Fmulder points us to
this week’s Shacknews piece previewing David Craddock’s upcoming Blizzard North
book drops the interesting and slightly horrifying fact that Blizzard North
briefly considered developing a Diablo project for the Gameboy. Quote:
“Following Diablo 2′s release, Blizzard North
split into two teams … kind of,” Craddock said. “One team immediately
started in on D2’s expansion set, Lord of Destruction.
The other team went into spitball mode, kicking around ideas for a new IP. But
several other developers ventured into groups of two or three and put together
proposals for smaller projects. One of those was given the working title Diablo
Junior, a game tentatively planned for the Game Boy Color and/or the Game Boy
Advance, depending on market share and other business-y factors.
“Diablo Junior was intended as a
single-player-only prequel to the original game. Taking a page from Pokémon’s
book, the team wanted to release three cartridges, each packing a different
hero in the warrior-rogue-sorcerer vein as well as items that players would
have to trade for in order to collect. Heroes started in a unique town before
heading into dungeons and wilderness zones. Diablo Junior was ultimately put
out to pasture (absent of cow levels, I’m sure) because of the steep production
costs associated with developing handheld games.”
The preview also
mentions post-LoD plans for a second D2 expansion which would have focused on
adding multiplayer features, including Guild Halls. Those were long-planned and
were actually playable pre-release; we saw a functional version during our
visit to Blizzard North in 2000, but they were never developed fully enough to
implement into Diablo II. Nor Diablo III, at least not so far.
No comments:
Post a Comment