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Franchise Familiariser: Deadlands

Tabletop roleplaying games are currently back in vogue. Dungeons & Dragons 5^th Edition continues to be the biggest fish in the pond, with a revised edition released in 2024, whilst games like Traveller, Call of Cthulhu, Cyberpunk RED, Mothership, Mork Borg and Dragonbane continue to do well. But another venerable RPG recently (ish) returned with a new edition (with a minor new revision arriving soon). What is Deadlands? What is it about? We have you covered with a Franchise Familiariser course!

The Basics

Deadlands is a horror-steampunk-alternate history franchise that debuted in October 1996 as a tabletop roleplaying game. Since then, it has spun off novels, comics and multiple editions of the tabletop game, but no live-action or video game adaptations as yet (despite interest and attempts).

The game was developed by RPG writer Shane Lacey Hensley, inspired by a painting by the artist Brom depicting a Confederate vampire from the World of Darkness line. Hensley set up a new company, PinnacleEntertainment Group, to publish the game. Two industry veteran friends of his, Greg Gorden and Matt Forbeck, come on board early on to act as writers, editors and even investors in his company.

Launching in October 1996, the game was an unexpected smash hit success, given the poor state of the tabletop industry at the time (Dungeons & Dragons was just starting to undergo the convulsions leading to the collapse of TSR and its buy-out by Wizards of the Coast several years later), and won an Origins Award. Deadlands sold well enough to warrant no less than forty-nine sourcebooks and a revised edition (launched in 1999), as well as spin-off roleplaying games Deadlands: Hell on Earth (1998) and Deadlands: Lost Colony (2002). A collectible card game, Doomtown, was launched in 1998 and ran until 2001. The roleplaying game also generated an accompanying miniatures line and its own focused wargame, Deadlands: The Great Rail Wars, which began in 1997.

In 2001 Deadlands was relaunched as Deadlands d20. It abandoned the use of the original, popular rules system and switched to the d20 rules system popularised by Dungeons & Dragons 3^rd Edition, under the Open Game Licence. Although new companies had found financial success with d20 games, established companies were fiercely criticised by long-term fans for making such a move to chase dollars at the expense of existing fans (who saw no reason to move to a whole new rules system and spend more money when the existing rules were still fine). The move was also of arguably limited utility: many D&D fans who came on board with 3^rd Edition showed a reluctance to move to a new game, even one using compatible rules. As a result, Deadlands lost many of its established fans and failed to pick up many new ones.

The financial losses stemming from the d20 experiment were substantial and Pinnacle almost went under; the company was refounded as Great White Games to alleviate these issues.

In 2003, the Deadlands rules, specifically the simplified set used in Great Rail Wars, were revamped and republished as Savage Worlds, a generic rules system with no established setting. Like earlier generic games like GURPS, the idea with Savage Worlds was to have one central rules system and players could then pick up a number of different optional settings and games to slot into the core system. Savage Worlds was warmly-received, with a number of different games and settings released for it in the first few years.

By 2006 Great White Games was able to revert to the Pinnacle Entertainment moniker. In that year Pinnacle released Deadlands: Reloaded, effectively a second edition of the game using the Savage Worlds fork of the rules system. Numerous supplements and expansions followed. Hell on Earth was also relaunched, and in 2012 was joined by a new spin-off game, Deadlands: Noir. In 2020 the game was relaunched as Deadlands: The Weird West, aka “Deadlands for Savage Worlds Adventurer Edition” (SWADE), compatible with the latest edition of Savage Worlds. This is the current version of the game being supported, with additional adventures and sourcebooks following.

A small selection of the original 1st Edition Deadlands sourcebooks, courtesy of Wayne's Books.

The Canon

The Deadlands canon consists of four roleplaying games (with a fifth in development) broadly sharing the same timeline. Time travel and parallel universes exist in the setting, allowing for retcons and lore changes between versions of the games without getting too caught up in minutiae, an in-universe phenomenon known as “the Mandela Effect.” Each roleplaying game exists in multiple editions, broadly speaking the original (now dubbed “Classic”), the Reloaded edition that used the first version of the Savage Worlds rules system, and the modern editions that use the Savage Worlds Adventure Edition rules system (SWADE).

The five roleplaying games in the setting are Deadlands (sometimes called The Weird West to differentiate it from the others), Hell on Earth, Lost Colony, Deadlands Noir and the forthcoming Dark Ages.

Deadlands

Classic Core Rulebooks: Deadlands: The Weird West Roleplaying Game (1996) • Deadlands: Weird West Player’s Guide (1999) • Deadlands: Marshal’s Handbook (1999) • Deadlands Classic: 20^th Anniversary Edition Core Rulebook (2017)

Classic Sourcebooks: The Quick and the Dead (1997) • Book o’ the Dead (1997) • Smith & Robards (1997) • Hucksters & Hexes (1997) • Rascals, Varmints & Critters (1997) • Twisted Tales (1997) • The Great Maze (boxed set) (1997) • Marshal Law (1996) • Ghost Dancers (1998) • Fire & Brimstone (1998) • City O’ Gloom (boxed set) (1998) • Law Dogs (1998) • Devil’s Tower 1: The Road to Hell (1998) • Devil’s Tower 2: Heart O’ Darkness (1998) • Devil’s Tower 3: Fortress of Fear (1998) • Tales o’ Terror: 1877 (1998) • Lost Angels (1998) • River O’ Blood (boxed set) (1998) • Boomtowns (boxed set) (1999) • Marshall’s Log (1999) • Doomtown or Bust! (1999) • Bloody Ol’ Muddy (1999) • Back East: The North (1999) • Back East: The South (1999) • South O’ The Border (1999) • Canyon O’ Doom (1999) • Rascals, Varmints and Critters II (2000) • The Agency – The Men in Black Dusters (2000) • Ghost Busters (2000) • Hexarcana (2000) • The Collegium (2000) • Rain O’ Terror (2000) • The Great Weird North (2000) • The Black Circle – Unholy Alliance (2000) • Dead Presidents (2000) • Lone Stars – The Texas Rangers (2001) • Epitaph #1 (2000) • Epitaph #2 (2000) • Epitaph #3 (2000) • Epitaph #4 (2001)

Dime Novel Adventures: Perdition’s Daughter (1996) • Independence Day (1996) • Night Train (1997) • Under a Harrowed Moon Part 1: Strange Bedfellows (1997) • Under a Harrowed Moon Part 2: Savage Passage (1998) • Under a Harrowed Moon Part 3: Ground Zero (1998) • The Forbidden God (1998) • Adios, A-Mi-Go! (1998) • Skinners (1999) • Worms! (1999)

d20 Core Rulebook: Deadlands: d20 (2001)

d20 Sourcebooks: Horrors o’ the Weird West (2001) • The Way of the Brave (2001) • The Way of the Dead (2001) • The Way of the Gun (2001) • The Way of the Huckster (2001) • The Way of the New Science (2001) • The Way of the Righteous (2001)

GURPS Deadlands Core Rulebook: GURPS Deadlands: Weird West (2001)

GURPS Expansions: Dime Novel 1 – Aces and Eights (2001) • Dime Novel 2 – Wanted: Undead or Alive (2001) • Hexes (2002) • Varmints (2003)

