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Entertainment Games

MicroProse, Legendary Creators of Civilization, XCOM, and Falcon 4.0 Is Back (hothardware.com) 115

MicroProse, an American video game publisher and developer founded by Bill Stealey and Sid Meier in 1982, is being resurrected after an absence of almost 20 years. The publisher's last game was Grand Prix 4 released in 2002, but is most famous for the XCOM and Civilization franchises. MojoKid shares a report from HotHardware: The company is now being led by CEO David Lagettiu, while Bill Stealey, who originally founded MicroProse with Sid Meier, will be onboard as a consultant this time around. For those that would like to see some of their MicroProse classics "refreshed" for modern systems, you're in luck. It will be remastering a number of games, although those specific titles haven't been revealed at this time. What the reinvigorated company has announced, however, is that it has three new games on deck. The first is Task Force Admiral, which will have you in command of a U.S. Navy WWII (Pacifica Theater) carrier task force. This will be a full 3D simulation game with 90 ship classes and 40 different types of aircraft with realistic ballistics and full damage modeling. The game is being developed by Drydock Dreams.

Next up is Second front, which is another WWII-themed game developed by Hexdraw. "Second Front is an accessible WWII turn-based tactical game with more than 40 infantry units and 200 tanks, vehicles and guns," writes MicroProse. It has all the depth of a paper wargame and the ease of a computer simulation. Campaign, scenarios and a complete editor make it an infinite tactical sandbox experience." Finally, there's Sea Power, which was developed by Triassic Games. Sea Power shifts to "modern naval conflict campaigns." All three of the games will be launching soon via Steam, which you can check out using the follow links: Task Force Admiral, Second Front, Sea Power.

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MicroProse, Legendary Creators of Civilization, XCOM, and Falcon 4.0 Is Back

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  • by Mishotaki ( 957104 ) on Wednesday May 06, 2020 @05:07AM (#60027618)
    Why should we be excited about another publisher? they are not even the ones making the games...
    • by AmiMoJo ( 196126 ) on Wednesday May 06, 2020 @05:52AM (#60027666) Homepage Journal

      They own the IP so if you ever want to see an update of, say, Stunt Car Racer it has to be licenced from them.

      Or just make a spiritual sequel and ignore the licence.

      • by DrXym ( 126579 )
        Providing its the original authors then the second option is usually completely fine. Look at Planet Coaster compared to what happened with Roller Coaster Tycoon.
        • by AmiMoJo ( 196126 )

          True. That not-Castlevania game Bloodstained was pretty good too.

          Road Redemption is great and has nothing to do with the original developers.

      • Ok, I am in my 40's and I get the appeal of Nostalgia, the hope to regain the feeling when you were a kid with a fully optimistic future ahead of you, not tied down with the realities of life.

        However if I want to get that Nostalgic feeling I will play the old games, or watch the old movies or TV Shows. Because the new stuff no matter how good it is, just won't strike the same feeling.

        Also the appeal of the old IP's is from the time they were made. For example as a Kid I loved the Sierra Adventure Games.

        • Yep. The world moves on, bars are raised.

          eg. If Star Wars Episode IV was released today it would be just another movie, nothing remarkable.

          That's why it's impossible to "see" Star Wars now if you've never seen it before.

          (...ignoring all the changes made by Lucas trying to turn it into a copy of Sesame Street)

          • That's why it's impossible to "see" Star Wars now if you've never seen it before.

            Not impossible, just difficult. As M. Night Shyamalan showed us in his documentary, The Village, you could raise your kids in total isolation and pretend that the world never moved on. Then, you can show them Star Wars just the way you experienced it.

            Of course, when they get curious and sneak off into the woods, you'll have to create spike pits and dress up as a Sith lord to keep them from escaping and discovering the truth.

        • You might not realize it, but you just made the case for why people want Re-Makes. They want Re-Makes so that they can have their rose-colored glasses updated with current technology. They want those unwinnable states to either be removed or improved upon. "Moon Logic" is what games are all about anyways. Sure there is a limit to both ends of this but the setting the game takes affects this greatly. It's just like movies that take themselves too seriously but get the science wrong... I hate those... bu

        • I rewatched the entire original Star Trek series recently. Just as good as when it was on the air. Was it cheesy with those low quality sets and some guy off stage throwing giant foam chunks at the actors who pretended to get hit by boulders? Absolutely. But it was just as cheesy when new. That was part of the charm. The stories and characters were still great even if the production value was lower than what I spent on lunch.
          • Agree, the meat and potatoes of the show was the good stuff and it was really great after it grew its beard.

