History TroubledProduction / VideoGames0ToM

* ''[=H1Z1=]'' was a zombie-themed MMO by Creator/DaybreakGameCompany that originally released on Steam Early Access in January 2015, but its ongoing support ended up transforming into an extremely complicated mess for a variety of reasons, from conflicting vision for the game's direction, to technical setbacks, to frequent exchanges of hand. As a condensed summary:
** The game titled ''[=H1Z1=]'' -- while facing major server problems early on -- was ultimately a modest Early Access success, though in February 2016, it was announced that the game would become split into two separate titles with their own development teams for ongoing support: ''[=H1Z1=]: Just Survive'' (focusing on the MMO and survival elements) and ''[=H1Z1=]: King of the Kill'' (a BattleRoyaleGame). This naturally induced a huge fission of the existing playerbase, with attention by players and developers ultimately favoring ''King of the Kill''. By August 2018, the survival game -- which had been retitled to simply ''Just Survive'' in 2017 -- was shut down due to low player numbers.

** ''[=H1Z1=]: King of the Kill'' attained a spike in positive attention around 2017 following the rise of ''VideoGame/PlayerUnknownsBattlegrounds'' and later ''VideoGame/{{Fortnite}}''[[note]](In an odd twist of fate, Daybreak initially brought on Brendan "[=PlayerUnknown=]" Greene -- back when he was simply known for producing a popular battle royale mod in ''VideoGameDayZ'' -- as a consultant for ''King of the Kill'', but following this period, he was later picked up by (what was then named) Bluehole Games to produce ''VideoGame/PlayerUnknownsBattlegrounds'')[[/note]], but soon found itself unable to keep up with the competition of them and other battle royale titles. By the time of its eventual release from Early Access in February 2018 (as well as a UsefulNotes/PlayStation4 release in August 2018), Daybreak had been struggling with deciding on and implementing features to give itself an edge from other titles, from suddenly announcing then adding in an "Auto Royale" game mode based on VehicularCombat, to the game initially launching with a $20 price tag, only to be reverted to a free-to-play a mere week later. The game's title was also in flux, with Daybreak periodically ditching the ''King of the Kill'' subtitle and just referring to the game once again as ''[=H1Z1=]''
** During this development period, Daybreak was undergoing chaos from various acquisitions and restructuring: after being independent since 2015, the studio received an investment from holding company [=NantWorks=] in 2018, causing Daybreak to undergo several rounds of layoffs between 2018-2019, with it being announced in March 2019 that Daybreak would be split into three separate divisions. In this shuffle, ''[=H1Z1=]: King of the Kill'' was rebranded yet again to ''Z1 Battle Royale'', with its new developer division being [=NantG=] Mobile, who -- in a bizarre turn of events -- reverted the game's form to a patch from ''2017'', undoing two years worth of work to the combat, movement, graphics, and other gameplay systems in the title.

** During this development period, Daybreak was undergoing chaos from various acquisitions and restructuring: after being independent since 2015, the studio received an investment from holding company [=NantWorks=] in 2018, causing Daybreak to undergo several rounds of layoffs between 2018-2019, with it being announced in March 2019 that Daybreak would be split into three separate divisions. In this shuffle, ''[=H1Z1=]: King of the Kill'' was rebranded yet again to ''Z1 Battle Royale'', with its new developer division being [=NantG=] Mobile, who -- in a bizarre turn of events -- reverted the game's form to a patch from ''2017'', undoing two years worth of graphics to the combat, movement, graphics, and other gameplay system.

** The game's final update came in the form of a bug fix in February 2020. In December of the same year, it was announced that Daybreak was being bought out by Swedish holding company Enad Global 7, and in April 2021, then-CEO Robin Flodin announced that they were going through the game's codebase and were interested in adding new life back into the game. This ended up being the last news of the game's development, with Flodin being replaced by Ji Ham (formerly Daybreak's CEO) in August 2021. No updates to the game has been made since, with North American servers [[DefunctOnlineVideoGames becoming defunct]] on June 2023 without announcement (though European servers still remain).

