Post by Sapharite on Jan 21, 2005 6:21:49 GMT -5
This is a post posted by toasty0. It contains short history of trek Gaming:
Thanks Tarcey for your post on the history of SFC. I have taken the liberty of editing for form only to make it a bit more easy on the eye and to (in my mind) place emphasis where it is due.
The following is a copy of an original post by Tracey.
From memory, Interplay held the TOS licence and Microprose held the TNG license as far back as 1994.Microprose published many games, the most noteable of which was Birth of the Federation, and several others adventure games (including the Doom-style Klingon Honour Guard) based on film releases, but these games never really lived up to the name of Trek.
Interplay too had released a plethora of Star Trek games, the first of which (and most successful) was Star Trek:25th Anniversary (1994), and adventure game, and its sequel, Judgement Rites (they look very archaic now but have a unique place in Trek gaming since the original actors, William Shatner, Leonard Nimoy and DeForrest Kelly did the voice overs) But, even before this, Amarillo Design Bureau had given permission to another programming company, Quicksilver to start creating a computer game based on SFB.
I think this actually hapenned as far back as 1990, around the time that Amarillo Design Bereau were only just hanging onto their identity having been put out of business(Stephen V. Cole and several others footed the entire bill out of their own pockets to get ADB out of debt and back up and running) Quicksilver wrote SFC1 And the SFC game engine, Interplay published it along with another programming group called 14 degrees East.
Some of these programmers then moved on to join a newly formed company to continue development of the SFC series of games. That company was Taldren. Taldren retained much of the Quicksilver code, in particular, the graphics engine, but extensively rewrote and revamped the game code, expanding upon it. Empires at War was thus born, again under the auspice of Interplay who still controlled the licensing.
In the meantime, the TNG license had been lost by Microprose and had been passsed onto Activision, who began creating games such as Armada.
Interplay finally had a winner with SFC1 and sold millions of copies, unlike the much awaited for Starfleet Academy which failed miserably, although its follow up, Klingon Academy was more popular. About the only good thing about Starfleet Academy was the five or so minutes of opening video that included some nice renders of the Enterprise in spacedock, and footage by William Shatner and George Takei. Taldren then began work on an expansion pack for Empires at War, Orion Pirates. Interplay decided to market the expansion as a standalone package and thus Orion Pirates became a seperate game.
This proved to be a bad decision and to the best of my knowledge, not what Taldren had in mind, nevertheless, the publisher is the final arbiter on the product. As a result, sales for Orion Pirates were far less than Empires at War, which was less than SFC1. Taldren began work on the next chapter in the series, continuing to add SFB races as they did with SFC2 and SFC3 was to include Andromedans (and perhaps Tholians as well). The artwork and original design were all but finished for SFC3, when disaster strikes, and Interplay lose the license to TOS gaming. It is passed onto Activision, who then held the licensing for all Star Trek gaming, for a tidy sum paid to Paramount. Activision then directed Taldren to change the SFC series into a TNG game, losing its SFB roots in an attempt to follow their existing TNG franchise of games.
Activision had had reasonable success with Armada and Armada II, however, these games were all Command and Conquer clones and lived on the Trek name. Voyager:Elite Force, again another clone of Doom, proved also to be reasonably successful, although the follow up was a flop. Activision were also reknown for releasing a game, then within 3 months, discontinuing all support for the game and running with the money.
Yet another clone, this time of Civilisation, was Call To Power. A reasonable game, its follow up, Call To Power II added very little to the game and infact removed many features from the first version. Both these games were created inhouse. When fans of the games asked of Activision following its discontinuence of support if they could have the source code to continue modding the game, the CEO of Activision replied stating that the original programmers had left the company, and that the source code was no longer in their possession.
Both these games only ever received one patch, as per Activision policy, and were shoved out the door packed full of bugs to geberate quick revenue. Sadly, SFC3 was no exception to this turnstyle philosophy of computer game production, SFC3 was released with many bugs and fell far short of expectations for those who played the previous 3 incarnations.
Activision enforced its one patch policy and Taldren was prevented from releasing further official patches and in fact ordered to withdraw an early beta patch by Activision. In the meantime, Activision had been losing money and cried foul to Paramount blaming them for their decline in revenue. The court case on this is still pending, keeping the Star Trek gaming license locked up awaiting on the outcome. The loss of revenue over SFC3 not only took its toll on Activision, but also Taldren as well, and here we are today.