            Star Trek Original and Next Generation were great because of Roddenberry and his processes. There is no more Star Trek after he died. Even Star Trek Picard makes Stewart a washed out and tired Captain which is a shame because Picard is my favorite Captain of them all.

            TOS, TNG, DS9, Voyager... those were the best, I have found that i do not care about any of the others and I hate anything recent.

            • I'm not sure how old Picard is in the new series, but I'm presuming he's roughly the same age as Patrick Stewart. While I found the series a little off key (didn't think much of the new characters, but it was fun seeing Riker, Troy and Seven again), that Picard is an older, jaded man, suffering some fatal disease (why do those still exist in the 24th century) isn't unbelievable. The problem I had with the series was more the tone.

              • The big issue with Picard is that the Romulans were *right* - the moment they were threatened and knew about the uber AIs, the androids basically leapt to calling them, despite knowing that the "protection" they would receive would involve the genocide of every biological sentient.

                Add to that the numerous plot holes - like the Romulan fleet captain saying "at long last, we shall finish our work" when infact cleansing the android population should in reality be just a single event in a long line. It doesn't

                • by F1re ( 249002 )

                  Yes, and nothing has been solved. They have just kicked the can down the road. All it takes is a handful of robots to decide they are unhappy and build a tower in less than a day and it's all over.

            • NO Sisko was the best.
        • You can still make game that look and feel like they were made back in the 80s/90s. For example, I had a blast with Don't Escape: 4 Days to Survive. Looks and plays just like an 80s point-and-click game, though not as long and doesn't rely on "look for that one hidden pixel" type of design.
      • If you want an update to Stunt Car racer go play Trackmainia. I'm not a flight sim guy but there's a big combat flight sim on Steam that's ultra realistic, as in it takes 15 minutes to learn how to turn on the plane.

        This is probably pointless unless they're just going to sell old games. Microprose's thing was simulation, and it takes a lot of effort to do that.

        OTOH a lot of these guys are math wizs and have the chops to do the sims. So you never know.
    • by goose-incarnated ( 1145029 ) on Wednesday May 06, 2020 @06:07AM (#60027684) Journal

      Why should we be excited about another publisher? they are not even the ones making the games...

      I get the feeling you aren't aware of how influential Microprose was. I have no doubt that myself, just like others, are looking forward to playing those old games updated for modern computers.

      • Screw Microprose, bring back Broderbund.
        • You obviously never played the first X-COM.
          • Yea the first 3 X-COMs where great. I hate the ones they currently have...

            The Original ones had a much more appropriate vibe and environment to them.

            I never played past the first stage of the new ones... the moment I first ran into the aliens and then saw them all move into position for defence cut-scene style I lost complete interest. That is not X-COM... that is a different game using the X-COM name to pad it's resume. Maybe I could enjoy the games if they called it something else... like "Little Alie

            • by Kjella ( 173770 )

              I want the 12 to 36 Squads you can drop into combat and it was hard you could easily have half of them wiped out and can get the d-day effect if you lose half your team trying to get off your transports. Those were the days! 3 units is not a Squad... it's a couple of heavily arms friends!

              You really want that? It would pretty much deteriorate to a "hold the line" play where you have a few guys inching forwards with a firing squad at their back. If you want to do unit-level control, individual character and special abilities/weapons/equipment then I'd say 6 characters are max. I completely hated the oversize missions, they were the least interesting of them all. Because of the my side-your side turn system triggering an unexpected troop near the end of your turn was hell. So you'd send out a

        • by lessSockMorePuppet ( 6778792 ) on Wednesday May 06, 2020 @08:15AM (#60027952) Homepage

          Yeah, bring back The Print Shop, tractor-reel paper, and giant paper banners!

      • by MobyDisk ( 75490 )

        Why should we be excited about another publisher?

        I get the feeling you aren't aware of how influential Microprose was.

        I am aware, since I knew people who worked there and played their games. The GP is right.