* ''VideoGame/DeusExInvisibleWar'' suffered from a myriad of development problems whose end product ultimately led to it sinking Creator/WarrenSpector's reputation and the [[GenreKiller immersive sim genre]]. The engine the game was built on, a heavily modified version of the Unreal Engine 2 dubbed the "Flesh Engine" was capable of great visuals, but it was a technical nightmare to work with. Disaster happened when the lead engine coder left partway through the project and left no documentation behind, leaving the rest of the team scrambling to fix critical engine issues. Further complicating the development was Eidos forcing Ion Storm Austin to also develop it for the Xbox in tandem with the PC, and the Xbox proved less powerful than the developers anticipated. This, combined with the engine issues forced the developers to significantly cut down levels and take extreme measures to try and save on memory usage, such as shutting down the entire game and restarting it on every loading screen. These problems also affected the development of ''VideoGame/ThiefDeadlyShadows'', which was developed concurrently with ''Invisible War'' and used the same engine. When the game finally was released, it performed ultimately poorly compared to the previous installment both critically and commercially.

** Fortunately, the aftermath did prove positive in the long run. Much like Hello Games and ''No Man's Sky'', CD Projekt RED never gave up on the game despite the rocky launch, and spent much of 2021 and 2022 patching the hell out of the game, even going as far as to cancel a planned multiplayer component meant as DLC to focus on saving both the game's reputation and their own. The fixes and additions of free side missions and in-game goodies in the accompanying patches helped entice gamers to give the game another chance, while the late 2022 premiere and success of the tie-in anime Anime/CyberpunkEdgerunners caused sales and support of the game to skyrocket. The crowning moment of redemption came a year later with the final 2.0 update completely overhauling elements of the game like the skill trees and police system, and the accompanying (and much-hyped) ''Phantom Liberty'' DLC expansion, which added a brand-new area to explore, brand new upgrade skills, and a new political thriller/espionage-style side-story which gave a new ending option to the core game (depending on critical choices made during the DLC's campaign) and included another fan-favorite actor, Creator/IdrisElba, as FIA agent Solomon Reed. The reception for the DLC and finalized game was unanimously positive, with reviews saying that this was clearly how the game was intended to be from the start. This gives CD Projekt RED a bright future with the ''Cyberpunk'' IP, as a sequel is in the wings, which hopefully will have a less turbulent development than its predecessor.

** Coming off of the high of ''VideoGame/DeadOrAlive5'', Yohei Shimbori, director for most of the series, started work on the next chapter of the franchise. He wanted to break away from ''[=DOA=]''[='s=] infamous reliance on sexy female fighters and make the next chapter more in line with other competetive fighting games. As well, the new engine being worked on would be used to give the characters a more realisitic stance with added damage, additions and physics.

** The development of ''VideoGame/CallOfDuty Finest Hour'' proved to be problematic [[https://www.gamasutra.com/view/feature/130125/call_of_duty_the_lawsuit.php?page=1 on multiple fronts]]: Even before production started, developer Spark Unlimited became embroilled in a nasty lawsuit with Creator/ElectronicArts: the company's founders had worked on the ''VideoGame/MedalOfHonor'' series and poached many of the staff behind ''VideoGame/MedalOfHonorFrontline'', causing EA to retaliate by accusing (not baselessly) the exilees of having stolen resources and helped Spark Unlimited on company time. The development itself also had its share of troubles: despite Creator/{{Activision}} insisting otherwise, the developers decided to use Renderware for the game, which caused many problems down the line as it was incompatible with Spark's custom object database, becoming increasingly slow and crash-prone as development progressed. A poor tool chain made it difficult to troubleshoot bugs. Spark Unlimited's game development philosophy was also at odd with Activision: while EA's philosophy was to focus on making the levels and focus on technological polish at the end of development, Activision expected a polished core game far earlier. As the developers missed every milestone and went greatly overbudget, Activsion salvaged the game by lending a large team of internal engineers to assist development and outsource large chunks of the game and development of the Xbox and Gamecube versions. While ''Finest Hour'' ended up being a financial success, lack of faith in Spark's management and an underwhelming pitch for a sequel caused Activision to end their contract with Spark Unlimited, spawning ''another'' lawsuit as Spark felt the company was trying to weasel out of the agreed royalties.
** During the development of ''[[VideoGame/CallOfDutyModernWarfare3 Modern Warfare 3]]'', the long-brewing conflict between publisher Activision and lead elements of studio Infinity Ward finally came to a head[[note]]Infinity Ward wasn't happy with Activision assigning Treyarch as a B-team to develop mainline games in the series, sneaking in a TakeThat at Treyarch's ''Call of Duty 3'' in the end credits of ''4''. Rumors also flew around that Infinity Ward wanted to move on to an original IP after the success of ''4'' but was pressured to make more ''Modern Warfare'' games instead[[/note]]. Activision fired the Infinity Ward's studio heads Jason West and Vince Zampella over royalties involving ''Modern Warfare 2'' and allegations that West and Zampella were communicating with rival publisher Electronic Arts in a plan to jump ship. In response, a large portion of Infinity Ward's staff ended up leaving or being forced out, forcing Activision to bring in Sledgehammer Games to finish development of the title. Infamously, one of the disgruntled employees leaked the complete plot of the single player campaign almost a year before release, which was widely published by the gaming press. West, Zampella and several departed Infinity Ward staff would then form the studio Respawn Entertainment, which was later be acquired by Electronic Arts, and a lawsuit over the royalties was [[https://venturebeat.com/games/activision-settles-lawsuit-with-former-infinity-ward-heads-west-and-zampella/ settled just before going to court.]].

