Category Archives: Midway

Former Midway Games VP of business development and licensing, Lee Jacobson, has said companies should be quicker when it comes to greenlighting or killing projects in order avoid sharing Midway and THQ’s fate.

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The Hollywood Reporter has word that New Line Cinema has put “into development” an adaptation of the 80′s arcade game, Rampage.

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With Midway Chicago being sold to Warner, the team behind the open-world action game Hero lost all assets, code, art and everything else pertaining to it in the process. So, when the remnants of that team went on to form Phosphor Games, it decided to continue work on the game in the form of Awakening, but unfortunately, it had to start all over from scratch.

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A couple of videos for Midway’s canceled action game, Hero, have surfaced.

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Following on from the revealing of a piece of art from Hero, a Midway title canned when the company was sold off, images a horror known as Day to Night have emerged, showing yet another binned project from the doomed publisher.

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The ghosts of what might have been are rattling their chains at Midway. A single piece of concept art for the ill-fated Hero has surfaced, revealing a lone protagonist amidst a devastated metropolis.

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According to Examiner, a new tournament world record hi-score for Galaga was set over the New Year weekend.

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Looks like Surreal Software’s This is Vegas may have been canceled after Warner purchased the firm from Midway, if sources close to the developer are correct.

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A US court has approved plans to liquidate Midway following an IP sale to Warner last year.

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Warner Bros. has filed three trademarks for Netherrealm Studios, which if you have played any of the Mortal Kombat games, the name should be very familiar to you.

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Update: Well, that didn’t take long. The Major has tweeted that the Midway titles being pulled from XBL Marketplace can be directly attributed to “publisher evolving rights and permissions”.

Don’t worry though, he says that if you purchased one of the deleted games in the past, you will be able to re-download it again.

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According to ex-Midway producer John Vignocchi, sometimes it’s not the developers who want to toss in a bit of multiplayer in games, but the executives who run the joint demanding it be part of the finished product.

Speaking during a Giant Bombcast last month, Vignocchi used Stranglehold as an example and cited the team’s multiplayer regret.

“We were having this battle all the time, talking about, ‘OK, is a totally amazing single-player experience, the most important thing? Or should it be an 80% single-player experience and then a pretty cool multiplayer?’, he explained. “Stranglehold wnet through that exact same problem. I think if you ask every single person that worked on Stranglehold whether or not multiplayer was a necessity for that product, they would all say, ‘I wish we never did it.’

“It was the worst part of the game, and it was something that executive management had said, ‘This has to be in the game.’ And no one wanted it, and it turned out the way it turned out. That’s something every game developer goes through.”

That’s not a very surprising thing to hear, considering we’ve played a few games with multiplayer that felt tacked on or forced upon us at gunpoint.

You can find this bit at 1 hour, 22 minutes, and 51 seconds into the chat here.

Via Kotaku.

Midway Europe head Martin Spiess has bought out the management division of his former employer and will now run the company as Tradewest Games, which published games Double Dragon and Ikari Warriors in the eighties and nineties.

Enfolding the UK and French offices into one, Spiess plans on staying in the publishing business.

“We are very glad to have acquired the rights to such an internationally well-known brand of such tradition in the gaming industry,” Spiess told MCV. “Under the name Tradewest Games we will as of now be acting as a European full service provider in the fields of game distribution and publishing.

“We have access to a wide-reaching global network of game developers and international partners from all relevant areas of the games industry.”

“This is a brand representative of tradition, a name under which a well-known North American game publisher operated between 1986 and 1994,” added a company spokesperson.

More through the link.

A filing with the US Securities and Exchange Commission has revealed that Midway’s managing director for Europe, Martin Spiess, has purchased Midway’s France and UK offices for €1/86 pence.

Midway UK and France are now owned by Spiess Media Holding UG and Midway’s European teams now have 90 days to sell the rest of the Midway stock they are holding.

Basically a management buyout, Midway Germany’s general manager Uwe Fürstenberg has purchased his end as well.

