Interplay to sell every 70 of its IPs (Earthworm Jim, Freespace, MDK, Giants, Dark Alliance, Messiah and more)

Having “entertained millions of players” with its impressive catalogue of games over the years, Interplay Entertainment has announced plans to sell off its videogame library and assets—a collection which includes 70 games.

Although relatively quiet in recent years following some significant financial turbulence and legal trouble in the early 00's, Interplay sold the Descent license to Descendant Studios—for its Descent: Underground Kickstarter project—in 2015, and shipped the Fallout license to Bethesda in 2007. The company alsofailed to crowdfund a Freespace board game last year, and promised aremastered ClayFighter this year—the latter of which is yet to surface.

The sale, however, means classics such as Earthworm Jim, Messiah, MDK, Freespace, Giants, Kingpin, Run Like Hell, Sacrifice, Battlechess, Clayfighter, and Dark Alliance are now up for grabs, not to mention the assets and characters within.

“With the proliferation of mobile, augmented reality, virtual reality and other new forms of consumption, we believe that consumers are ready to experience and interact with Interplay's characters, stories and gameplay in ways never possible before,” says Interplay’s president Eric Caen in a statement. “We look forward to seeing how this unique portfolio of interactive entertainment icons will evolve for the worldwide audience.”

Interplay's announcement can be read in full here.

http://www.pcgamer.com/interplay-to-sell-entire-videogame-library-and-assets/#article-comments

So what are your hopes? I really hope that someone willing to make new entries in Earthworm Jim, MDK and Giants will pick up these franchises and CIG should pick up Freespace. Interplay acquired it for 7500 bucks only so it shouldn't cost much for CIG. Either that or original developers... Volition.

Note: Get these games from GOG before they disappear.

Sadly the only IP I see worth buying is Earthworm Jim. But who will buy him? He does have a lot of potential to be great again. And under the right developer, he can be!

Its time for Freespace to make a comeback. We got our Wing Commander successor on the way and Decent coming. Its time for some Freespace and it will be the 90s on steriods again. If only we could get Lucasarts back now lol.

Kingpin and MDK, good memories.

Move your ass Deep Silver.

http://www.pcgamer.com/volition-would-commit-murder-to-make-freespace-3/

@Cloud_imperium: nice!

I hope Sony buys Earthworm Jim.

@Cloud_imperium: nice!

flying wild hog should buy and reboot kingpin.

@Cloud_imperium:

First CIG should ever released star citizen/SQ42. if we are lucky it would be in 2035 then will think of something like freespace.

Platinum Games should pick up Earthworm Jim. It'd be epic.

I have fond memories of Earthworm Jim & MDK.

Damn you are bitter. Exaggerate much?

Earth worm jim was one of my childhood games. Such intricate animations and I loved the level design and comedy that coincided in such a beautiful and splendid way that I wanted to explore. I want a new game under the right Developers that take after this franchise.

Same here.

Earthworm Jim could net interplay a pretty penny, it's a rather valuable I.P.

I certainly wouldn't complain about a new Freespace game.

Devolver Digital and Night Dive should get their hands on some of these games.

...and MDK. They are the perfect developer to bring that back.

Nordic THQ should buy these IPs and Strengthen their brand.

@Planeforger: hell no, I don't want them to ruin earthworm Jim.

While very much enjoy Flying Wild Hog games part of what made Kingpin interesting and very much one of a kind was the semi-sandbox environment with interactivity without delving into rpg elements - which they or pretty much any modern game designer would ignore converting it into something wholly different, e.g. Prey.

MDK in particular is a special game, many modern games the younger Xbox users praise like Gears Of War are grey rooms of a jock man hiding behind a wall, very shit and a huge waste of time.

MDK visceral piece of art. HR Giger, Mega City One and Salvador Dali rolled into a concoction of goodness. 1000X better than these shitty Last Of US, Uncharted whatever movie games. Has more creativity in it's butthole than most modern games have in their entirety.

Kingpin, MDK, Freespace, Giants and Messiah are some of my favorite games from back in the day.

Sad to see interplay going away. Earthworm jim, MDK, kingpin, freespace , Giants are all great games

No... If anyone should have EWJ, it's someone friendly across all companies. Besides, some of us want EWJ in a CERTAIN fighting game and Sony buying it would ruin that like MS owning Rare IP's (though Phil Spencer wants to see them there).

