Somehow, the Emperor returned. Nah, that’s a little harsh. January isn’t akin to an unkillable Sith Lord just yet, but it is impressive that there is somehow still a week left.
And for those who have not gotten a payday yet, fret not!
I know the bills are stacking up, and all these postings of wishlists and Steam specials by Cody and Arielle must be torturing your wallet, but the end is in sight!
And at the very least, you are not bankrupt (unless you bought that mosquito laser thing Cody posted. That is one expensive toy.)
That seemed to be the theme of the NAG issue that I picked this week: June 2009.
In the wake of the financial crisis/global recession/I should have bought stocks, but I was too busy eating dirt in 2008, a lot of companies were reeling from the losses and decided to close their doors.
Don’t worry, I have some tidbits to lighten the mood along the way.
Let’s hold some funerals.
I Need A Hero!
The Hero games from this era certainly were strong, fast and fresh from a fight.
Guitar Hero’s success was at an all-time high during this time, and despite all the people rocking and rolling financially, they were still rocking and rolling in their living rooms, too.
This meant it was time to create spinoffs, such as the plate-spinning DJ Hero (equipped with an entire turntable controller) and Band Hero, helping friends band together more harmoniously.
The staple franchise would also get a new release with Guitar Hero 5, which continued to give an ever-growing playlist of songs to jam to.
While not affiliated with these games in any way, Spore Hero would also make its way to the Wii hot on the heels of the PC cult hit (it was basically just an elongated version of the creature stage, but hey, I’m not complaining).
These days, there are No More Heroes (and no, I’m not talking about that weird Suda51 game), as Guitar Hero and its spinoffs have had their last hurrah, which I have also covered in an earlier piece.
Oh, and Maxis also died by EA’s hand. RIP.
Who SAW This Coming?
Video game adaptations of movies have always been hit or miss (likewise for the vice versa of this).
The 90s, for example, saw Batman, Terminator, Ninja Turtles and more make their way onto our home consoles, with varying results.
However, the award for the most faithful adaptation must go to 2009’s Saw: The Video Game.
Because it genuinely felt like you were in a Saw trap, being tortured to play this abomination of a game.
The traps and mini games/missions were so tedious that you were more likely to be bored to tears instead of crying for help.
The craziest part of this entire story is that this game is canon to the SAW franchise!
But I guess that is par for the course for one of the biggest horror soap operas of all time. “I want to play a game” – no, you don’t.
For Whom The Bell Tolls
Welcome to our funeral service.
As we all know, good things don’t last forever, and with the financial crunch weighing heavily on everyone, the previous year, this was the end of the road for a bunch of studios:
Ascaron Entertainment, the developers of the Sacred fantasy series, stayed true to releasing Sacred 2 until the very end.
Luckily, a lot of the developers were snapped up by Gaming Minds Studios, from where they continued their work on their Port Royale games and recently helped make Railway Empire 2.
The rights to Sacred, however, went to Deep Silver, and they went on to make Sacred 3, which felt a bit more like sacrilege.
Empire Interactive, perhaps best known for FlatOut, had writing on the wall for a few years after being acquired by Silverstar Holdings, having 30% of its staff cut in July 2008 and wanting to sell Razorworks (the entity that worked on their bonkers vehicle game.
By 2009, the empire had fallen. Some of the staff were dispersed to other UK-based studios such as Creative Assembly and Rocksteady.
As for FlatOut, its third instalment would be released by Team6 in 2011, but the only chaos and destruction that it had was how flat-out bad it was.
Ensemble Studios ended up recouping most of its workforce to form Robot Entertainment, from where they continued to support Halo Wars and Age of Empires III.
They were also in the process of making the Halo MMO, Titan, before it got canned (before we got sorta the same thing six years later in Destiny). At least we got Age of Mythology: Retold in 2024.
Interplay Entertainment also had the squeeze on them in 2008, ending the year without a dollar to their name.
If they failed to release a Fallout MMO by 2011, the rights would be acquired by Bethesda (and given that we saw the nuclear wasteland that was Fallout 76, you can tell what happened).
Guess the game was rigged from the start.
And finally, 3D Realms. In their never-ending quest to get Duke Nukem Forever out of development hell, they ended up dooming themselves to the underworld instead.
Gearbox would finally get it over the line in 2011 (was it even worth the trouble?), while 3D Realms had to do a double take when Take Two (the publishing rights holders) filed a breach of contract suit against them for not delivering Duke on time.
3D Realms has, in time, made its comeback from the dead and is currently with Saber Interactive.
Hail to the king, baby.
Bonus: The Caption Of The Month
Let’s at least end our weekly replay with a lighter note.
In the old mags, there was a competition for a “caption of the month”.
NAG would post a screengrab from a game and allow the readers to tickle their funny bone into giving one lucky winner a game.
The last month’s winner in this magazine was genuinely so funny that I laughed out loud and woke up my wife. [Ed’s Note: Don’t think I missed you casually dropping that you have a WIFE now.]
I am now on the couch.
Thanks, Nikki.
