4 video game series that are doomed to never return

Everyone loves a good video game revival. Just look at the way "Mega Man" fans' eyes light up when you show them this footage from the coming sequel-in-everything-but-name "Mighty No. 9":

But some series — no matter how much promise they may have had or how many fans clamor for their return — are just gone from the earth. I recently took a long dive into the reasons some fan-favorite series disappear. Here are four I learned will almost certainly never come back.

SEE ALSO: Why your favorite video game series is never, ever coming back

AND: Online communities are changing video games to make them better, weirder, and much more wonderful

'Midnight Club"

"Midnight Club" was the "Need for Speed" franchise's darker, more worldly twin in the underground street race genre. Players raced across cities including Los Angeles, Paris, and Tokyo, fending off cops and rival street-racing gangs to earn cash for car upgrades and rule the streets. 

The game's tone and unbounded open-world racing style stood out from its competitors, but explosive internal beefs among its developers and the crushing dominance of "Need for Speed" helped kill its future.

"Mercenaries"

"Mercenaries" sat at the nexus between the open world of "Grand Theft Auto" and the explosive grittiness of war games such as "Call of Duty." Open-world, nihilist, and pro-mayhem, the series dropped players into imagined Korean and Venezuelan war zones to unleash the machinery of war for fun and profit. Leaving aside the cynicism of that premise, grim even by anti-moral "Grand Theft Auto" standards, "Mercenaries" was a clever new spin on a popular genre.

But Electronic Arts shut down the series after only two titles; EA told us there are no plans to bring it back.

"System Shock"

"System Shock" invented the first-person-shooter adventure game in the '90s. Fun, plot-driven, and featuring gorgeous sound design, the series spawned successors including "Deus Ex" and "BioShock" (among countless more indirect descendants). These modern titles are now so beloved and successful that there just isn't any call to bring back the grandparent that gave them all life. Consider us shocked if it returns (pun intended).

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