Bully Bullworth Academy: Canis Canem Edit. Literally, dog eats dog. Speculatively, the subtitle for a sequel to one of Rockstar’s first forays into games without wanted levels*.
Rockstar registered the name as an EU trademark on November 20, and it’s since come to the attention of JunkieMonkeys.
It’s not the only dot we have to join: Rockstar parents Take-Two filed to update their current Bully trademark in the US on July 25 – and a Rockstar employee CV last month suggested the “next version of a famous IP” was in the works.
The original high school caper was the debut of Rockstar’s Vancouver outfit, who’d worked on Homeworld: Cataclysm and Valve’s Counter-Strike beta in a former life as Barking Dog Studios. They brought Bully to PS2 in 2006, and did the same for PC after an excruciatingly long wait in 2008. The studio has since made Max Payne 3, and lately been merged with Rockstar Toronto.
The game cast players as Jimmy Hopkins, and tasked them with attending classes and getting into scrapes in and around Bullworth Academy. It made use of a modified San Andreas engine to give every one of the school’s pupils a unique appearance (Edit: I’ve been informed that the PC version used Gamebryo instead – the engine what powered Oblivion and Civ IV).
Did you play Bully at the time? I know a few peers who talk about its compellingly small-scale plot in reverent tones.
*Bully had a ‘trouble meter’ instead. Totally different deal.
Thanks, Eurogamer.