Here's another older game (from 2000) for the PC that I started playing recently again. Crimson Skies still plays surprisingly well (with graphics only a bit behind today's standards), while still being exciting. The story is fun and the voice-acting is still among the best I've ever heard in a game (it's a pulp-adventure style flying game set in an alternate 1930's, and the voices and background music are appropriately "pulpy" ). If you play the game, don't forget to download and install the Version 1.02 patch... and don't forget to use a joystick, of course! While there still doesn't seem to be a sequel planned for the PC, there appears to be a Crimson Skies game heading for the Xbox pretty soon. Also somewhat ironically, Crimson Skies originated as a boardgame with cardboard chits, then became a PC game, and will soon make its way back as a boardgame (but this time with fully-formed plastic plane pieces)... go figure. -G
The recently-released movie Sky Captain and the World of Tomorrow made me think of this game again. Though they both have different background stories from each other (and Crimson Skies has less of a sci-fi aspect to it than Sky Captain does), they both very much evoke a "pulp" genre alternate universe... and they both involve planes in a big way. Out of curiosity, I recently visited one of the local Fry's Electronics to see if the game (the PC version) was still being sold. Lo and behold - in the "Classic Games" section, I found it being sold for $9.99 + tax. It wasn't being sold in a bigger box with a manual as before, but instead had a Crimson Skies cardboard wrapping around the CD's jewel case just like this, with a .pdf file of the manual included instead of the actual manual. The game now apparently has the latest v1.02 patch included, and as always, it works with Windows XP just fine. Oh man, would I still love a sequel to this game! -G
I loved this game when it first came out. This was my time killer before I started on the CM games. Did anyone get to read some of the stories that came out at the time of the game? There was a site that had some of the background stories of Nathan Zachary (the hero in the game). I know the Xbox version came out this year, but i dont have that platform. Was it any good. Any chance of another CS comming out for the PC? This was one game, although deffinately a niche game, that definately had potential to be a long series.
Yeah, I'm also pretty surprised that there hasn't been several sequels for the PC by now, much less one. And like you, I don't have an Xbox, so I've never gotten the chance to play that system's version of the game, Crimson Skies: High Road to Revenge. There were indeed Crimson Skies novels about Nathan Zachary's adventures released at about the same time that FASA's original Crimson Skies boardgame hit stores in 1998 (front cover and back cover). And besides expanding the franchise to a PC game in 2000 and onto the Xbox late last year, they've also come full-circle to an extent (also last year) by releasing a collectible miniatures game of it. Also, you can find the game's background story here (which explains how the alternate-1930's world came about). -G