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Top Gear Overdrive (Snowblind Studios, Kemco, 1998). Gif by N64th Street.

#top gear overdrive #snowblind studios #kemco #nintendo 64 #racing game #N64

#champions of norrath #snowblind studios #ubisoft #playstation 2 #ps2

An old-school hack-and-slash action RPG awaits! Pick one of five heroes, defeat monstrous enemies with weapons and spells, loot treasure and

EEE-yesss! Baldur's Gate Dark Alliance II is on Steam!

Not long ago I played Baldur's Gate Dark Alliance on Dolphin Emulator and then played its PC/ Steam version afterwards, then emulated Dark Alliance 2 on PCSX2. Looking forward to trying the PC version of DA2.

Dark Alliance on PC! Okay, how about the Champions games next? Oh, how I wish...

Something I noticed is on the Steam Store page there are quite a lot of reviews for this game and DA1 that were people asking for Champions of Norrath and Champions: Return to Arms to be ported to PC since the games are in a similar boat and have ties to each other.

What is Champions of Norrath?

For those of you who don't know, Champions of Norrath and Champions: Return to Arms are old PS2 top down hack n slash RPG looting games (kinda like Diablo) and was developed by Snowblind Studios, who also co-developed Baldur's Gate Dark Alliance 1. Rather than being the DnD universe like Baldurs Gate, the Champions games take place in the Everquest universe. Everquest was an old MMO game owned by Sony Online Interactive.

Now I am a HUGE Champions fan. While I myself have never played the Everquest MMO, I can safely say you don't have to know Everquest lore to enjoy the Champions of Norrath games. Without a doubt they are my favorite PS2 exclusive games. Which that is the sad part, the games never re-released... EVER. They've been stuck on PS2 since they were released way back in 2004 and 2005.

PC Port? Very unlikely...

As much as I would LOVE PC ports to happen, I just don't see it being possible. Snowblind created the Snowblind engine, the engine the Champions and Dark Alliance games run on and helped co-develop Dark Alliance 1. However, the Baldur's Gate Dark Alliance games are still property of DnD and owned by Wizards of the Coast, so they were far easier to get a hold of to re-release for PC and modern consoles, but the Champions games, however, are entangled in a serious mess of copyright holders that would be next to impossible to sort out for a proper re-release. Think Goldeneye 64. how it's tied to Rareware, the James Bond IP, and Nintendo. Image courtesy of Nerrel from his video on Emulation on Youtube.

A user on Steam pretty much summed up the game's messy copyright situation as this...

Champions is not ever getting released again. Snowblind, the original developers were merged with Monolith, who's owned by Warner Bros. The game was published by Sony Online Entertainment and Ubisoft. SOE have since been sold to Columbus Nova (a NY investment firm) and are now under the name Daybreak Game Company and they own the IP rights for Everquest (the world Champions is based on). The process it'd take to get that mess untangled would be a nightmare and in the end wouldn't be worth the amount of money they'd make off of releasing it on steam.

Emulation is key!

So, its highly unlikely the game will ever be released again and will remain on PS2 forever. That's why emulation is incredibly important for preserving old games that get left behind. I recently did several runs of both Champions games with my brother using PCSX2 and had little to no issues. It felt like playing the original game, but in a higher resolution than the original PS2 could offer and some graphical tweaks for better color with the use of ReShade.

Now I still want to hold out hope that one day I'll get an official PC port of one of my favorite games ever, but if that day never comes, then at least emulation will keep the game alive.