forgotten franchise revival

[Kriven]

To be honest, if I were in charge of some kind of revival project, the first thing I would do would be to release a "Nintendo All-Stars Arcade" type of game... essentially 3D/HD remakes of the basic old games, just to make them relevant again. I'm not talking big project like Kid Icarus, but Ice Climbers, Balloon Fight, Clu Clu Land, Donkey Kong Trilogy, Wrecking Crew, etc. After that I might elaborate on a specific franchise with a stand-alone release... I think I would most personally want to revive Balloon Fight in some way, although I haven't figured it out exactly. Definitely I would want the classic Balloon Fighter to take the lead role (I've been calling him Bob for a while), but Alice and her brother (from Balloon Kid) would make excellent alternate characters and multi-player options. The pseudo-platformer direction of Balloon Kid is pretty fun, and I could definitely see the franchise going in that direction... but I also like the Balloon Fight microgame in WarioWare: Smooth Moves, and I feel like that kind of StarFox perspective would do well for Balloon Fight... so I suppose I would go with a 3D Adventure Platformer where the main idea is to fly from one island to the next...

Thinking about it, I suppose it depends if I were to call it "Balloon Fight" or "Balloon Something". If I were to go with the "Fight" name, I would want to honor the concept there, which is to be the last balloonist standing. I think I like this more, now that I'm writing about it. So there are multiple arenas, some made up of different islands, and battles take place in a large 3D space. Like the NES title, the objective is to defeat every enemy in the arena by popping their balloons and then crashing into them. In the single player mode, Bob the Balloon Fighter is tasked with apprehending the Bird Bandits (what I'm calling the enemies from the first game). Controls are pretty much the same as always, with a single button for lift and the directional pad for movement. I suppose the shoulder buttons could be used to help players make sharp turns. The main attraction would be the multiplayer battle mode (although a multiplayer co-op campaign could be included).

As a player character, you are not defeated when both of your balloons pop (unlike Balloon Fight). Instead this causes you to plummet to the surface, where you are extremely vulnerable to attack. If you can surive long enough to inflate your balloons (which is done by either blowing into the microphone or rapidly tapping down on the control stick), you can put yourself back in the game!

Right now I'm seeing two arenas: a series of islands scattered around an ocean. Each island shares a resemblance to a different arrangement from the original game. The other arena is a city styled after the first world of Balloon Kid, with lots of buildings to bounce to.

Initial Playable Characters:

Bob the Balloonist (Balloon Fight)
Alice (Balloon Kid)
Samm (Balloon Kid)
Jim (Balloon Kid)

Unlockable Playable Characters:

Bird Bandit (Balloon Fight) - Unlocked by clearing the campaign
Tingle (Tingle's Balloon Fight DS) - Unlocked by playing for 05:40:00
Bubble Monkey (EarthBound) - Unlocked by playing ten versus rounds
Hello Kitty (Guest Character -- Hello Kitty World is a reskin of Balloon Kid for the Famicom) - Unlocked by playing Survival Mode with all other characters.

Survival Mode: Simply put, Survival Mode is an endless-battle mode where enemies spawn rapidly and frequently as players attempt to survive and set a high score.