Posted September 30, 2022
Have sent emails to your respective business addresses but I figured if there's any support staff here from either Nightdive or Retroism willing to show this to management then posting this here might be worth a shot too!
It's been great to see companies like Nightdive & Retroism bringing back so many great old games stuck in licencing hells to modern audiences and especially the old Microprose ones. I was surprised when I saw that you guys brought Sid Meier’s Colonization back into digital stores as I was under the impression 2K owned the rights to Colonization which I guess means you guys did a deal with them?
The reason I bring this up and am contacting you is because for some strange reason the grand daddy of TBS 4x gaming, Microprose's Sid Meier’s Civilization (that of course led to Colonization) along with its sequel Civ2 which was one of the biggest most successful strategy games of the 90s that sold millions and has continued to this day with many sequels (there are already rumours rumbling about Civ7 being on the way soon!) are still not for sale anywhere on any digital stores which is just amazing considering how popular and successful they were. All Civilization games from 3 onwards were made by Firaxis and published by 2K and are for sale in Steam and GoG. 2K appears to have the rights to the earlier Microprose Civ games as they included them in a Civ chronicles compilation release back in the 2000s but I’m guessing they sadly have no interest in doing anything with them these days and need someone else to step in and make it happen! There's also a chance Atari (formerly Infogrames & Hasbro) still has them and they weren't part of the 2K Atari Civ deal in the 2000s but it seems more likely that 2K have them.
If you guys were able to work out an arrangement with them to sell Colonization again then I’m hoping you’ll considering trying to do the same with the first 2 Civilization games that were more successful and thus a greater chance for you guys to make more money from than you have with Colonization.
I moderate the Civilization 1 & 2 forums at CivFanatics (the largest civ fan site) and we get people coming in all the time saying “I lost my CD, how do I get this game now”! All we can legally do is tell them to go on ebay which doesn’t help much as many don’t have CD drives anymore and many don’t know how to get the games working on modern machines! New legally sold, easy to install packages by you guys would change all that! There are tens of thousands of wishlist votes for these games on GoG showing there is indeed a demand for these games.
Civ1 is just as easy as Colonization was for you as it just has to be stuck in a dosbox package. Civilization 2 had two different main releases that can be sold separately (meaning you can make even more money lol!) known as the Multiplayer Gold Edition (vanilla civ2 and it’s 2 addon packs) and Test of Time (a special enhanced version of Civ2 with animation, more colours, multiple linked worlds etc), these releases were Windows games but thankfully were 32bit applications meaning they will run on modern OS’s however there are some bugs on 64bit systems which thankfully fans have fixed with patches. There are also extension programs for both MGE and ToT that fix more bugs and add even more features that modders have been using to create amazing scenarios with even now to this day! You guys have a great history of working with fan modders to re-release classic games and you could easily do the same with these ones!
I’ve rambled on enough but I have more info (with links to all the wishlists and fan patches for the games) posted in a thread at Civfanatics if it’s of interest to you guys.
https://forums.civfanatics.com/threads/vote-for-sid-meiers-civilization-i-and-ii-mge-test-of-time-to-be-added-to-gog.675300/
I hope this message makes it to you and you consider the opportunity. Many thanks for your time!
Regards
Blake
It's been great to see companies like Nightdive & Retroism bringing back so many great old games stuck in licencing hells to modern audiences and especially the old Microprose ones. I was surprised when I saw that you guys brought Sid Meier’s Colonization back into digital stores as I was under the impression 2K owned the rights to Colonization which I guess means you guys did a deal with them?
The reason I bring this up and am contacting you is because for some strange reason the grand daddy of TBS 4x gaming, Microprose's Sid Meier’s Civilization (that of course led to Colonization) along with its sequel Civ2 which was one of the biggest most successful strategy games of the 90s that sold millions and has continued to this day with many sequels (there are already rumours rumbling about Civ7 being on the way soon!) are still not for sale anywhere on any digital stores which is just amazing considering how popular and successful they were. All Civilization games from 3 onwards were made by Firaxis and published by 2K and are for sale in Steam and GoG. 2K appears to have the rights to the earlier Microprose Civ games as they included them in a Civ chronicles compilation release back in the 2000s but I’m guessing they sadly have no interest in doing anything with them these days and need someone else to step in and make it happen! There's also a chance Atari (formerly Infogrames & Hasbro) still has them and they weren't part of the 2K Atari Civ deal in the 2000s but it seems more likely that 2K have them.
If you guys were able to work out an arrangement with them to sell Colonization again then I’m hoping you’ll considering trying to do the same with the first 2 Civilization games that were more successful and thus a greater chance for you guys to make more money from than you have with Colonization.
I moderate the Civilization 1 & 2 forums at CivFanatics (the largest civ fan site) and we get people coming in all the time saying “I lost my CD, how do I get this game now”! All we can legally do is tell them to go on ebay which doesn’t help much as many don’t have CD drives anymore and many don’t know how to get the games working on modern machines! New legally sold, easy to install packages by you guys would change all that! There are tens of thousands of wishlist votes for these games on GoG showing there is indeed a demand for these games.
Civ1 is just as easy as Colonization was for you as it just has to be stuck in a dosbox package. Civilization 2 had two different main releases that can be sold separately (meaning you can make even more money lol!) known as the Multiplayer Gold Edition (vanilla civ2 and it’s 2 addon packs) and Test of Time (a special enhanced version of Civ2 with animation, more colours, multiple linked worlds etc), these releases were Windows games but thankfully were 32bit applications meaning they will run on modern OS’s however there are some bugs on 64bit systems which thankfully fans have fixed with patches. There are also extension programs for both MGE and ToT that fix more bugs and add even more features that modders have been using to create amazing scenarios with even now to this day! You guys have a great history of working with fan modders to re-release classic games and you could easily do the same with these ones!
I’ve rambled on enough but I have more info (with links to all the wishlists and fan patches for the games) posted in a thread at Civfanatics if it’s of interest to you guys.
https://forums.civfanatics.com/threads/vote-for-sid-meiers-civilization-i-and-ii-mge-test-of-time-to-be-added-to-gog.675300/
I hope this message makes it to you and you consider the opportunity. Many thanks for your time!
Regards
Blake
Post edited October 01, 2022 by Blake00