Bar a commendable sending up of the Batman license in Arkham City Imposters, Monolith’s recent output has read very seriously indeed: FEAR; Condemned; more FEAR; more Condemned.
T’wasn’t always so. As you may remember, the developers made their PC reputation with silly ‘60s spy caper No One Lives Forever and its sequel. But you won’t find either on the shelves of your local digital distributor. Dan Amrich, blogger for former NOLF rights-holders Activision, has done a little digging into why.
“The person that I normally talk to about this stuff does not believe that we currently have the rights,” said Amrich. “They’ve never seen it. They’ve never been given the permission to put that stuff on Good Old Games. He said, basically, ‘If we had it, I would love to be able to reissue those old games’.”
And so Amrich turns to Monolith, now part of Warner Bros.
“I wondered if maybe at the time when Activision was saying ‘we’ll keep these, we’ll leave these, we’ll sell these, whatever,’ maybe Monolith stepped up and took their IP back,” Amrich continued.
“So I contacted a friend at Monolith… and he doesn’t know. So unfortunately, all I can definitively say is that at this time I do not believe that Activision has the rights to No One Lives Forever.”
Shame, meet Crying. What would you like to see done with the NOLF license, if one of its creators were to happen across it in an office Spring cleanout?
Thanks, PC Gamer.