crimson-skies posts

In 1999 Microsoft bought FASA Interactive and incorporated the game company resposible for MechWarrior, Crimson Skies and other games into their Redmond, Washington campus. Now, in a new chat with Gamesindustry.biz, FASA's creator Jordan Wiseman says that move was the beginning of the end, saying, "I don't think the studio ever really had a chance. It was destroyed right in the beginning."

The studio created a number of games for Microsoft including new Mechwarrior games, the Crimson Skies PC and Xbox games and finally the Shadowrun FPS game before shutting the studio down in 2007. Wiseman says that the move cause the team to be absorbed into Microsoft's culture. Wiseman recently announced plans to revamp the Mechwarrior franchise but adds, "we're operating under some pretty tight restrictions of the licence that make publishing the games kind of challenging.."

Last month the PC game community got a big surprise when it was revealed that a new Mechwarrior game is in the works. The game rights to the property are currently owned by Smith and Tinker who also own the game rights to other former FASA Interactive games. In a new chat with GameSpot, FASA and Smith and Tinker founder Jordon Wiseman hints that another FASA property, Crimson Skies, could get its own game revival

Crimson Skies imagines an alternate 1930's where flying planes, rather than driving cars, is the main mode of personal transportation. A PC game from Microsoft was released in 2000 and an Xbox title came out in 2003. Wiseman states, "I think Crimson Skies is something we'd love to get some energy around, and we have some devious plans--we'll see if those materialize."

Don't look for a revival of Shadowrun anytime soon, though. The cyberpunk-themed RPG was transformed into a multiplayer FPS by Microsoft in 2007 that failed to attract an audience. Wiseman states, "Shadowrun was recently...not treated well...shall we say, so the thought was let a little time pass before approaching that one again." In the meantime Smith and Tinker just launched their first original PC game, a Pokemon-like online collectible card themed game called Nanovor.

For a look at the origin and story of the Crimson Skies games you may want to check out a feature that 1UP is running. They've recently been covering Dark Void, from developer Airtight Games, who happen to be made up of many original team members who worked on Crimson Skies: High Road to Revenge. However, 1UP recently decided to take a step back and look at the history of both Airtight Games and Crimson Skies. One bit of cool knowledge from the article is that even before Crimson Skies on the PC there was apparently a BattleTech-style arcade game named Corsairs that never came to be.

Airtight is quick to point out that while there are many similarities to Crimson Skies they don't see it as a spiritual successor to those games. We can only hope for a day when pirate-piloted planes burning across the sky return to the front of our collective minds, but until then at least we have Dark Void to look foward to playing.