InXile Entertainment - Autoduel trademark

PC Gamer reports that Inxile Entertainment has filed a trademark for Autoduel an old Origin Systems game.

Autoduel was a racing/RPG based on the Steve Jackson Games pencil-and-paper RPG Car Wars, a vaguely Mad Max-ish game about heavily-armed vehicles doing battle in a post-apocalyptic America. The computer version was developed by the long-defunct Origin Systems and released all the way back in 1988. And now, if a trademark filing dug up by the RPG Codex is to be believed, it may be on the way back.

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Fargo has tweeted some sort of confirmation by tweeting in response "Once again the Codex is first on the scene"

The Fargo connection to Autoduel isn't as obvious as it is with games like Wasteland 2 or The Bard's Tale 4, but it is there. Origin Systems was founded in 1983 by Richard Garriott (and others, including his brother Robert, but Richard is the one everybody knows) and acquired by Electronic Arts in 1992; Electronic Arts just happens to be the publisher of the original Wasteland and the original Bard's Tale trilogy.

It's a tenuous link, but given the success inXile has had with Wasteland 2 and the widespread interest in other old-school resurrections-especially RPGs-it's not unreasonable to think that EA would give him a shot at a franchise that hasn't been touched for decades. InXile said it had no comment beyond Fargo's tweet, which isn't surprising but still a bit disappointing.

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More information.

I loved Car Wars, I even kept my subscription going to Autoduel Quarterly for a few years after I quit playing...

I'm sure if they do something with this it'll be good, but I just can't imagine any kind of vehicle combat being fun if done turn-based or RTwPause. In a table-top game, sure, but a videogame? I'm not so sure.

Of course I'll end up backing the thing on kickstarter anyway.

I think I played every rpg that Steve Jackson ever made or was involved with. I didn't play Car Wars as much as some of the others, but I'll be there to both buy and play this.

I played the hell out of Autoduel as a kid on the…C64, I think it was. Seems you can get it for free on PC these days.

Great game, or at least I thought so at the time. Brutally difficult, as I recall. Permadeath, sort of. You could buy clones, which were quite expensive, so they could get a bit old on you. So, if you died, which I personally did often, you would lose whatever progress you made since you bought that last expensive clone….or had him updated, which was a bit less expensive than buying the first one outright. One thing I remember clearly: when on the road, make sure as hell the coast was clear before you got out of your car to repair it or loot a car you had destroyed. Another car could come swooping in from off screen while you were trudging along painfully slow on foot and destroy you in a second. Great open-world game. As I recall, there was a storyline that was revealed to you sort of by accident, as you went about your business buying and building your car, improving your skills and gaining reputation as a courier or arena fighter. In between cities were deadly gangs and you had to pay attention to road reports at the driver's "guild" or you could quickly get in over your head travelling between towns.

Majnun said:

I loved Car Wars, I even kept my subscription going to Autoduel Quarterly for a few years after I quit playing…

I'm sure if they do something with this it'll be good, but I just can't imagine any kind of vehicle combat being fun if done turn-based or RTwPause. In a table-top game, sure, but a videogame? I'm not so sure.

Of course I'll end up backing the thing on kickstarter anyway.

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Autoduel was real time. Personally, I'd like to see turn based in InXile's remake. It can, and has, worked quite well in car-combat games. There was another old one I played, which I can't remember the name of right now, that was turn based, and it worked great. For a current example, also free to play in at least part of the game world, see Darkwind. That's fresher in my mind, being much more recent. Shame it's multiplayer, but the turn-based combat works wonderfully.

I was kind of hoping InXile would reboot Crimson Skies after its foray into Battletech, but this is good, too. Quite good. Hope they don't make it too modern and preserve some good difficulty and a real death penalty.

Never heard of the game, but your description of it sounds like it could be fun, Capt Huggy Face. Looking forward to the (possible) KS pitch.

To anyone interested in brutal combat, permadeath and turn-based racing games: Qvadriga. Wow, it's even on Steam now.

I remember playing Auto duel on the C64 and how very very brutal and unforgiving it was but it was also a lot of fun too. The only other car combat game I had as much fun with was Interstate 76. The whole shoot em up and loot the leftovers always seems to grab my attention.

I remember playing the hell out of that game when I was a little kid, but as I recall it wasn't even remotely an RPG. It was pretty much all about building upp and customizing vehicles with weapons and armor. … and that's all I remember about it now…

I also seem to recall that there was an SSI(?) games on the atari st that were kind of similar, road wars? well similar in the fact that IIRC it was post-apoc, and had vehicular combat, but I didn't play that one as much. It was more RPG than auto duel was though IIRC.

I don't understand why they are remaking a mindless action game.

Um, you do realize that there is an entire world of Autoduel/Car Wars outside of that below average C64 game.

I'm pretty sure they have no intentions of remaking THAT game. They're just setting it in the car wars/autoduel universe.

Car Wars was basically BattleTech with vehicles replacing the mechs. Yes, the focus is on the cars and the combat between them. Just like BattleTech.

Since this is inXile we're talking about one would assume they will have plenty of outisde the vehicle character development & gameplay. But they might go the route of harebrained schemes with the new Battletech game and make it a pure auto tactical combat game.

Of course I could be completely wrong and they're just remaking that mindless action game (seems pretty unlikely to me though).