Help with a possible unreleased Saturn game...

[Anthaemia.]

I've found the box art for a possible unreleased Saturn title called Shadoan in a US magazine:



Anyone ever heard of this one? From what I can tell (and even the normally reliable Satakore has nothing on this one!), it was originally an interactive FMV adventure game on the Philips CDI, which was later ported to various systems during the 32-bit era, including the Saturn, or at least that was the plan.

I'm fairly certain that if this was indeed released, it was only in the US - based on the cover image available - and may have been limited to a very small market due to its publisher's lack of funds. Again, more concrete information would very much be appreciated...

[martiniii]

Can't give you any direct answers, but a quick bit of checking turned up the following facts which may be of help in your search:

Apparently the full name of the game is Kingdom II: Shadoan. It's actually the sequel to the 1984 laserdisc arcade game Thayer's Quest(which was ported to the 3DO and CD-i under the name Kingdom: The Far Reaches, hence why the sequel is called Kingdom II). So far as I can see, Kingdom II was only released for PC and CD-i.

[mick_aka]

It was due in November 1996, then there were some... problems!

From a March 17th 1998 article:

The president and founder of Virtual Image Productions (VIP), Rick Dyer, has filed a lawsuit against Behaviour Communications Inc. (previously known as Malofilms) in California Superior Court for multiple breaches of contract and computer crime.

Dyer, who developed the original Dragon's Lair, Space Ace, and most recently, Shadoan, is asking for at least US$50 million in damages.

The lawsuit alleges that Behaviour (in the Malofilms days) fraudulently obtained a seizure order for the Sega Saturn version of Shadoan from the home of programmer Pierre Proulx.

As a result, VIP claims that since authorities seized all of the code for Shadoan, it was impossible to develop the Saturn version of Shadoan, which disrupted VIP's rollout plans.

Jeremy G. Schuster, the lead attorney representing VIP, said that Behaviour's bad faith "destroyed the development cycle and viability of games that were well-positioned for release. My regret is that we trusted Behaviour after they failed to make a $100,000 required payment; we should have litigated and crushed them at that time."

"We are obligated to our developers, many of whom are participants in the venture," said Dyer. "We can't forsake them and allow Behaviour to skate away after they destroyed our productions."

[martiniii]

Wow, crazy stuff...