Reloaded Core Rulebooks: Deadlands Reloaded (2006) • Deadlands Reloaded Player’s Guide (2006) • Deadlands Reloaded Marshal’s Handbook (2006)

Reloaded Sourcebooks: Marshal’s Screen (2009) • Trail Guide: The Great Northwest (2010) • Trail Guide: South o’ the Border (2010) • Trail Guide: Weird White North (2011) • 1880 Smith & Robards Catalog (2011) • Ghost Towns (2012)

Reloaded Adventures: Coffin Rock (2008) • Don’t Drink the Water (2009) • Doomtown: A Fight They’ll Never Forget (2009) • The Flood (2009) • Murder on the Hellstromme Express (2009) • Night Train 2: For Whom the Whistle Blows (2010) • Saddle Sore (2010) • Devil’s Night (2011) • Blood Drive 1: Bad Times on the Goodnight (2012) • Blood Drive 2: High Plains Drovers (2012) • Guess Whose Coming to Dinner (2012) • The Last Sons (2012) • Return to Manitou Bluff  (2012) • Blood Drive 3: Range War! (2012) • The Inheritors (2013) • Stone and a Hard Place (2015) • Dead Men Walkin’ (2015) • The Tombstone Seven (2015) • All the Purty Little Horses (2016) • The Twilight Protocol (2016) • The Land Beyond the Busted Doorway (2016) • Sawed ‘em in Gomorra (2016) • Paradise Lost (2017) • Good Intentions (2017) • Knights with No Armor (2017) • A Tale of Two Killers (2020)

Reloaded Dime Novel Adventures: Beast of Fire (2005) • Deadshot (2006) • Frostbite (2006)

SWADE Core Rulebooks: Deadlands: The Weird West Savage Worlds Adventure Edition (2021)

SWADE Sourcebooks: Hell on the High Plains (2023) • The Abominable Northwest (2025) • The Mysterious Maze (2026)

SWADE Adventures: Showdown at Sundown (2021) • Blood Drive (2021) • Crater Lake Chronicles (2021) • Horror at Headstone Hill (2021) • Night Train (2024) • Carnage in the Cascades (2025) • Curse of the Maze Queen (2026) • Red Tide (2026)

Short Story Collections: A Fistful O’ Dead Guys (1999) • For a Few Dead Guys More (1999) • The Good, the Bad and the Dead (1999) • Wendigo Tales: Savage Stories of the Weird West (2025)

Novels: Deluge: A Novel of the Flood (John Goff, 2008) • Ghostwalkers (Jonathan Maberry, 2015) • Thunder Moon Rising (Jeffrey Mariotte, 2016) • Boneyard (Seanan McGuire, 2017)

Graphic Novels: The Cackler (2016) • Rise of the Black Circle (2025)

Deadlands: The Great Rail Wars

Core Rulebook: Deadlands: The Great Rail Wars (boxed set) (1997) • Deadlands: The Great Rail Wars Revised (2001)

Expansions: Reinforcements (1997) • Derailed (1998) • A Fist Full of Ghost Rock (1998) • Dogs o’ War (1998) • Cry Havoc (1998) • High Noon (2000) • Raid on Roswell (2001)

 

Deadlands: Hell on Earth

Hell on Earth Core Rulebooks: Deadlands: Hell on Earth (1998) • The Wasted West (1998)

Hell on Earth Sourcebooks: Brainburners (1998) • The Last Crusaders (1998) • Children o’ the Atom (1998) • Road Warriors (1998) • Toxic Tales (1998) • Radiation Screen (1998) • Cyborgs (1999) • The Junkman Cometh (1999) • Shattered Coast (1999) • Iron Oasis (1999) • Monsters, Muties ‘n’ Misfits (1999) • Waste Warriors (2000) • Spirit Warriors (2000) • Denver (2001) • City O’ Sin (2001)

Hell on Earth Adventures: Hell or High Water (1998) • Something About a Sword (1999) • Urban Renewal (2000) • The Boise Horror (2000) • The Unity (2002)

Hell on Earth Dime Novels: Leftovers (1998) • Killer Clowns (1999) • Infestations (1999)

Hell on Earth d20 Core Rulebook: Hell on Earth d20 (2002)

Hell on Earth d20 Sourcebooks: Horrors of the Wasted West (2002)

Hell on Earth Reloaded Core Rulebooks: Hell on Earth Reloaded (2012) • Hell on Earth Player’s Guide (2012)

Hell on Earth Reloaded Sourcebooks: Hell on Earth Companion (2014)

Hell on Earth Reloaded Adventures: The Worms’ Turn (2014)

Deadlands: Lost Colony

Classic Core Rulebooks: Deadlands: Lost Colony (2002)

Classic Sourcebooks: Lost Colony Companion (2002)

SWADE Core Rulebooks: Deadlands: Lost Colony for Savage Worlds Adventurer’s Edition (2020)

SWADE Adventures: A Billion Miles from Home (2019) • Widowmaker (2020) • Hellstromme Triumphant (2020) • Maw of Oblivion (2024) • Mad World (2025)

Lost Colony Novels: Banshee Screams (2002)

 

Deadlands: Noir

Core Rulebooks: Deadlands Noir (2012) • Deadlands Noir Player’s Guide (2012)

Adventures: The Old Absinthe House Blues (2013) • The Case of the Jumbo Shrimp (2013)

Dime Novels: Tenement Men (2012) • Blood & Roses (2013) • Memories of Yesterday (2013)

 

Deadlands: Dark Ages

SWADE Core Rulebooks: Deadlands: Dark Ages Core Rulebook (forthcoming)

SWADE Adventures: Sins of the Father (2023)

Graphic Novels: Merlin’s Champions (forthcoming)

Brom's original cover art for the 1996 release of Deadlands.

Backstory

In 1863, the American Civil War peaked with the Battle of Gettysburg, a decisive confrontation between the United States of America and the rebel Confederacy. But on the day of the battle, a mystical ritual ruptured the walls between this dimension and one beyond, the Hunting Grounds, the home of incredibly powerful entities known as the Reckoners. The Reckoners were able touch our world, unleashing chaos, evil and darkness. The dead began to rise, strange creatures appeared and an uncanny sense of fear began to spread across North America. The greater the cumulative level of fear in the world, the more powerful the Reckoners became.

Shortly after this event, a massive earthquake tore California apart, dropping most of the coast into the ocean and forming a shattered landscape of ravines, whirlpools and canyons: the Great Maze. In the walls of the Maze, explorers found an incredible source of energy and power, ghost rock. Capable of burning far hotter than coal and for far longer, ghost rock opened amazing new avenues for scientific research and engineering. New technology appeared, including steam-powered gatling guns, gyrocopters and steam tanks. Stories of “strange happenings” around ghost rock were dismissed, or even accepted as the price of harnessing this new power. The Civil War raged on, far longer than anyone expected, before the North finally gained the upper hand and defeated the South in 1871 (although many swear blind to having memories where the Civil War continued into the early 1880s).

Deadlands chronicles the “classic” Weird West, the original incarnation of the setting. The original edition of the game was set in 1876, the very mild revised edition in 1877, the Reloaded edition was set in 1879 and the current SWADE edition updates things to 1884.

