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Current Messages (newest additions marked with *NEW*)
Interplay has a tendency to release BUGGY games that CRASH too much (documented below). So, do yourself a favor and never buy an Interplay Game! Frankly, we are surprised that Interplay has not been sued yet for false advertising, selling defective products or other acts of customer abuse. If you are a lawyer (or know one) please consider filing suit against Interplay (you can leave us a message on our Message Board).
Help spread the word and save others the agony, pain and suffering that is a typical result trying to play an new Interplay Game. Leave messages in various Newsgroups as well as Message Forums.
This site is obviously just getting started ... please send your Interplay stories via our Message Board to have them added here! Hopefully during the next month this site will be expanded and improved. Thanks.
Preliminary Note
This is merely background info ... the real reason for this page comes next. Interplay is producing about 30 games per year ("shovelling them out the door" using PC Gamer's phrase). This is bad because it crowds the games by small independent gaming companies off the shelf! Interplay figures that if they dump enough games on the market they can crowd out the competition and come out ahead. So, keep in mind:
"Quality -- not Quantity"
Support the small independent gaming companies like Firaxis (Sid Meier's Alpha Centauri coming in January), who does one game per year, and take extreme pride in their work!
Background on Interplay itself (*NEW*)
On June 19, 1998, Interplay went "public" and sold 5 MILLION shares of stock at $6 each (raking in nearly 30 MILLION DOLLARS)! Their stock is traded on the NASDAQ as "IPLY". Their underwriters were Piper Jaffray Inc, Bear, Stearns & Co, and UBS Securities.
Piper Jaffray Inc might be interested to hear your stories about how Interplay is selling games that don't work well (or even don't work at all in the case of MAX2 multiplayer mode). You can write to them at 222 South Ninth Street, Minneapolis, MN 55402, call them at (612) 342-6221 or fax them at (612) 342-1028.
Likewise, you can FAX Bear, Stearns & Co at (516) 254-7146 or UBS Securites at (212) 821-3667.
You also can get a copy of the Interplay Prospectus from them as well. Let's see if Interplay is not living up to what it's Prospectus says!
Information on how to contact Interplay itself is already available on antother website (MAX2 Heaven), so rather than duplicate it ... just go to their Contact Interplay page! They also have a resource page on how to contact the editors of the gaming magazines and websites so you can let them know what you think of Interplay!
Boycott Future Interplay Games! List follows...
A.I. Alien Intelligence - a Flat Cat production for Interplay - the same people who released MAX2 that still does not work after four patches. This game is tauted as "where other strategy games left off..." MAX2 left off with a crashed PC. A must to avoid. Play Master of Orion 2 or StarCraft instead!
Baldur's Gate - on October 6, 1998 at the official IRC chat the developers said "<LukeAtBio> an interactive demo won't be in the works until after the main release." They are afraid of putting out a Demo before the game. Actually they said the reason was "we don't want to work on it right now because we're spending out time debugging the main game." And you should WORRY about the multiplayer aspect. Interplay showed that it had no idea how to implement multiplayer with MAX2 and word is that some of that "fine code" may be in Baldur's Gate! If you want to warn people not to buy Baldur's Gate, do so on their Developer's Corner Message Forum (or on their Backroom Message Forum). There are plenty of other games of this type to buy instead of this one!
Battle Cruiser 3000AD - You can add Battle Cruiser 3000 to the list of Interplay Fiasco's like MAX2 and Descent to Undermountain. You can preorder it now if you like throwing your money down the toilet. You can leave warning messages about it on their Commlink Forum. It's foolish to even consider buying this game.
Past Interplay Fiasco's - Buyer Be Warned!
Descent To Undermountain - Warn people to avoid Interplay games on the Descent to Undermountain Forum.
Andy Hooper - "This game is a joke. I think that Interplay owes all of us something for this total waste of cash. If I buy a new car that breaks down every 5th time I drive it, I would expect compensation."
Mentat - "Interplay released a statement about DTUM being pushed out the door too early after getting bombarded with complaints...They never did get that game to work properly. They appologized profusely in this statement about releasing it too early....then a few months later BOOM they do it again [with MAX2] ($$$$$$$$)."
Dragon Lo - "I've had more problems with this game and spent more time installing it and it's patches than palying it. When it started getting good, I needed the second patch and had to wait for the patch to be sent to me. While I waited for the fix I bought Might & Magic VI. Now that was a game. I completed it without any problems; no patches, and the graphics were great. I tried starting dtu again, to complete, and now the game will not start."
Nick - "What are the chances of fixing the remaining broken spells, items and thieving abilities? The gameplay has been dramatically improved with 1.3 but some very simple things remain unresolved. I am not asking for another major overhaul of the game, just a simple patch to fix some real annoying bugs. For instance, I get blinded for 110 minutes! Knock used to work fine in 1.2 but now it is broken. How do you explain that?! I have never hid in shadows or backstabbed once as a thief! Everytime I miss with a Wand of Lightning Bolts I strike myself- not a very practical weapon! Wands bought in the store have unlimited charges! And flying/levatate/feather fall either don't work the way they are supposed to or never expire! Feather fall worked in 1.2, didn't it? I hear the Ring of Wizardry, a great 1.3 addition, is broken as well. Some of my spells expire the second I cast them, etc., etc. I can live with the graphics, no multiplayer support, the occasional lock-up, and even disappearing rest areas but please fix these simple things that are at the heart of any AD&D game! I pre-ordered this game about a year ago and am still waiting for the final version. Please reply. " [Sorry, Nick ... you have been abandoned by Interplay (typical for them)]
Die By The Sword - Warn people to avoid Interplay games on the Die By The Sword Forum.
