April 23, 2000
For Immediate Release:
Barnaby Jones: The Game
Following SouthPeak Interactive's announcement of its Dukes of Hazzard game, and Empire Interactive's recent announcement of its Starsky and Hutch PC game comes another game based on a 1970s TV show. This morning, MoonApples Entertainmnet said that it has signed an agreement with Quinn Martin to publish a game based on Barnaby Jones for the PC and "next generation" consoles.
Barnaby Jones aired from 1973 to 1980 on CBS, and starred Buddy Ebsen as the detective Barnaby Jones and Lee Meriwether as the foolhardy secretary Betty Jones. Barnaby Jones represents the new image in video game detectives: an older man with a quaint country charm and trigger wit. He is an amiable old codger, whose keen analytical mind is often masked by a homespun exterior. He calls himself kind of a "long looker and a slow thinker", giving way to a new game design paradigm. Thus guilty parties are drawn into a false sense of security. Barnaby will solve crimes with a calm, folksy demeanor. He treats people with respect and has always words of consolation left for the victims. Side missions will include solving missing person cases and doubted "deadly accidents", as he takes on investigations for the California Meridian Insurance Company. He pursues the criminals by car, on foot or if necessary even on horseback, all in stunning real-time 3-D. His gun is sure-hitting. He often resorts to a ruse. In his spare time he likes to go fishing. His favourite drink is milk.
"Barnaby Jones has to be one of the most well-known TV shows of all time, and it's an ideal property on which to develop a game, so we are absolutely delighted to have secured the worldwide interactive publishing rights," said Moonapples managing director Robert Lewis. "The brand is hugely recognizable in all of our key global markets, and the marketing possibilities are limitless."
MoonApples Entertainmnet' conversion of Barnaby Jones is scheduled for release in 2001 on the PC and on several consoles.