Deadlands: Hell on Earth is a sequel to the original game. Set in 2094, Hell on Earth postulates that the Reckoners finally succeeded in entering the world in 2081, triggering the Last War, a cataclysmic conflict that devasted the world. Hell on Earth is set in the Wasted West, a post-apocalyptic North America where magic and technology have become intermingled. The world has largely been laid waste but, curiously, having entered our world the Reckoners soon after vanished, and a key part of the metaplot ties into finding out what happened to them, as well as traditional post-apocalyptic concerns.

Deadlands: Lost Colony runs simultaneously alongside Hell on Earth and is also set in 2094. However, the setting is another planet altogether, known only as Banshee. Using a mixture of ghost rock and magic, an expedition was sent via wormhole to this planet. Discovering it to be rich in ghost rock, humanity began colonising and exploiting the planet, leading to conflict with the native species, the Anouks. More than three million humans were on Banshee when the Last War took place, sealing the wormhole and leaving them trapped. The game depicts more of a classic science fiction setting, with some spaceships, laser weapons and more advanced technology, mixed with magic. The game’s metaplot kicks in when it is revealed that the Reckoners were banished from Earth shortly after the Last War…but they were banished to Banshee, and their arrival obviously is not good news for the inhabitants of the planet. Fortunately, since Banshee is in a much better state than Earth and has a smaller population (depriving the Reckoners of the vast quantities of fear they feed on), there is also the possibility that they might be finally vulnerable on Banshee. The SWADE edition of the game updates the timeline to 2096 and hints of a final way of defeating the Reckoners.

Deadlands Noir is a limited-run RPG that updates the setting to the early 20^th Century, and is thus an interquel, set between the original Deadlands and Hell on Earth. The rulebook provides information on running games from the 1910s to the 1950s, and is a moody, noir-infused game where intrigue and investigation is favoured over combat. Elements such as Prohibition, World War I, gangsters and jazz music feature.

Deadlands: Dark Ages is a forthcoming game that acts as a prequel to the entire Deadlands saga. It is set in Dark Ages England in 877, a thousand years or more before the original game, and taps into Arthurian legends. Morgana le Fey will be a major character in this game. Despite being a prequel, time travel (which canonically exists in the setting) allows for events in Dark Ages to impact on the other time periods and vice versa, and possibly allows characters from one game to travel to another.

A map of the Weird West by Cheyenne Wright.

Setting

The primary Deadlands setting is the continent of North America in the latter half of the 19^th Century, specifically the area known as the Wild West, approximately an area extending from the Mississippi River to the Pacific Ocean incorporating the Great Plains, the south-western deserts, the Rocky Mountains and the coastal regions of California and the Pacific North-West.

The geography is more or less identical to that of the real world, with several notable exceptions. A massive earthquake destroyed the coast of California in 1868, obliterating most coastal cities and settlements. What was left behind was a maze of water canyons, bays, inlets, towering sea stacks and vast seams of ghost rock. The resulting terrain became known as the Great Maze. Fear of a recurrence was offset by the immense wealth to be gained by mining ghost rock, resulting in a crazed rush reminiscent of earlier gold rushes. The City of Lost Angels became the dominant settlement of the region, benefitting from the resulting westwards rush.

In terms of geopolitics, the United States remains the dominant force on the continent, especially after defeating the Confederate States in 1871. However, control of the western states is somewhat tenuous, and Native American tribes have regained autonomous control of two regions: the Sioux Nations, which expand across western Dakota, most of Nebraska, eastern Wyoming and south-eastern Montana; and the Coyote Confederation, in eastern Oklahoma and south-eastern Kansas. In 1866 Utah declared itself the independent nation of Deseret, a religious nation under Mormon leadership.

As well as political entities, there are also powerful factions within those entities to contend with, such as the Pinkerton Detective Agency, the Texas Rangers (both now oriented towards supernatural threats more than mundane ones), and various newspapers and do-gooders determined to expose what's "really happening" out west, though the folks back east are still distracted by reconstruction and other issues.

With the Civil War over, the Great Rail Wars have begun: several major and numerous minor rail companies were established with a competitive goal: to drive railheads all the way from the Mississippi to the Pacific, allowing for fast cross-continental travel and delivery of ghost rock, gold and trading goods back east. The Rail Barons would turn out to be utterly ruthless, competitive to the point of lunacy and almost untouchable in their power, using means both mundane and supernatural to ensure they would come out on top. The rail companies include Bayou Vermillion (noted for their use of zombie labour), Black River, Union Blue and Iron Dragon.

The Deadlands world also features significant differences to our own when it comes to technology. Ghost rock, a supercharged (and, some say, supernatural) form of coal, has allowed for the creation of advanced steam technology, including steam wagons, faster steam trains, steam-powered gatling guns and even steam-enhanced gyrocopters. Alongside the standard six-shooters and horse-drawn wagons, more exotic, weird technology is starting to appear in the West.

More concerning are the Reckoners: enigmatic beings of supreme power, the Reckoners were sealed away from our world but that seal was broken in 1863 during the Battle of Gettysburg, when their influence was able to seep into and touch our world once more. Since then, supernatural events have become more commonplace. Magic, though unpredictable, works through strange rituals and processes. The dead – the Harrowed – can rise again to torment the living. Wendigos, jackalopes, wallcrawlers, ghouls, sasquatches, maze dragons, gremlins, pox walkers and Texas skeeters, among many others, have become increasingly common and unnerving threats.

To overcome these threats, the various groups of the Weird West have a powerful resource to call upon: you. Or rather, any number of well-meaning adventurers, heroes, antiheroes, cowboys, cowgirls, huxsters, hexslingers or mad scientists who are ready to heed the call to adventure and take on the forces of evil armed with noting but their wits and guts, and maybe a gatling-cannon-armed steam gyrocopter.

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Star Wars: Galactic Racer

The horror and trauma of decades of warfare is over. The Empire has fallen and peace reigns...which means a return to prominence for the Galactic Racing League. Speeder racers from across the galaxy converge for a new championship, but the rich family of spoiled brat Kestar Bool has basically bought him the championship. Organiser Darius Pax hires the racer Shade to take the fight to Bool, if he can.

Star Wars: Galactic Racer is pretty much exactly what it says on the tin: a racing game in the Star Wars universe, and a spiritual successor to Star Wars Episode I: Racer (1999). The development pedigree is impressive, with new company Fuse Games assembling a team of top talent from other racing games, with a majority coming from the Burnout franchise.

Galactic Racer does some interesting things with its premise. The main gameplay mode is the single player campaign, which combines a narrative story with roguelite elements. The player takes part in a tournament consisting of multiple races but losing certain events means losing a token; lose all your tokens and you fail the entire season, and have to wait to start the next tournament to rejoin the fray. Early in the game you only have one token, so losing an event is an insta-fail condition. But, whilst you lose your upgrades for the season, you keep any permanent upgrades you make to your vehicle between tournaments, plus of course you as the player get better and better as you go along. You need to win three tiers of tournaments to complete the game, though once you've completed one tier, you automatically start at the next (i.e. once you've beaten the first tier, all future resets will be to the start of the second tier until you complete it, and then the third; you don't need to complete all three tiers in one go, for the sake of sanity and any furniture near you). You can also start grudges with other characters, eventually forcing them to agree to a duel. Defeating them means taking a token from them. Certain sponsors also provide you with additional tokens, so you can fail one or two token events per run and still have a shot at victory.

