By Alec Meer on March 11th, 2008 at 4:27 pm.
Odd timing, this – on the same day that Obsidian, a company formed from the ashes of Black Isle, finally step out of Bioware’s shadow and announce their own game, we also see the return of Black Isle’s much-troubled owners, Interplay.
Interplay.com now hosts this excited image:
and a Coming Soon message. See the full pic here. Going left to right, we’ve got MDK, Earthworm Jim, Baldur’s Gate: Dark Alliance, and apparently the browny-green bit underneath the Interplay logo is concept art from Fallout Online. Edit – and Descent on the far left.
Goodness, how exciting. Although seems unlikely a rejuvenated Interplay is going to suddenly announce new games in all those franchises, – though they’ve previously intimated they do want to pursue sequels to all of them. It’s more probable this is a spot of ‘hey, remember us and all the cool stuff we’ve done’ promotion to encourage folk to take the publisher seriously again. But why?
N4G suspect Interplay are about to submit a new performance report – so perhaps the publisher’s finally got some money to spend on new games. If so, what? Lest we forget, Interplay’s deal flogging off the Fallout 3 rights to Bethesda did stipulate that they got to hang onto Fallout Online, so long as they started working on it within two years from last April.
Amusingly, here’s a post from proto-RPS last year that I don’t even remember writing, sniffing at the Bethesda-Interplay arrangement and the then-current state of the latter’s coffers. Look at it, all virginal with its zero comments, no disparaging accusations of reporting rumours, grammar nit-picking or perfect strangers calling each other names. Ah, simpler times.
11/03/2008 at 16:33 Jim Rossignol says:
Ah, the olden games of Interplay. It’s like remembering childhood TV. We all loved Stonekeep, didn’t we eh? No? Oh.
11/03/2008 at 16:57 MeestaNob! says:
Dear Interplay,
FreeSpace 3 please.
Regards,
Everyone
11/03/2008 at 17:12 Flint says:
This world needs another Earthworm Jim.
11/03/2008 at 17:14 Lu-Tze says:
Needs more Battle Chess.
11/03/2008 at 17:16 Nny says:
Great news indeed.
11/03/2008 at 17:25 Metsys says:
I think Descent is also represented in that image: the blue shield orb behind Kurt’s head.
And yes, I’d really like another FreeSpace game as well, or another installment of Descent that doesn’t suck.
11/03/2008 at 17:29 Okami says:
I remember buying the “Interplay Tenth Anniversary” compilation. That was… 13 or 14 years ago.
I’ve played through Dragon Wars more times than I care to remember. Never finished Wastelands though.. What a shame.
Dragon Wars.. *sigh*
11/03/2008 at 17:36 Zeno, Internetographer says:
Please, for the love of Odin, no more Dark Alliance.
Terrible games, and the worst part is that they bring shame on the BG name.
11/03/2008 at 17:44 max says:
I just LOVED mdk, interplay sure was amazing.
11/03/2008 at 17:51 Nick says:
MDK and Earthworm Jim were great.. more would be interesting but you never know – they could easily just crap them up.
11/03/2008 at 17:54 Phil says:
Beating MDK 2 playing as Max, after at least 20 attempts, is one of my better gaming achievements.
MDK 3 could be hugely fun – provided they stayed away from pixel perfect tower climbing and focused on allowing you to build nuclear toast rocket lauchers and six armed dogs.
11/03/2008 at 17:54 Citizen Parker says:
I can’t help but notice by peeking at the HTML source that one of their keywords for that page is “mmorpg.”
Probably idle speculation thanks to over-eager search engine tweaking, but I can’t imagine any of those properties working as an MMORPG. An online Earthworm-iverse?
11/03/2008 at 18:08 MeestaNob! says:
BTW, my illogically hopeful gamers brain has just highlighted two seemingly unrelated facts:
1) Valve have hinted that they have signed a new partner for game content on their Steam service.
2) Interplay have come from the clouds to be a player in games again. When was the last time they even published a game until now, out of curiosity?
The plot thickens! (via baseless speculation!)
11/03/2008 at 18:08 Chris Charabaruk says:
Okay, you FS3 fans… Even if Interplay produces and publishes it, it won’t be what you want. Only Volition can properly do FS3.