The following is a copy of an original post by Tracey.
From memory, Interplay held the TOS licence and Microprose held the TNG license as far back as 1994.Microprose published many games, the most noteable of which was Birth of the Federation, and several others adventure games (including the Doom-style Klingon Honour Guard) based on film releases, but these games never really lived up to the name of Trek.
Interplay too had released a plethora of Star Trek games, the first of which (and most successful) was Star Trek:25th Anniversary (1994), and adventure game, and its sequel, Judgement Rites (they look very archaic now but have a unique place in Trek gaming since the original actors, William Shatner, Leonard Nimoy and DeForrest Kelly did the voice overs) But, even before this, Amarillo Design Bureau had given permission to another programming company, Quicksilver to start creating a computer game based on SFB.
I think this actually hapenned as far back as 1990, around the time that Amarillo Design Bereau were only just hanging onto their identity having been put out of business(Stephen V. Cole and several others footed the entire bill out of their own pockets to get ADB out of debt and back up and running) Quicksilver wrote SFC1 And the SFC game engine, Interplay published it along with another programming group called 14 degrees East.
Some of these programmers then moved on to join a newly formed company to continue development of the SFC series of games. That company was Taldren. Taldren retained much of the Quicksilver code, in particular, the graphics engine, but extensively rewrote and revamped the game code, expanding upon it. Empires at War was thus born, again under the auspice of Interplay who still controlled the licensing.
In the meantime, the TNG license had been lost by Microprose and had been passsed onto Activision, who began creating games such as Armada.
Interplay finally had a winner with SFC1 and sold millions of copies, unlike the much awaited for Starfleet Academy which failed miserably, although its follow up, Klingon Academy was more popular. About the only good thing about Starfleet Academy was the five or so minutes of opening video that included some nice renders of the Enterprise in spacedock, and footage by William Shatner and George Takei. Taldren then began work on an expansion pack for Empires at War, Orion Pirates. Interplay decided to market the expansion as a standalone package and thus Orion Pirates became a seperate game.
This proved to be a bad decision and to the best of my knowledge, not what Taldren had in mind, nevertheless, the publisher is the final arbiter on the product. As a result, sales for Orion Pirates were far less than Empires at War, which was less than SFC1. Taldren began work on the next chapter in the series, continuing to add SFB races as they did with SFC2 and SFC3 was to include Andromedans (and perhaps Tholians as well). The artwork and original design were all but finished for SFC3, when disaster strikes, and Interplay lose the license to TOS gaming. It is passed onto Activision, who then held the licensing for all Star Trek gaming, for a tidy sum paid to Paramount. Activision then directed Taldren to change the SFC series into a TNG game, losing its SFB roots in an attempt to follow their existing TNG franchise of games.
Activision had had reasonable success with Armada and Armada II, however, these games were all Command and Conquer clones and lived on the Trek name. Voyager:Elite Force, again another clone of Doom, proved also to be reasonably successful, although the follow up was a flop. Activision were also reknown for releasing a game, then within 3 months, discontinuing all support for the game and running with the money.
Yet another clone, this time of Civilisation, was Call To Power. A reasonable game, its follow up, Call To Power II added very little to the game and infact removed many features from the first version. Both these games were created inhouse. When fans of the games asked of Activision following its discontinuence of support if they could have the source code to continue modding the game, the CEO of Activision replied stating that the original programmers had left the company, and that the source code was no longer in their possession.
Both these games only ever received one patch, as per Activision policy, and were shoved out the door packed full of bugs to geberate quick revenue. Sadly, SFC3 was no exception to this turnstyle philosophy of computer game production, SFC3 was released with many bugs and fell far short of expectations for those who played the previous 3 incarnations.
Activision enforced its one patch policy and Taldren was prevented from releasing further official patches and in fact ordered to withdraw an early beta patch by Activision. In the meantime, Activision had been losing money and cried foul to Paramount blaming them for their decline in revenue. The court case on this is still pending, keeping the Star Trek gaming license locked up awaiting on the outcome. The loss of revenue over SFC3 not only took its toll on Activision, but also Taldren as well, and here we are today.
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