| Last year, Erick Dyke, President of software developer n-Space, was
enjoying his vacation in a lush tropical locale, when he received a telephone call from
Ron Chaimowitz, CEO of GT Interactive Software. The point of the call was a simple
question. As Chaimowitz sat in a downtown New York office building, he grasped the phone,
took a deep breath, and asked Dyke, "What would you do if I gave you the Duke Nukem license to do an original game?" There was silence on the
phone, as Dyke considered the magnitude of what had just been offered. He collected his
thoughts for a few seconds, and buzzed in with an equally simple answer: "Duke
Raider," he said, matter-of-factly imagining the Tomb Raider environment meshed with
the Duke Nukem universe. For Dyke and his company, n-Space, this wasn’t their first
chance at doing a Duke Nukem product. They actually had the chance to do the PlayStation
port of Duke Nukem 3D, but passed on it. Now, they were possibly only days away from
scoring the ultimate game license and being able to mold their own original game. The only
loose piece of the puzzle? GT and n-Space both needed to convince 3D Realms, the owners of
the Duke Nukem license, that they had the skill to create an original Duke property that
would remain faithful to the franchise. Would they be able to do it?
Outsiders might have predicted that n-Space would have a hard time selling 3D Realms on
the concept, considering their previous track record. This Orlando, Florida developer,
independently owned and home to about 35 different programmers, artists, and designers, is
primarily assembled of ex-Martin Marietta employees who worked in the advanced simulation
group. Their first project was the visually stunning arcade game for Sega, Desert Tank,
where the team worked with acclaimed Sega game designer Yu Suzuki.
After working with Sega, n-Space switched sides and
signed a contract with Sony Computer Entertainment America as one of the founding
developers for the PlayStation. The game they developed, entitled RazorWing, was touted by
Sony at the first E3 show as one of the biggest hits due out for the PlayStation in the
fall of 1995. I still remember being chauffeured over to the RazorWing kiosk by
Sony’s PR people and being shown this "triple A blockbuster title."
However, just three months short of completion, RazorWing was canned by Sony, and n-Space
had gone from fame to folly within months. The company finally got back on track in 1997
with the mediocre action game TigerShark for GT, but up until now, has never really had a
big hit game. Dyke was confident that if all the pieces of the puzzle fell into place,
Time to Kill could be their big break. |
