This past weekend felt like a bit of a fever dream. Cody and Ollie AKA RandomSalesDad went down to the Velodrome (yes, that Velodrome! I think I just triggered some oldheads’ muscle memories) to check out the latest eSports event, the Redbull Locked In event. The only blemish on the otherwise perfect occasion was the game being played. Apex Legends. Sigh. How did we allow arena shooters and RTS to fall by the wayside?
Considering this, I cracked open the September 2010 NAG mag. Galen Marek might adorn the cover of this issue to reprise his revived role in The Force Unleashed II (I’ll never forgive Disney for canning this franchise either!), but the StarCraft 2 feature was all the rage this month, baby. Just being able to revisit more classic (read: better) competitive games brought a tear to me dry ducts. Let’s see what else is in store!
(Mc)Gee Whiz
Excuse the American slang here, but I figured it might make the American that I’m talking about more at home. The American called American. Americanception.
American McGee is well known for his brilliantly warped and violent retelling of Alice in Wonderland’s story. After ten years of waiting, a sequel was finally in the works where Alice would return “home” to face evil once more.
Madness Returns would perform admirably, but not as well as its predecessor. Years later, Alice: Asylum would be pitched as the third game in the series, but was ultimately rejected by EA. As a result, American left game development behind, and settled for a quiet life.
Who knows? Maybe one day he will return to the rabbit hole. We are all a little mad down here.
Everyone Likes Double D’s
And when Tekken and Street Fighter announced a collaboration, it made everyone sit up (and something else upright).
One game would take SF’s roster to 3D, while the other would squash all of Tekken’s in one less dimension. While Street Fighter x Tekken did end up releasing to mixed reviews, a Tekkenified Ryu has yet to be seen.
Trickles of information would drip-feed thirsty fans over the years, but even that has dried up, with Harada himself also having left Namco Bandai at the end of last year. For now, Chun-Li’s thighs remain trapped in the vertical plane.
More Spore
Will Wright has done a damn lot for EA. From the uber-popular SimCity to the revolution of evolution in Spore, his decade there had spawned masterpieces. The latter of these is still selling physical copies in the big 2026, no less.
Will would depart in 2009, and EA would announce a spiritual sequel to his latest game called Darkspore, which would also be developed by Maxis. Take the creature creator from Spore and slap it into an ARPG with four-player co-op. What do you get?
A game that was a Diablo clone with always-online DRM that had its servers shut down in 2016. Oh, EA. You always were the kid who would play with other people’s controllers with your Flings-riddled fingers.
Richard The Lyin’ Heart
The next man might give the Mad Hatter a run for his money. Richard Garriot was nothing short of a mythical legend in the 90s. He’s known as the man who coined the term MMORPG, when other developers were playing around in the MUD (not the mud your parents played in as kids). He’s also known for the Ultima and Wing Commander series. Oh, and he also had an alter persona called Lord British… And he went to space for reasons.
When he parted ways with EA in 2000, and established Destination Games, the intrigue at what he would do next was at an all-time high. Over the next seven years, he would work on a new MMO named Tabula Rasa.
Things, however, did not work out as expected for the game, with the live service ending in early 2009. NCSoft, the publisher of the game, announced that Richard had voluntarily left the company. Things would get ugly quickly. In a dramatic turn of events, Richard revealed that he was coerced into selling all his stock and that he had, in fact, been fired. He would sue NCSoft the following year and win the suit of $28 million.
The latest update of Lord British is that his excellency wished to claim more coin from the peasants with an MMO that incorporates NFTs. No updates have been made since 2023. Sometimes, silence says more than words can.
Bonus:
The treat for this week is this multi-pager, multi-person Starcraft II review. Damn, do I miss these in the physical NAG mags. Maybe we can do one of these when/if GTA 6 drops. What do you say, Len? 😉
