Found this little tidbit in the January 2004 issue of Game Informer magazine, page 28, under "Loose Talk:"

Loose Talk has heard that Bungie is working on a revival of Shadowrun (originally on the SNES) for the Xbox. The Halo creator is said to be collaborating closely with author Jordan Weisman.

I'll note that I didn't find this myself, but was pointed to the quote on another board I'm on. I don't know squat about it, but I can't think of anyone better to do the game than Bungie. Hot damn.

I love links.

Well, here's the link to the original conversation I copy/pasted from:

RPGnet thread

I'd verify it myself happily, but my Game Informer subscription ran out last month. Anybody else got one handy to look it up?

Freaking finally. Hopefully it's very customizable and isn't purely FPS. I would cry so much.

But why the SNES version? It sucked! Why not the Genesis!

You could do that in genesis too, but there weren't any damn magic or hit points at least.

You can hack it for Ungodly attributes, but what I mean is that you can still be a cybermonster and a bad-ass shaman at the same time, the lessened magical abilty amounts to needing to carry more fetishes around, s'all.

Yeah, but that's hacking it...

The Genesis one is much better. Battle System- Better. Story- Better. More Guns- Better, etc, etc...

SNES had a better athmosphere I found, though. It was more cyberpunk but less shadowrun.

I doubt that it will actually be "based on" the SNES version. They probably just mentioned it, because that is the reference that many video gamers will recognize. In fact, the author of the article may be unaware of SR's true origins and just assume that the XBox game is a sequel to the SNES game. But the XBox is capable of so much more than the SNES, I'm sure the similarities will be minimal.

I just hope it goes cross platform so I can play it playstation 2.

Two systems better??? nintendo sucks ass. Bill gets enough of my money as it is with computer software. As to your thought of it crossing over lots of game s do and already have. Lastly the ps2 may be low end for now but 2005 is ps3 so things will improve.

Your odds of seeing it cross over to another platform (other than PC) are the same as seeing Halo, Crimson Skies, Mechwarrior/Mechassault, or any of the other exclusive Microsoft-owned properties -- as in, nada. They have a game,they have a console, and they want to keep it exclusive so as to draw people to their console. It's strictly business.

Halo just came out for Macs.

You can also run Windows on Macs.

Unfortunately, it might just become an xbox release, meaning it would be more click and less rule-oriented to the true rpg. This is going to be a major dissapointment.

Can you say "name association"? Just another butcher of the game with better gfx.

Did a search took less that a minute to find several sites that talk about it and the first one I clicked on had an article called:

Neverwinter Nights didnt come out on console for a good reason.

You cannot keep adding adventures, gear, spells, places to explore, and npc's to games on consoles.

console rpg = suck.

If Microsoft was smart, they would make it a computer game from the start. That way they can compete to get players from Neverwinter Nights and EverCrack. Now that would be a wise marketing move.

Halo is also available for PCs.

This will probably be butchered worse than Deus Ex: Invisible War was.

At least expectations are low, but to be honest I don't care if the game gives oral pleasure: I'll be buying a console when Carrot Top sweeps the Oscars.

I can wait for the (inevitable) XBox emulator.

Knights of the Old Republic seems to be a successful and well-done console RPG.

hmm, shadowrun the shen-mue (or whatever the spelling was...) way

ARGH! No Shenmue! No Shenmue!! A friend of mine talked me into getting that game (Shenmue II), saying it was the greatest thing ever. I read a couple reviews that said likewise, then I bought the (expletive) thing.

Shenmue: experience the joys of performing menial labor and taking sleazy sidewalk jobs for hours on end, punctuated by occasional aimless wandering across a well-rendered cityscape.

This ends the debate of which console to buy.... PS2 or XBOX...

- J.

Actually, console makers really want exclusive games. True, they could sell more games if they released versions for other consoles, but in the long run, they would rather have more games that are exclusive to their console, to encourage more people to buy their console. The more X-Boxes there are, the larger the market for X-Box games.

And with Microsoft trying very hard to close the gap between the X-Box and the PS2, they don't want to do Sony any favors. Granted, the game might come out for PC, but I doubt it will ever come out for another console.

As a current GameStop employee who is holding the January issue of Game Informer magazine i8n his hands as he types (No mean feat ), I can confirm that the Cut n Paste is accurate, and is the full news tidbit.

That said, a few misconceptions.

1) Mechwarrior, Halo, and Crimson Skies will not be available on any other platform console. They're exclusive, and the chances of them showing up on PS2 or Gamecube are about the same as Final Fantasy X showing up on the XBox or Cube. There may be a different MechWarrior, Battletech, or Crimson Skies game that gets released for one of those systems, but it won't be the same as the current ones available, and the chances are slim anyways.

