Crimson Skies Flies Again?

Oh my, I really do hope so. I confess don't have much time for flight sims these days, but the greatest love I've ever felt for this most venerable of PC genres is divided equally between Stunt Island (a game I've been deliberating how to best write about for several years now) and Crimson Skies. The latter is a wonderful thing, a out-and-out joyous blend of stupidity, stunts and style in an atmosphere-rich airpunk world of sky-pirates and 1920s derring-do. It was Hollywood dog fights incarnate, and it looked, felt and sounded pretty much as perfect as shallow wee me could possibly wish for from a flight sim. Splendid multiplayer too, plus it was the best partner I ever did find for my beloved Sidewinder 2 Force Feedback joystick. And it might be coming back.

Crushingly, the only sequel to date, High Road To Revenge, was Xbox only. However, between the rumour of a new sequel and the Mechwarrior series, which originates from the same stable, enjoying a PC-friendly, modern-tech reboot, my hopes for this firm-chinned air combat series to return home are pretty high.

Of course, it's all based on groundless speculation, but hey, that's the most fun kind of speculation. And frankly, the more positive talk the internet can generate about Crimson skies, the better the chances of this happening.

The flurry of interest comes from Jordan Weisman, founder of FASA Corp, who owned the rights to the Crimson Skies universe (which in fact began life as a boardgame, which I really must find a copy of). He's also one of the chaps behind kickstarting the Mechwarrior revival. He let this slip to Gamespot:

"I think Crimson Skies is something we'd love to get some energy around, and we have some devious plans...we'll see if those materialize."

By 'let slip', I do of course mean 'outright told, probably in the hope of generating hype and fan petitions'. Still - exciting news. Sadly it's pretty much impossible that original Crimson Skies devs Zipper Interactive will be at the reigns, as they're owned by blimmin' Sony these days. That said, the console sequel survived transition to a different (and now sadly defunct) developer relatively unscathed, so hopefully that can either happen again, or Weisman and Microsoft will be able to convince some of the old guard to return to the fray. More of this is what we want:

Fingers crossed, what-what, tally-ho.

(There really is a lot of retro revivalism going on in games this Summer, isn't there?)