** Fortunately, the aftermath did prove positive in the long run. Much like Hello Games and ''No Man's Sky'', CD Projekt RED never gave up on the game despite the rocky launch, and spent much of 2021 and 2022 patching the hell out of the game, even going as far as to cancel a planned multiplayer component meant as DLC to focus on saving both the game's reputation and their own. The fixes and additions of free side missions and in-game goodies in the accompanying patches helped entice gamers to give the game another chance, while the late 2022 premiere and success of the tie-in anime Anime/CyberpunkEdgerunners caused sales and support of the game to skyrocket. The crowning moment of redemption came a year later with the final 2.0 update completely overhauling elements of the game like the skill trees and police system, and the accompanying (and much-hyped) ''Phantom Liberty'' DLC expansion, which added a brand-new area to explore, brand new upgrade skills, and a new political thriller/espionage-style side-story which gave a new ending option to the core game (depending on critical choices made during the DLC's campaign) and included another fan-favorite actor, Creator/IdrisElba, as FIA agent Solomon Reed. The reception for the DLC and finalized game was unanimously positive, with reviews saying that this was clearly how the game was intended to be from the start. This gives CD Projekt RED a bright future with the ''Cyberpunk'' IP, as a sequel is in the wings, which hopefully will have a less turbulent development than it's predecessor.

* The development of ''VideoGame/{{Doom}}'' went generally smoothly, but its infamous [[UsefulNotes/ThreeDOInteractiveMultiplayer 3DO]] port was something else. It was produced by a company called Art Data Interactive that reportedly believed that all one had to do to port a game to another platform was to recompile its code, and that new weapons could be added just by importing new art assets. This led to programmer Rebecca Heineman, who had joined under the impression she just needed to polish a complete game for release, having to develop ''the entire thing, on her own, in ten weeks,'' which forced her to live in her office to finish it on time. This, alongside the difficulties she ran into with the 3DO,[[note]](Heineman lost about a week of development time dealing with flaws in the console's development tools and quirks of its operating system; for most games this would have been only a minor inconvenience, but with such a short development timescale, it was all the more damaging. And even if she'd had more time to optimize the code, the console's CPU was too weak for it to even match the resolution or frame-rate of the Atari Jaguar or Sega [=32X=] ports, hence why it runs in such a small gameplay window)[[/note]] explains why the result was such a PortingDisaster. Nine years later, Heineman [[https://github.com/Olde-Skuul/doom3do released the source code alongside her story of its production and a wish that she had time to polish her work before release]].

** It didn't help that the 3D engine was difficult to work with. While the ''Loaded'' engine allowed up to 100 enemies to appear on-screen, the ''Tomb Raider'' engine only allowed for three. These enemies had only basic "walk-in and attack" patterns. They also dealt with a limited draw distance and a camera system that made it impossible to ''not'' see new foes coming. Argonaut solved these problems by turning the game into a FirstPersonShooter, which limited players' POVs, and therefore, made enemies scarier. This meant things like fully voiced cutscenes had to be scrapped, but it meant the game didn't have to be restarted from scratch either.