This structure is surprisingly compelling, and the game is successful at nailing that "fail by doing," angle. When you fail a run, you usually know exactly how and why you failed, and how to succeed next time, nailing the appeal of games like Hades and Frostpunk in a completely different genre. This also makes the single-player campaign surprisingly chunky. It took me 20 hours to finally beat it, which doesn't seem unusual. That's a decent amount of SP content compared to most racing games, where the SP material is fairly limited with the main focus on multiplayer.

You have a choice of three vehicles to race, namely a speeder, a bike or a skimmer. Certain flashback missions also give you access to a Phantom Menace-style podracer. Each vehicle can be customised, though for the most part changing models only has an aesthetic effect. You get actual new parts for your vehicles through the game from winning events, and can also buy new parts from your mechanic or new rare parts from the specialised merchant (who also repairs your vehicle). You can also tweak certain characteristics between each race, though which characteristic you want to tweak is randomised. Also, oddly, you can only buy new parts or engage in repairs between planets, or if you visit the merchant at the expense of not taking part in a race.

This does lead into Galactic Racer's arguable biggest weakness. There are a lot of elements in this title which are "gameified," that is, it does things for game balance that have no basis in actual logic. Not being able to repair damage between races is infuriating, and strictly limiting when you can buy new gear is weird. If your engineer doesn't have any good parts, you need to pay an ever-increasing amount to reset the pool, which means you frequently waste your bank balance resetting the pool only to find you can't now buy the parts for your favourite setup. What this means in practice is that you may find a favoured setup which dominates one run but on the next, the randomisation means you can never achieve that setup again, which is annoying. It does encourage you to try different tactics and approaches, which is good, but if you've hit on the perfect ramjet build, not being able to recreate it again just feels aggravating.

Fortunately, the actual racing is excellent. Handling is solid and responds well to upgrades, and knowing when to deploy your afterburner versus your ramjet becomes a key strategy. Sliding around corners and then boosting out via ramjet feels fantastic and the game gives you a tremendous sense of speed. Getting into "the zone" as you learn the tracks and know exactly where and when to boost can be very satisfying. The three vehicle types respond differently and require different lines, and the podracers you fly in the flashback missions are genuinely unhinged, incredibly powerful monsters constantly on the verge of killing you or other racers, or both. The only disappointment here is opposition AI, which is rarely threatening, with the game resorting to the groan-inducing tactic of "rubberbanding" (mysteriously teleporting opponents you've really left utterly in the dust close enough behind you to keep things interesting) to keep them in the game.

For a racing game, there's a lot of good writing and characterisation here. The eleven other racers in the league gradually become more familiar over multiple runs, with some emerging as enemies, some as allies, some as frenemies, and some as, er, Biddy Blas. Some will also be vicious competitors on the track but turn on the charm off it (between runs you can wander around the paddock and converse with other characters). Do enough runs and you will have the opportunity to defeat them all in one-on-one duels. The flashback missions, which explore the life and misadventures of a Phantom Menace side-character, are also well-characterised, adding a lot of depth to the one-note racers from that movie. 

Graphically, the game is superb, the only issue being occasional readability on some of the tracks where the track limits are not clearly delineated. This is more of a problem on Jakku than the other tracks, and also an issue more with graphics options that can make the details smeary at a distance. The game also defaults to having the cinematic camera on, which is a nice idea but a damned liability mid-race and killed me more times than any competitor. Fortunately you can turn it off. Music and sound effects are also outstanding.

Star Wars: Galactic Racer (****) is a great arcade game, with a lot of customisability. The story and characters are much stronger than expected, it has an infectious sense of humour and fun, and the game has a ridiculous "one more race" feel that may cause serious sleep disruption. Some of the progression mechanics feel harsh for their own sake, and graphically some tracks have issues with not always making it clear in time where the hell the limits are. But these are mostly minor irritants. The game is available now on PC, PlayStation 5 and Xbox Series X/S.

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Electronic Arts shuts down BioWare and cancels the next MASS EFFECT game

In news that is not entirely unexpected, but the timing certainly is, Electronic Arts is to shut down BioWare, the legendary RPG studio behind some of the greatest games in history, including Baldur's Gate, Baldur's Gate II, Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic, Mass Effect and Dragon Age: Origins, along with their respective sequels. The fifth Mass Effect game, in development at the studio since at least 2020, has been cancelled.

BioWare was founded in Edmonton, Canada in 1995 by Ray Muzyka, Greg Zechuk and Augustine Yip. Their first game, Shattered Steel, was a mech combat title, published by Interplay Entertainment in 1996. Their second title was planned to be a fantasy roleplaying game with the working title Battleground: Infinity, using impressive new tech that was quickly dubbed the Infinity Engine. Interplay, impressed by a demo, suggested merging the game with their own Dungeons & Dragons video game licence. The resulting game, Baldur's Gate, was released in late 1998 and was hugely critically acclaimed, enjoying strong sales. Arguably, this was the first game to come close to nailing the atmosphere of playing a tabletop game of D&D. The game also had a robust multiplayer mode, allowing people to play different characters at the same time in a classic D&D party. BioWare developed an expansion pack, Tales of the Sword Coast (1999), and a fully-fledged, far more ambitious sequel, Baldur's Gate II: Shadows of Amn (2000), still regarded as one of the finest video games of all time. Baldur's Gate II also received its own expansion, Throne of Bhaal (2001), which brought the story to an end (for twenty years, anyway).

In the meantime, Interplay licensed the Infinity Engine for their inhouse development team, Black Isle Studios, to develop their own Dungeons & Dragons games, giving rise to Planescape: Torment (1999), Icewind Dale (2000) and Icewind Dale II (2002). Collaboration between the two companies remained strong and BioWare began development of Neverwinter Nights (2002), their first 3D title. However, Interplay lost the D&D licence to Atari, who published Neverwinter Nights instead. Interplay and Black Isle went into financial freefall and collapsed in 2003, ironically whilst working on Baldur's Gate III: The Black Hound and Fallout 3: Van Buren, neither of which was ever finished.

BioWare had entered into discussions with LucasArts and in 2003 released Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic, an epic roleplaying game set 4,000 years before the events of the films. Released at a moment when the franchise was at a low critical ebb, due to the perceived two disappointing prequel films, the game received enormous praise for its writing and central plot twist, which some held to be better than Empire Strikes Back's twist. Surprisingly, BioWare passed on developing the sequel, instead recommending Obsidian Entertainment, a new company set up by their friends who had escaped the collapse of Black Isle and Interplay. Knights of the Old Republic II: The Sith Lords was released in 2004 and began Obsidian's own storied (though bumpier) journey through the RPG space.

By this point BioWare had made the strategic decision that they were spending too much money on licences for other people's properties, and decided to develop their own worlds from scratch. This resulted in Jade Empire (2005), an Asian-influenced hybrid of roleplaying game and martial arts brawler. The game was critically well-received, but the RPG hardcore audience disliked the streamlining of RPG mechanics and the general audience seemed confused over the game's genre. Though it did okay, it did not meet BioWare's sales expectations and plans for a sequel were dropped.

