Hi,

I'd like to know when did Arena come out? I know it was in the beginning of the year 1994, but i'm looking for the precise date;

http://uk.pc.ign.com/objects/003/003623.html says "January 15, 1992". But I know it isn't 92... maybe January 15, 1994?

http://www.jeuxvideo.fr/jeux/the-elder-scrolls-arena/ says "february 1994" or "28 february, 1994", but only for the french release of Arena, which could be different than the first release of the game.

So, do you have more reliable sources?

Although i cannot find an exact date considering reliable, the official site mentions 1994.

But yeah, i also found several dates/years at which it was released.

I'm guessing that the difference between these dates may be the region it was released in, some may take date of when it was first announced instead of its release.

Arena released in March, for Wikipedia :

it says 1993 on both my box and diskettes.

so the game was made 1993 and released 1994.

"Disastrous?" *heh heh* And people are complaining about Fallout3.. Sorry they didn't research the developer.. (but seriously, I love Bethesda, in general. Other than Daggerfall, I haven't had the probs out of the box that some have)

The game was released in early 1994. Bethesda started to give away Arena for free on what they considered to be the http://www.elderscrolls.com/tenth_anniv/tenth_anniv.htm, which was on http://www.elderscrolls.com/news/press_040504.htm.

Just how much, if any, of Bethesda is still intact as was after all these years? I have to believe through changes in corporate structuring & business in general since the early '90s, not many. It's got to be a grueling business, full of burnout (esp. on the hands-on developer level).

Not to mention every single member of Bethesda that worked on Arena or Daggerfall mysteriously vanished afterwards...

:stare:

Bethesda Softworks had some extreme financial troubles back in the late 90s and was acquired buy Zenimax, so no doubt something changed around then. I think Vlatko Andonov became CEO around then too. Due the financial problems, the whole existance of gamesas was in the hands of Morrowind being a financial success or not.


http://www.mobygames.com/developer/sheet/view/developerId,16254/ was a programmer on Fallout 3, and he has been working for Bethesda Softworks for ~20 years now. And he's not the only one either. It's just that people seem to think that the first two TES games were only created by Julian Lefay, Ted Peterson and Mark Jones. Julian Lefay stopped with game development after Battlespire flopped, unfortunately, Ted Peterson is the lead designer at Savage Entertainment and Mark Jones is a freelance game artist, mainly focusing on games for mobile phones nowdays I think.

I think they planned on having everything ready by 1993, but things just did not work out that way. That's why the disks have earlier dates printed on them. As mentioned before, the region is also a factor.

Most likely, that happened quite often with Bethesda's earlier work. I remember reading on how we all know that the original TES game is titled "Arena" because it was originally going to be a party-based fighting tourney game, and that the only reason they didn't rename the game afterwards is because all the advertisemants and press materials had already been published. XD

Most likely, that happened quite often with Bethesda's earlier work.

Who ever releases anything worthwhile on time? In fact, missing a software release date by just three months sounds almost like "early" to me. (Note that unless what was meant in the earlier post by "Christmas" was actually "in time for Christmas gift-giving", that lateness didn't make any difference in the slightest.)

Not by choice! I've done some nice PC stuff too. SAGA and some thing for The University of Louisiana

(Having said that I've just finished up a 240 polygon Mage today for the iPhone.

Sigh....

240 polygons? Sounds like 1998 all over again! I have a vague recollection of reading the box for a Planet of the Apes game that boasted characters with 300 polygons.

Who else could answer my question more accurately than you? So do you remember when exactly Arena came out? I'm a huge fan of Arena and above all Daggerfall, and I'd like to celebrate properly the 15th anniversary of The Elder Scrolls

What? When did phone games start having polygons, not just pixels? I've obviously been left behind here...