A clause in the agreement says the offices must drop the Midway name immediately.

Loads more financial and legal stuff regarding this are over on MCV.

According to a recent job listing, WB Games Chicago wants the next Mortal Kombat to be the “golden standard for network play.”

“WB Games Inc. seeks a Senior Software Engineer, Network to help us implement cutting-edge online features to ensure the Mortal Kombat franchise is an industry leader in online functionality. We are looking to position Mortal Kombat as the ‘gold standard’ for network play, and we are looking for someone who wants to push the boundaries of what is possible with online interaction,” reads the listing.

Apparently, whoever lands the gig will be responsible for “revolutionizing” online play.

Fame and fortune — what more could you ask for?

Thanks, TRMK.

An SEC filing indicates that Midway’s San Diego studio has been sold to THQ, and its French and German divisions to holding companies formed by their heads, resulting in what is “effectively a management buyout for each regional distribution area.”

According to a report from Gamasuta, THQ will offer employment to at least 40 of the 100 employees working at the studio, but “specifically excluded from the bankruptcy purchase by THQ is the contract with the TNA iMPACT! video game in development at the studio, as well as the third-party tools such as Unreal Engine being licensed for the game’s creation.”

At least there’s some good news for the employees of Midway.

More through the link.

Thanks, Blue.

An ex-Midway Newcastle GUI artist named Steven Pick has detailed the studio’s closure over on his personal blog, stating that work was going on as usual before the doors officially shut.

Pick details how Necessary Force was still being pitched to publishers right up to the last day in hopes of saving it,stating that the rush to provide a complete demo for investors was to help save jobs – which, alas, did not work.

“One thing is for sure – the threat of losing your job is a strong motivator,” he wrote. “We had expected that the closure would be on Friday, and everyone was working to that point. A week after we were told of the failure of the ‘big pitch’, Tuesday July 14 would be a day I will never forget.

“As lunch neared, our secretary noted on the security cameras that Matt Booty – the bigwig Midway CEO at the time – was outside the studio ‘with a bunch of people’. The news filtered through the studio like wildfire accompanied by assorted reactions – mostly of the ‘oh f***’ variety.

Apparently, the studio closed on pay-day, but no redundancy or holiday pay was forthcoming.

“Some of us asked why we were not getting paid when the London office was reportedly cash-rich. After all the work, the praise, the highs and lows of it all… it came down to this. It was heartbreaking seeing everyone slowly filter away from there… wondering what would become of us as individuals now that our team, which was such a solid and incredible machine, had been disassembled like a piece of flat-pack furniture.”

Ouch. Read the rest through the link.

Via GI.biz.

This is Vegas canned? Not a chance, says Warner Bros.

“This is Vegas has not been cancelled,” a WB spokesperson told G4. “The game is currently in production.”

And so, like the nightlife vampires it depicts, This is Vegas is not so easily killed. The wet T-shirted dream lives on, for better or for worse.

According to a report on Action Trip, Midway’s glitz, glamor, and sleaze simulator This is Vegas has probably been canned.

Apparently, GameStop has informed preorderers that the game won’t be making it into their surprisingly eager hands, so that’s probably that.

The cancellation can most likely be attributed to Midway’s recent sale to Warner Bros.

And so passes the front runner in the race to make the dream of virtual wet T-shirt competitions real.

More through the link.

Warner has promoted Jeff Junge to senior VP of business management in wake of its acquisition of Midway Games.

“Jeff is a tremendous asset to the studio and has been a key contributor to the success of many of the company’s major initiatives,” said Warner Home Entertainment president Kevin Tsujihara.

“He is a strategic thinker, has exceptional insight into the deal making process and is a tireless worker. Jeff’s expertise will be critical as we continue to expand our business and explore new opportunities.”

Junge was instrumental in the purchase of Traveller’s Tales back in 2007, and Warner’s investment in OnLive.

His new position will entail continued merger and acquisition suggestions and implementation.

Via Edge.