BioWare's next game was Mass Effect (2007), an epic RPG that was an effective spiritual successor to Knights of the Old Republic, but in an original science fiction universe. Again, the RPG hardcore was let down by the removal of even more RPG mechanics, but the game's character creation system, dialogue choices, writing, worldbuilding and hugely iconic plot twists, which the player could influence, were all hugely praised. The game, originally published in a deal with Microsoft, sold quite well and attracted the attention of Electronic Arts, who acquired BioWare in late 2007.

One of the prevailing narratives through the years since has been that EA interfered significantly in BioWare's internal development. Upon acquiring the studio EA learned that their in-development game, a spiritual successor to Baldur's Gate called Dragon Age: Origins, was planned to be a PC-only title, despite having been in development already for several years and had spent a large amount of money. EA mandated the game be released on consoles as well and a marketing campaign filled with blood and gore was launched, which some people felt heavily misrepresented the tone and style of the game. Appalled at the game's budget, EA also demanded a "quickie" sequel to be developed in just one year. Dragon Age: Origins (2009) was extremely well-received reviewed on PC, but the console ports were criticised for being underwhelming. Dragon Age II (2011) was even more fiercely criticised for heavy reuse of limited assets, being a much shorter game than Origins, and removing a lot of RPG mechanics in favour of lots and lots of combat.

In between, BioWare released Mass Effect 2 (2010), possibly their single most well-received game, which featured greatly improved combat and a companion character mechanic which saw the player have to recruit a dirty dozen to take on an alien threat, with tremendous freedom in which characters to select and how to use them in the final mission, with differing numbers of casualties and outcomes possible. However, during the development of this game, development started of a Star Wars online multiplayer game, and the Mass Effect franchise lost some of its main writers to the new game. Star Wars: The Old Republic was released in 2011 to some good reviews and reasonable sales, but a lot of fan scepticism, especially those who perceived the game would prevent the development of a "proper" Knights of the Old Republic III.

Mass Effect 3 (2012), which concluded the epic story begun in the first game five years earlier, launched to a storm of controversy with players incensed that the complex choices players had made through three games was reduced to choosing one of three options at the very end of the game, and the game being thematically incoherent with the ideas being laid down in the earlier titles, which they blamed on some personnel (particularly chief writer and worldbuilding Drew Karpyshyn) being moved over to the Star Wars game. BioWare responded to the criticism by issuing patches rewriting the ending to acknowledge more of the players' choices, though ultimately it could only go so far. A few months later, the remaining BioWare founders at the company all quit.

Dragon Age: Inquisition was released in 2014 and was the company's biggest-selling game. Despite this, the game suffered criticism for being too big and long, an overreaction to Dragon Age II's shortness, and by being an open-world game, chasing the appeal of Skyrim, whilst not having game systems well-suited for that format. The game's critical cachet improved markedly with the release of its expansion, Trespasser (2015).

Mass Effect: Andromeda was released in 2017 and received fierce criticism for a likewise dramatic change to the series' structure, pursuing a similar open-world environment, albeit this time on multiple planets. The game was also criticised for having weaker characters than the trilogy, and by removing the action to the Andromeda Galaxy and some 800 years further in the future, many fan-favourite characters, species and ships were missing from the title. The game also launched in a heavily-bugged state. The game's critical cachet has improved somewhat in subsequent years, and its combat has been praised as the best in the series, but the game's financial underperformance was a bigger problem it could not solve. Anthem, a multiplayer shooter based around jetpacks, was released in 2019 and was the company's biggest failure to date, launching with an anemic amount of content.

The company rallied in 2021 for Mass Effect: Legendary Edition, a comprehensive remaster and re-release of the original trilogy as one game, optimised for modern systems. The remaster was regarded as a success, introducing the franchise to a new generation and selling well.

In 2024 BioWare released what would prove to be their final game: Dragon Age: The Veilguard. The game had been developed as a multiplayer title before pivoting to a single-player focus, and the game was criticised for weird pacing, an unusual visual aesthetic compared to the previous games and some odd mechanics and gameplay ideas that may have been remnants of the multiplayer focus. Though not completely without merit, the game's critical reception was dubious and its commercial success dire.

BioWare had confirmed they were working on a new Mass Effect game that would feature a return to the Milky Way Galaxy and would be a more direct sequel to the original trilogy, with some OG characters returning. In 2025, Amazon Television confirmed that a Mass Effect TV series was also in development. It was well-known inside and outside the company that "Mass Effect 5" (the final title would have likely been different) was the studio's last chance to shine, and failure would likely mean the shuttering of the company.

However, it's now clear that Electronic Arts had decided not to even give them that chance. Despite releasing a teaser trailer for the game in 2023, no new footage or information about the game had been released in over three years. Today's storm of news stories confirm that the game was in "early" development nine years after the release of the previous game in the series, which was clearly unacceptable. EA themselves may have been responsible for this, putting the studio through rounds of lay-offs after Veilguard's release that may have simply made it impossible for them to make a brand new AAA game. Some of today's reporting suggests that only 50 employees were left working at BioWare, clearly far too few to even consider the game in full production. Some reporting indicates that EA had been rotating BioWare personnel into other studios and projects for some time.

BioWare's obituary will be simply having created some of the greatest video games of all time. Baldur's Gate I and II, Knights of the Old Republic, all three Mass Effect games (despite the ropey ending) and Dragon Age: Origins are all-timer classics of the genre. Neverwinter Nights, Jade Empire, Dragon Age II and Mass Effect: Andromeda are also all pretty solid games in their own right, if not of the same calibre. Dragon Age: Inquisition was also well-received, though I must confess that in my several attempts to play the game, I bounced off it pretty hard.

BioWare's legacy is also in the studios that it inspired. Without BioWare's early help and recommendations, Obsidian Entertainment would have likely never survived and achieved the things they did. CD Projekt Red also owe their existence to BioWare, having started off as the Polish localisation team for the Baldur's Gate games before licencing BioWare's Aurora Engine for The Witcher (2007), which was published by Atari on BioWare's recommendation. Larian Studios mooted their Divinity series as a spiritual successor to the Baldur's Gate games which led to them getting the licence to make Baldur's Gate III, an absolutely massive giga-success on release in 2023. Fans and personnel at BioWare themselves both asked why BioWare wasn't making that game instead. Other companies exist thanks to BioWare veterans, such as Beamdog (founded by ex-BioWare vets to release successful remasters of Baldur's Gate and its sequel) and Archetype Entertainmen, who will release their Mass Effect spiritual successor Exodus in April 2027.

The feeling, fairly or not, was that since at least the EA takeover in 2009, BioWare could no longer take creative risks and they were constantly funnelled into chasing trends rather than establishing them. Inquisition's open-world pivot was a response to the success of Skyrim, whilst Anthem was chasing the success of the likes of Destiny (without any understanding of why that was a success). EA, whose most successful franchises were online shooters and sports games, were an awkward fit for BioWare from the start. However, some commentators have cautioned on this as an overly simplistic narrative, pointing out that Anthem was a project originated by BioWare themselves and pushed by leadership at the studio.

