Video game crossovers have been a staple of the medium for decades, but there is still a well of untapped potential.

Crossovers, the combination of two different franchises in a single story, are irresistible nectar to media fans. Crossovers were first officially seen in the mid-1970s as stories between the most popular Marvel and DC Comics superheroes.

RELATED: Power Rangers: The 10 Best Crossover Episodes, Ranked

Video games were slow to embrace crossovers, aside of Nintendo and Sega throwing cameos of their mascot characters into unrelated games. In the mid-1990s, Nintendo introduced its popular party fighter, Super Smash Bros. SSB took the implicit form of a child taking toys from their toy box to create fantasy battles between Nintendo juggernauts. Sega and Nintendo reached an agreement in time for the 2008 Olympic Games to coproduce the first of the Sonic and Mario at the Olympics series, which continues today. Video game crossovers can be hard to come by, but a little imagination can produce some fantastic possibilities.

The exploration game Little Kitty, Big City, with its mysterious release date of "Cats Don't Have Deadlines," was announced in 2021. It joins a subgenre of animal-simulation puzzle games, including the artistically-similar 2019 puzzler Untitled Goose Game by House House.

When an adorable kitten meets a horrible goose, the animal-based chaos would certainly expand! Freeing the goose from its mission-based exploration could lead to an urban reign of terror. Kitten missions could add some cuteness to a lovely English village. Screenshots and memes would definitely proliferate. Either way, the internet will never be the same.

Them’s Fightin’ Herds came out in 2020 as an original fighting game with art by cartoonist Lauren Faust. Coming from a fan game project of Faust’s animated series My Little Pony: Friendship is Magic, TFH has robust fighting game mechanics.

RELATED: The Biggest Video Games Releasing in April 2022

With tight controls and strong game mechanics, Them’s Fightin’ Herds could make an interesting crossover with serious fighters. The Street Fighter series, with Street Fighter VI upcoming, has given its campy roots a gloss of professionalism and polish while keeping its silly premise close to heart. Herds could also easily cross over with Super Smash Bros. in a campy game of extravagant hits and zany props. The possibilities are as endless as Herds is colorful.

Shovel Knight, the 2014 indie darling, launched then-small publisher Yacht Club Games to mainstream success. Yacht Club’s retro-flavored offerings continue to expand, year by year, but Shovel Knight remains a perennial bestseller. It was even the first indie game to get its own Amiibo when it was ported to Nintendo Wii U in 2015. Its spin-off pocket puzzle game was released to keep fans happy while waiting for another installment.

With Shovel Knight’s association with Nintendo platforms comes the opportunity for a crossover as odd as the game itself: Capcom's 1989 classic DuckTales! Shovel Knight and DuckTales share the game mechanic of the main character using their iconic object as an unlikely weapon and pogo stick, and after defeating the Enchantress.

Sega’s early-2000s dark-horse darling RPG Skies of Arcadia (Eternal Arcadia in Japan) has had surprisingly little love from its publisher over the years. Aside from the intra-company crossover game Sonic All-Star Racing Transformed and cameo appearances in Valkyria Chronicles, the game has virtually disappeared. This comes despite being headlined by Rieko Kodama, one of the principal developers of Phantasy Star.

RELATED: 10 Games To Play If You Love Genshin Impact

Skies of Arcadia deserves a chance to shine once again. Its best crossover potential is with a game that came out in the same week: Final Fantasy IX. Both games share a love of airborne swashbuckling with their iconic airships. Skies is a love letter to classic RPG gameplay and would be completely comfortable crossing into the Final Fantasy franchise with a heroic team-up of the Blue Rogues and Zidane's crew. There’s nothing complicated about this crossover idea, it’s simply two great tastes that taste great together.

There are few video games more iconic than the Mega Man series. The original Mega Man debuted on the Famicom on December 17, 1987 and on the NES only twelve days later. Famous for high difficulty ameliorated by a smart rock-paper-scissors design, the Mega Man series exploded in popularity with Mega Man 2 a year later.

Crossing Mega Man with Metroid combines two franchises with an exploration emphasis and a high degree of difficulty. Both games have charismatic heroes with cannon arms who are icons of the gaming world. Both have recent releases on Nintendo's flagship Switch console.

The convergence of vertical-scrolling game mechanics between Kid Icarus and Super Mario Bros. has intrigued fans of both series for decades. Kid Icarus and Super Mario Bros. were both action games introduced for the NES within the first year of its release in North America. Kid Icarus was a contemporary of Super Mario Bros. 2 in Japan and was designed for the newly-released Famicom Disk System.

RELATED: 10 Video Games That Defined The 4th Generation Of Consoles

Difficult and engrossing, Kid Icarus represents a fascinating road not taken for Nintendo's game efforts. Its mythological themes and strong pacing are an interesting alternative to its more famous counterpart. Perhaps even Wart, the long-lost king of Subcon, could join the fight.

Sega’s 1991 Golden Axe Warrior applied a coat of Golden Axe paint to The Legend of Zelda’s game mechanics. The result is a playable but obscure clone of the 1986 NES classic. It was discontinued in 1992 due to the end of Master System game production. It never saw a Japanese release despite role-playing games being immensely popular in Japan.

However, a clone of another game does not a crossover make. Copying Zelda’s game mechanics is one thing, but bringing two similar classic video game franchises together can be complicated. A mighty-thewed barbarian fighting through Hyrule alongside the willowy elf? It could happen!

These two 90s brawler franchises were stalwarts of their respective platforms from 1991 to 1994. The capstone of Capcom’s experience with the arcade brawler genre, Final Fight rewarded the savvy player. Not to be outdone, Sega introduced Streets of Rage, a classic in its own right that redefined its genre with excellent gameplay and smooth Genesis sounds. Despite their popularity, the two franchises have never come together.

With the 2020 release of DotEmu’s Streets of Rage 4, that series is back, and with it the idea of uniting these two legendary brawling franchises. Much has changed, but much remains in the video game fighting world.

Once upon a time, there was a game series called Wonder Boy, and it split in two. One half of the series went to Hudson Soft and became the Adventure Island franchise. The other underwent a sword-and-sorcery makeover. Add magical transformations into animals, and the Wonder Boy series as we know it was born.

We’re now out of the era of strict platform separation, and it might be time for the two franchises to make up. The first game and the Adventure Island series bring speed and resource-based gameplay. The Sega follow-ups add smart platforming and RPG elements. Both together are more than the sum of their parts.

This crossover could be with any of the many Dungeons & Dragons-based role-playing games available on the PC platform. Pathfinder and Dungeons & Dragons are like estranged sisters. Born of the same parents, the two games are natural matches for a crossover.

While official licensing may create issues for such a crossover, this is a crossover that has definitely happened, at least among tabletop gamers. Critical Role is the most famous game that started in Pathfinder but moved to Dungeons & Dragons, but the movement has been in both directions over the years. Tabletop role-playing gamers routinely port rules they like from one game to another, so hundreds of people have probably played a homebrew crossover between these two games.

Kate lives and works in Minneapolis, MN. In her free time, she's a gamer, a cat mom, and a roller derby player, in no particular order.