        Saying "Microprose is back" is like saying that "Tandy" is back or buying an "RCA" TV - they are just trade names run by completely different people. And if they are a publisher, that means they are doing the finances, marketing, and making deals for the release - but having little creative control over the games. I'm sorry to burst your bubble, but it is just a name. They only hire one of the original founders as a

    • by gweihir ( 88907 )

      Why should we be excited about another publisher? they are not even the ones making the games...

      But, but, the marketing people (also known as lying scum) _want_ you to be excited! So please be!

  • Great (Score:4, Insightful)

    by Opportunist ( 166417 ) on Wednesday May 06, 2020 @05:12AM (#60027622)

    Because all the reboots, remodels, refurnishes and refucks of movies were so great at trashing what's left of the fond memories we had of the cinema of yore, let's do it all again with games so gamer geeks can join the movie buffs in the sulky corner where the people who loved the old movies cry about their childhood being ruined while the people who didn't know the old movies wonder what the fuss was about since they're at best meh.

    • There are some great remastered old(ish) games, e.g. Serious Sam HD and VR versions.
      I'd love to see an enhanced version of Sid Meier's Pirates!, as well as the classic Railroad Tycoon (which I played to the extreme back in the day, hitting the 32-bit number limit for dollars earned, at which point a game bug turned the number into its negative value). I would buy it like yesterday and play it once more.

      • by dwywit ( 1109409 )

        Their B17 (think "Memphis Belle") sim was excellent.

        But I could never take off successfully unless I didn't stop at the start of the runway - I always had to be moving.

      • I'd love to see an enhanced version of Sid Meier's Pirates!

        Thats already been done. The one you remember was probably the remake.

        • But the remake was made just long ago enough that its nearly a retro experience in and of itself. Its from that special era of the early - mid 2000's where its age really shows. No widescreen support, the fonts aren't scaleable etc. And unlike true retro games that are mostly sprites and text and therefore relatively straightforward for dedicated modders to make either high res or vector versions of the assets, no luck here. The game looks pretty bad on a modern HD display. An HD re-release akin to AoE II w

        • by Anonymous Coward

          I suspect Sid Meier still has the rights to Pirates!, so I can't see MicroProse doing a remake. We'll probably get Gunship 2020 (Gunship / Gunship 2000 sequel), Silent Service (reboot), and F35 (F-15 II sequel). I'd hazard an opinion - the Sim genre is in decline because it's way too much like the real thing - i.e. actual work.

          What I'd really like to see is Covert Action. It was 2 games in one. There were logic puzzles, where you tapped phones and installed radios on a suspect's car and cracked encrypte

          • by K10W ( 1705114 )

            I suspect Sid Meier still has the rights to Pirates!, so I can't see MicroProse doing a remake. We'll probably get Gunship 2020 (Gunship / Gunship 2000 sequel), Silent Service (reboot), and F35 (F-15 II sequel). I'd hazard an opinion - the Sim genre is in decline because it's way too much like the real thing - i.e. actual work.

            What I'd really like to see is Covert Action. It was 2 games in one. There were logic puzzles, where you tapped phones and installed radios on a suspect's car and cracked encrypted messages. Then there were action segments. One was a car tail/chase segment - I didn't play it much, it was hard to use. Another was the meat and potatoes - the B&E section. You'd run around taking pictures of everything (file cabinets, safes, dropping bugs) and trying to evade detection. If you were caught, the suspect would go to ground, and it might mess up the entire plot. I think it was officially Sid Meier's Covert Action, but I don't know who holds the rights at the moment. It could have had an RPG like progression to it, but I don't think they had time to develop that.

            A last less famous MicroProse title is Darklands. Unfortunately, it was doomed by 1) being too ambitious for it's time, 2) a giant backlash against Dungeons and Dragons (e.g. Mazes and Monsters [wikipedia.org], Geraldo, devil worship, etc... [wikipedia.org]) which forced some aspects to be re-worked and 3) size. It came on 7 3.5" floppies, and expanded out to 20 MiB of storage - a not insignificant amount in the early 90s. That and the diskettes were the cheapest they could find, so you would get at most 10 uses out of them before they croaked. The RPG system seemed a bit like GURPS, so that might be the other reason it's not mentioned much.

