Jordan Weisman hopes to resurrect Crimson Skies

Shadowrun creator Jordan Weisman's plan to bring the fine cyberpunk RPG back in a new video game is going swimmingly, as Shadowrun Returns hit its Kickstarter funding goal in only 28 hours. Now, he's eyeing up another of his classic creations too. In a chat with Shacknews today, Weisman revealed he wishes to resurrect Crimson Skies and its dieselpunk world of air-pirates.

"I'm hopeful that's another property that I can approach soon. I'm in discussions with them about that," he told us. "I'm hoping that we can bring that back to life as well."

Weisman's former company Smith & Tinker licensed the video game rights to Crimson Skies in 2007, along with Shadowrun and MechWarrior. However, "It kind of fell into the same void" as the first stab at resurrecting MechWarrior, unable to secure a publisher.

"That era and that story is one of my favorites that we came up with and I'd love to be able to go back and tell stories in that world as well," he said.

Crimson Skies was first released as a board game by FASA in 1998, followed by books, a miniatures game, and two video games. It's set in an alternate-reality 1930s, where air-pirates plunder the skies over a fractured United States.

Don't get too excited just yet, though. "I don't want to bite off more than we can chew right now," Weisman explained. "First comes Shadowrun, and we want to make that great, and then we'll figure out where to go after that."

With 16 days still to go, the Shadowrun Returns Kickstarter has rocketed past its $400,000 goal, approaching $875,000. Putting at least $15 into the kitty will get you a copy of the finished game, with increasingly fancy perks for those who give more and more.

We'll have more on Shadowrun Returns once I've sifted half an hour of chat about cyberpunk, social networks, the pressures of fan-funding, and what flavor of ice-cream Jordan would be if he were an ice-cream (it's Rocky Road).