Once upon a time I used a program called WinMX to download my warez, including music, movies, and games. One game I accidentally downloaded was No One Lives Forever 2: A Spy in H.A.R.M.’s Way, which was an ISO that I was able to use DAEMON Tools to play. Upon playing this game I immediately fell in love with the Genre and Playstyle.
I revisited this recently because of some Better Call Saul YouTube shorts. I learned that Saul’s full name was, among other aliases, Saul Goodman, and remembered that in the NOLF2 gameplay there was a level where you were looking around someone’s house with the same last name. I discovered the actual name was “Tom Goodman”, which then led me down the subsequent licensing issues whirlwind. Apparently Vivendi, Monolith, Sierra, Fox, Blizzard, and now Activision couldn’t find the IP for the game, so after Contract Jack‘s prequel/sequel was done and assets were sold nobody knew who owned what.
Thanks to Wikipedia and the Open Source community, and with a HUGE nod to the source code being released there is a whole community to make sure this awesome game is available for everyone.
Starting with the No One Lives Forever: Revival, this is the physical new home for NOLF/NOLF2/Jack.
The Toolkit for NOLF2, released by Monolith and Sierra is available for download.
The only thing missing is nolfgirl.com, which (to wit) was the original forums. Currently it’s for sale by HugeDomains for $1,995.
Maybe ilovenolf.com would be the next Cate Archer fansite to make sure the IP moves along to the community? Projects, projects, projects…
#memories