And lo, the clouds parted, and the sun shone down, and a game studio known for re-releasing classic PC games filed for a trademark on one of the great lost video game series of our age.


As spotted by Siliconera, an outfit called Night Dive Studios has filed trademark applications for No One Lives Forever, The Operative, A Spy In H.A.R.M.'S Way, and Contract J.A.C.K. Those, of course, are the primary and secondary titles of the three games in Monolith's cult classic No One Lives Forever series of early 2000's stealth/espionage games.

In one of gaming's all-time bummers, the NOLF games have never been made digitally available, meaning that modern PC gamers must either pirate them or track down physical CDs if they want to play. The last we heard about them was about a year ago, when then-Activision spokesman Dan Amirch explained that Activision no longer had the rights to the games, and that they actually didn't actually know who did.


Night Dive is primarily known for reviving long-lost PC games and re-releasing them—they're responsible for bringing games like System Shock 2, The 7th Guest, I Have No Mouth And I Must Scream, and the Wizardry series to services like Steam and GOG.com. In other words, they're just the people you'd expect to bring No One Lives Forever back from the dead.

These are just trademark applications, mind—it's not yet confirmed whether or not Night Dive has secured the copyrights to the actual games. But the trademark application is certainly a promising sign, since it'd be odd to file for a trademark without having some assurance that it'd be usable. In an email, Night Dive CEO Stephen Kick told us (and everyone else in the press) that while he is currently unable to comment on future plans, "our team has a great fondness for these games and our hope is that they will one day be re-released."

Last year I replayed all of the first game and a good chunk of the sequel, and found that not only do they hold up, they do some things better than most modern games do.

Needless to say, I'm really excited at the possibility of wide re-release of these games, even *gulp* Contract J.A.C.K.


Source: Siliconera