Blood resurrection plan halted by Atari uninterest

Former Monolith CEO Jace Hall's campaign to resurrect the studio's first game, gory FPS Blood, has been shot down by current rights-holder Atari. Hall had spoken of revamping and updating Blood, like how fans have reworked the Doom engine, not only for PC but other platforms as well. He cryptically teased further plans too.

"I just got an unusually short, one sentence e-mail from Atari, letting me know that given the current set of circumstances, they are choosing to decline to proceed," Hall wrote on Blood fan forum The Postmortem last Thursday (via Polygon). "Obviously, I am disappointed. Particularly given Atari's continued encouragement along with the amount of time, effort and correspondence that I have put into this venture."

Started by 3D Realms but finished and released by Monolith in 1997, Blood was famous for its violence, Lovecraftian tinge, and weird and wonderful weapons. Former cultist cowboy Caleb was armed with a flare gun, voodoo doll, sawed-off shotgun, aerosol can flamethrower, and other novel ways to reduce men and monsters to piles of parts or ash. And, as was customary for 3D Realms games of the era, he'd spout quips and pop culture references. A sequel, Blood 2: The Chosen, followed in 1998; it was not as good.

Hall first revealed his plans in August, seeking community support. "I am thinking of bringing the ORIGINAL Blood game back as it was, with functionality alterations/enhancements that are similar but superior to ZDAEMON's. I would also make it work on all platforms, and not just PC," he wrote.

"There are other things as well..." he teased.

While Hall does already have a copy of the source code himself, he stated in August that he couldn't and wouldn't release or build upon it without approval. Which isn't coming.

He concluded on Thursday, "The only thing that can be done at this point is to wait and see what happens with Atari, and hope that they find themselves in a position and mindset to allow my efforts to continue on this matter at a future date." Oh dear.