Sir-Tech (the US publisher) had gone bust even
before JA2 was released but had transferred
the game rights to Sir-Tech Canada, which
was apparently a development studio. Got
that? They organised to get JA2 published
by TalonSoft, but the expansion, Unfinished
Business, was published by Interplay, because
TalonSoft had already gone bust. Or maybe it
went bust later.
At or about this point, in the early 2000s,
Montreal publisher Strategy First Inc took
on the Jagged Alliance IP. The circumstances
are unclear but the result is plain: SFI would
spend the next decade trying to work out a
way of replicating the critical and (modest)
commercial success of Jagged Alliance 2.
Spoilers: they didn’t.
ENTER THE RUSSIANS
One way to reboot a franchise just three years
after its last successful game is to hire some or
all of the original creative team and hope they
can take it to the next level. Another way is
to flail around the globe looking for someone
to make you something you can call Jagged
Alliance. SFI went for the latter. Big time.
First they did a weird deal with a modder
named Serge “WildFire” Popoff and i-Deal
games to produce a tweaked-up rerelease
of JA2 called, naturally, Jagged Alliance 2:
Wildfire. This came out in 2004 but then i-Deal
games accused SFI of not paying them.
Rather than pay i-Deal and keep going,
SFI instead engaged Cypriot publisher Game
Factory Interactive, who in turn contracted
with Russian developer MiST Land South
to make Jagged Alliance 3D (which would
be Jagged Alliance 2, but in 3D) and Jagged
Alliance 3.
Unfortunately, GFI then went somewhat
off-commission, and tried to get SFI to accept
a game with no strategic layer and a mission-
based story. SFI might have been convinced,
but then GFI said the game would have
real-time combat instead of turn-based, and
Strategy First vetoed this decision and things
got a bit nasty and the end result was an end
to the relationship and no JA3D. SFT moved
on, and that was that for GFI until 2008, when
they put out a game called Hired Guns: the
Jagged Edge. Subtle.
Before that though, back in 2006, Strategy
First had decided to try outsourcing the game
again, and naturally chose a Russian mob
called Akella, because of the good experience
working with Russians the first time.
Jagged Alliance 3 stayed with Akella until
2010, when SFI presumably said to hell with
it, and boxed up the IP and sold it to a German
outfit called bitComposer.
LOSS OF SIGNAL
So Jagged Alliance entered its second decade
as a mess of failed remakes, leaving a trail of
angry Russians behind it. And there was no
way bitComposer was going to betray a legacy
like that. So they published another mediocre
remake of JA2 called Jagged Alliance: Back in
Action, flailed around with some expansion
packs, and then went bankrupt in 2015 and
sold the IP to THQ Nordic who, despite all
evidence to the contrary, called the purchase a
“no brainer”.
I can’t really figure how, in 2013 while
bitComposer was sinking but before THQ
Nordic bought the IP, Danish developer Full
Control was able to crowdsource Jagged
Alliance: Flashback. But it did. They stripped
even more gameplay and mechanics from JA2,
the fans hated the game, and so, logically, THQ
Nordic waited five years and released Jagged
Alliance: Rage - which (ignoring JA Classics,the Nintendo DS version, and how i-Deal
games somehow released an updated version
of JA: Wildfire by itself) brings us up to date
on the state of the IP that just won’t die.
Developed by Cliffhanger (who had done
Jagged Alliance: Online back in 2012, wait
did I mention that one? Whoops), JA: Rage
has finally done justice to the series and all
the fans love it to bits.
Nah just kidding, they hate it too.
So in the 24 years since JA2 created a new
kind of tactical turn-based PC game, nobody
has done anything to justify the franchise’s
survival. Yet live on it does, because even
after all this time, everyone still agrees that
Jagged Alliance 3 is going to be awesome.
ANTHONY FORDHAM