Yes! Jagged Alliance Lives! (probably)

[A Black Falcon]

http://gamespot.com/gamespot/stories/new...42,00.html
Cool! Read the article... its not that long... :)

While this isn't as big news as Wizardry 9's resurrection (Sir-Tech Canada's other game that died with the company) would be to me, its still nice... Jagged Alliance is a pretty good turn-based strategy game series... so seeing its alive after its developer closed is great... now how about Wizardry 9? :)

Isn't it great to see serieses from dead developers still alive? Theif 3 from whatever Warren Spector's company is called now, Jagged Alliance (probably) from either Strategy First or someone else, rumors of a System Shock 3 from Irrational Games (they made System Shock 2, but the developer of the first game and series creators Looking Glass closed several years ago... Irractional recently made Freedom Force, btw.)... :)
Its not as good as still having Sir-Tech Canada or Looking Glass Studios still with us, but lacking that its as close as we will get. Nice... as long as it happens...

[EdenMaster]

OH YEAH! Jagged Alliance is one of my all-time favorite franchises, if not my number one favorite. I've been playing ever since the first came out and I love every installment more. I shall anticipate more news on JA3 with bated breath.

[Nick Burns]

You guys are just now finding this out, I've known about it for about 4-5 months already. Strategy First bought them out, and only some of the orginal developers joined, but its the big shots. Good ole' Gumpy (Chris Camfield) is heading the project. Here is my source:

http://www.ja-galaxy.com

Also: a mod for JA2 is coming out that actually looks better than the orginal ja2. Its called urban chaos and it should be out by middle of Feb. Its going to host new guns, new movies, new tiles, more vechiles, and all the orginal maps were scrapped and replaced, with more added. I can't wait till it comes out.

JOY

(sorry if I repeated stuff that was in the article, but my firewall here at school prevents me from seeing any good gaming sites.)

[A Black Falcon]

Jagged Alliance plans alive at Strategy First
Despite closing its Ottawa studio, which was made up of former members of Sirtech, the Canadian publisher still has plans for the acclaimed turn-based tactical franchise.

In December, Strategy First closed the Ottawa studio that was working on a successor to the Jagged Alliance series, a franchise which Strategy First acquired from Interplay early last year. The closure of the publisher's only external studio came about after several of its 2002 games sold fewer than expected copies. A Strategy First representative said that the closure took place amicably and that all the Ottawa employees were offered jobs in its Montreal headquarters. Five took up the offer and are moving to Montreal.

The Ottawa studio was formed primarily from members of Sirtech Canada, which created the acclaimed Wizardry 8 and Jagged Alliance 2 and was independently working on sequels to both games until the middle of 2001. Strategy First acknowledged that the Ottawa studio was in fact working on a new Jagged Alliance game, and that the publisher still holds the rights to the franchise. Strategy First has made an effort to put other publishers in contact with Sirtech, which is led by Ian Currie, in an effort to keep the team together.

Strategy First had high hopes for a strong successor to Jagged Alliance, and there are still tentative plans to keep the project alive. It hasn't been decided if the project will be developed internally or by an external studio, or if the former Sirtech team will be involved with the further development of the game. There are no plans to make an announcement on the franchise's future until concrete plans have been put in motion.

The article. It mentions Strategy First hired 5 guys from Sir-Tech.

As for JA, the games are good, but that genre (tactical strategy) is one I never liked as much as other types of strategy games... I'm not sure why. Maybe its because I haven't played those games that much (X-Com or whatever). Even so they are good games and hearing of sequels now is great... it gives me more hope that stuff like System Shock 3 (and someday maybe even Wizardry 9) will happen, among other things. Plus, if/when the game comes out its bound to be good... it better be...

[EdenMaster]

I've come to the conclusion that I enjoy micro-management games. Games where many different things must be done to complete one goal, where you must control every little thing to succeed. Jagged Alliance (hiring mercenaries, attacking sectors, money, and in JA2s case, bloodcats), Outpost 2 (food, morale, power, army management), The Sims (morale needs and enhancing skills), SimCity (self-explanatory, here), Caesar III (Planning festivals, honoring all Gods equally, food, having enough engineers, etc.), all of them are the same way, and all of them are amongst my favorite games. I guess that's just the kind of PC gamer I am.

[A Black Falcon]

SimCity (I have all 3 SimCity games) and Caesar (I have Caesar II and Zeus) are two more strategy games that I think are OK, but not great... they get boring and frusterating in not too long... fun to play for a while, but boring in the end. Not some of the better strategy games out there... I'd far rather play Civilization, Warcraft, Age of Empires, Heroes of Might and Magic, Warlords, Disciples, Medieval: Total War, Lords of the Realm, Gettysburg, or the rest of the RTS/TBS genres over those resource management-type games like SimCity, SimTower, SimEarth, Caesar/Pharoah/Zeus, etc.

As for the tactical combat ones (JA, X-Com, maybe Syndicate, and Fallout Tactics, among others), I haven't played them enough to really judge, but they seem fun enough. A little more action-oriented, but still fun. Not as good as TBS/RTSes, though, IMO.

[EdenMaster]

Oooh and how can I forget Civilization? I love Civilization, I used to play it literally all the time, I would come home from school, head to the computer, pull up Civilization (Civ I, Civ II wasn't released yet), and would play until it was almost time for bed. I loved it. Of course, I have better things to do with my time nowadays than go on multiple hour PC gaming binges like those, but hey, they was fun ties :D.

GameCube gaming binges on the other hand...that's a different story...

[A Black Falcon]

Civilization II is my favorite TBS game ever... I liked Civ 1, but 2 was a lot better, IMO... that game is still a very good game. I got it, both expansion packs, and then the gold version (for better win95 support, really... I haven't played it in multiplayer, which was the other feature of that release)...
Civ 3? Very good game... but it changed a LOT of things from Civ 1. Too many, in some ways... there are some changes that I don't like. Honestly, I still prefer Civ 2. Maybe if I played Civ 3 a lot I'd grow to prefer it, but I haven't and so I still like the second one more.
Strategy games are some of the easiest to get into that kind of thing with... them and RPGs. Many other gamesa are easier to stop, but strategy games... I'm sure you are well aquainted with "Just One More Turn" syndrome... :) (or some equilivant for realtime games).

"Just one more turn... then I'll stop..."
*several hours pass*
"I'm almost done, just another turn will be it. Really this time!"
*Much later*
"Huh? I didn't know the sun came up this... er... early..."
(well, slight exaggeration maybe, but close... :) )

[Weltall]

Civ II is the only, and I mean only PC game I play with any sort of regularity. If you ever want to hit me up for a multiplayer match sometime, I'm willing. I have the MPE Gold version as well, with the expansions.