Like SEGA (despite their struggles), if they owned EWJ, it would be a perfect marriage, given that's where EWJ was most popular.

I like the Earthworm Jim IP. It has a lot of possibilities. It had a cartoon. It could be a 2d or a 3d platformer with 3rd person shooting. Jim can be used as a whip.

Clayfighter is a goofy fighting game.

Freespace is finally...free.

Freespace 3 10/10 will gladly get my ass kicked and lose to the Shivans again.

Lol, I was kinda in the middle. I managed to stop them but took major casualties in Freespace 2. Everyone who fought with me died as far as I can remember but we managed to stop the invasion.

Hope some decent studio picks up the IP. Night Dive comes to mind. They treat old games with a lot of respect.

I would love to see a new Dark Alliance

they need to make a new Sacrifice

About time, maybe now i can get another MDK game.

We need MDK 3, that is all.

Indeed. I was thinking that would be a great purchase but the game is not that well known and you can simply make a game based off the mechanics without paying for the IP. So, its purchase it kind of a dud.

wonder who's gonna get MDK and freespace

In a way this is good news. At least there's a chance for some of those games to see the light of day again. I need a new Giants game. MDK with current tech is a potential hit, Sacrifice has what it takes to become a refreshing MOBA (I hate this type of games, but still...), and so on.

A new Freespace could make for a killer VR game.

I was hoping Descent got a modern console port or entry. Made tons of old school PC shooters on consoles last gen, Doom, Doom 2, Wolfenstein 3D, Duke Nukem 3D, I was hoping this would have made it.

Descent Underground is in development.

Do they own the Darkthrone rights? Or does Blizzard own them?

Has anyone played Blackthorne? Such a cool, if a bit derivative game

@Salt_The_Fries: I remember that game, never did beat it but I really liked it

A new Messiah would be interesting. Also, didn't realize M.A.X. was their IP. Really cool turn-based strategy literally no one knows about.

Got bored of it fast and i looooved me some Flashback.

Ohh , MDK .. :(

I know about M.A.X. - the first one came out in 1997, right? I was reading about it in a magazine. And I think it had a sequel?

Ill take some for free, otherwise, no thanks.

Loved this game back then. I continued to play it even after I got rid of old Consoles. Played it via emulators. One of the better old school games from Blizzard.

It had a sequel but i didn't get to play it, the game was hard to find 'round my parts. It had some weird Xcom Apocalypse-esque real-time+turn-based gameplay which wasn't received too well.

Lots of good games there.

It's a really old game, but their Atomic Bomberman was the best bomberman game I've ever played. The music and voices made it so much better. MDK was always a little niche, but might be really good as a co-op title with single player mode having character switching Trine style. I would love to see a remastered redneck rampage and kingpin. So many fond memories.

Someone for the love of god needs to grab the Stonekeep IP. Maybe the Legend of Grimrock guys. I could even see it being a VR dungeon crawler fairly easy.

The original creators of Descent(The guys who worked at Parallax, Volition and Outrage, back in the day. They now go by "Revival Productions".) are presently making a new Descent game called Overload. (Steam)

(They can't use the Descent name because someone else has the rights to it; Descent: Underground (Steam) is licensed to use it, though the team behind that are completely different, as it much of the gameplay.)

That said, I believe they've said they fully own everything to do with Freespace, and they've hinted that if Overload is successful we might see Freespace 3 or somesuch.

For reference, Interplay apparently owes a lot of royalty money to a lot of people, that they've not been paying for decades.

Adult Swim games could be a good match for Earthworm Jim. I'm really excited for their new Toejam and Earl.

Volition streamed Descent and Freespace 2 a while ago with some of the old devs. They also played the spiritual Descent successor Overload together with the original Parallax founders as guests. The 3 designers, Dave Baranec, Jason Scott and Adam Pletcher are still in Volition. Baranec was also the programmer, and Scott one of two writters. The lead artist is still there too.

Freespace needs to end up with Volition somehow. Does anybody knows if volition's devs have changed or are still mostly the same since then?

@kozio: ueah Mdk was pretty sweet back in the day too! Already got overload and decent underground. Good stuff.

Ninty needs to buy Earthworm Jim and give it to Retro (with the script taken care of by Intelligent Systems)

Another MDK or Citizen Kabuto would be amazing.

OMFG yes