Speaking of comics, Z-Man Games has announced plans for a roleplaying game based on the Tomorrow Knights, a Marvel title from the early ’90s. Sounds like a cyberpunk-ish setting with mecha thrown in, which could be rather cool. Spectrum Games, known for Cartoon Action Hour, will develop the title for Z-Man, for a late 2004 release.
Z-Man press release follows:
Z-MAN GAMES TO PUBLISH TOMORROW KNIGHTS RPG!
IMMEDIATE RELEASE
Mahopac, New York
January 31, 2004
Z-Man Games, Inc. announces today that it will publish a roleplaying game based on the Tomorrow Knights, a comic book series created by cowriter/artist Roy Richardson and cowriter/artist Rod Whigham and produced by Marvel’s Epic Comics imprint in the early 1990s. The game will be developed by Spectrum Games, the design team responsible for the successful Cartoon Action Hour RPG.
The Tomorrow Knights is a fantastic science-fiction tale of intrigue, politics and rapid-fire action. According to Zev Shlasinger, president of Z-Man Games, “Tomorrow Knights offers a setting that has not been explored in much detail in RPGs. It’s a near future Earth where corporations have battle-suited security forces to prevent corporate spying and to put the hurt on the competition.”
The enthusiasm for the project isn’t exclusive to the folks at Z-Man and Spectrum. Tomorrow Knights creator/writer Roy Richardson is equally excited about bringing the property into an new arena. “This is going to be a great new incarnation for the Tomorrow Knights. The RPG genre is tailor-made for a Sci-fi concept like ours. If you like believable near-future settings, fully realized characters, and guys in hi-tech battle armor blowing stuff up, this is gonna be the game for you!”
The Tomorrow Knights game system will be slightly familiar to fans of Cartoon Action Hour. Many of the core concepts from the popular system will be used in the Tomorrow Knights RPG. The rules will enable players and GMs to bring the gritty yet cinematic action portrayed in the series to life in their games. Spectrum Games president, Cynthia Celeste Miller is looking forward to the challenge of emulating the Tomorrow Knights in RPG format. “It’s going to be a blast! The setting is just unbelievably suitable for roleplaying. It has subterfuge, suspense, robot-like battlesuits, complex characters — virtually everything a gamer could want in a world. Translating all that into the system is a dream come true.”
The rulebook will be bristling with fantastic art from Whigham and Richardson, some of which has never been published before, including a brand new, full color cover done especially for the RPG. Fans of the series will have the chance to see more of the Tomorrow Knights universe than ever before.
If you’ve never had the opportunity to read the Tomorrow Knights comic, you won’t be left out in the cold. The game will be self-contained, featuring a massive amount of info on the TK universe and the characters who inhabit it. Says Eddy Webb, vice-president of Spectrum Games, “One problem with licensed games is that many people think you have to be a fan of the original material to enjoy the game. With Tomorrow Knights, we want to bring all of the information from the comic book into the game, so people who have never read the series will be able to play side-by-side with long-time fans.”
The Tomorrow Knights is scheduled for release in late 2004. For those wanting to find out more about the Tomorrow Knights, the first two issues of the comic are available at www.unboundcomics.com. Negotiations are also underway to collect the entire comic series into a trade paperback. Check out www.tomorrowknights.com for the latest info.