            Speaking of disk issues, back in the day Silent Service made you boot off of the proprietary formatted 5 1/4" diskette. I think it had 7 sectors per track instead of 8? Something goofy like that. I could do without copy protection like that - protection that destroys the disk as you play the game. The only other game that had an issue like that was Starflight. Once you finished the game, you were done, you couldn't run it anymore. As in, it would never run again. Although, I think it allowed you to make one (precisely 1) backup that you were supposed to run it on, but no one did.

            Not sure where you get the idea sims are in decline. The sim market is actually growing and doing well if player numbers and communities for DCS world, IL2 BoX and XP11 and other air sims are anything to go by. Falcon BMS (mod for falcon 4) still retains a lot as well as draws new people due to dynamic campaign despite age and there is even more retention than expected for the older stuff like P3D/MSFS and similar. Aerofly etc etc the list goes on and that is just for air sims.

            Same for racing/driving sims

      • by eltwo ( 4283339 )
        RailRoad Tycoon (yeah, I'm old) brings back great memories.
        • All of the "Tycoon" games, though many were not released by Microprose. The RR Tycoon series, though, went seriously "off the tracks" after the first one in terms of game play and DRM. Rollercoaster Tycoon 1 & 2 were (and still are, in a virtual machine with Win98 or in DOSBox) pretty good, too. There were several other "Tycoon" clones; my daughter just submerged herself in Zoo Tycoon when young, and it forced a couple of computer upgrades over the years as MS made it fancier.

      • It's ok, we're all geeks here. You can admit what you really want is a VR version of the Leisure Suit Larry series.
      • You should have done the opposite. Spend money until you hit the negative limit and watch it turn positive.
      • by Zak3056 ( 69287 )

        I'd love to see an enhanced version of Sid Meier's Pirates!

        Fantastic game... a decent spiritual successor was Assassin's Creed Black Flag

    • There have been some pretty good remasters, grumpy. Check Day of the Tentacle, Gabriel Knight, Age of Empires II. Not everything is doom and gloom.
    • by AmiMoJo ( 196126 )

      Sometimes it works for games. Streets of Rage 4 is very good and well received. Sonic Mania was the first decent Sonic game in years, possibly the best one ever made in fact. Mario Maker is classic 2D Mario and great.

      Even a lot of the "mini" consoles like the Famicom/NES Mini and PC Engine Mini update the games a little with quality of life features like save states and button remapping.

    • At least not until Disney gets the MOUSE Act (Make Our Users See Everything) passed through Congress. Then yeah, failure to watch Disney content on release will be a felony. But we're 2 or 3 months out from that.
      • Don't you know that you have to watch them? If you don't pay for it it can only mean that you stole it, you pesky pirate!

    • by tlhIngan ( 30335 )

      What's so great about MicroProse? I remember them for incredibly buggy software back in the day. They had cool stuff, but it was buggy to all hell in the later years.

      If the revived version can fix that issue, we can say it's an improvement

  • possibly the best 4x strategy game ever
  • Falcon 4.0 has evolved into Falcon BMS. If they can beat the amount of realism of BMS, I'd be very, very happy. But I really doubt that they will. I don't think there is a market for a commercial company for such games.
    • Why not?

      I can see a Falcon 4.0/BMS adaptation on common VR systems could be a huge success. The VR flight simulators I've seen so far don't even come close to the operational realism of Falcon 4.0/BMS. If you added a couple of other aircraft and allowed multiplayer sorties it would be great.

      Personally, I'd LOVE to get a couple of good flight simulators in VR, so far I've been totally underwhelmed with the simulators I've tried.

      Anybody got suggestions? What am I missing?

      • Because of the amount work that will go into developing such simulator vs the amount of people interested in such simulator. Not worth the effort for a commercial company.
  • by quonset ( 4839537 ) on Wednesday May 06, 2020 @06:11AM (#60027688)

    While conceptually the games were good, the blatant cheating by the computer did them in. I'm not talking about a spearman being able to take out a tank, I'm talking having your opponent down to one base with no resources or energy yet able to keep making an indestructible unit turn after turn. Yeah, Alpha Centauri was like that, and it was the most annoying part of the game next to telling your opponent to surrender and they keep fighting on.