* Team Alpha, the maker of the popular ''Alphabirth'' GameMod for ''VideoGame/TheBindingOfIsaac'', wound up being destroyed by their work on its third edition, as outlined in [[https://modteamalpha.tumblr.com/post/165080542066/a-critical-look-at-ab this blog post]] from the head of the mod team. Most of the problems stemmed from the new application programming interface (or API) introduced with the official expansion ''Afterbirth+''. While it was intended to be mod-friendly, it instead suffered from clunky programming and design that made modding work far more difficult. Fixes were slow in the pipeline, especially for modding tools, and ''Binding of Isaac'' developer Nicalis was slow in communicating. While the mod was released, the burnout suffered by the team caused them to hang it up afterwards.

** During the development of ''[[VideoGame/ModernWarfare Modern Warfare 3]]'', the long-brewing conflict between publisher Activision and lead elements of studio Infinity Ward finally came to a head. Activision infamously fired the Infinity Ward's studio heads Jason West and Vince Zampella over royalties involving ''Modern Warfare 2''. In response, a large portion of Infinity Ward's staff ended up leaving or being forced out, forcing Activision to bring in Sledgehammer Games to finish development of the title. Infamously, one of the disgruntled employees leaked the complete plot of the single player campaign almost a year before release, which was widely published by the gaming press. West, Zampella and several departed Infinity Ward staff would then form the studio Respawn Entertainment, which was later be acquired by Activision's rival Electronic Arts.

** Unfortunately, a playable demo at New York Comic-Con [[TaintedByThePreview failed to impress]]. Whoever played it was let down by the subpar graphics and controls, and most fans were left ''livid'' by the sudden ArtShift towards a style influenced by Creator/CartoonNetwork shows. However, Inafune's mind was made up, and the new art style stayed while the dev team focused on polishing up graphical fidelity.
** As ''Universe''[='=]s scope grew to include a two-player co-op mode, Inafune had the game outsourced to a third-party studio. Unfortunately, to save costs, he chose a studio that had '''no''' experience with home consoles or online networking; as a result, the online co-op simply didn't work.
** In October 2010, Inafune announced he was leaving Capcom. ''Universe''[='=]s development became completely disorganized, without a real director to call the shots (but with help from producer Akiko Ito). With a Spring 2011 release window set in stone, the studio dropped the co-op mode — but still found itself completely unprepared to handle ''Universe''[='=]s ambitious scope.
** Capcom ultimately tried to salvage what remained of the game by reassigning development to Capcom's in-house studios and changing platforms to [[MobilePhoneGame iPhone and iPad]], scrapping the level editor and leaning even more heavily into its original concept as a ''Mega Man 2'' remake. Even ''that'' didn't work, and ''Universe'' was officially [[https://web.archive.org/web/20110331060908/https://www.capcom.co.jp/megaman_universe/ cancelled in March 31, 2011]].

