Fans may get their wish sooner rather than later as the company has renewed its trademarks Skies of Arcadia and Eternal Arcadia (its Japanese name) on January 16th. The listings recently went public, as discovered by Gematsu.

Released in October 2000, Skies of Arcadia garnered extensive critical acclaim. It would receive a Nintendo GameCube port, Skies of Arcadia Legends, in 2002 with additional content, and while a sequel was considered, it ultimately never happened. There’s also never been a remaster or port for current-gen platforms.

Whether the listings mean plans to pursue a new project, a remaster, a sequel or an imminent announcement for something else remains to be seen, but it’s a positive sign. Stay tuned for more updates in the coming months.

Babel Fish – The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy

The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy isn’t the most straightforward adventure, which is saying something given the book it’s based on. But suffering its idiosyncrasies is required for getting the Babel Fish, which then leads to the atomic vector plotter. Not having it means game over. Furthermore, when acquiring it, you also have to make sure to pick up your towel (don’t ask), failing which can lead to another death. Long story short, don’t panic and don’t forget your towel.

Shadow Hearts: From the New World

Imagine an alternate reality Prohibition era America with ninjas, talking cats, vampires and of course, demons. That’s Shadow Hearts: From the New World in a nutshell as players assume the role of teenage PI Johnny Garland. The game starts in a fixed path but quickly expands after a job that Johnny takes quickly goes off the rails. With a combat system dependent on timed button presses and combos, strange plot twists and an endearing cast of oddities, From the New World is perhaps the strangest and yet most endearing PS2 RPG of its time.

Metal Gear Solid 2 –  Metal Gear Ray followed by a battle with Solidus Snake

Raiden goes through a lot of tough battles in Metal Gear Solid 2, but the toughest is certainly the wave of Metal Gear Rays that appear out of nowhere to attack the hero at the end of the game, weakening him for his confrontation with the conniving Solidus Snake. And what a finale it’s as Raiden finally gets his revenge on Solidus who killed his parents,

Min-Maxing

Pop quiz, hotshot. What do fans of Diablo and action RPG/looters all have in common, besides laughing at Diablo Immortal? Min-maxing. Every time we start a new character or new League or season rolls around, min-maxing is the priority. It essentially means pouring all resources and prioritizing a single stat for the sake of a desired play style. So if you’re maining Shadow Impale Demon Hunter in Diablo 3, for instance, you’re maxing out Life on Hit, Attack Speed, Movement Speed and keep pouring points into Dexterity. Does it make sense to prioritize only one stat in real life? No, but in an action RPG looter, it’s everything.

The First CD-ROM Console

When you think about disc-based consoles and their rise, Sony’s PlayStation One obviously comes to mind. The console did an incredible job of popularizing the media and pushed the boundaries of console gaming as a result. However, it’s far from the first console to actually implement a CD disc format. That honour goes to the PC Engine Duo which released in September 1991 for Japan and later as the TurboDuo in October 1992 for North America.

In fact, with its premise of an Assassin pirate who goes around stabbing dudes and stealing their female consorts when he’s not hunting whales and raiding ships like a boss, the game is definitely unlike anything the series has pushed forth till now. That it’s a sort of prequel to AC3, with you playing as Connor’s grandfather Edward Kenway, but takes place immediately after the events of the same makes one even more wary.

But really, looking at the game, it’s easy to see what Ubisoft Montreal is doing. What they’re really doing is making a more realistic Skies of Arcadia. And really, even if they’re not doing so intentionally, they should certainly start.

If you don’t know, Skies of Arcadia is both one of the last original RPGs that Sega had created and also one of the best RPGs of all time. As an escapist fantasy with pirates, it’s also one of the better pirate games to ever be released.

The game had all the excitement of a likable protagonist, awesome ship battles, and an original story that mixed stealth and action with drama and adventure and made sure to fit just about every trope of piracy and high-seas hijinks into its weird premise of flying ships as much as possible.

At a glance, it’s certainly impossible to consider the two games similar in any way whatsoever. One of those is a cartoony RPG (pfft); the other is the follow-up to a multi-million dollar franchise that focused on freedom, truth, conspiracies and the war between Assassins and Templars.

But the actual game gives off no such vibe. This is an adventure where you can do anything and it all ties back to your ship. The assassinations appear to be taking a back seat to the adventure aspect of discovering sunken wrecks and fighting sharks.

You’ll be upgrading your ship and seemingly building a pirate empire, taking to cities and following a shadowy purpose apart from your usual plundering ways. And wouldn’t you know it, but even Blackbeard is a little cautious of Kenway.

Skies of Arcadia is the same, believe it or not. You can explore a vast world and find mysterious new locations. These discoveries would fetch a pretty penny and help up your rank as an adventurer. Even more exciting, the way the protagonist Vyse builds his reputation, coinciding with the storyline events that lead to the epic conclusion, you can literally sense a legend unfolding before your very eyes.

Think of Black Flag as what happens afterwards: What happens when the legend becomes an epic myth, one shrouded in mystery and all grown up, going about what it does best but all towards furthering a deeper purpose? What if it discovers bloodshed, booze and sin, experienced in the ways of the world but still highly endearing towards them?

That’s the image of Edward Kenway that’s been presented to us. And while we could point towards both of the games, and look at the naval aspects as the epicenter of all intrigue (the combat in Skies of Arcadia was tight and focussed but never the focal point of the game), both games function as a purely escapist medium of entertainment but grounded in the tenets of piracy. Everything you do, and everything you work towards comes back to that one central theme: You are a legend.

And you’re damn good at it too.

Again, with skepticism running high, it’s already interesting that Ubisoft is deviating so far away from what its previous games worked so hard to build up. It’s no longer cloak and dagger plotting – this is straight up action-adventure, whether you believe the developer’s testimonies of plenty of stealth or not.

Of course there have to be numerous routes to accomplish a mission – what kind of AC title, let alone open world game would it be if there weren’t? But stealth isn’t the focus.

Nonetheless, maybe this is the kind of game we need to wash the failings of AC3 from our memories. Maybe we just need a good, strong adventure to remind us that not everything need be about who’s with the Templars and who’s avenging who. Maybe we just need something fun from a talented developer that has been working way too hard to push this epic, be-all-end-all tale on us from the word go.

Maybe we just need another Skies of Arcadia to show us that, hey, it can be a blast if you give it a chance. That Assassin’s Creed IV: Black Flag happens to be a part of the mega franchise that is antithetical to its main purpose is a different matter altogether.

Of course, and you knew this was coming, that’ll be IF they can successfully pull it off.