FASA is dead! Long live FASA!

[Rando]

I come here to mourn the loss of the FASA Corp.

They went out of buisness recently, and as far as I'm concerned, it is a sad day for the gaming comunity.

If you don't know, the Freedonia Air and Space Administration is the company that produced Battletech, Shadowrun, Earthdawn, and several other games.

They were always a good company to deal with, and you could tell that thier games were made by people that were actually themselves gamers. If you had a rules question or other comment you wanted to write in with, you were guarenteed a personal reply.

The rules of thier games were realistic while remaining smooth playing, and the background storys of thier settings and worlds were rich and detailed.

Battletech and Shadowrun were sold to WizKids, the company that makes MageKnight. I here that the founder of WizKids was also a founder of FASA, so I hope he does good things with the licenses.

RalPartha, FASA's miniture manifacturer, is also defunct I fear, so if you played Battletech, go out and buy as many mini's as you can now. We may never see them again.

 

[Baskil]

This actually brought a tear to my eye when I was told of this. You see, FASA was, in my opinion, the best gaming company that was on the market. They had a hands-on approach with everything, and many of the supplements were a direct result of customer interaction.

And unlike GW or Hasbro, the company was very reachable. At Origins last year, I had an opportunity to talk with a few of the FASA bigwigs, and they were just like us; hard-core gamers.

The worst part about this all was that the games that FASA were producing were all at the hight of a turnaround. Shadowrun, in particular, had taken a new direction under Mike Mulvahill, and streamlined the rules. Anyone who's played it can attest to it's greatness as a system, all due to Mike and his team.

Battletech was also experiencing a similar turnaround. There were talks of a movie, tons of materials coming out, etc. Crimson Skies was finally finding its niche.

And yet, I can not help but feel pity for the desicion makers at FASA. They made a boneheaded decision, which led to this. You see, they were working *with* Ral Partha in the beginning (Ral Partha, of course, was also working AGE and others). Then someone had a bright idea that having Ral Partha under the FASA banner would create enourmous synergy. There was one problem, however. They didn't have the cash to outright buy them.

In order to get that cashflow, they made their fatal mistake. They sold their Video Games division (which was it's most profitable division) to Microsoft. Then, when they purchased Ral Partha last year, something happened. Suddenly, they found out that Ral Partha was not making much money at all. Actually, they might have been losing money. And now, within a year, they had to close.

I'm glad to hear that WizKidz was the group that picked up the licences for Shadowrun and Battletech. Hopefully they don't screw it up.

On a related note, has anyone heard what's going to happen to Cruicible now that Ral Partha is defunct?

 

[Rando]

I had a talk with my local game-shop owner, and he said that RalPartha is unreachable, and that his distributors can't get word from them either.

You should see the remaining Battletech mini's fly off the shelves though! I know that the second he told me that FASA went under, I went back to the Battletech stuff and bought $60 worth right then and there. Several other die-hard Battletech fans completly cleared the shelves later that day.

WizKids also purchased "certain assets" of RalPartha, so I think that RalPartha as a company is gone for good.

one more thing...

One time I called FASA for a rules question on Battletech. Right there they set up some minitures and ran through the same senario I was to give me a ruling. I have never called any other game company and actually heared the rattle of dice in the background...

 

[Ura]

Another note about old FASA products.
The Earthdawn game was discontinued by FASA a couple years ago but for those of us who were fans of it you can rejoice because a company called Livingroom Games bought it and is re-releasing the old core books along with some new materials later this year. Joy!

r.i.p. fasa, you were my second fav company.