The Iconic BASS Logo

Revolution Software have just announced they are entering the pocket gaming market. The first game released, under the “Revolution Pocket” moniker, will be Beneath a Steel Sky Remastered, on the iPhone. As was with the Broken Sword 1 Director’s Cut, the extraordinary Dave Gibbons is back on board, contributing new art to the game.

This announcement marks, once again, an interesting paradigmatic difference in the way traditionally adventure-oriented companies approach their old intellectual property and heritage.

After the jump you’ll find a brief, Revolutionary recap and an assortment of old Revolution Software logos!

Revolution was, to my best knowledge, the first company to embrace ScummVM (who, by the way, won this year’s SourceForge.net “Best Project for Gamers” award. Congratulations!). Beneath a Steel Sky gained ScummVM support as early as 2003, and was simultaneously released as freeware. The company later followed up by doing the same with Lure of the Temptress and further helped the ScummVM team in adding support for Broken Sword 1 and 2.

Furthermore, the company has a rich history of embracing multiplatform development from the get-go: Systems as diverse as the PlayStation, the GBA, Palm OS and Windows Mobile have all seen ports of Broken Sword 1, and revised versions of the game have also seen daylight, in the form of the Director’s Cut version, on the Nintendo DS Lite and the Nintendo Wii.

All in all, it is extremely heart-warming to see a well-written and deeply engaging adventure game such as BASS get a second chance in the marketplace, perhaps even paving way for the long-awaited sequel?

On the outset, it would also seem as though other developers are slowly beginning to realize the real value of their back catalogue. We’re all hoping it’s not too little, too late, after so many years of neglect – do I even need to mention how objectionable I think it is of Activision, only days after LucasArts start adding their back catalogue to Steam, to throw a haphazard assortment of Sierra’s “Quest” series on Steam, exactly the same way they did years ago, coupled with DosBox?