, from Odin Sphere’s Velvet to Dead or Alive’s Kasumi & Kokoro. Some of my favorite comic artists subsist almost exclusively on “good girl” art: Arthur Hughes, Amanda Conner, Bruce Timm, Frank Cho, and J. Scott Campbell among them. Clearly, then, I have a third fascination: buxom lasses. Doubtlessly, my dream game will involve, to the greatest possible extent, this crucial interest.

So here's what I'm thinking.

The story is inconsequential—maybe something to do with treasure hunting? Anyway, your character, or perhaps characters (who are all beautiful women), embark on some kind of adventure through different levels, which the player can revisit in search of an ancient treasure of currently hazy definition. Of course, this being MY game, the jungles, caves, mountains, swamps, and ruins are crawling with prehistoric beasties, but not just survivors from the end-Cretaceous extinction, but from the Permian all the way through the Cretaceous. Screw those stupid Cenozoic mammals. Yeah, okay, Embolotherium is pretty awesome, but pales in comparison to something like Kosmoceratops. Maybe a more geologically recent lost world will be in the sequel, where you’ll be fending off the likes of Thylacoleo and Andrewsarchus. Needless to say (though I’m about to say it), our girls find a wealth of armor and weaponry among the fronds and boulders with which to fend off the dangerous denizens of this primeval paradise.

Most of your enemies will be smaller critters, the largest being something like Deinonychus or Saichania. Mini-bosses and boss characters will be much larger, of course: screen-filling creatures like Spinosaurus and Eotriceratops, or more obscure taxa such as Postosuchus and Teratophoenus. Of course, as with Pokémon or Aria of Sorrow, one of the goals will be to “collect ‘em all”; in this case, creature cards, which drop randomly from defeated animals. Half the fun of harvesting will be unlocking that animal’s entirely accurate profile information. I can easily see at least one paragraph per creature as well as traditional “vital statistics” including geologic time period, body length, etymology, locality, and taxonomic information. Bosses will drop their creature cards automatically upon death, of course, since you can’t fight them multiple times. To add a maddening Dawn of Sorrow aspect to this collect-a-thon, perhaps collecting multiples of the same card deposits more information of that animal into your reliquary?

The game should probably be more accurate than this silent film. I don't even know what those dinosaurs are supposed to be.

A combination of magical items gleaned from accidental discovery and defeating bosses will, as in any self-respecting Metroidvania knock-off, allow your character(s) to explore previously completed areas and find new places to traverse and new items to find. Of course, the usual tropes of this genre are firmly entrenched: the backdash, the slide, and the double-jump. I’ll toss a few more in: the wall-kick, the grappling hook, and the rocket boost (for high vertical jumps). Another idea: like the classic Game Boy game Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles 3: Radical Rescue, you start out with one character who rescues the others—each heroine with a specific move set, which allows further discovery.

While 2D Metroid takes place in generally subterranean haunts and Castlevania in massive castles, my game would take place in largely outdoor, naturalistic settings. Beaches, jungles, ancient ruins, complex cave systems, and canopy cities are all viable options. Imagine the wealth of settings in Abe’s Odyssey or the Dinotopia series and you can start to get an idea of the variety of potential places to visit. In fact, the game may start out on the beach—your drop point for the quest—and take you further toward the heart of the island, which may or may not involve an active volcano; I haven’t decided yet. The player will be able to move between distinct geographic (and aesthetic) locations via strategically placed warp points. Like Order of Ecclesia, you’ll start things moving level-to-level, but you’ll eventually find the bridges between distinct areas. This being a more open, outdoor game, not every “level” will have the heavy exploratory bent that one finds in the typical Metroidvania game, though there are plenty of ways to hide items upgrades out in the open, as we saw in all of Retro Studios’ Donkey Kong Country Returns. Environmental triggers will spark discovery in these airier areas, encouraging re-traversal with better equipment or more characters.

Speaking of characters, the more I think about this, the more I like the concept of having multiple characters. They can either each have customizable loadouts but identical move sets (like in Dawn of Sorrow and Order of Ecclesia) or limited loadouts and differing move sets, in which case the other girls would have to be found and rescued in order to progress to new areas. Personally, I like the latter idea; it would make each girl feel unique (and rightly so). In terms of limited loadouts, I really just mean that each girl could only use certain classes of weapons and armor. As for whom the girls would be, I’m tempted to steal Abby Chase and Sydney Savage from Danger Girl wholesale, and since this is my dream game, I have absolutely no problem doing that. The third character could be a Shanna the She-Devil kind of “cavewoman,” living in this primordial land that time forgot. Alternatively, we could pull in Sydney's sister, Sonya, who just appeared in the newest Danger Girl series (Revolver).

These gals are pretty dangerous.

As to what system this dream game would appear on, that’s open for debate. While I certainly believe the spritework and special effects would appear far better on the PS3 or Xbox 360, I would be far more likely to play this type of game on the go, so my vote goes to either the PS Vita or the 3DS. Frankly, the latter needs software, and it needs software bad. The 3D effect could be great for different layers of the environment, too. I’ve been saying for a while that a 2D Metroid or modern Castlevania game would look great on that system for precisely that reason. Besides that, you could select different equipment or swap characters on the fly with the touch screen. And while the screen isn’t as large as the PS Vita, I’m confident that we can get somebody like WayForward to develop the game—their 2D platforming skills are, frankly, unmatched even by Nintendo (lately). These are the people who brought us A Boy and His Blob, Batman: The Brave & the Bold, Shantae: Risky’s Revenge, and Bloodrayne: Betrayal. They know what they’re doing, and I love them for it.

So that's my dream game. Please, somebody make it. I'll love you forever.