10 great games that were worth the wait

Bethesda Games’ Starfield is here – a mere 29 years after the title was first tentatively typed into an Apple II computer by the studio’s executive producer Todd Howard. The action-RPG, which was touted as “Skyrim in space” has had a mixed critical response, partly because of the length of time it took for Starfield to land, yet the majority of critics and gamers seem to agree it was worth the wait. 

Waiting time is relative. Four years doesn’t seem that long today – when tent-pole releases require millions of lines of code and plots scripted by a pool of Hollywood screenwriters – but in 1992 and the 16-megabit era, it felt like an ice age. That’s how long it took to deliver the now-iconic Street Fighter II (1991) to consoles, the team working so hard that, at 7am on Valentine’s Day 1991, when the game was finally ready, designer Akira Nishitani reportedly thanked his colleagues, burst into tears and then passed out under his desk.

Here are some other games whose lengthy load times have been worth the wait.

After the success of Yu Suzuki’s Virtua Fighter (1993), the world held its breath for the designer’s next button-masher. Would it be a motorbike or sports car sim like arcade hits Hang-On (1985) and Out Run (1986)? Open-world adventure Shenmue materialised on the Dreamcast after a six-year wait: meditative, costly (the most expensive game ever made at the time) and – eventually – a cult classic.

Five years in the making, gamers loved Remedy Entertainment’s detective noir and wanted more; 12 years later, their patience was acknowledged when Alan Wake was remastered for Nintendo Switch. To the fans for whom that wasn’t a big enough fix: a sequel proper, Alan Wake II, is due to arrive later this year.

Almost a decade after the heartbreak of The Fall of Max Payne (2003), the burned-out detective was given a fresh start by Rockstar. Anyone expecting more gloomy shootouts instead got an extremely gratifying whodunnit as Max is lured to sunny Sao Paulo, and blasts his way through a gang war. The killer soundtrack by HEALTH made this third entry a worthy pay-off.

Blizzard went method when they waited 12 years to follow up on the success of Diablo II (2000). This next instalment is set two decades later, and sees sage-like NPC Deckard Cain disappear – with our hero the Nephalem hot on his tail. The developers are nothing if not consistent: Diablo IV, released in June, took more than six years to develop.

Intended as a PS3 title, The Last Guardian arrived on PS4, completing the arc that began with Ico (2002) and continued with Shadow of the Colossus (2006). Gamers fell in love with kitten-griffin hybrid Trico, and while the controls were buggy (trying to travel on the creature’s back makes train-surfing look easy) the game proved to be a cinematic feast.

id Software scored multiple hits when they took us to hell-on-Mars in Doom (1993), and then into a Lovecraftian labyrinth with Quake (1996). But it took eight years of tinkering until a new Doom title landed, and players could once again massacre demons with hi-tech weaponry. Hell was as fun as ever, and definitely hadn’t frozen over in the wait.

Gamers had waited since 1995’s Future Shock for a Terminator adaption that would authentically drop them into the war between man and machines. Polish developers Teyon managed it with Terminator: Resistance (2019), a well-received FPS that felt as though it had been waiting in the dark like a red-eyed robot. Fans of cyborgs will be happy to know the same team are resurrecting RoboCop.

Revolution’s follow-up to sci-fi classic Beneath a Steel Sky (1994) took a time-dilating 26 years. Gumshoe Robert Foster (co-created by comic legend David Gibbons) returned to take on a Machiavellian AI, and track down a missing child in the future Aussie wasteland. Director Charles Cecil had learned his lesson from Broken Sword: The Sleeping Dragon (2003) and made the switch from point-and-click to open world a seamless one.

Landing with a flying superman punch nearly 30 years after Streets of Rage 3 (1994), part four dazzled with its killer combos, a wealth of unlockable characters and nods to original villain Mr X (the pre-Resident Evil version). Newcomers bitten by the beat ‘em up bug should also investigate Strider (2014), which pulled off a similar move over a decade after its ‘90s Sega incarnations.

In September last year, the long, long-awaited prequel to Ubisoft’s space adventure officially became the most delayed AAA game of all time, beating Duke Nukem Forever’s 14 years of ‘coming soon’. Astronomers might tell you that’s no time at all, but even after the rave reviews, multiple awards and cult following earned by the 2003 trip to planet Hillys, 20-plus years is a lot of hype to live up to. Here’s hoping fans (and their kids) won’t be disappointed.