You might soon be able to legally get hold of System Shock!
System Shock, the 1994 classic PC science-fiction RPG/first person shooter that's beloved by all five people who got to play it, and which has been in copyright hell for years, might soon be available for purchase again! Night Dive Studios, who a couple of years ago bought the rights to distribute the brilliant PC only System Shock 2, have bought the rights for the first game, so presumably it will be on GOG and Steam very soon.
The two concerns though are;
a) Will they alter/upgrade the game before release? The original game is difficult to control, since it uses very non-standard keys. Some people got used to it and claim to love the controls, but a few years back someone hacked it and added the ability to change the controls, with the default now being the traditional WASD key setup. Plus the game was a nightmare to get running, as it was DOS only, needed stringent memory/TSR setups, and has a top resolution of onl6 640x480 (which was very high back then, but twenty-one years later lots of gamers will dismiss the game just because of the low (nowadays) resolution.
All of these concerns were fixed, in a downloadable-but-not-really-legal all-in-one-package called System Shock Portable, which was the game setup with DOSBox and lots of fan made improvements, such as bug-fixes, higher resolutions, better mouse response, etc, but now SSP has been removed from download since the game will soon be available to buy. But will the game feature such fixes as standard (we don't even know if Night Drive Studios have got hold of the game's source code), and if not, then presumably it will still be compatible with the fan-made fixes.
b) There's a very promising remake of System Shock being made, at:
http://www.moddb.com/games/citadel
and I really, really hope Night Drive Studios don't send the author of the remake a cease and desist letter.
The two concerns though are;
a) Will they alter/upgrade the game before release? The original game is difficult to control, since it uses very non-standard keys. Some people got used to it and claim to love the controls, but a few years back someone hacked it and added the ability to change the controls, with the default now being the traditional WASD key setup. Plus the game was a nightmare to get running, as it was DOS only, needed stringent memory/TSR setups, and has a top resolution of onl6 640x480 (which was very high back then, but twenty-one years later lots of gamers will dismiss the game just because of the low (nowadays) resolution.
All of these concerns were fixed, in a downloadable-but-not-really-legal all-in-one-package called System Shock Portable, which was the game setup with DOSBox and lots of fan made improvements, such as bug-fixes, higher resolutions, better mouse response, etc, but now SSP has been removed from download since the game will soon be available to buy. But will the game feature such fixes as standard (we don't even know if Night Drive Studios have got hold of the game's source code), and if not, then presumably it will still be compatible with the fan-made fixes.
b) There's a very promising remake of System Shock being made, at:
http://www.moddb.com/games/citadel
and I really, really hope Night Drive Studios don't send the author of the remake a cease and desist letter.
Comments
Maybe that was system shock 2, or maybe I'm mixing it up with something else. Pretty sure I got this from Home of the Underdogs back in about 2004?
I'd have dismissed this story as a big whoop dee doo type thing (like with you and your Perfect Dark :P), but I quite enjoyed Strife, which is kind of a similar type thing (By which I mean sci-Fi type RPG in FPS type mode from bloody years ago).
and i am very pleased :)
Yes, it was available illegally for years, but this is great because now we can legally own it. Plus there is a slight (very slight) chance that if it sells well then it will make it more likely that we'll get a System Shock 3, though even if it did come out it would probably be so dumbed down that even Dizzy fans could play it fairly well! Well, until they get the joypad stuck up their noses or someting... :-j
i didnt know people who played the Dizzy ganes were that bad tbh Oo
He probably gave up after then...
...It's not his fault he's crap ;)
I believe you :p