A 24-year-old Sega Genesis game by DICE — yes, that DICE — that was canceled on the doorstep of being published will see the light of day in 2019. “Hardcore,” (its working title) is even being developed on an original Genesis SDK.
Hardcore will launch for PlayStation 4 and PS Vita next, with a physical and online marketplace release. It’s being developed (or, perhaps, finished) by Strictly Limited Games of Germany, which counts DICE co-founder Fredrik Liljegren and other veterans of the studio among its nine-person staff.
“Hardcore is being developed using original Sega Mega Drive development hardware,” the studio says on the game’s official page. “It will then be ported to run on modern platforms.”
Hardcore was also the title of the game DICE was making for Commodore Amiga, Sega Genesis and Sega Mega-CD in 1994. It was, according to its makers, “about 99 percent finished” to the point that previews were beginning to show up in gaming magazines of the time.
“The expectations were high and all the signs were pointing to another hit,” they write. But publisher Psygnosis pulled out at the last minute, de-emphasizing the Genesis as the runner-up in the 8-bit console war and shifting its attention the new PlayStation, and the leap in performance and graphics gained with CD-based gaming.
Motherboard noted that DICE founders Andreas Axelsson and Olof Gustafsson had told the story of Hardcore in 2010 at Datastorm (the Commodore enthusiast expo in Sweden), even showing off a running version of the game. Sony ended up owning the Psygnosis back catalog, which is probably why it’s coming out on these two platforms.
From the trailer above, Hardcore appears to be a run-n-gunner (“Eurostyle 2D shooter” is how the trailer puts it) with lots of powerups and fast-twitch reflex action. It’s very much evocative of the kind of console games in that day that commanded a lot of attention and gameplay time.
“With input from the original developers, we [will] try to add the missing tank levels back into the game,” Strictly Limited Games said. “Everything is being handled with care, to guarantee gamers get the best possible version of this masterpiece.”
Source: Polygon – Full
GameUP24 