The Other BattleSphere
var...@best.com
STRANGEST chapters of the BattleSphere saga. I'm not sure
I'll ever know exactly what was what, but one fine day
I stumbled across >The Other BattleSphere<. No, not the
never released space combat game from Virtuality, but an
entire parallel effort by a company called Viridis to make a
networking space battle game for the PC called BattleSphere.
The funniest thing is that these guys were mere blocks
from my apartment in West LA (possibly pointing antennae at us?).
So how'd I find out about this? Simple, do a DNS search
on battlesphere.com and look at who owns it. I was just about
to register this domain in late 1996 when BLAM. Then, when I
found their web site at www.viridis.com, the game description,
the graphics and title screen, and the concept were almost dead-on
to what we were self-promoting back at SCES 1994. This was creepy,
this was eerie, and it was the crowning insult to our inability
to find funding for a PC edition.
Needless to say, we weren't amused. Upon perusing the
web site further, they had a second game in development called
_Killing Spree_ which sounded an awful lot like a game design
called "Goin' Postal" that I described as joke in an interview
with _Intelligent Gamer Fusion_ magazine back in early 1996.
Now I have nothing against someone making that game. Sheesh,
"Postal" was a big hit and Jer Horwitz and I used to talk a lot
about the game "Cat Fight" on IRC in early 1994, and we were
both amused when someone actually went and made the thing, but
this was just too odd, BattleSphere was our baby, and I was ready
to go postal myself.
And like I said, at a time when no one will fund any of us in
4Play for even a measly 100K project, the implication that the suits
will even fund one of our own games if only we have nothing to do with
its development was enough to make me believe in crashed saucers
in New Mexico, government mind control experiments gone mad, and the
therapeutic use of shark cartilage. This industry sucks and
I need more aluminum foil!
So where was I? Well, Tom Harker called these guys up pronto,
got run around a bit by their lawyer, and then suddenly the game was
called _Sphere Warriors_ (but set in the BATTLESPHERE, GOSH!), but of
course if one still had the links to the original directories, all the
original material was there, bitmaps, screenshots, textures, purple
prose HTML, and all. I saved all this in case it ever became relevant.
It didn't.
Because what do you know, the company appears to be no more.
Gee, wonder what happened? Did some pack of overzealous
overfunded developers run out of money again? Am I gloating?
Yep. We may be but a videogame footnote, but we finished
what we started and our reviews kick ass.
So, I'd really love to know the inside story about these guys.
Were they really stealing 4Play game concepts when they could
have just hired us or was it all just some cosmic coincidence?
They never seemed to release a single title, yet they _had_ (heh heh)
such a wonderfully elaborate web site with ambitious plans to show
off their game lineup at E3 '97. My personal suspicion is
that either they figured they could take the BattleSphere name
and run with it since we had seemingly dropped off the face
of the earth along with Atari in early 1996 or they were
related in some way to some of our 1996 BattleSphere pitches,
but who knows for sure? This industry sucks and I'll settle
for some saran wrap if you're all out of foil.
So there you go. I've just spilled the beans on the most
surreal event in the evolution of the 'Sphere. Don't
believe me? Go do an altavista search crossing viridis
with battlesphere. Enjoy. The world is a strange place
and the industry still sucks, but maybe we'll get our
hands on the battlesphere domain some day.
Scott
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Sean Connery
>Well, it looks like I can finally comment on one of the
>STRANGEST chapters of the BattleSphere saga. I'm not sure
Interesting story, no doubt.
>So where was I? Well, Tom Harker called these guys up pronto,
>got run around a bit by their lawyer, and then suddenly the game was
>called _Sphere Warriors_ (but set in the BATTLESPHERE, GOSH!), but of
>course if one still had the links to the original directories, all the
>original material was there, bitmaps, screenshots, textures, purple
>prose HTML, and all. I saved all this in case it ever became relevant.
How timeless. The words "Tom Harker", "got run around" and "lawyer" are
all still words I could compose in a sentence for you today. Since it
seems Tom has seen his share of "the shaft" I find it utterly shameful
that he has no problem in shafting the 14 registered unsatisfied and irate
ICD customers at www.eta.org/catbox. If you could perhaps shed some light
on THIS little mystery, the Atari faithful would be appreciative.
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