** The marketing of the game was the first to attract attention, as marketing focused heavily on brutally realistic human-on-human violence and on Ellie's sexual/romantic relationship with a woman; The former was called out by some critics as snuff film-like (not helped when director Neil Druckmann [[https://www.gamesradar.com/we-dont-use-the-word-fun-says-the-last-of-us-2-director-neil-druckmann/ admitted]] that the team watched "uncomfortable" videos to ensure the violence was as realistic as possible), while the latter attracted a score of homophobic commentators who accused the studio of "pushing an agenda". Repeated delays also hit the game; Initially set for February 21, 2020, it slipped to May 29, 2020 before being [[https://twitter.com/PlayStation/status/1245773000592384001 delayed indefinitely]] that year due to the UsefulNotes/CoronavirusDisease2019Pandemic.
** In March 2020, [[https://kotaku.com/as-naughty-dog-crunches-on-the-last-of-us-ii-developer-1842289962 Jason Schreier]] did a report on the intense crunch conditions that had become commonplace at the studio, pointing out that the rate of turnover was high enough that of the twenty non-gameplay leads of ''Uncharted 4'', 70% had left. Script changes were causing problems late into development; playtesters were finding characters unlikable while Naughty Dog's tradition of not using managers meant that developers were working on art assets for weeks at a time, only to find a change in the script had made their work irrelevant. Both factors were resulting in the long development time and constant delays that had marked production. Shortly after the report went public, [[https://www.tweaktown.com/news/71212/naughty-dog-is-no-longer-the-best-animator-hospitalized-from-crunch/index.html a former animator for the company claimed]] that Naughty Dog's reputation is so bad in Los Angeles that the studio found it "nigh-impossible" to hire game animators, forcing them to hire workers from the film industry. At least one employee was so overworked during the creation of the September 2019 demo that they had to be hospitalized - an occurrence that was not uncommon at the studio during crunch.
** Jonathan Cooper, a former ND employee, claims that the game’s development was plagued by having an inexperienced team because of the high turnover of more senior employees. While he says that the younger employees are a great bunch and what happened is not their fault, the project was finished roughly between a year and a year and a half later than it should have been since they had to learn on the job with no one to go to for help.
** Things got worse in April of 2020 when a massive ContentLeak occurred. The leak was posted onto a Youtube channel that contained cutscene and gameplay footage from a near-final development build of the game, spoiling several major plot points (including and '''especially''' [[spoiler:the [[CruelAndUnusualDeath brutal and horrific]] [[TheHeroDies death of Joel]] at the hands of [[BigBad Abby]], the daughter of the Fireflies surgeon Joel killed to save Ellie near the end of the first game]]). These plot points were met with derision by a large portion of the fanbase and were quickly subjected to MemeticMutation across the internet, while the aforementioned figures attempted to stir further outrage by claiming that [[spoiler:Abby was a trans character [[InsaneTrollLogic simply due to her muscular physique]] (which later turned out to be false and stirred up by transphobic and misogynistic observers of the entire controversey)]]. Within a day of the leak, Sony and Naughty Dog [[https://blog.us.playstation.com/2020/04/27/release-date-updates-for-the-last-of-us-part-ii-ghost-of-tsushima/ suddenly announced]] that the game would release on June 19, 2020, likely in an attempt to mitigate the impact of spoilers. The source of the leak was assumed to be a disgruntled Naughty Dog developer, but Sony [[https://www.gamesindustry.biz/articles/2020-04-27-the-last-of-us-part-2-leaked-online stated]] that the source of the leak was not affiliated with Sony or Naughty Dog, and Jason Schreier [[https://twitter.com/jasonschreier/status/1256893466564603906 believed]] the leak came through a data breach attack on Naughty Dog's servers.

** When the game finally released in June 2020, critics greeted it with open arms. Many gave perfect scores and some went as far as comparing it to highly regarded classic works of cinema such as ''Film/CitizenKane'', ''Film/TheGodfatherPartII'' and ''Film/SchindlersList'', but others such as Polygon and Kotaku were more reserved in their praise, leveling criticism at the story's pacing and characters. Fan reception was mixed to say the least, with some agreeing with the praise and others outraged, and the work's Metacritic page being subjected to a bombardment of negative user reviews (many of which were from members of the alt-right angry over the game's main character being a lesbian and the cast of the game prominently featuring multiple [=LGBT=] characters and people of color). HypeBacklash and the reports of harsh crunch may have also contributed to the outrage (as did criticisms regarding how well -- or not -- some of the [=LGBT=] characters were portrayed), while the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic and widespread social unrest caused some to dismiss it [[AngstAversion for its excessively bleak tone]] [[RealitySubtext in an already depressing and tragic year]]. Nevertheless, it quickly become [[https://twitter.com/MatPiscatella/status/1284109173601366016?s=19 one of the best-selling games of 2020]] and swept The Game Awards 2020, winning 7 awards including Game of the Year.

* Given the wildly ambitious scope of the project, it probably should come as no surprise that ''VideoGame/{{Cuphead}}'' went through this. A run 'n' gun game that [[DoingItForTheArt painstakingly reproduced the art, animation, and sound]] of 1930s cartoons by [[Creator/MaxAndDaveFleischer Fleischer Bros.]] and similar animation companies, while also packing over three dozen varied boss battles; produced by a small indie studio of very limited staff on hand. As one would expect, it took a long and hard 7 years before the game became what it is today, and the development cost was so big that the Moldenhauer brothers, the game's creators, had to ''mortgage their house'' to get through it. It worked though -- the game sold over a million copies in two weeks, and received tons of acclaim and a handful of awards for its presentation.

