Imperium Galactica is back in 2017!

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The old Imperium Galactica Series was one of the greatest game series I ever played as a kid in the 90s and now I’m pleased to say this old forgotten 4X space strategy series is returning to us thanks to Nordic Games. What made IG so good and different to Master of Orion and everything else out there at the time (& even to this day in some respects) was 2 things:

1 – It had epic immersion via all the amazing videos and story elements. Completing strategic objectives brought on amazing video & story rewards instead of just some simple text on a screen saying “well done” lol. In IG1 you could even explore your own ship! People raved in 2010 when Starcraft 2 WoL came out because you could spend large amounts of time exploring your battleship and talking to people in the bar in between the strategic missions. Well IG1 did that 13yrs before Blizzard did haha!

2 – It was basically 3 games in 1. I grew up playing Master of Orion, Sim City 2000 & Dune2/C&C and used to think “wouldn’t it be cool if there was a game that combined them” and then I found IG1&2 and realized some clever folks in Hungary had made my dream a reality! As far as I know no one has really combined those 3 things since!

IG1 & IG2

IG2 & OpenIG

A couple of years ago I started seriously considering doing a big IG tribute at Blake’s Sanctum and started looking into what happened to its creator Digital Reality. I thought they were long gone so I was so excited when I did some digging and found out that they were still alive in the 2010s and had made an enhanced IG2 for mobiles and were working on a new online IG game (called Stargazer or something?). But then I discovered that this was actually old news from around 2013ish and Digitial Reality really were gone this time and their lifeless website & forums were filled with spammers.

However this week I’ve discovered that Nordic Games bought the series in 2016 and have released both Imperium Galactica 1 & 2 on Steam and GoG! Even better they’ve taken all the improvements digital reality did with the mobile version of IG2 (improved interface & textures etc) and ported them back over to the PC version. And on top of that they’re even patching IG2 to make sure the old 1999 game is fully compatible on modern systems! 🙂

If these releases are Nordic Games ‘testing the waters’ to see if IG is still a good money maker for a sequel then I encourage all IG fans to go purchase these new versions. Then we might just get that Imperium Galactica 3 we’ve been waiting so long for.

On top of all this the fan project OpenIG which is a remake of IG1 is looking very good now after many years of work. It does NOT require the original game files and it supports high resolutions, better interface, gameplay improvements and best of all SKIRMISH/SAND BOX MODE! No longer are you locked into the campaign mode making the game just a re-playable as its sequel! It supports multiplayer and you can even play as the alien races with full Master of Orion style race customisation.:)

So basically we can now play both Imperium Galactica 1 and 2 in high resolution with modern improvements thanks to the work of Nordic Games and the fans behind OpenIG. Finally some good news relating to a great series that hasn’t had any in 18 years!!

Here’s all the Links:
THQ Nordic Games Announcement

Imperium Galactica 1 on Steam
Imperium Galactica 1 on GoG

Imperium Galactica 2 on Steam
Imperium Galactica 2 on GoG

OpenIG IG1 Remake Project Page

My big new Imperium Galactica & similar games tribute website

IG2

What We Left Behind – Star Trek DS9 Documentary

Wow wow wow! It breaks my heart that we’re not getting a HD remake of Star Trek DS9 due to the TNG HD remake blurays not making enough money however at least we’re getting this!

DS9 showrunner Ira Behr has teamed up with Adam Nimoy (who did the recent excellent For The Love Of Spock doco) to do a new Star Trek documentary all about Deep Space Nine! Unlike the existing soft DS9 PG DVD extras this doco looks like it will contain lots of juicy and possibly even controversial behind the scenes info on the struggles of the show and the actors (eg like the full on recent Chaos On The Bridge TNG doco). Nearly the entire cast is behind this too and best of all Ira has got together the old DS9 writing team (including Ron Moore) to brainstorm a mythological DS9 Season 8 Episode 1 story that us fans have been begging for years. How will they get Sisko back to DS9? Can’t wait to see!

TNG was my favourite Star Trek show back in the day yet after all these years I seem to find myself craving and missing DS9 more. I just loved the characters and stories so much. I loved all the things they did that they weren’t supposed to do in the Roddenberry Trek universe like serialised connected stories, imperfect flawed heroes, likable bad guys and huuuuge wars.

In the last hour or so I’ve seen $20,000 USD being thrown at this thing resulting in it already being at $60,000 as I type this which means its well on its way to meeting it’s $150,000 target. Let’s make sure it does and spread the word fellow DS9 fans!

Update:
It made it in ONE DAY! Now it’s over $200,000 and flying towards the stretch goals! I hope paramount are watching this. TNG HD may have fallen short of their $ goals but DS9 fans are very loyal to our bastard series. 🙂 They could at least do a ‘testing the waters’ HD release of the pilot & favourite eps like they did with TNG. DS9 fans would pay! Or maybe even a straight to dvd/bluray release of this mythical season 8 story (eg Ark of Truth was Stargate SG1s 11th season wrapped into one dvd film for the fans).

Link:

What We Left Behind: Star Trek Deep Space Nine Documentary Indiegogo

I made it to Rock Paper Shotgun!

Well it’s been a pretty crazy 2 months since I released my Quest for Glory IV 3D Hexen and Star Trek Doom mod projects. I went overseas to Ko Samui Thailand for a month and around it I did my best to respond to the surge of attention my mods brought to this blog, my youtube channel and my website. Thank you every one for your feedback, it’s been amazing and certainly inspired me to pick up work on my mods again one day.

Blake’s Sanctum has passed the big 20,000 moment and its now already closing in on 21k. This blog has shot up by 1000 hits including one crazy day where 600+ people visited. The mod videos have received over 4,000 hits. Just amazing!

As I posted about the mods in various facebook groups and forums there were many surges in visitors but the biggest of all came from a wonderful man named Richard Cobbett. I’ve posted about him before over the years as he was responsible for showing Quest for Glory to a huge audience on two occasions when he first ensured QFG4 made it into the 2012 PC Gamer UK top 100 Games of all time list and then second posted an awesome 2 page spread on QFG4 in 2013 once again in PC Gamer UK.

Well now after finding out about and even playing my QFGIV 3D mod he decided to do a massive article on Rock, Paper, Shotgun all about my mod. Rock, Paper, Shotgun has got to be one of the biggest gaming news sites out there! I’ve read many an article there over the years so for my silly little mod to be covered on their site is just a nerdy dream come true lol!

I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again. Thank you Richard! I work hard to promote and ensure QFG is never forgotten but I’ll never have the global reach you have so the fact you do the same thing for QFG on sites like this and in the huge PC Gamer mags is just wonderful.