2) The fact is that the Console Market and the PC Gaming market are two differnet target audiences, and two very different markets. Sure, Halo is on the PC now, and out for Mac, but no one really cares all that much. Console games released for the PC sell poorly, and vice versa for PC games done for the Console.

Shadowrun does not have the following nor the built in "knowledge" of the world that a fantasy game like Neverwinter Nights has. Fantasy is easy, everyone can wrap their brains around it. Cybperunk is a whole other element, and the udience is a good deal smaller> So a Neverwinter Nights style game isn't really an option.

At best, we'll see a Knights of the Old Republic style RPG (Which would rock if it's even half as good as KotOR), but we're more likely to see something more action oriented than a straight RPG.

Also, I'd just like to say for all those disparaging the X-Box simply because it's a Microsoft Product... Grow up! What, are you still in 3rd grade? Try judging a product on it's merits rather than just becauwse it's made by some company you have a bias against.

Bull

I am not a big video gamer, but I could care less which system it comes out on. I have a little brother(11) who has all my old systems and all the new ones and I have a really nice computer so....IF the games looks good I'll get it no matter what system it is on. X-box, PS2, or Game Cube makes no difference. I just hope it is not a FPS with Shadowrun slapped on it.

It's true that a "massively multi-player" game is probably out of the question, but can you imagine how cool that would be? Running the shadows would be a perfect setting for the kind of mission-based play that those games tend to have. Or, players could form a gang, and have turf wars with other gangs.

And what about this: What if the game allowed some players to take the roll of an actual corp. They could hire runners to do missions against other corps, allowing for more dynamic, player-created content than just static missions.

Of course, a sort of role-playing action game would be good too, but it's good to dream.

Actually, that sounds like it would perfectly represent the chaos of busy downtown Seattle
Having the game have strict death and a duration before your new character can enter the game (to keep you from immediately dashing for your old gear, natch) would do two things: one, keep with the deadly spirit of Shadowrun, and two, dissuade the Everquest n00bs.
It would also do a third thing, tied intimately with the second: make the game sell abysmally. C'est la vie.

~J

Postscript: any chance you can translate the unintelligible gibberish spouted by the Everquest players quoted in your reply?

All I remember is that 'wts' means 'Willing to sell', and of course, 'wtb' means 'Willing to buy'..

I think 'SOW' is some spell.. Spirit of the Wolf, if memory serves.. It speeds up your movement, and so everyone wants to have it cast on them whenever they travel.. Of course, only a handful of classes have the ability to cast that spell, so if you happen to be of that class you can expect to be harassed by people to cast it on them..

'gt pls' I believe is 'I need someone that can cast 'Gate', so I can go somewhere else'.

And, 'grats' is short for congratulations..

As for the 'sotw' and 'sotf', I dunno.. I couldn't tell you.. I just assume it means 'Sword of the Whatever' and 'Sword of the Fuckhead'..

Well, that's what the Ares Predator is for. You could hook the game up to allow enhanced PKing to anyone who abuses the english language in certain ways, with leniency for connections from out of the US, UK, Ireland, and Australia (and the other English-speaking types).

~J

Something brooding in my head for some time now, with all these threads saying "SR rules! It should have a computer counterpart!":

You can't make a compRPG, much less a MMORPG, out of shadowrun.

An action(/adventure)-game perhaps, but not a RPG as we percieve them now; The character development is too flat for that. The very same mechanics that make AD&D the not-so-best PnP RPG, also makes it one of the best for a computer port. Since I deem SR too be the best PnP RPG ever (and ever and....), Im quite content with the game remaining at that.

If SR makes it too the electronic format, it will probably be some sort of shooter. Hopefully one with grace and refined ideas (Deus Ex, Max Payne 1 etc.), but still a shooter. And I wouldn't want it any other way.

LoseAsDirected, that Everquest post was fucking genius.

*takes a bow*

Console games are only ported to pc if they do very well.

The basic calculation is: can we be absolutely certain that we will make more money off the pc version than it will cost to make and market plus whatever profit they feel makes it worthwhile. This means either that the game is a bestseller and they port it a year or two later (eg halo), or it is a sequel and they are so confident that they release both more or less simultaneously (eg deus ex invisible war). The threshold for this should be somewhat lower for xbox games than for ps2 games because the xbox is more pc-like than the ps2.

So will they be sure enough that a shadowrun game will do well to release it for both simultaneously? Probably not.

Will microsoft release it on both ps2 and xbox? No.

Will it do well enough to be released on pc later? Well possibly, but it won't be because of the Shadowrun brand name.

First, I'll see if it's any good. I might buy an Xbox for a quality Shadowrun game. I love Cyberpunk ^_^

And for the record, the SNES game was what got me into Shadowrun, so IMNSHO, it owns

Likewise.. A friend and I played it all the time in middle school, and then the Sega version came out, and I loved it even more.. Then in '96, my freshman year in high school, we met a guy who was into the P&P RPG version, and we've been playing it ever since.