The rumor looks plausible, and if true it would be so incredibly awesome... X-Com is an amazing game, and Irrational is one of the best developers there is.
Quote:Irrational Games Developing X-COM Title? [02:23 pm]
112 Comments - Chris Remo
Irrational Games, developer of System Shock 2 as well as the upcoming BioShock (X360, PC), may be working on a successor to Microprose's PC tactical sci-fi classic X-COM: UFO Defense. Evidence suggesting the new game's existence comes by way of a resume found on the official website of law firm Fierst, Pucci & Kane, LLP. It was listed in the CV of firm partner Frederick U. Fierst, which states that among Fierst's clients are "Ken Levine and Jonathan Chey, founders of Irrational Games LLC." The current version of the document has had the pertinent reference removed, but a cached version of the document lists the following games as being credited to the Boston, Massachusetts- and Canberra, Australia-based developer (emphasis added):
System Shock 2, Tribes 3, SWAT, X-Com, BioShock, Freedom Force
Fierst, Pucci & Kane is no stranger to the video games industry, with clients including Shiny founder Dave Perry, The Behemoth, High Voltage Software, The Tetris Company, Paradox Interactive, and everybody's favorite copyright protection service, StarForce.
X-COM has spawned several sequels since the original game's release in late 1993, though the franchise has not seen a new entry since 2001's action spinoff X-COM: Enforcer. Studio head Ken Levine is known to be a diehard fan of X-COM. He has referred to the game as "sort of like my first love," and frequently mentions it as an example of strong design that stands the test of time. He has cited X-COM as the single greatest influence on Irrational's Freedom Force series as well as a more minor influence on the upcoming BioShock. Developer MicroProse was acquired in 1998 by Hasbro, and the development studio was closed soon after; in 2001, Atari (then Infogrames) acquired Hasbro. Coincidentally, original Microprose co-founder Sid Meier now heads up design at Firaxis Games, which is owned by Irrational Games parent 2K Games (in turn a label of Take-Two Interactive).
Levine declined to comment on Irrational's potential developments when contacted by Shacknews. At the moment this can be taken only as a rumor. Further inquiries have been send to 2K Games and Irrational Games.
Update: Shacker baron calamity points out that Take-Two Interactive acquired the X-Com property in full from Atari in 2005, just a few months before Irrational Games was acquired by the publisher.
Alright, that's it, I'm not shopping there any more. First they pester me, then they sell me opened games as "new" (which is great, except they readily admit this is to lower sell-back price as they won't take opened games as new, but they will SELL them as new? Hypocracy!), then there's the uppity "ya should have preordered" attitude if they are sold out of some game (which usually I find at Wal-Mart or Best Buy anyway). About the only reason I still go there is it is close. No longer, I'll go the extra mile!
It would seem that Nintendo of America is at least "open" to the possibility of releasing those Japan only games in our VC selection, if they can get them translated. I'd be happy muddling through a Japanese game and a .txt translation on my laptop :D. That would, potentially, get us every Fire Emblem game save for the first GBA one.
What did I do to get the sidebars on Windows Explorer deleted (the sidebar where it shows filesize, date, image preview, etc)... and the 'Open With' option on Windows Explorer rightclick menus is gone too... bah... :(
Kirby's Adventure and Ice Climber too... a lot better than most of the NES stuff they've released, that's for sure... (well, Mario, Zelda, and a few others are good, but Tennis? Ice Hockey? Etc? Ah...)
Hey... I've had a GBA for years and years now. I'm not quite ready to move onto the newer generation of Game Boys yet. Anyway, my GBA has basically only been used with one game: Yoshi's Island... for years and years, it got me through trips to Florida, Georgia, and more recently, Europe.
However, I am interested in getting a SECOND game to share the burden, that Yoshi may get some R & R.
What is a really good game on GBA that I could get? I'm accepting all recommendations, but I am looking for something thats probably a port of an older game; maybe a great, classic RPG, or a platformer game... maybe a Mario or a Zelda or a FF or something...
And with this game, I get the impression the GBA has been pushed a bit too far. This probably should have been released on the DS instead.
Yes, I actually got it. Well, it is still my favorite in the series. Unfortunatly, the port job wasn't exactly the best. First of all, graphically it is nearly identical to the original. No additional graphics in the least, as I predicted as the updated graphics in IV and V were about the same quality as FF6 originally was (even with the tiling taken into mind, as it's done VERY well). Unfortunatly, they couldn't even keep up the old graphical quality, so improving it was out of the question. The sound is sometimes different, not better, and in some cases worse in fact (various sound effects are reduced from sounding pretty much exactly as they should (train sounds) to some unintelligable "BZZT" sound effect. The special effects are a little off too. Aside from slowdown, the worst yet in these GBA ports (FFIV had some, but I barely noticed it, and FFV, as far as I can tell, doesn't really have any), there's also poorly executed ones. The "Banisher" effect no longer takes pieces of the enemy away in it's beams of light, the enemy just vanishes and the beams of light just go up empty handed. Oh, riding chocobos and the airships is pathetically slow.
Further, the extras lack some of the extras included in the PS version of the game, like the colloseum, but the beastiary does work better, basically slowly unlocked as they are encountered like in the others.
I haven't beaten it yet, so I can't say anything of the other extras. I expect the dungeon to be interesting at least.
What I can say is the translation has been redone. Now, the original SNES version got it almost spot on, so there's not much to change, but they did alter enough to give it a somewhat different feel. For the better, I think. They did, oddly enough, keep a lot of it like the original translation. Character names, I understand, but they also sort of kept other things I'd rather they translated correctly as well. All in all I think it would have been best if they had either put this on the DS or PSP.
