GemeTek filed for chapter 11 bankruptcy in 1996 and everyone thought taht it had gone ok, but rumors of more financial problems later began circulating again, and Tomy, the Japanese publisher, decided to remove the title from its lineup, claiming that licensing conflicts were the reason.

For those of you who haven't heard about Robotech before, it was a mission based space combat game. The idea was that choices made while flying missions in the game would influence on how the game later on would turn out, sounds a bit like Starfox64 really. There would be no real set plot or strict order in the missions that one must go through in order to complete the game. You would have the ablity to decide if you want to take on a particular mission. You may be flying a quiet patrol mission and receive a distress signal from a nearby ship being attacked and you then have to decide to assist or not. Or, you might fly the patrol mission and encounter no conflicts at all.

The Robotech story, probably better known to some as Macross, started out as a cartoon show back in 1985. It was based on 3 different japanese cartoon series which had been put together and re-written to 85 american episodes.

The Robotech: Crystal Dreams story was something like this:

2019, after Earth has defeated the main Zentraedi fleet and the new Superdimensional Fortress 3 (SDF-3) is being tested in Earth orbit. You're a specific character; Kyle Bartley, a disgraced ex-fighter now serving as a news pilot (in a nod to the Japanese MACROSS II). Thrown into a battle at the start of the game, you learn the plot as it happens; renegade Zentraedi are attacking Earth alongside an unknown alien, a giant asteroid-like crystal lifeform called Eboliar. Can you help defeat Eboliar and the Zentraedi, regain your good name in the eyes of the Robotech Defense Force, and win back the love of your ex-girlfriend, the micronized Zentraedi Vala Norri?
Source: Viz Communications

According to the designers, the entire solar system in the game was mapped in 3-D and you could fly from one end to the other. The game engine was said to be complete as the game was playable, but the E3 preview, which lately has been spread around the net, seems like no enemies were made, although rumors of a very complete game, including enemies, is said to exist, I've even seen a movie of something which did look much better than this E3 preview.

In December 1995, GameTek hired a guy named Doug Lanford who became second programmer as well as the main guy behind the Crystal Dreams story. Doug had earlier been working for Sega where he made a couple of SegaCD games (Jurassic Park and Wild Woody) and a Genesis game, he originally was hired to mess around with the GameGear at Sega.

Well Doug Lanford have always been a Robotech fan, and some of the prople at GameTek knew this from their previous work at Sega, and they decided to hire him for the job. On his homepage Doug mentions that working on Robotech Crystal Dreams was a dream come true for a die hard Robotech fan, and he would have done anything to see Crytal Dreams on the store shelves, to me it actually sounds like he still is hoping that someone will pick up the rights for the N64 game and let him finish it. The game alpha stage was 90% complete he says, and if he have had 3 - 4 months more, the game would've been finished.

But the small company GameTek ran out of time, and money. The programmers and designers the the Robotech was working as late as the saturday before GameTek was closed (Monday morning, July 20th 1998), hoping that they could finish the game even more to convince the GameTek owners to let the company run a few more months, and distribution of the game was being handled, not by GameTek but by Capcom, who by this time had their awful Street Fighter movie loss way behind them.

Capcom entered the project as the US distributor, but still with GameTek as the publisher, and the game was even shown at Capcom's booth at E3 in 1998, Doug Lanford handled the demo behind closed doors, but a few months later it was over for the company.

GameTek has always been known for making family games, in the shape of TV quizshow games such as Jeopardy and Wheel of Fortune, which both were released for the Nintendo64, Jeopardy being their last game. Before these there were also a lot of Jeopardy games, from jr to pro, there was Double Dare, Family Feud, Firehouse Rescue, I Can Remember, Perfect Fit, all games in the same game category, and not something a teenager would spend their hard earned pocket money on. I do remember tho that GameTek released a "Nigel Mansel" racing game for the Nintendo Entertainment System, so it wasn't all gameshow games, but close.

Maybe that was why GameTek couldn't survive in the business, as a small company they were used to small costs when making their Wheel of Fortune, and so on, games, but when the Nintendo64 and other new-generation (now old gen) system came, production costs rised to more than 10 times as mush as before, and Wheel of Fortune 64 and Jeopardy! didn't sell that well.

But black monday came for the GameTek employees, they were met by a sign on the door saying that GameTek had gone bankrupt. Employees were let inside to pick up personal belongings and then told to leave again. The rights for most of GameTeks assets were sold to Take2, but Robotech Crystal Dreams wasn't included, for unknown reasons. However Take2 got the European sales and distribution rights to the N64 Jeopardy!, Wheel of Fortune and some Gameboy and PC games as well as the ownership of a Canadian development studio, Alternative Reality Technologies. Strategic Technologies got the distribution rights for the PC game Dark Colony, which was developed by Alternative Reality Technologies. The rights to produce Robotech games was passed on by Harmony GOLD to Mattel, who told the press that the game was too unfinished to bother, but that they definately would be interested in making games for the next consoles such as the GameCube and Microsoft's Xbox.

Take2 planned to redo the two GameTek N64 games, Jeopardy and Wheel of Fortune, a bit and release them for the European market, but was delayed over and over until Take2 finally decided that the games weren't suitable to the European market.

The N64 Robotech staff went different ways, Doug Lanford ended up at 3DO, where a former NES artist also works, Nina Stanley from Color Dreams the unlicensed company. Along with Nina Stanley he worked on both Battletanx games, Battletanx and Battletanx: Global Assault, released for the Nintendo64.

More rumors followed stating that Capcom would take over the code, but the fact is that they never really were interested, and since the rights for Robotech computer games went to Mattel, it would be of no use.

I recently found a small movie of what could be the Robotech Crystal Dreams intro, something which wasn't featured in the E3 alpha version, or atleast didn't work as supposed to. The programers both own a copy of the code, and one has the "final" alpha on a N64 flash cartridge, he got when GameTek closed. He says that he would be more than happy to share this final game with everyone, but because he doesn't own the rights for the code, or even the game rights, this won't happen, who would want to loose everything you own in a courtroom just because you were nice to collectors. However if the owner of the code, who still is unknowm, decides that the game will be spread, it will be. How the E3 preview ROM ended up on the internet, is still unknown, but as only a few people had access to it, one can only guess :)

The E3 preview (alpha version) floating around was said to be developed by an Australian game company, Harmony GOLD, but Harmony GOLD is actually the American company owning the rights for Robotech, they never had anything to do with the actual programming of the game. GameTek did the programming inhouse, and the game was started from scratch a few times.

When I decided to write this little info on Robotech: Crystal Dreams a few months back, I started collecting bits off the internet, there's quite a lot of material out there, but mostly rumors. I'd especially ran across an article from Viz Communications from 1996 which explained the R:CD story in detail and I must say that after reading all these pages and seeing around a hundred small bits of video from the game, I really wish I was able to check out the game.

Then in the beginning of December words came from usenet that the E3 preview alpha mysteriously had appeared in one of the groups, it came with a nice word document which explained the controls in the game. However the E3 preview was/is not the final, and it would be very cool to have seen how far they actually got.

Anyway this is it for now, cause I'm out of pizza and cocacola, but I hope I cleared a few of the many rumors and stories about the game. I'll be back later with another unlicensed game story, so stay tuned ;)