Glover 2 announcement and its ‘cancellation’

It has been quite hands-on for Glover this week. It started with an announcement by German developer Golden Mushroom Studio saying that they were going to make the long-lost Glover 2 into a reality on the Nintendo Switch.

A bit of History of Glover 2

This is one of those games that was stuck in development hell for the longest time. Glover was a game released in 1998 that sold pretty well on the Nintendo 64 and even had a mediocre Playstation 1 port. It sold well enough that the publisher wanted to make a sequel or the N64, PS1 and Sega Dreamcast due for release in 1999. Since these dates were pretty close together, the sales cycle of Glover overlapped with the development cycle of Glover 2.

Hasbro decided to order a new batch of 300,000 cartridges (twice the amount of a regular batch) at a reduced bulk price to get more bang for their buck. This was a bad idea, since there wasn’t enough demand for Glover and they were stuck with 150,000 surplus cartridges that retailers wouldn’t take. The loss in sales meant that the Glover name was tainted, even though it was a fairly well-received game. All of this eventually led to the abandoning of Glover 2 even though it was well on its way into development.

In 2010, a development cart resurfaced containing the unfinished ROM for the game on Nesworld, which was later ripped and uploaded to the internet in 2011.

Golden Mushroom Studio and Glover 2

Golden Mushroom studios is a game development studio that works as a subcontractor for other studios to help as part of a bigger project. They spent the past two years building up money to fund their project of releasing Glover 2 to the public and feel that now the time has come. It took me a while to find (using various search engine caches), but this is the announcement tweet that is now deleted:

He’s not dead! Glover will come back! Exklusive for Nintendo Switch! #nindies #NintendoSwitch #glover #glover2 @NintendoAmerica

They want to bring the long lost game to the Nintendo Switch, but many have met the claim with skepticism. First off, it’s a studio with no reputation for creating any games in the two years they’ve been open. This means that it is unknown whether they are able do deliver a project at all despite being a registered developer with Nintendo and having a Nintendo Switch Development Kit.

Also shortly after the announcement, they reported a series of attacks on their online presence (Twitter, Facebook, Website, etc.). They have since regained control, but the identity of the attacker (or their motive) remains unknown.

Piko Interactive, who worked on the 40 Winks project earlier this year, have also chimed in. They claim to have the IP rights to the Glover franchise and it seems like they might have a point. They’ve gone back and forth discussing the trademark and it looks like Piko isn’t handing it over. GMS was hoping on buying up an expired IP and making a sequel based on it, but it seems like it’s not going to go through.

(Melvin) But this is not the end for our project!!! We will now drop Glover as Character and we have a great replacement 😉 So it will be not Glover 2 or Glover 3 but a spirituel successor with all the things that need a Glover Game! Stay tuned! #nindies

On the bright side, they do have something else planned. Since they already started development, they’ll continue with the game under a different name. Rather than a direct sequel called Glover 2 or Return of Glover, it will be more akin to a spiritual successor. Time will tell what comes of this project. Best of luck to the chaps at Golden Mushroom Studio!