Have You Played... MDK2?

Have You Played? is an endless stream of game retrospectives. One a day, every day of the year, perhaps for all time.

I can't even remember how much of MDK 2 I ever played. The reason I remember it is because it accompanies a rambling anecdote, and that it's really bloody weird that it was made by BioWare.

Ready to learn how very old I am? I was at a preview event for Baldur's Gate 2. Not the release, but during its was in development. I am ancient. It was in Seattle, because I guess American journalists didn't like travelling one state higher and actually going into Canada or something. In a three storey arcade, which was open only to us and for which we had infinite tokens for goes on the machines. Which in many ways sounds like a childhood fantasy, but was a bit awkward and meant we weren't getting the information we'd travelled halfway around the world for.

Anyway, when it was finally time, the Doctors declared the game existed, and that we were going to have a go at it. And goodness me if the resolutions weren't improved from the previous game, and so forth. Anyway, it's clearly ridiculous to try to preview a 200 hour RPG in an arcade surrounded by shouting weirdos, but this was 2000ish and how it was. Which eventually brings me to MDK2.

At the time, the sequel was pretty much unseen. Released in 1997, MDK did well in sales, and unlikely publishers Interplay wanted to set straight to work on a sequel. However, Planet Mood were already on Giants, and super-strangely Interplay ignored the game's creator and went to their buddies BioWare to put it out. Someone at that Baldur's 2 event, someone from BioWare whose identity I genuinely can't remember, was drunk enough that he thought it a good idea to whip out his laptop and show us a working build of the game. Looking back, I wonder if that someone could have been Dr Greg, since he was lead on the project. I like to think it could have been. It probably wasn't.

Anyway, there I had this world exclusive look at the game before anyone else, and I couldn't do a thing with it. Very strange. So, anyway, did you play it? It was really rather liked, and fantastic for being such an anomaly from the RPG developers.