Certainly BioWare's dramatically slowed release cadence was a problem; they released seven games in their first decade, ten in their second but then only three in their third (four only if you count a remaster). Sales were also an issue: Inquisition was, by far, their biggest-selling game but never cracked 20 million units, less than a third of Skyrim. Most of their games stayed under 10 million units sold. It did sometimes feel that BioWare was often treated and reported on as an AAA industry-leader developer but its sales never really reflected that (unlike Bethesda, CD Projekt Red post-Witcher III, Blizzard etc). This wasn't a problem when budgets were low and their release frequency was high, but as their budgets shot up and their release schedule elongated to ridiculous timespans, the situation clearly became untenable.

It will be interesting to see if EA does anything with the franchises it now owns in full after BioWare's dissolution, or if interested third parties try to acquire those series to do something with them. Whilst the company is gone, its games remain, and many of them remain solid gold classics.

Transformers: Til All Are One - Compendium 3

The Transformers Civil War continues to rage on their homeworld of Cybertron and also Earth, which the Decepticons have identified as ripe for fuel exploitation. New reinforcements have arrived on both planets via the intermediary world of Nebulos, and the Autobots are rejoicing at the return of Optimus Prime, restored to life as a Powermaster. However, the threat of the time-travelling Decepticon warlord Galvatron remains and a new threat has been located in deep space: the mysterious Underbase.

I covered the first two compendium volumes (of four) of Transformers: Til All Are One previously, noting both that it's great that Skybound and Image Comics have brought the Marvel Transformers run back into print in four volumes, but it's also annoying that these unified volumes were only available in a Kickstarter campaign. The mass-market paperback editions split the UK and US stories apart from one another, an act of editorial madness that will long live in infamy. This should be the definitive way the comics are collected from now on. This volume collects together issues #45-80 of the monthly Transformers US Marvel comic, alongside issues #188-254 of the UK comic, for around 1,197 pages of Transformers action, originally published between October 1988 and May 1991.

This volume is pretty much all pay-off, with the storylines and characters established in the first five years of the comic reaching a series of massive climaxes that takes over two-and-a-half years to fully resolve. The early UK storylines in this edition are dedicated to resolving the "Galvatron Saga" that began near the end of Volume 1 with the classic Target: 2006. Having established himself as a threat to the rest of the Transformer species, Galvatron finds himself being hunted by no less than seven factions simultaneously: Optimus Prime, Shockwave and Scorponok's forces on present-day Earth, the Autobot Wreckers and Decepticon Mayhem Attack Squad on present-day Cybertron, and combat teams led by Rodimus Prime and Soundwave from future Earth. It turns out that the prolonged presence of Galvatron, Cyclonus and Scourge in the past and the resulting shifts in the timeline have heavily disrupted the space/time continuum, causing a rift to form in the fabric of the universe that threatens to destroy everything. After a few complications, the final battle takes place in Time Wars, where Simon Furman merrily lays waste to recently-delisted toys and some toys that were never released in the UK in the first place from years earlier (so both hello and goodbye to the Deluxe Insecticons in the space of a few pages).

What should have been the grand finale to over two years of plotting and build-up falls a bit flat. There are some major continuity glitches here, such as the modern-day Autobots completely forgetting about the "mass-displacement" process for time-travelling, leading them to assume Optimus Prime has been killed (again) when fairly obviously he hasn't. It's also a story without much nuance, with a huge running battle with numerous casualties but there isn't really much meat here. The characters have to survive and try to keep Galvatron contained until basically the plot resolves itself without much intervention by anyone (bar arguably Shockwave and Scourge). This means both the huge casualty list was completely unnecessary and Galvatron also ends up looking like a chump: his two years on Earth accomplished absolutely nothing. This may be more down to Furman bringing Galvatron back to present-day Earth because Target: 2006 was so awesome, but then not being able to have him win or take command of the Decepticons because that would have been ignored by Bob Budiansky in the American comics. Still, some good action sequences and the story does bring Ravage back into play after years of being MIA.

The US storyline then brings in its own epic with the "Underbase Saga," where the Decepticons create an island resort to improve their image with the humans (!) but it turns out to be a cover to research the impending arrival of the mysterious Underbase. Although Ratbat initially plots to seize the Underbase for himself, he is surprised - and absolutely nobody else is - when he is betrayed by Starscream, who sets out to seize the Underbase for himself. All of the Autobots and Decepticons on Earth have to join forces to try to stop him, but the result is a total massacre with the better part of fifty Transformers deactivated, some for good.

This is a bit of an oddball story, with Budiansky killing a whole bunch of Transformers but not in a very interesting way. There are some good character moments for Prime and Scorponok, and finally seeing Starscream get everything he ever wanted, only to find you can have too much of a good thing, is quite amusing. There are also some good character moments for the Transformers' long-time human ally Buster Witwicky. It's really also the last hurrah for Budiansky, who manages another five issues of mostly-stand-alone lightweight fare before finally retiring his writing pen. Budiansky created so much of the Transformers lore and characterisation that continues to hold try now, forty years later, that he deserves respect, but his stories were always very hit and miss, and sometimes even his really good ideas were let down by variable dialogue and pacing issues.

Budiansky's retirement means that Simon Furman gets to take over the American comic as well as carrying on his work for the British one, giving him UNLIMITED POWER (kind of). His UK stories from this era suffer from a shift in format in the UK comic, which switched to shorter, black-and-white stories with previously-planned 2-week arcs now unfolding over 4 or 5, completely disrupting both pacing and also his planned efforts to tie together the UK and US storylines more firmly. A new, dystopian future story arc depicting the fate of Rodimus Prime and his team from Time Wars as they return to a completely changed future where Galvatron and Unicron still endure is very promising, but underdeveloped. Another arc where scattered survivors of the Time Wars regroup as a new group that transcends the Autobot-Decepticon division is also intriguing, but again it feels like there's not enough time to do it justice. In the middle of this, Budiansky has to introduce the new Micromasters, which Furman then has to continue, meaning yet another set of interesting storylines is diluted by dozens of new characters suddenly showing up.

However, this chaotic period starts easing up as Furman sets in motion his master plan: a new epic saga spanning two full years of the comic and drawing on his UK time travel epics for inspiration that he can repackage for the US audience without violating UK continuity (which more or less works, if you squint a bit). This arc starts with the revelation that Megatron is alive and now in control of part of Cybertron. He kidnaps Ratchet to have him work on a new secret weapon. This sequence of events results in the resurrection of three classic Autobot warriors - Grimlock, Jazz and Bumblebee (Ratchet cheerfully admits to disliking Goldbug, so rebuilds him in his original form) - and the apparently for-real destruction of Megatron, resulting in the rise of the powerful Thunderwing as the new Decepticon leader. These mid-tier events take a turn for the epic when Grimlock, Jazz and Bumblebee are teleported to the centre of Cybertron to discover the face of Primus, the Transformers "god," etched on the side of its core. Furman gets to canonise his origin myth for the Transformers here (having previously established it in the UK future epic The Legacy of Unicron two years earlier) for the US audience. At the end of a pitched battle, Primus is briefly awoken, his scream of pain revealing the location of Cybertron to Unicron.

