While the Game Developers Conference isn’t known for being as big an expose of new titles like E3 and the Tokyo Game Show it usually has a few newsworthy notes. With one of the highlights yesterday being the announcement of Gears of War 2 it seems that an announcement from EA was swept under the rug. In an unusual move on EA’s part the publishing firm has announced they are collaborating with Starbreeze Studios, developers of the excellent game The Darkness as well as The Chronicles of Riddick, on a new project. While details are lacking EA did say that the project is a revival of a classic EA developed franchise with a project codename of “RedLime.” The title has been in development for some time and will be released on the PS3, Xbox 360 and PC.
As a fan of many Electronic Arts games back in the day I suddenly get a nostalgia trip at this. I’ll have some personal considerations of what the title could be after the jump.
The first franchise that comes to mind is the Strike series. An isometric 3D game, players would fly around in a helicopter or a variety of other vehicles pretty much blowing up every enemy in sight. Containing five games total, this series has a special place in my heart. In 2005 EA, collaborating with Pandemic Studios, attempted to do a remake of the classic series but the eventual game that arrived did not bear the Strike moniqer. Instead the game that was developed evolved into the excellent Mercenaries Playground of Destruction. While EA could work on this title the odds are slim that it would happen.
Another series that died out some time ago was the Janes Combat Simulations series. A series of combat flight simulators, the JCS series came about when EA bought the rights to the Jane’s Information Group to develop realistic and very authentic feeling combat games. Spanning twelve individual titles with and several expansions, the entire series ran from 1996 to 2000 and has not been seen since. While a dominant combat flight simulator has not been seen since then on the PC a return to form for Electronic Arts would certainly ensure control of the genre its survivability as a console game would almost certainly not be possible.
The franchise most likely being remade in my book however is Road Rash, the popular street motorcycle racing series that arrived in the Genesis Master System back in 1991. The series spanned six games over a dozen systems and has seen several ports, including the 2004 port of Road Rash: Jailbreak to the Gameboy Advance and the compilation of the first three games in the series in EA Replay on the PSP. There has yet to be a remake of the series in either this or the previous generation of consoles and the fan support for the series has been quite strong. In a recent interview with Criterion’s Craig Sullivan, lead developer of Burnout Paradise, Sullivan said that many members of his team are big fans of the series and that a track in Paradise was an omage to the original Road Rash. Whether this means anything in the grand scheme is very debatable but what’s for certain that the technology is available, the time is right, the fans are ready, and a compitent developer like Starbreeze could really pull it off.
Anyway, these are my musings. What are yours?
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