Earth and Beyond playable again!

[Harrison]

I don't think anyone else here actually played the great Westwood game Earth and Beyond before EA bought them out and then shut down the game. As some of you know I was a big fan of this MMO style space game and was very sad when it got closed down.

Now a group of people are hard at work to create an E&B emulator so that the game will be playable again. It will work like a local server running on your own PC so that you can experience and play the game locally.

It is not yet known if it will also be possible to set this up for network or internet play, but if they do manage it that would be really great to experience and play this game again against other real players. There are a lot of people still into the game and hoping this will become reality so the hope is also there that a large proportion of the original community would come back and populate a live server.

If you want to take a look at the E&B server information go to http://forum.enb-emulator.com/

They have some nice screenshots in their gallery showing the game as it was when still active, and also some screenshots of the emulator running the game.

[Demon Cleaner]

Cool. They have indeed some quality screenshots there. I'm no online player though, but I love space sims (still have Starlancer installed), and I gotta tell it to Oz, who is an affected EVE Online player.

[AlexJ]

I've always thought, if EA turned off the servers to save money they could just let other independent servers operate. The fact they don't means it's just to get people to buy their new titles by breaking their old ones. Now this I can understand with games like the FIFA series etc. with very little to distinguish between releases but for unique games it's ridiculous. It backfired for them in my case - rather than purchasing the newest version, I now try to avoid purchasing EA games wherever possible.

I hope projects like this one succeed, and spoil EA's ridiculous plan. Maybe then they'll go back to making better games to encourage people to buy them, rather than breaking the old ones.

[Harrison]

EA have been like this since the start of internet gaming, as far as I can tell. It is a real shame because in the 16-bit era that produced some great Amiga games. I agree with you that logically if a newer game in a franchise such as FIFA has been released then the online play should move to focusing on the newest game in the series. But they equally don't seem to care at all of their existing userbase, instead all they are interested in is attracting sales from their current games and disgarding the older ones.

I think if Westwood had been able to remain on their own we might have seen many different outcomes. E&B might even have a sequel by now, and the C&C series might be far removed from what we have now.

It is easy to see why EA have become so disliked by more seasoned gamers. The rest are just brainwashed by the dolls house series, The Sims. It still escapes me what is so facinating about that franchise. I played the original for probably 30 minutes before I got completely bored. I then used the cheat to by everything available in the game, built the biggest house I could with everything in it, and the game was still boring even with the Sims able to interact with everything possible. Never touched it since and have never been tempted. I suppose it is what teenage girls play, after all, it's the new substitute for the traditional dolls house.

I think I finally had enough of EA last year when they announced they would slowly be shutting the servers down for all their older games. But then looking at the list of games affected they included titles only released a year ago. A company that doesn't even support it's games a year from launch has something seriously wrong with it.

[AlexJ]

EA have been like this since the start of internet gaming, as far as I can tell. It is a real shame because in the 16-bit era that produced some great Amiga games. I agree with you that logically if a newer game in a franchise such as FIFA has been released then the online play should move to focusing on the newest game in the series. But they equally don't seem to care at all of their existing userbase, instead all they are interested in is attracting sales from their current games and disgarding the older ones.

I suppose the change started in 1991, when their founder Trip Hawkins, left the company. They continued to maintain their standards for a little while but they gradually decreased, as the EA Sports franchise took off in the late 90's, The Sims was released killing off the rest of Maxis' output and they milked the series of the companies they purchased destroying their innovation. What new successful games series have EA produced this side of the Millennium? Battlefield (which is actually developed by Digital Illusions of Pinball Dreams/Fantasies fame) that's all I can think of really. The rest of it is just new version of old series.

[Harrison]

Medal of Honor is quite a successful series of theirs, and I actually enjoyed a couple of the titles in that series a lot. Burnout and need for speed are another two that have sold well. But all are continuing franchise too.

It is such a shame Maxis have no output other than the dire The Sims. They used to produce some great titles. I didn't even like Sim City 4 as much as previous versions.

[AlexJ]

Medal of Honor is quite a successful series of theirs, and I actually enjoyed a couple of the titles in that series a lot. Burnout and need for speed are another two that have sold well. But all are continuing franchise too.

Yep, but NfS was first out in the mid 90's and the original MoH was 1999. I'll give you Burnout, but the first two in the series were published by Akklaim (sp?) not EA.

It is such a shame Maxis have no output other than the dire The Sims. They used to produce some great titles. I didn't even like Sim City 4 as much as previous versions.

True, but if The Sims continues to sell, then I don't see why EA will stop making it.

[Harrison]

Granted. NFS first appeared in the 3DO console in the early 90's and was later ported to the PSX.

Although their logo looked like it was Akklaim, the company was actually Acclaim Entertainment. I know they went bust, but were they bought out by EA? or did EA just buy up some of the more popular franchise from the ashes?

[Harrison]

I just found this Wiki about Acclaim and it only mentions the first Burnout in the list of games. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Acclaim_Entertainment

Quite an interesting read about the companies history.

[AlexJ]

I just found this Wiki about Acclaim and it only mentions the first Burnout in the list of games. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Acclaim_Entertainment

Quite an interesting read about the companies history.

I think the list is of the most popular Acclaim games as opposed to a complete definitive list. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Burnout_2:_Point_of_Impact says it was by Acclaim, and the boxart has the A<<laim logo on it.

From the looks of it, Acclaim were merely the publisher and the developer Criterion Games held the rights to the name, so EA just bought them in 2004.