Impossible Creatures finally releases on Steam, 13 years after being announced

It was used to unveil Steam in 2002

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In gaming, a few days ago is considered ancient history. So, if Fallout 4 being released two days ago is now considered old news, what the hell do we call news from 2002? That’s pretty much the time when fish with legs were crawling out of primordial soup in comparison, and yet here we are.

Way back in 2002, Valve unveiled its brand-spanking new platform, Steam. It was to be a way to easily download and install games quicker than it’d take to run the disc installer! To show off this fantastic new service at the 2002 GDC (I would’ve been seven at the time), a pre-release version Relic’s real-time strategy Impossible Creatures was used.

Fast forward 13 years to a future where hundreds of millions of people use Valve’s platform, including teenagers born after it was announced, and at last Impossible Creatures has been released on Steam.

Impossible Creatures’ main hook is the ability to mix-and-match parts of your animal units, for example shoving the head of a lion onto the body of an eagle and unleashed feline-avian fury on your enemies.

The game did see a full release back in 2002, it just never get onto Steam. Publisher Nordic Games picked it up, gave it a bit of a facelift and patches to make sure it works on modern systems, they even re-enabled multiplayer and added Steamworks functionality.

For a game that was meant to release in 2002, that’s a pretty awesome update.

In gaming, a few days ago is considered ancient history. So if Fallout 4 being released is now considered old news, what the hell do we call news from 2002? That’s pretty much the time when fish with legs were crawling out of primordial soup in comparison, and yet here we are.

Way back in 2002, Valve unveiled their brand-spanking new platform, Steam. It was to be a way to easily download and install games quicker than it’d take to run the disc installer! To show off this fantastic new service at the 2002 GDC, a pre-release version Relic’s RTS Impossible Creatures was used.

Fast forward 13 years to a future where hundreds of millions of people use Valve’s platform, including teenagers born after it was announced, and at last Impossible Creatures has been released on Steam.

Impossible Creatures’ main hook is the ability to mix-and-match parts of your animal units, for example shoving the head of a lion onto the body of an eagle and unleashed feline-avian fury on your enemies.

The game did see a full release back in 2002, it just never get onto Steam. Publisher Nordic Games picked it up, gave it a bit of a facelift and patches to make sure it works on modern systems, they even renenabled multiplayer and added Steamworks functionality.

For a game that was meant to release in 2002, that’s a pretty awesome update.


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