Today's installment of Throwback Thursday focuses on a wonderful game that sadly was never released.
Publishing opportunities can come across your desk in many different forms. In the case of HYPERSPACE DELIVERY BOY™, one of our testers at Majesco had been playing the game for months when he brought it to the attention of Joseph Sutton, our EVP. Joey brought it to my attention as a possible acquisition for our growing Game Boy Advance line. I started playing it and was instantly hooked. After all it was designed by legendary DOOM™/QUAKE™ creator, John Romero.
So, at the 2002 Game Developer Conference, Joseph Sutton and I met with John Romero, Tom Hall and Stevie Case of Monkeystone Games to put together a deal to publish the game on the Game Boy Advance. The game was developed internally at Monkeystone with Tom Hall leading the production, while I produced the game for Majesco.
If you've never played the game, I strongly encourage that you find the PC version online and try it. It's an incredibly fun "Zelda-style" adventure game with what seems like hundreds of screens, puzzles and action.
Monkeystone eventually finished the game and it looked and played beautifully on the GBA. Majesco sent the game out to reviewers and designed the package. Everything looked good for a release in early 2003.
Everything that is until the retailers took a look at the title. You see, during the early days of the GBA, retailers and players were hungry for games and Majesco published a lot of them. As the GBA market matured, retailers became less interested in original titles, and more interested in games based on a license or a highly recognized genre, such as ATVs, fishing, racing, etc. These games usually sold better because they came with a built-in audience. So, with very few orders in hand, Majesco decided not to release the game.
Somewhere in my storage I hope I still have a GBA prototype version. But until then, I'll be locating the original PC version online and playing it on my laptop.