Ikon was a third person shooter / sandbox game that was in development for the Playstation 2 from 2002 to 2005 at Ratbag Games. In three years the project evolved and it was later know as Scavenger, as it was shown at E3 2005.
As we can read on the official press release: “Scavenger’s hero is a loner battling for his survival and searching for a sister sold into slavery. Scavenging, trading and raiding, he builds up his arsenal of weapons to wreak revenge on the men who took her. Centred around a huge desert wasteland, the game features convoy attacks (players pit their skills against escorted convoys to try and steal their cargo) and allows players to trade to increase their wealth, align themselves with different factions, and increase their attack power by modifying their vehicles and upgrading weapons.
As we can read from a former Ratbag developer:
Scavenger was a Free Roaming 3rd Person Action game with exciting vehicle combat and a unique economy simulation that the player could influence and exploit. The player could roam the waste lands hunting bandits and convoys shipping goods between settlements or escort the convoys for a fee. Each settlement produced something the others required, if the player intercepted the goods they could then sell them to the towns that needed them for a higher price. Money was used to buy new vehicles weapons and upgrades. Unfortunately Midway had no interest in taking the project into full production and moved the team on to The Wheelman before eventually closing the studio.
Even if they did find a couple of publishers interested in Ikon / Scavenger, the game was dropped by Rockstar after being dropped by Sony and sadly the development was stopped after E3 2005. Midway bough Ratbag Games and shut them down with this promising game still unfinished.
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(4 votes, average: 4.25 out of 5)
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Having worked on the first iteration of this game there is a bit more to it than above :)
We built a demo for Sony in 2000 for a launch title on PS2 called “Next”. It was going to be franchised with Mad Max and we had some great script writers and people developing it (and _alot_ of money from Sony). Imho, the original 2001 demo and video is still pretty amazing. If you email me, I can send you the movie :)
Sadly, during 2000 the development team all left due to a number of reasons, but mainly because the people running Ratbag didnt want to invest in the “engine” the developers had built (which was imho amazing!) and so they all left – these were the original PowerSlide developers – yes, all of them except for the head of development.
I was lucky enough to learn a large amount from them, and realized without them, it was very unlikely the game would see the light of day (In 2001 I moved on too). Sure enough early 2001 Next was dropped by Sony, and renamed and resold to another publisher :) .. and then again later too..
The original PowerSlide team (developers) were all amazing talents.. it was a real privilege working with them and I have been lucky enough to work with a couple of them later in life.
“Next”.. really could have been the Mad Max that we all wanted to make, its a pity some people didnt have much long term vision. I know many people in the company blamed the publishers and others, but the reality was without the key skills it would be years before Ratbag had the talent to build such a title, and by then it was too late.