To kill a game

First topic message reminder :

I've been thinking about killing my game "Diamond Quest" for several reasons:

Not well planned
hardly anybody plays
I've no idea how to finish it off

What I want to do is kill this game and replace it with something else of the same gamplay, i.e. a platformer.
However this time I want to do it based on a "theme" that is well known, like my Metal Sonic game which has become a success for me, it was based on the popular sonic series, where as Diamond Quest was just something random.

So here was what I was thinking: "Virtual Homer".

Basically it's Homer Simpson going through several gaming themes such :

Tetris
Pacman
Super Mario land (several ideas here)
Sonic

What I want to try here is to combine the humour of homer with the gameplay of different gaming themes, for instance Homer flying through space defeating viruses from dr.mario, etc.

However, I want to expand ideas further than just these four, (or any oher I can come up with).

So any ideas?

Scrolling shooters can't have characters that easily. If there's a massive *** story behind the character all that's really happening in the game is peow peow peow. Plus scrolling shooters are only really good if it has like 50 features, killer graphics and awesomely intense gameplay. So if you're continuing a scroller, make sure you flog the crap off every scroller ever. Don't want to sound harsh or nothing.

when you mean "flog the crap off every scroller ever", do you mean do some research on enemy behaviour, scenery, boss behaviours,etc.

Or am I going in the wrong direction?
I do want to get this right!