It didn’t match up with their original promises.” Because at the time they had their GoldenEye game, and they said that for every dollar they spent on marketing that game they would get more dollars back. “We had quite a frank conversation with EA, where they told us they weren’t going to bother trying to market very much. When speaking to Eurogamer in 2012, Steve Eliis had this to say: It’s a bit of a shameless cash grab on the GoldenEye license, if nothing else, but either way, Free Radical believed it negatively affected Future Perfect. Unfortunately for Free Radical, EA had also commissioned a development team to work on GoldenEye: Rogue Agent, which proved to be a bit of a flop, maybe due to the fact you play as the bad guy who happened to have a Golden Eye. It’s a bit of a cult hit now though.Īfter a two game partnership with Eidos, Electronic Arts partnered with Free Radical for TimeSplitters: Future Perfect, with the belief that EA would deliver proper marketing and sales for the TimeSplitters series. However, the concept of someone with psionic powers killing dudes happened to coincide with the game Psi-Ops: The Mindgate Conspiracy, which had a bigger budget and more marketing behind it, meaning Second Sight felt lost in the shuffle. It was also featured in Shaun of the Dead, which, you know, is something I guess.īefore development started on TS3, which would come to be known as Future Perfect, Free Radical devoted some time to developing Second Sight, an idea the team had since Free Radical started. This reflected in both critical and commercial success, with the game receiving glowing reviews from critics across the board and reaching two million sales. The multiplayer and arcade challenges were also bolstered, making the sequel a more complete game as a whole. TimeSplitters 2 launched in October 2002 for the PS2, Xbox and GameCube, and introduced a heavier focus on the single-player campaign, which was widely criticised in the first game. Development began the day after the first game went gold, with Free Radical given twice the development time and employees to turn around a successful follow-up. They swore that the sequel, TimeSplitters 2, would be world-beating, and they certainly weren’t wrong. TimeSplitters sold over one million copies, which Eidos were certainly pleased with, but Free Radical felt like they could do better, as GoldenEye sold a lot more. A knock-off version of Facility is still just as good as the regular version, right? There was even a Mapmaker that let players recreate their favourite multiplayer maps from other games too. Launching in October 2000 in time for the release of the PS2, TimeSplitters quickly became a household sensation with its enjoyable, if a little disposable, single-player campaign and focus on multiplayer that had been refined by the team’s experience working on both GoldenEye and Perfect Dark. Their first game, TimeSplitters, was developed in the space of 18 months, with a studio comprising 18 employees. In February of 1999, several key members of the development of both games, including David Doak, Steve Ellis, Karl Hilton and Graeme Norgate, all left Rare to form Free Radical Design in Nottingham, England. The history of TimeSplitters actually begins with Rare, and the development of both GoldenEye and Perfect Dark. The History of TimeSplitters TimeSplitters 3 Let’s ask the question: when will it be time to split again, and will we ever see TimeSplitters 4? Fans have been hoping to see the series return in some form or fashion over the past decade and a half, but an official release is still nowhere to be found. Quickly becoming one of the most successful and celebrated FPS franchises of the 2000s, TimeSplitters seemed to disappear as quickly as it arrived, dropping a trilogy of absolute bangers before disappearing into the night. That, or you’ll know it as the game that Ed loves playing in Shaun of the Dead. Gamers who were around in the early to mid-2000s will likely have a lot of fond memories when it comes to the TimeSplitters series, whether that’s from inviting your mates around to play the four-player split screen multiplayer, or just from experiencing the weird and wonderful campaign and challenge missions the series had to offer.
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