* The lead-up to the development of ''VideoGame/MarioPlusRabbidsKingdomBattle'' was [[https://www.eurogamer.net/articles/2018-01-11-the-pitch-that-convinced-miyamoto-to-back-mario-rabbids not the smoothest]]. Ubisoft wanted to revitalize the ''Rabbids'' franchise after a strings of poorly-received games and tasked Ubisoft Milan's newly-promoted creative director Davide Soliani to create a pitch for a new ''Rabbids'' game that could potentially be shown to Nintendo. However, as Ubisoft Milan was already busy with assisting the development of ''VideoGame/GhostReconWildlands'', Soliani was only given a tiny team of designers and they had to hire a junior programmer with no experience in video games to code the prototype - which turned out to be timely when management told him they would show a prototype to ''Creator/ShigeruMiyamoto'' in three weeks and a half. After Miyamoto responded positively to it, the team's resources were increased slightly for the purpose of making a second prototype over the next three months, but some employees had to split their work between it and ''Ghost Recon'' and Davide Soliani was so overworked that he went to the hospital as he was fearing having an heart attack (after being told there was nothing wrong with him but that he had to chill for the sake of his health, Soliani would promptly go back to work). Fortunately, it seems development on the actual game was far smoother.

[[folder:L-P]]

* ''Pump It Up Infinity'', a spin-off of Andamiro's ''VideoGame/PumpItUp'' arcade rhythm game series, [[https://www.reddit.com/r/PumpItUp/comments/kpo7je/comment/ghzrub6/?utm_source=share&utm_medium=web2x&context=3 struggled]] due to a disorganized, unpaid and unmotivated team; deadlines that were missed or delayed; a head producer who was hard to contact; and one developer's family who ''[[https://www.reddit.com/r/PumpItUp/comments/kpo7je/comment/ghzuml1/?utm_source=share&utm_medium=web2x&context=3 attempted to wipe out his hard drive which contained work on the game]]''.

[[folder:L-M]]

** Most of the game's potential investors -- including Creator/WayForwardTechnologies -- were driven off by Stevens' behavior.[[note]] When interviewed, Aya declined to elaborate on what Stevens did to make [=WayForward=] bow out.[[/note]] Allegedly, one deal involved Stevens not being the team leader.

* ''[[VideoGame/MetalSlug Metal Slug 5]]'' was originally being developed by Noise Factory (who handled ''4'') and was almost done, until SNK took over late in development and revamped the entire thing. Unfortunately, they were also forced to rush the game out prematurely in order to begin development of ''6'' for the upcoming Atomiswave arcade board, and as a result, a lot of stuff got cut out such as a large turtle-like mech and the native zapped by lightning at the beginning acting as the final boss on a levitating, laser-blasting pillar. All the stuff that was left out can be found [[http://randomhoohaas.flyingomelette.com/msmia/ here]]. For what it's worth, some of them do eventually get their time to shine in the mobile games ''VideoGame/MetalSlugDefense'' and ''[[VideoGame/MetalSlugAttack Attack]]''.
** A [=GBA=] port of the first ''Metal Slug'' was also being made, but was criticized during development demos for poor implementation and was eventually cancelled due to memory limitations alongside planned ports of ''2'' and ''3''[[note]]That, and the fact that ''[[CompilationRerelease Metal Slug Anthology]]'' was also being released probably didn't help matters.[[/note]].

** This in turn, ironically, would lead to ''another'' TroubledProduction for ''VideoGame/YsVIIILacrimosaOfDana''. Despite the lofty promises that initially won Falcom over, it turned out that NISA actually had very little experience with non-Sony game platforms, leading to the much-anticipated PC version being delayed at the very last minute for almost half a year, and when it finally released, it was ''still'' chock-full of bugs and glitches both mundane and game breaking. Most egregiously, the localization, which NISA had insisted would be on par quality wise with [=XSeed=]'s beloved localizations of past ''Ys'' games and the ''Legend of Heroes'' games, turned out to be [[BlindIdiotTranslation anything but]]; hundreds of typos, wooden, directionless voice acting, conversations and scenes making absolutely no sense due to horrendous grammar and syntax, and completely off-base translations of even the simplest of terms and titles (most infamously, a major dungeon was literally translated as "Big Hole"). The backlash against the localization was so severe that NISA was forced to completely retranslate and rewrite the script from the ground up.

** After almost three years, the Keyboard Component was officially cancelled late in 1982. The FTC dropped the mounting fines when Mattel agreed to offer a full refund to anyone who ''had'' purchased one of the limited production runs. Those who wanted to keep them had to sign a full waiver promising not to seek any support or later refund from Mattel (in-house, the KC saw some limited later use when modified versions proved to be ideal development boards). A few are still out there somewhere.