Join today to claim your daily loot

EA Has Forgotten These 15 Game Franchises

1-15

Ignacio Weil

Gaming - November 12th 2026, 23:30 GMT+1

Dead Space Director Retires — 1. Dead Space (2008)

Aiming for the head is a hard habit to break, and *Dead Space* got an entire generation of horror fans to start aiming for the knees. Isaac Clarke’s plasma cutter felt like something an engineer might actually carry to work, right down to the rotating blade. Motive’s remake gave us an excellent reason to board the Ishimura again. What Isaac could use now is a new assignment. | © Electronic Arts

SSX 2012 — 2. SSX (2000)

Take both feet off a snowboard in midair and you’ve made a terrible mistake. Do it in *SSX Tricky* and somebody ought to turn up the Run-D.M.C. EA’s snowboarding series had room for that glorious nonsense and the quieter pleasure of riding all three peaks in *SSX 3*, settling into a rhythm halfway down a mountain. It’s that long ride I’d most like to take again. | © Electronic Arts

Medal of honor above and beyond cropped processed by imagy — 3. Medal of Honor (1999)

One of the tensest things you could do in the original *Medal of Honor* was show a guard your papers. DreamWorks Interactive understood the appeal of playing an undercover operative in occupied Europe, including the awful moment when a German officer took a closer look. The series eventually traded espionage for modern military spectacle, then made its World War II homecoming in *Above and Beyond* an invitation only VR owners could accept. | © Electronic Arts

Syndicate 2012 cropped processed by imagy — 4. Syndicate (1993)

Bullfrog gave its corporate agents a device called the Persuadertron, which is a wonderfully polite name for a machine that makes strangers obey you. Watching a crowd fall in behind your four operatives said more about life under corporate rule than a lengthy cyberpunk briefing ever could. Starbreeze’s shooter reboot brought back the brain implants and added four-player co-op. The job of directing the whole operation from above is still vacant. | © Electronic Arts

Sim City 2013 cropped processed by imagy — 5. SimCity (1989)

Ask a *SimCity* player about the neighborhood they built as a kid and there’s a decent chance they still have opinions about its traffic. Maxis made municipal planning personal. Bulldozing six houses to fix a junction felt considerably worse when you remembered putting them there. *SimCity BuildIt* keeps mayors busy on phones, but the PC series never got a fresh start after its always-online reboot struggled to let people into their own cities. | © Electronic Arts

Overlord Fellowship of Evil cropped processed by imagy — 6. Overlord (2007)

It’s hard to look like the scourge of humanity when one of your soldiers has found a pumpkin and decided to wear it as a hat. Triumph Studios understood that the minions were the stars of *Overlord*. Sending them through a halfling village was half the fun. Seeing what they hauled back was the other half. EA inherited the series when it bought Codemasters, years after *Fellowship of Evil* sent the little brutes home. | © Codemasters

Alice Madness Returns — 7. Alice: Madness Returns (2011)

A pepper grinder passes for a machine gun in *Alice: Madness Returns*. Spicy Horse knew its Lewis Carroll well enough to make that feel perfectly reasonable, even as Wonderland grew uglier and Alice pieced together what happened to her family. A third game, *Alice: Asylum*, made it as far as a 414-page design document. American McGee said EA declined both to fund the project and to license it to his team. | © Electronic Arts

Cropped SPORE — 8. Spore (2008)

How does an animal with five knees and no obvious front end walk? *Spore* would have a go at answering that, then let you send the poor thing out to meet the neighbors. Maxis built five stages around the journey from single cell to space travel, yet you could happily lose an evening before your species had a name. The community still holds creation contests. Imagine what those regulars could do with a sequel’s worth of new parts. | © Electronic Arts

Command Conquer 4 cropped processed by imagy — 9. Command & Conquer (1995)

Somewhere between your first power plant and your third tank, you’d realize the most important vehicle on the map was that lumbering Tiberium harvester you’d left unattended. Westwood made an economy you could understand at a glance and lose through one expensive lapse in concentration. EA has done right by the classics with remasters and source-code releases. A new PC campaign with Joe Kucan leaning into the camera as Kane would be another matter entirely. | © Electronic Arts

10. Burnout (2001)

*Burnout 3: Takedown* could make you restart a perfectly good pileup because, on reflection, you really should have waited for the bus. Crash mode turned a busy junction into a puzzle, and Criterion had the good sense to let you admire your solution from several angles. *Burnout Paradise Remastered* brought back a terrific open-world racer. Anyone nostalgic for those meticulously staged traffic disasters still has to go digging through the older games. | © Electronic Arts

Ultima IX Ascension cropped processed by imagy — 11. Ultima (1981)

A blind shopkeeper in *Ultima IV* trusted you to count out the right payment for spell ingredients. You could shortchange the merchant, pocket the difference and carry on adventuring with a slightly less convincing claim to the virtue of Honesty. Richard Garriott made buying supplies into a role-playing decision. *Ultima Online* has kept Britannia inhabited for decades, while the single-player series that dreamed up that little transaction stopped counting at nine. | © Electronic Arts

Army of two the 40th day cropped processed by imagy — 12. Army of Two (2008)

“Keep them looking at you” is an unusually honest thing to ask of a friend. *Army of Two* built its best shootouts around that favor. An aggro meter showed when Salem or Rios had drawn enough attention for the other player to slip around the side, giving both halves of the couch a say in the plan. With *The Devil’s Cartel*, EA handed the masks to Alpha and Bravo for what became a one-game posting. | © Electronic Arts

Mercenaries 2 World in Flames cropped processed by imagy — 13. Mercenaries (2005)

Pandemic Studios put a price on every target in *Mercenaries: Playground of Destruction*, with a better payout for bringing them in alive. That detail did a surprising amount of work in a game happy to sell you an airstrike. Suddenly, leveling the building was a financial decision, and a rescue operation might be necessary to save a man from your own enthusiasm. *World in Flames* took the business to Venezuela. A third payday never came. | © Electronic Arts

Dungeon keeper 2 cropped processed by imagy — 14. Dungeon Keeper (1997)

The chickens were an inspired touch. In *Dungeon Keeper*, even a respectable lord of darkness needed a hatchery, because a dungeon full of hungry employees was going to have problems long before the heroes arrived. Bullfrog let you possess a creature and walk the corridors yourself, an excellent way to discover how dreary your masterpiece looked from floor level. EA’s mobile revival offered a less flattering perspective on dungeon management once the excavation timers kicked in. | © Electronic Arts

Populous The Beginning — 15. Populous (1989)

For a deity, you spent an embarrassing amount of *Populous* doing site preparation. Level a patch of ground and your followers could build a bigger settlement. Give them enough room to thrive and you’d acquire the power to visit considerably worse weather on the neighbors. Bullfrog found a whole strategy game in that relationship between geography and faith. *Populous: The Beginning* even gave you a shaman who could walk across the land you’d reshaped. | © Electronic Arts

1-15

Electronic Arts rarely lets a football season go by without a new game, which makes the wait for another Burnout feel a little personal. Where else could you spend an afternoon trying to cause the most expensive pileup possible and call it progress? These 15 EA franchises each had a good answer to “What should we play tonight?” For anyone who misses them, the answer these days usually involves digging out an old console.

Facebook X Reddit WhatsApp Copy URL

Electronic Arts rarely lets a football season go by without a new game, which makes the wait for another Burnout feel a little personal. Where else could you spend an afternoon trying to cause the most expensive pileup possible and call it progress? These 15 EA franchises each had a good answer to “What should we play tonight?” For anyone who misses them, the answer these days usually involves digging out an old console.