Image credit: Radical Entertainment
The site page for New Radical Games has surfaced online, stoking fresh fuel to the fire about the company’s dormant IP, and remaster rumors.
New Radical Games is said to be a coalition made from the long-dormant Radical Entertainment, which shuttered in 2012, and HotHead Games, which is mostly known for its suite of mobile titles like Mighty Battles and Forged Fantasy.
Radical Games is (arguably) most known for its Prototype series, two over-the-top, incredibly violent superhero open-world games. However, the studio was also beloved for its 2000s licensed titles, such as The Incredible Hulk: Ultimate Destruction and The Simpsons: Hit & Run.
It’s not just a revival in name only, at least if the staff onboard is anything to go by. Radical Entertainment co-founder Ian Wilkinson is New Radical Games’ CEO, and Tim Bennison, formerly of Capcom, is COO. While nothing appears to be in production yet, at least there’s what seems to be the right talent at the top to give us hope.
Speaking of hope, the New Radical Games website makes deliberate use of the company’s historic IP. The scroll-down heavily features game art from The Simpsons: Hit & Run and Prototype when detailing “work for hire full game development” and “porting”, respectively.
Rumors of a full Prototype remaster (or possible remake) have been circulating for months now, which came to a head when new credits were added to the Steam version of the game. The updated credits scroll included the name of Iron Galaxy Studios, which has previously ported Skyrim, Diablo III, and The Last of Us Part 1 before.
Could we see proper remasters from New Radical Games?
I would love nothing more than to play Prototype 3 someday, but it still seems incredibly unlikely. What does seem more feasible is full-scale remasters of games which were previously stuck on older, aging hardware. The Simpsons: Hit & Run remains a fan favorite to this day, but the only way to it without emulating is to pop in a PS2, Xbox, or GameCube disc.
A modern console port of the beloved 2003 open-world game would be a needle mover for New Radical Games. The current licensing situation for The Simpsons: Hit & Run is uncertain; all three of the game’s original publishers (Vivendi Games, Fox Interactive, and Sierra Entertainment) are long defunct, which means there’s only really Microsoft left in the equation.
The Prototype: Biohazard Bundle saw both games be ported to the then-modern consoles, the PS4 and Xbox One, in 2015 with mixed results. We’re now closing in one six years into the PS5 and Xbox Series X/S generation, so console gamers have been starved superhero action for a decade.
New Radical Games is unlikely to give us anything new, but it could really kick things off with a remaster of must-play crowd pleasers. Nostalgia is a hell of a drug, and it would be just the thing to get people talking about Radical Entertainment again, even if we’re unlikely to see Pariah tear up New York Zero in the future.
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