(Thanks to Bryan A. for the tip!)
Just a little background on this before we get too far into it – back in 2007 we ran a story about a unique new arcade game that was shown in Japan by Namco called New Space Order. It was an RTS game set in space for arcades and PCs but whether it was released, I am not sure – we didn’t hear about it again though. Either way it was a fairly popular post on the site for some time. Then in October of last year, we ran news of a new website Namco had launched to celebrate their UGSF series of games, which encapsulates quite a few games and they started off with some special footage from the unreleased Starblade: Operation Blue Planet.
With the new year the UGSF website has been updated again and there have been some changes made since I last took a peek. On the main page they have added a UGSF timeline, showing where many Namco games fit into this alternate universe that they’ve created. You’ve got Ace Combat 3, Galaxian, Galaga, Dig Dug, Bosconian, Cyber Sled, Mr. Driller, Starblade and several other titles that are a part of this universe. It’s an interesting timeline that will fill your curiosity to know how these games fit into the universe and when.
They also have added to their Special section, where we previously learned about Starblade: Operation Blue Planet, information on the aforementioned New Space Order. There is this video below which gets into the whole timeline thing and shows some anime footage from NSO; visit the UGSF site if you want to read more about this canceled game including artwork. I am not sure what else they have up their sleeves to cover on unreleased content but here’s hoping we’ll finally get to see what Starfox Arcade was supposed to look like sometime in the near future (yes, they were actually working on that at one point)
I still have a hunch that this could lead up to some new arcade title based in the UGSF universe sometime this year but we’ll have to wait and see.
Are you sure NSO was cancelled? I’ve been keeping an eye on it since your first post about it and it was my understanding that it was still in production with no given release date. Bummer if it’s cancelled. Also really cool to see the timeline, I’ve been working on writing a crazy fanfic thing where Galaxian, Galaga and Dig Dug take place in the same world, had no clue it was canon!
I had thought it was released too but as I looked over what they said on the UGSF site (placing it into the same category as the unreleased StarBlade as well) and realized that no more news came along about it in 2007, it seems that it wasn’t. But if I’m wrong, I’m happy to correct that!
Sadly, you’re right, the NSO site has a cancellation message 🙁 I was hopeful since all American sources still had it labelled as TBA. I certainly hope your speculation at a new UGSF game is correct, this timeline has me excited…