With the Chaos-Bringer on his way to destroy Cybertron, the Autobots launch a desperate search for the missing Creation Matrix, which was blasted in space with Optimus Prime's original body a long time earlier. In the Matrix Quest arc, multiple teams of Autobots have to search an entire star system for Prime's corpse and the missing Matrix, getting involved in various local problems along the way. This arc is superb, with some great one-off stories and ideas. One story is a Western, another is heavily influenced by The Maltese Falcon, and another by Moby Dick (with Longtooth as the whale-hunter). One story influenced by Aliens is a bit hamstrung by the level of violence and gore the comic can get away with showing, but the finale to the Quest, with all hell breaking loose on the Ark and an ending drenched in irony, is outstanding. This arc is also enhanced by the arrival of UK artist Geoff Senior, oft-regarded as the franchise's best-ever artist, who adds a lot of dynamism to the storyline.

The subsequent run of stories, with the Autobots and Decepticons preparing to defend Cybertron against Unicron, is also excellent, with Andy Wildman and Stephen Baskerville adding their distinctive techno-organic art style to the comic. Furman is having far too much fun here, with more scheming, more bringing characters back from the dead, and even having a truly disturbing excursion into body-horror. A subplot about G.B. Blackrock forming an anti-Decepticon superhero team known as the Neo-Knights is a bit wince-inducing (with Furman clearly setting up the Neo-Knights for a spin-off that never happens) but it's not the worst idea the comic has ever had, and allows it to bring Circuit Breaker back into the main story. A high point here is Optimus Prime offering Scorponok his surrender in return for uniting their forces against Unicron and Scorponok having to navigate internal Decepticon politics as he decides on whether to honour the deal or not, only to be interrupted by Shockwave trying to seize command from him (again). We also get Grimlock going on an insane solo mission to resurrect his fallen Dinobot companions using a mystical energy source called nucleon, which goes about as well as you'd expect. By this point Furman had been told the comic would be cancelled with its 75th issue, so he was clearly setting things up for a grand finale.

These events culminate in Unicron's final assault on Cybertron in issue #75 (of the US run), which unfolds rather differently to the movie (and with a far higher body count in known characters). From an action and character standpoint, this might be Furman's finest hour, with even some black comedy thrown in for good measure: Grimlock ramming the Ark into Unicron's face and then leading the entire nucleon-resurrected Autobot army of classic characters into battle over Prowl's frantic complaints is an all-timer franchise visual. If this had been where the comic ended, it would have been an undeniably awesome way to go out.

At the eleventh hour, the comic was given a five-month reprieve. Furman puts into motion a series of new, scaled-down plots revolving around the need to evacuate Cybertron (devastated apparently beyond repair by Unicron), whilst reluctant hero Spike Witwicky has to resurrect Fortress Maximus to defeat a renewed Decepticon incursion on Earth. The Autobot-Decepticon Alliance is also on shaky ground following its apparent victory (albeit at a sky-high cost), and there is a superb political storyline as Grimlock and new Decepticon commander Bludgeon realise they have the measure of one another and try to outsmart the other. The final issue is effective but rushed, with maybe a few too many ideas competing for limited page space. Given the business constraints here, the comic's ultimate end is surprisingly satisfying, even if a few loose ends are left aflap. Even that becomes a boon as Furman would later drawn on some of these dangling threads for the Generation 2 mini-series.

This is the strongest of the three collections containing the main Marvel storyline. Although Budiansky has his strengths and his achievements in creating so many characters for Hasbro is worthy of respect, his plotting and storytelling is a bit too variable in quality. Furman certainly isn't perfect - and his worst-ever story about the creation of Arcee is present in this volume and remains horribly cringey - but he has a much firmer grasp of longer-form storytelling, establishing the stakes and executing them well, with a defter touch at humour. His final two-year run on the American comic might be his best-ever sustained burst of storytelling in the franchise. In fact, that run is so highly regarded that Furman himself has twice tried to create a continuation/sequel to it with both the Generation 2 mini-series and, twenty years later, the Regeneration One series for IDW, and neither were successful.

The volume is also helped by a greater variety of stronger artists. The US comic is buoyed by the arrival of UK talent including Geoff Senior and Andy Wildman, and it feels like US mainstay Jose Delbo ups his game in response. With colouring techniques in American publishing improving at the time, these closing issues of the original run finally start looking almost as good as the UK comic did for most of its run.

With Compendium 3 wrapping up the original Marvel run, it falls to Compendium 4 to contain the odds-and-sods. The Transformers Universe mini-series of character profiles, Generation 2 and the errant Earthforce branch of continuity await.

Transformers: Til All Are One - Compendium 3 (****½) contains the strongest succession of stories in the original Marvel comic run, with a lot of inventive use of established lore and characters to bring this huge saga to a close. The art is at its best here, and it's easy to share Furman's frustration that the comic was cancelled whilst it was enjoying a renaissance of quality and still selling over 80,000 copies a month (figures any comic company would easily kill for today). If you can find a copy (or wait for a Kickstarter reprint), this is a very solid compilation of Transformers stories.

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DEADLANDS celebrates its 30th anniversary

The classic tabletop weird west roleplaying game Deadlands has celebrated its 30th anniversary. One of the most iconic tabletop roleplaying games of all time, the game has weathered changing financial fortunes and numerous failed adaptations to the screen to remain a mainstay of the TTRPG market.

Launched in October 1996 by Pinnacle Entertainment, Deadlands used a novel rules system built for fast, six-shootin' action mixed in with magic and weird science. The game combined different die types with cards for greater randomisation and a whole magic system built around deck-building (this was streamlined later on). The game was notable for its setting, which mixed Wild West action, Lovecraftian horror, steampunk science and black comedy. Think of Army of Darkness meets Unforgiven meets The Difference Engine with zombies and you're most of the way there. It's not for nothing that the legendary Bruce Campbell himself provided the introduction for the revised edition of the game in 1999.

The game had a revised edition in 1999, two sequel TTRPG games (Deadlands: Hell on Earth, set on post-apocalyptic Earth, and Deadlands: Lost Colony, set on another planet) and a spin-off miniatures game using a simplified version of the rules, The Great Rail Wars, but an attempt to pivot to the d20 rules system (derived from Dungeons & Dragons 3rd Edition) in 2002 backfired spectacularly and nearly drove the company out of business. Regrouping, the company used The Great Rail Wars rules as the basis for a new, universal rules system, Savage Worlds. The company then released new versions of Deadlands for Savage Worlds, namely Deadlands Reloaded in 2006 and Deadlands: The Weird West in 2020. Both have been successful.

Pinnacle funded a 30th Anniversary edition of the game via Kickstarter back in February, which will include a behind-the-scenes and art book and a new integrated rulebook which merges the current Savage Worlds Adventurers' Edition rules with the Deadlands-specific setting material, to make a much more approachable one-stop entry point to the franchise.

Hopefully we see the game expand further in the future, although the oft-mooted video game and TV adaptations remain elusive.

Thunderbirds 2086

In the year 2086, Earth and the Solar system are governed by the Federation, a supra-national organisation that evolved out of the United Nations. In a world of advanced robotics, artificial superintelligence, climactic disturbances and natural disasters, it falls to the International Rescue Organisation to fly to the rescue of anyone in trouble on or off the planet.

