I’m certainly not proud to admit this, but I’ve never played an Oddworld game.  These days, I try to play every type of game out there, from JRPGs to interactive cinema to first-person shooters to platform puzzlers, but back in the late nineties, I was a much less adventurous gamer, and therefore missed out on both Abe’s Oddysee and Abe’s Exoddus.  By the time Munch’s Oddysee and Stranger’s Wrath came out for the Xbox, I felt like I was too far behind in the series to jump in.  Besides, I didn’t have an Xbox.  Now, as fans of the series eagerly await another chapter in the Oddworld saga, I find myself merely looking for a good way to play the four existing games.  Speaking with G4, series creator Lorne Lanning has revealed some news that, while good for me, is somewhat heartbreaking for longtime fans of the series.

The Oddworld sequel, which has been teased by Maxis since 2008 as a game that would "look as good as a CG movie,” has apparently been shelved.  Lanning clarified, "There's a lot of things on the shelf right now… We had a few on the fire, and they're still on the shelf...there's a lot of shakeup going on [in the gaming industry] and in that turmoil, we didn't really want to put the Oddworld brand out there in the middle of it.”

Instead of a new adventure, fans can look forward to The Oddbox, a collection of all four console releases which will be available on Steam for PCs sometime this year.  This will be a great opportunity for gamers who missed out on the series the first time to experience the reportedly brilliant weirdness of the Oddworld universe, and also to realize just how bad the other news is.