Chris Geroux - "Whenever I try a IPX or modem game, the signal always winds up disconnecting. Am I doing something wrong? It's get into the arena some times, and I once played for 3 seconds before it shut down. The single player works like a charm, as does the arena mode. Anyone have any ideas at all? Please?!? " [Interplay does not seem able to do multiplayer!!!]
Warik - "I'm just curious about this. I just tried having a 3 person game over
the internet with 2 of my friends. One of them has a PII/400 and the other has a P233 MMX.
I hosted the game and I'm using a PII/450 and I have a cable modem. When the game started
the gameplay was AWFUL. It wasn't "slow" constant motion, it was sorta like
this:
Go (for a second or two)
Game pauses... (5-10 seconds)
Go (second or two again)
Game pauses... (5-10 seconds more)
and so on and so forth. I find this very odd since all our machines are well above the
recommended system requirements, we even tried putting low detail mode but the problem
still persisted. Am I the only one who has encountered this problem, and does anyone know
what I can do to resolve this? Oh and we were using version 1.04." [Interplay does not seem able to do multiplayer coding!!!]
Edge Crusher - "I have a problem when playing over a modem. I start the match and then in about 25 sec. It just ends. Both computers have the same cirrus logic 56k modem. Does anyone know why? Is it hardware or software? " [Neither ... the problem is Interplay and muliplayer!]
MAX2 - Warn people to avoid Interplay games on the MAX2 Forum.
(*NEW*) MAX2 does not work at all in multiplayer mode as thoroughly documented on the MAX2 Heaven BUGS page (so we won't dupliate it here).
Of Light and Darkness - Warn people to avoid Interplay games on the Of Light and Darkness Forum.
cal - "I cant play this game longer than 10 minutes before it crashes or freezes up. "
dieter - "after reading the messages here, I am confident that my computer is quite ok while the programming of the game is not." [Now that is an interesting way to say that the game doesn't work:) ]
Louise Wolbers - "My game has gone faulty. I have started to get the hang of things when suddenly there is no longer a time clock tell me to white light appar. nor can I get my hands on the remaining 4 artifacts. When I go to exit it goes to the robot but then straight back again to the game before I can push any request whatsoever. I therefore cannot exit, save, do new game etc. I have to switch off the computer cold tuckey. " [The solution was to ALT-TAB to windows desktop and use Taskmanager to End Task for OL&D ... wow, some solution that is!]
Watson - "My CDs had so many glitches that I was more entertained reading the problems other users were having than I did actually labouring through this exercise in "teach yourself to fix a programming error." My Level one experience was filled with a robot repeating "going back" without allowing me to restart a game. Plus the uninstall feature was not functioning properly. On Level 2 I was only permitted to "redeem" 14 of the 21 freaks before I decided to hit this site. It was well worth it. I'm not even going to waste my time and effort asking for a refund, I've wasted enough of my days on futile rebooting and going into every room with every device and using every star flash sequence that I just gotten really turnsd off to Interplay; something I'll be sure to advise my gamer friends to beware of. "
Dragon - "I just don't understand Interplay's motivation in releasing such an untested and unstable program. I am running Windows 950a on a Pentium 166 with 32Mb ram, Sony 32x CD drive, Creative AWE64, plenty of hard drive space (6.4 Mb), ATI 3D Rage Pro Turbo graphics card with 8 Mb SCRAM, up to date drivers and the latest version of Direct X (both 5 and 5.2). I have experienced numerous audio and video hangups and omissions together with an extremely flawed Save Game function. Incidentally, I have also experienced the Robot loop as reported on this message board, and I strongly disagree with the suggestion that the problem resides with the user depressing the ESC key too vigorously. Rather I suggest the problem really lies with the programmers and game designers of this product. After about 15 calls to technical support (at my expense), long waiting periods and two broken promises to send another CD set, I finally found an employee who did so. Unfortunately, the same problems persist. I do not believe that my configuration is an unusual one; certainly others also experience these problems. I urge them to formally complain to Interplay to correct these problems, either by system adjustment or software patch. "
Redneck Rampage - Warn people to avoid Interplay games on the Redneck Forum.
Stan Martell - "I still cant get my video to work right on Redneck Rampage Rides again. Its all choppy looking and the colors are messed up. Ive been told i need to configure my VESA drivers. I cant find any place on the internet that knows how to do this. I cant get my sound to work either. What a jip. I paid almost 40 dollars for this game and i cant even get it to work. Why didnt they make it run under windows like normal games. I give it a thumbs down."
DUH - "I cannot launch/play game without going thru setup. If I try it gives me a blank screen."
Darin - "The game crashes when I walk under the space ship and am about to be sucked into it, What can I do?"
Trent - "I keep getting the error from EMM386 at memory address f00:00bm9(<--something similar to that) I don't know what to do, I can't play the game. This time it gave me the error even when I said there was NO soundcard. "
Hank DJ - "Can make it all the way through to the processing line but when we try to exit through the sewer pipe it crashes just as we reach the very top of the pipe."
Star Fleet Academy - Warn people to avoid Interplay games on the Star Fleet Academy Forum.
KIN Takvah - "The reality check has to do with the fact that even after all the screaming was done about SFA, nothing was done to fix it. I'm not talking shield indicators here, I'm talking multiplay. Also the fixes in the end hurt some features in the game, ie reloading at a starbase. It's as if Interplay washed their hands of the whole project and believe me I was as upset as you when I got this game and even RETURNED IT" [Interplay seems consistent in botching up multiplayer and doing nothing to fix it in game after game after game.]