BattleSphere

BattleSphere is a 3D space combat simulator for the Atari Jaguar console by 4Play/ScatoLOGIC Inc., released in 2000. Released after the Jaguar's demise, cartridge components and other supplies needed to manufacture the game were scarce, resulting in not enough copies to meet demand. A second edition of the game, with additional features and improvements, was released as BattleSphere Gold in 2002. Although Scatologic will not release sales figures, a few hundred copies are known to have been manufactured. The first copy of BattleSphere was sold on eBay for over $1500.

Development

BattleSphere was originally called Star Battle, named after a mainframe game written by one of its creators back when he was in high school. PlayNet, the forerunner of AOL, almost bought Star Battle for its online services in 1986. The game was first announced in 1995.

After Hasbro bought out Atari, it took relentless lobbying by the BattleSphere fanbase and much behind the scenes persuasion to convince Atari to release the Jaguar console into the public domain. Without this event, BattleSphere, though completed in July 1998, would not have been allowed to be encrypted and released.