Harpoon 4 still on the way
"I'm not quite dead yet"
It's been a long time since we last heard anything about Harpoon 4, the latest installment in the long-running naval wargame series, but the good news is that the game is once again coming out of hibernation. In an open letter posted to a newsgroup earlier in the week, Larry Bond (the man behind the original Harpoon board games) confirmed that the PC game is now back in full production at SSI and Ultimation after UbiSoft stumped up the cash needed to complete work on it. Harpoon 4 has had a long and troubled life so far, starting development way back in 1997 only for repeated changes in management to leave it festering on the backburner for much of that time. Now, after a collosal game of pass the parcel which saw SSI come under the control of Mindscape, The Learning Company, Mattel, GAME Studios and UbiSoft at various stages, work is finally underway again. And according to Larry, "while the owners of SSI have changed many times, the core development team has remained unchanged". How long it will take the company to make up for four years of underinvestment and bring the game up to spec remains to be seen, but at least the game may eventually see the light of day now.
