Prowler Outage (March 2, 2007)

Bandit LOAF

Bandit LOAF

Long Live the Confederation!
Veteran Wing Commander artist Sean Murphy has some memories to share with us... about a game not many people have heard of. In 1995-6 Origin developed Prowler, a 3D mech game for the 3DO Interactive Multiplayer and later Sony Playstation consoles. It wasn't a Wing Commander game, but it was certainly for the same audience -- sci fi combat in a distant future. Unfortunately, Prowler didn't make it -- it lasted all the way to E3, where it was shown next to another lost game, Wing Commander III Saturn. Sean was nice enough to scan a boatload of original sketches and to write up an article explaining his involvement in the project. You can read the whole thing here -- it sounds like it was a pretty cool concept! Here's a sample:
After Super Wing Commander shipped, the team had some down time. We weren't sure what we were going to be working on next, so Glen Johnson and I started fleshing out an idea we'd been tossing around for a mech game. We wanted to see a Gundam-style game, with fast and agile robots leaping about the countryside, as opposed to the heavy, plodding Mechwarrior-style games we'd seen.
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Original update published on March 2, 2007
 
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Huh.. that is odd.. I started on a project called "Prowler" when I first hired on at OSI. And it didn't look much like these concept drawings. I haven't read through all of Sean's stuff, but I worked with him on WCP and SO.

Perhaps this was what Prowler looked lie prior to when I started?

The "Prowler" I worked on was a 3D0/PSX mech game.

Okay.. having read briefly through Sean's article, I think I was hired onto the "Storm Troop" project that got renamed into "Prowler."

As I said, it was a mech game... with a decidedly odd art style. All the badguy mechs were based on Egyptian mythos. (with mech names like Anubis, Bast, Horus, etc.) Whereas the good guys were based around Greek mythos. (with mech names like Minotaur and.. well.. thats the only one I remember..)

If I remember correctly Wing III PSX shipped with a flyer about games from OSI that were "Coming Soon" and there were some images from Storm Troop / Prowler in it. There was also an OSI T-shirt that had one of the mechs in it.

Anyway.. there you are.

Hi Sean!
 
Ah! I have that shirt, let me dig it out and take a picture.

EA actually put out a bunch of screenshots for Prowler once... but I haven't found them anywhere. There were some advertisements in magazines, too.
 
Here we go:

prowlershirt.jpg


I assume the giant one is a Prowler... but what's the red guy on the front left?

(I'm assuming the center guy with the sword is from Ultima and the guy with black armor is a Crusader character.)
 
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Yep.. That's the shirt.

Just for fun..

Top left:
"Longbow"

Top Right
"Wings of Glory"

Big honkin mech
"Prowler" (that may be the Minotaur, but am not sure)

Bottom row:
strange robo thing with red eyes???? (an escapee from the 'Black Hole' movie??)
Bio Forge
Crusader (I think)
Ultima? Maybe SilverHeart.. but probably Ultima..
CyberMage
Hobbs - WCIII

Little guy in the 'O' - ??

Of course, this was like 10 years ago.. so, I could be wrong.. maybe..
 
Thats the greatest shirt I've ever seen!
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"It's the best shirt in God's universe," he said with the solemnity of prayer.

No, actually, it isn't even #2. Check out these:

wc2shirt.jpg


ccgshirt.jpg
 
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Hehe, I was just telling Goku about that today. Here it is:

eaborg.jpg
 
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I remember Mark Hamill refused to wear the Hell's Archers t-shirt :)
 
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