11/03/2008 at 18:13 MeestaNob! says:
Who owns the rights to it? There’s potentially no reason they couldn’t ask Volition to develop it for them if they (Interplay) own the FreeSpace 3 IP?
Only issue is: Is any one still at Volition that was around when FreeSpace was new, ie, any one there who still cares about the game and could do it justice?
11/03/2008 at 18:17 Janek says:
Volition are owned by THQ these days aren’t they? Doubt it’s going to happen.
11/03/2008 at 18:27 roBurky says:
I loved Stonekeep. My Mum and I played it right up until the game-crashing bug in some icy caverns.
11/03/2008 at 18:48 Alexx Kay says:
Stonekeep was an ok game. But the Wahooka song in particular brought great joy to my household :-)
11/03/2008 at 19:44 mbanana says:
Umm….you left out that blue thing on the left which is for Descent. Which I need more of.
11/03/2008 at 20:57 etho says:
I got stuck on the first boss of MDK2. But I’d love to see more of that series. And Descent.
11/03/2008 at 21:11 Roflgoat says:
DESCENT, GOD YES
11/03/2008 at 22:02 Mika says:
New MDK or Earthworm Jim game could be interesting, but if Shiny or Bioware isn’t developing, I don’t expect much.
11/03/2008 at 22:25 Taxman says:
You can forget about Freespace unless it was done on a really tight budget & by some one other than Violition. Those games are really niche and just don’t sell in large numbers plus Violition are working on GTA clones (some of the Freespace crew are still there but some left a while back to start a new studio).
In an interview with gamespot (see wiki of Interplay), they said were looking to build off the Earthworm Jim, Baldur’s Gate: Dark Alliance, Descent, and MDK IP’s. MDK is a pretty old game and not well known cant see them using that but Earthworm Jim and Descent are probably worth a go.
Not sure about Fallout MMORPG, some murkiness around the IP of Fallout and online games with Bethesda I heard Bethesda snapped up the remaining rights to Fallout so Interplay has no right to use Fallout online unless they license it from Bethesda ?.
12/03/2008 at 00:30 Tha Capitan says:
Interplay? I want a new BLACKTHORNE now!! Oh, what a fantastic game that was. Heck, I’d even settle for re-release over xbox live arcade. Just please, please, no CLAYFIGHTER ok?
12/03/2008 at 00:31 NegativeZero says:
I would happily purchase a new MDK game. I loved those.
12/03/2008 at 02:07 Anonymousity says:
They re-hired the old lead artist from fallout 1 and he talked a lot about mmo’s a while back and I think it’s pretty obvious the first thing they’ll do is fallout, you alone in the waste that are now heavily populated by lots of idiots shouting chuck norris ftw.
12/03/2008 at 03:46 malkav11 says:
Blackthorne = Blizzard, so that won’t be happening. MDK and Earthworm Jim = Shiny, so they might make another one but it wouldn’t be the same. In fact, given Shiny’s recent track record, even if they got Shiny to do it, it’d still probably suck. Descent I got over long ago. Fallout Online is a terrible idea. So….erm. Another BG: Dark Alliance would probably be the best possible outcome. They’re not Baldur’s Gate proper, of course, but they’re about the best same-screen cooperative experience to be had on consoles.
12/03/2008 at 10:39 Briosafreak says:
N4g just copy pasted this piece.
12/03/2008 at 14:46 Briosafreak says:
They already did, a long time ago.
12/03/2008 at 18:06 Ranger Ben says:
Ah, Wasteland (singular)! That game was the best reason to buy that compilation! I wonder what Fargo out inXile thinks about this. Down with humans, up with mutants, long live Finster!
12/03/2008 at 23:48 Briosafreak says:
Fargo has the Wasteland license again.
13/03/2008 at 09:48 LSNDuck says:
Descent was the first game I played on PC (having been a Sega boy). It was brilliant, as was the sequel. The projects to keep the games going (D2X for example) have reawakened my love, but a further genuine instalment would have my eye.
06/06/2008 at 10:30 nateklomp says:
Dear Interplay:
Dragon Wars 2.
‘Nuff said?