I think I can guess what you're thinking here: what the hell is Thunderbirds 2086? You've heard of Thunderbirds, the 1965 original puppet-and-explosions classic, and you've (probably) heard of Thunderbirds Are Go, the 2015 CGI-and-models reboot show from the Lord of the Rings effects team. You may have even heard of (and tried to forget) the ill-advised 2004 live-action movie directed by Jonathan Frakes. So what in the fresh heck of obscurity is this show?

Thunderbirds 2086 is an English-language dub of a Japanese anime called Scientific Rescue Team Technoboyger. The anime was developed by Jin Productions after a possible collaboration with Gerry Anderson on his new show Terrahawks fell through in the late 1970s. The team were huge fans of Anderson's work and, even after Gerry went back to the UK, they decided to honour his work with an animated "spiritual successor" to Thunderbirds. This successor featured the Scientific Rescue Team attending to disaster zones with their high-tech vehicles, the "Technovoygers." Amusingly the team deliberately mistranslated the name in English characters in the show as "Technoboygers," meaning the vehicles were dubbed "TB-1," "TB-2" etc as a further homage to Thunderbirds. More amusingly, this meant they could sell the show to ITC in the UK (the Thunderbirds IP holders) direct as a successor show, which ITC followed through on in its dub.

In this iteration of the franchise, the International Rescue Organisation (IRO) operates from the Arcology, a gigantic city-building rising out of an island in the South Pacific, as well as Thunderbird 6, a city-sized space station in orbit. The IRO has tens of thousands of people working for it and no less than seventeen major Thunderbird vehicles, alongside numerous less-impressive vehicles. The IRO was founded as a private enterprise by Commander Simpson, but now operates as an official arm of the Federation, the UN-descended government of Earth and its colonies across the Solar system. The IRO operates effectively as a space-age version of the US Coastguard, ensuring both the safety and security of people from natural disasters on and off Earth.

Despite the IRO's gargantuan size, the organisation is heavily dependent on a team of just five pilots: Dylan Beyda, the pilot of Thunderbird 1; Thunderbird 2 pilots Jesse Rigel and Jonathan Jordan Jr.; Thunderbird 3 and overall team commander Gran Hanson; and Thunderbird 4 aquanaut Kallan James. Commander Jared Simpson oversees their operations from the Arcology, and the commander's young nephew Skipper lends a hand as he prepares to apply as a Thunderbird cadet when he is older.

The vehicle roster is much larger than the original show. Thunderbird 1 is a large space shuttle which operates as a fast recon vessel and can more directly help in rescues than in the original show; Thunderbird 2 is still a huge transporter (though blue rather than green) which can bring other equipment to the danger zone in its various pods; Thunderbird 3 is a ground-control mobile command centre, basically a massive APC; Thunderbird 4 is still a submarine, but much larger than the original, and can carry smaller vessels inside it; TB5 is a firefighting vehicle which also has a large drill on the front; TB6 is the orbiting space city; TB7 and TB8 are fast interceptor vehicles stored on TB1 (and can also be used as drones); TB9 is a mech suit; TB10 is a spacecraft used for fast travel to other planets; TB11 is a high-speed ground vehicle carried inside TB3; TB12 is a large bulldozer carried by TB3; TB13 and TB14 are smaller underwater vessels (a flying mini-sub and bathysphere respectively) carried on TB4; TB15 is a ground drone and mobile computer; TB16 is basically the Mole from the original show; and TB17 is a huge spacecraft with an experimental near-light drive that can cross the inner Solar system in a matter of hours.

This massive and impressive vehicle roster is made a bit less impressive given that several vehicles never show up and almost every episode relies on TB1, 2 and 3, which can combine together into a larger vehicle capable of space travel. TB4 plays a major role in only a few episodes, so Kallan spends most of her time acting as a co-pilot on one of the other vehicles.

Like the original show, we have a mixture of natural disasters and problems caused by criminals. Unlike the original show, we also have something approaching a story arc as the sinister Shadow Axis - an alliance of asteroid settlements that want to break away from the Federation - launches various terrorist attacks on Earth to try to secure its independence. We even have a recurring villain, the Shadow Axis's unseen leader, General Starcrusher. Before you get too excited, this story arc is not very well-developed and left unresolved at the end of the show (though given the last half-dozen or so episodes don't even mention the Shadow Axis, this is not a major problem). More impressive is that the characters actually show some development and internal characterisation. Captain Hanson is the oldest and most experienced member of the team and the only one to have a wife and family. In at least one episode, he struggles to reconcile his calling to help people with the time it takes away from spending with his family. Dylan and Kallan have an unresolved mutual attraction, whilst Dylan also suffers from a clash of duties when his friends are put in danger and he has to choose between helping them or saving thousands from impending disasters. It's no big thing, but very different from the much more limited character arcs in the original.

Some of the disasters are very clever and well-portrayed. Arguably the best episode deals with a tidal wave striking the South Pacific after the weather control system goes haywire and has the four main Thunderbird vehicles having to work in concert to save thousands of lives across multiple islands. Another episode about a research station in danger of crashing into the Sun (a clear homage to an OG Thunderbirds episode) has a lot of superb tension given the limited running time. Most of the episodes are in fact pretty decent, with a strong sense of character and tension. The worst episodes are the ones that phone in some dodgy stock-SF plot, usually about aliens (Mindmeld and Trial are the worst offenders here) which are otherwise largely missing from the setting. The Shadow Axis/Starcrusher storyline is promising but doesn't really go anywhere, and without an on-screen face for the villains, it falls a bit flat. Starcrusher ends up being a less compelling villain than the Hood, which is really saying something. Other episodes are goofy but somehow pull it off: one episode about a dolphin joining the organisation ends up being surprisingly enjoyable, and an episode about a forest fire caused by the never-ending battle of wits and wills between a prize hunter and a cyborg stag (!!!) is one of the strongest episodes of the season.

The show is arguably a little darker than the original, even granting that the English dub pulls its punches way more than the Japanese original in terms of casualties, but the sense of worldbuilding and the scale of the Federation is really well-realised. There's a lot more work here in terms of scene-setting and continuity than the original show attempted.

The animation is mostly decent, especially by the standards of 1983, and the music is superb, with a mixture of themes from the original Japanese version and ITC's Barry Gray library. The use of themes from the original Thunderbirds and other Supermarionation shows is restrained and will raise a smile when they appear. The voice acting is mostly fine, especially from the regulars, but the guest cast can be hit or miss. The English-language dub has some very witty dialogue and pop culture references, though one episode where the redshirts who are about to die in the opening disaster refer to themselves as redshirts is a bit too on-the-nose. Some of the guest voices in the last couple of episodes are awful, possibly due to a budget crunch as they tried to finish the project on time.

As an alternative, Next Generation-style take on the classic premise, Thunderbirds 2086 (***½) is a decent show. It has some clever ideas and pretty entertaining episodes. It lacks the full charm of the original puppets, but the shorter running time means the show is much more dynamic and faster-paced, and the advantages of animation in portraying things the puppets and small sets could never even attempt are obvious. It definitely gets weaker towards the end of the run and the serialised elements never really take off, but you can do much worse than giving this curiosity a spin. The show has never been released on DVD or Blu-Ray, but a remastered version is available to watch for free on YouTube.

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