    • by Jarwulf ( 530523 )
      Sid probably hasn't been involved in a very long time, even way back in AC, Brian Reynolds was brains behind it. He's Stan Lee with his name in the title instead of obnoxious cameos.
      • by lessSockMorePuppet ( 6778792 ) on Wednesday May 06, 2020 @08:40AM (#60028006) Homepage

        What? Sid still codes. He does talks where he discusses what they're working on. He does workshops for kids and makes games right there with them.

        The man is a god amongst programmers, and modern Civ games still cheat. A lot. Crank it up and watch it push you off a tile to give the AI that space + 12 units. They even cheat in specific ways and for specific reasons, and he discusses realism versus fun gameplay in one of his talks.

        • I wish that with all of the computational power we have along with the advances in AI techniques that some developers would create really good AI opponents that didn’t need to cheat. A person could even let top human players submit their moves to help train the AI even more.

          A lot of times the computer cheats to compensate for some really idiotic behavior that can be predictably exploited. There’s no satisfaction in higher difficulty levels when the same poor behavior exists only the computer
    • by Laxator2 ( 973549 ) on Wednesday May 06, 2020 @07:06AM (#60027812)

      In those times the AI was quite poor, so to make the games challenging there was such cheating all over the place.
      But it was not something Microprose-specific.
      I remember in games like Dune2, the AI started with the base already built, while the human player started from scratch and had to build it first. Then, the AI could air-drop units anywhere on the map, the human player could not. There was a place where units could be bought instead of built. Most of the time it would take your money and not deliver any units. And so on.

    • by Tupper ( 1211 )
      Funny thing about the spearman vs tank example: when it happened IRL, the spearmen won [wikipedia.org].
  • by spaceman375 ( 780812 ) on Wednesday May 06, 2020 @06:16AM (#60027692)
    Why the focus on WWII? Are all the executives/investors in their 80s? Civ was a totally re-imagined breakout of what a computer game could be when it was released. Now they want to re-hash events from 80 years ago in a format that has existed for thousands of years: war games, but now on a computer.

    If you want to get somewhere with this, be creative. The "safe" approach will make pennies at most.

    • Microprose made quite a number of WWII games in the 80's and 90's.
    • Good to know we're not allowed to like things you don't like. Civ and civ-style games are already very popular. Naval sims like Sea Power and Task Force Admiral are very niche in comparison and I'm happy to see them as there's been a dearth of titles in that space.
    • shut up
    • by sremick ( 91371 )

      Agreed. I get that the genre is popular, but some variety for the rest of us would be nice.

      I have zero interest in contemporary war/re-enactment games or sports games. Give me an adventure, puzzle-solver, RPG or the like.

      • > Give me an adventure, puzzle-solver, RPG or the like.

        Have you checked the massive catalog of those available on Steam and other online shops?

    • > Why the focus on WWII?... now they want to re-hash events from 80 years ago in a format that has existed for thousands of years: war games, but now on a computer.

      Because that type of game happens to be fun? WWII units play on a turn based "board" completely differently than WWIII units would. I for one am very interested to see the final product as there has been a dearth of these types of games over the last 20+ years. Most turn based games vanished in favor of RTS games (Close Combat, Sudden Stri

    • Exactly they should do the whole suite!

      They can start off with WWI where you can watch your horse die, sit in a mud hole for 3 years, get trench foot, have it amputated, and die.
      Then the rest of the WWII stuff they already mentioned.
      Finally the WWIII, you can sit have eat your breakfast in your barracks, when you see a surprisingly bright light outside.
      (Or for an alternate ending, stay inside watching Netflix for months, I have to believe there will be any number of COVID-19 spin off survival games)

      So in ca

  • Civ IV 64-bit ? (Score:4, Interesting)

    by cobbaut ( 232092 ) <paul.cobbaut @ g mail.com> on Wednesday May 06, 2020 @06:27AM (#60027724) Homepage Journal

    Dear Microprose, please make a patch to upgrade Civilization IV to 64-bit, the modding community would greatly benefit from this.

    • Civ IV is from the Firaxis days.

      Micropose did 1, 2 and 3 from memory.

      Soren Johnson left Firaxis after Civ IV so thats why the series want downhill.

