I was going to start on F-15 a couple of days back but the Windows 98 PC which I’d only had working for a few days has already conked out. It still works to some extent but there is something wrong with the cmos. If I clear the bios settings it boots with defaults (which are too fast so it crashes shortly afterwards). If I update the settings then it locks as soon as the machine tries to boot again until the bios is cleared. The motherboard was ropey in the first place which was why the PC was shelved several years back, so I’ve given in on it and bought a salvaged Pentium 4 off Ebay, basically for the price of postage. That’s arrived but it still needs everything setting up.
In the meanwhile, I thought I’d put this post up to see if anyone knows anything about the game Noctropolis. I noticed in the playtesters bio’s in my last post that a couple of the testers had moved onto Noctopolis after Wing Commander Armada. I’d not heard of this game and figured it was possibly a project that got cancelled. So I looked it up and it turns out to be be a comic book adventure game which was developed by another studio and published by EA in 1994. I would assume that the testers were simply shifted around within EA but it turns out that the clue book for the game was also published by Origin.
This makes me wonder just what Origin’s connection to Noctropolis was. Have I found another game I ought to be playing in this blog? Even if it doesn’t make it into the blog, I’m always up for a new adventure game so I’ve ordered copies of both the clue book and the game but it will probably be 2 weeks before I get my hands on either of them.
If anyone can shed any light on Origin’s involvement, I’d like to hear from you. From looking at the credits on Mobygames, it appears that Origin staff just headed up the QA on the game although that doesn’t entirely explain why they ended up publishing the cluebook.
Can’t really help you with Noctropolis. Did EA proper still have a print publishing division in ’94 (I know they did a few years earlier, they did several clue books for their own games)? If they didn’t, but they wanted to keep it in-house, maybe Origin was the only option?
Regarding possible additional games for the blog, ever looked at Netstorm? Developed by Titanic Entertainment, who were made up entirely of ex-Originites. It was their only game – apparently an RTS with an emphasis on multiplayer.
You would expect Origin to have published books for loads of other games if that was the case but I’ve not come across any others. It might become clear when I get my hands on the book.
Netstorm must deserve a place on here, and it’s been ages since I played an RTS. I’m not too keen on the postage price for the only copy I can find at the moment so I’ll keep my eyes open for one at a more reasonable price.