Kien, the Most-Delayed Video Game in History, Released After 22 Years (theguardian.com) 24
An Italian video game, 22 years in the making, has finally hit the market, setting a record for the longest development time in gaming history. "Kien," an action platformer for Nintendo's Game Boy Advance, began development in 2002 by a group of five inexperienced enthusiasts, The Guardian reports. Only one, Fabio Belsanti, saw the project through to completion. The game, inspired by 15th-century Tuscan manuscripts and early Japanese graphics, offers a challenging, nonlinear fantasy experience. It's now available on a translucent gray cartridge, complete with a printed manual -- a rarity in modern gaming. Belsanti's company, AgeOfGames, survived the delay by creating educational games. The recent boom in retro gaming finally made Kien's release feasible, he said.
Wow (Score:5, Funny)
A game that beats Half Life Episode 3. Impressive.
Nope. (Score:3, Interesting)
The award for longest running vaporware belongs to Racing Legends, by the West Brothers. It was announced in 2000, and the web site is still up.
Re: Nope. (Score:3)
Very cool, I never heard of that game before. I wonder who is paying for their web hosting.
Re: Wow (Score:1)
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Star Citizen will claim this title.
Eventually.
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Yep. I guess people are still buying a lot of shit from SC's store, though. But I think I read that its funding so far is still comparable to AAA titles like GTA V.
Interestingly, 7 Days to Die was in public alpha for 12 years, just hit 1.0 ~2 weeks ago.
Give it some time (Score:5, Interesting)
Beyond Good & Evil 2 is only 5 years behind, and currently holds the record among AAA titles. Work began in 2007 and it was announced in 2008. It passed Duke Nukem Forever's 15-year development time back in 2022.
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Beyond Good & Evil 2 is only 5 years behind, and currently holds the record among AAA titles. Work began in 2007 and it was announced in 2008. It passed Duke Nukem Forever's 15-year development time back in 2022.
The problem I have with statistics like this is has the game been in active development or shelved since 2009?
Also, the engine they started developing on 15+ years ago would be so out of date you'd need to start again on a new engine. Same with art assets. in 2008 1080p was considered high resolution, now we regularly get 4K in monitors, so a lot of your art assets (like textures) will be useless too. BG and E's PC engine was utter pants too.
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..in 2008 1080p was considered high resolution, now we regularly get 4K in monitors..
Mind explaining how your argument works in the streaming world where providers still think 1080p is the best they need to offer?
Needless to say just because your monitor can doesn’t mean everything else is unsellable shit.
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..in 2008 1080p was considered high resolution, now we regularly get 4K in monitors..
Mind explaining how your argument works in the streaming world where providers still think 1080p is the best they need to offer?
Needless to say just because your monitor can doesn’t mean everything else is unsellable shit.
I take it you're on a console.
I'm a PC gamer, making textures for sub 1080p became unacceptable over 8 years ago.
I like modding old games, a lot of the time you're replacing textures that were very low res because no-one thought beyond the technology of the time. Fallout 3/NV is terribad for it, a lot of textures were made for 720p (I.E. the terminals). Mass Effect (1) was also bad for it, there was a 6 GB texture mod for it years ago. Even GTA V has a graphics enhancement mod (Natural Visions Evolved
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making textures for sub 1080p became unacceptable over 8 years ago.
Is this actually true?
Sure, the Internet would get upset if a AAA title launched without 4K support, but would it actually matter after the initial brouhaha died down? Gamers overwhelmingly favor framerate over resolution [gamespot.com], GPUs have skyrocketed to inaccessible prices in the last few years, and the Steam Deck is selling like gangbusters with a 1280 x 800 display, so I'm not sure that sub-1080p is actually as unacceptable as you suggest. I was toying around with Whisky [getwhisky.app]—a GUI wrapper for Apple's Game Por
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The problem I have with statistics like this is has the game been in active development or shelved since 2009?
Given that it was re-announced in 2016, was followed up in 2017 with a fresh trailer [youtube.com] and tech demo [youtube.com], then a cinematic trailer in 2018 [youtube.com], confirmed in 2021 financial statements to be "progressing well', and was reconfirmed again just in the last week to still be in progress [nintendolife.com], it sounds like it's been in active development.
It sounds like there have been a few issues, biggest of them being that Michel Ancel, the creator of BG&E who helmed the project until 2020, is alleged to be some combination of disorganize
Back before digital distribution (Score:5, Informative)
The ROM for Super sushi pinball for the NES finally showed up on line this year. It was a localization of a weird Japanese pinball game made even weirder by calling it super sushi pinball. Is a kid I remember seeing the screenshots that had some anime style robots in them and wondering what the game would be like. It was a lot of fun getting to see it and play it after all these years.
Some stuff just disappears though. There were two PC games back when I was a kid that are just gone and I'd love to see them. They were from a company called Pedersen. One was called zombies undead or alive and the other was called cyber cop (no relation to the early FPS game). It struck me as odd because they bought advertising in game magazines back in the day but then the game just never materialized.
Then you have games like Arkistsa's Ring that I saw in magazines but I thought never came out and then years later found out did get a release
One thing that sucks was there were lots of great games that never made it out the door and then you get crap like me NES X-Men game or those crummy back to the Future games that clog up retro game stores
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One thing that sucks was there were lots of great games that never made it out the door and then you get crap like me NES X-Men game or those crummy back to the Future games that clog up retro game stores
Those are LJN games, and they suck. Angry video game nerd rips on LJN all the time. My favorite X-men game back in the day was X-Men 2 - clone wars. Great game.
"most delayed video game" (Score:5, Insightful)
That's of course a BS statement unless you contrive some highly specific criteria .. I bet there are people who want to finish a video game they thought of in the 80s and 90s, but instead got fat.
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Yeah, I don't think it should count if a game was shelved for development, then a company decides to work on it and release it 20 years later. It's not a game that had a delay in release. It was a game that was cancelled and they later decided to complete it.
Re: "most delayed video game" (Score:2)
Not the most delayed (Score:4, Informative)
TV Tropes has a page of this stuff [tvtropes.org]. Unfortunately, whether something is the "same game" as was announced years later is a fuzzy thing. Swordquest: Airworld has a cool 39 year delay. If you think that doesn't count as the same game that was originally announced, American Hero was originally meant for release in 1995 and came out in 2021, which is 26 years.
Duke Nukem (Score:2)
Re: Put a chick in it and make it lame and gay (Score:1)
sheesh, and I thought Duke Nuk'em Forever ... (Score:2)