      Of all the old Micropose games I'd like to see a sequel of is BoFT, Birth Of The Federation. A Star Trek TBS from the late 90s that was a good game that suffered from being a bit buggy and unbalanced. Still has a small cult following.
      • Civ III is Firaxis as well. The first two Civ games were Microprose before Sid left. They made Alpha Centauri using the Civ II engine because Microprose still had the rights to the Civ name. Activision acquired the rights to the Civ name, so you had a game with Civ in the name without Sid competing with a Sid Meier game without Civ in the name.

        FWIW Civ V is a great game when you have the G+K/BNW expansions. As released it was broken/incomplete but they fixed it and expanded it to be better than Civ IV. But

    • by bosef1 ( 208943 )

      Steam has Civ IV on it. I don't know if the game is a full 64-bit conversion, or if it's just the 32-bit game that has been adjusted to work with Steam.

      • Probably the latter. Steam, for example, got special 32-bit support in the new Ubuntu, which otherwise abandons all 32-bit support.

      • by Cederic ( 9623 )

        It's the original game. It runs full screen at 1024x768 which was a poor resolution even when it was released, but crashes if you try and change to a higher resolution.

        Maybe just widescreen resolutions, I didn't try a 4:3 format.

  • by DrXym ( 126579 ) on Wednesday May 06, 2020 @06:43AM (#60027762)
    Doesn't mean the ethos, spirit or whatever that was the old Microprose has. It's just a brand with some IP which presumably they're going to milk for all its worth.
  • I NEED a newer version of Hyperspeed / Lightspeed. I have played this game to death, and still play it.

  • microprose soccer was one of the best soccer games on the C64. The soundtrack was great too. https://www.youtube.com/watch?... [youtube.com]
  • Loved this on the Atari 800 (speech!). An updated version would be awesome.
  • by rgbscan ( 321794 ) on Wednesday May 06, 2020 @07:39AM (#60027878) Homepage

    Oh man, I played a ton of Command HQ by 14.4k modem with my best friend in high school. Would love to see an updated version.

  • Stunt Car Racer. A true classic, and few games can touch it in concept, save for Track Mania.

  • And here I thought they were legendary for F-15 Strike Eagle [wikipedia.org].
  • by CaptnCrud ( 938493 ) on Wednesday May 06, 2020 @09:12AM (#60028130)

    Many mornings before school I played it on our 286 sx....I hadn't thought of that game in years until I read this post...

  • I loved MicroProse games back in the day, but I don’t know how a reboot is going to work. What made them great was what they could do on meager computers like Commodores 64s and PCs at the time. Maybe they can update their old games to modern times but I don’t think how that translates to GHz CPUs and TB HDDs
    • by HiThere ( 15173 )

      It depends on what you're after. "Realism" isn't that important, it's just eye-candy. It helps for a quick sale, but it doesn't improve the game.

      E.g., I liked "The Bard's Tale", but it wasn't as good a game as "Orbquest" was, which could be played on an ascii terminal. (I'll admit that Orbquest seems to have totally disappeared, but it wasn't sold, it came with an Altos Unix system.)

      Of course, if you want high strategy, you do need a fast computer. Go isn't something that a Commodore64 or and Apple ][ c

  • https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... [wikipedia.org]

    If I had spent as much time chasing ass when I was 15 as I spent chasing Russian Sub Pens at 200' AGL.....

  • The article was rather scant on relevant information, but it looks like this is just someone who's trying to capitalize on a name that was well known and was able to get just one of the original people as a "consultant".

    No mentions of any of the originals in a creative position, just one person as "consultant".
    No mentions of if they even hold the IPs for any of the original Microprose stuff. (I have a feeling that both Civ & Xcom are out of their hands since others have been making those in the past dec
  • I seem to recall playing new Civ and XCOM games over the last 20 years. "Microprose" as a brand isn't associated with those games anymore (and they don't own that IP anymore either).

  • Ah Microprose. So many good games. Everybody knows about Civ & XCOM, but there were so many more. They had a number of blockbusters, but a bunch of hidden gems too. Here are some of the ones I played and loved

    Pirates!
    Sword of the Samurai
    Colonization
    Darklands
    Master of Magic.

    Master of magic is one of my favorite games of all time. I still like going back and playing that one from time to time. Unfortunately, I don't think we'll ever see a refresh or a remake of that one. It had so much material fro

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