It’s an Square Enix IP that’s been neglected for two decades. It’s fair to say that the franchise has only received the obligatory update, leaving the publisher with all the rights…

Gematsu has posted on Twitter that Square Enix in Europe has renewed the rights to Gex with the EUIPO (the European Union’s Intellectual Property Office). We can understand if someone would point out that Square Enix has not dealt with the loudmouthed, TV-addicted gecko, except for one act, which we will come back to later.

The green wall-crawling reptile first saw the light of day on the Panasonic 3DO back in 1995, but a PS1 and Saturn port came later that year, followed by a PC version in 1996. At that time, it was a side-scrolling platformer with the gecko regularly voiced a la the Sonic clones. The sequel in 1998 (Gex: Enter the Gecko, a title that had several variants depending on region and platform; it came out for PS1, N64, PC and Game Boy Color) was now three-dimensional, and yes, the weakest element in the game was the camera. In 1999, the final instalment in the series, Gex 3: Deep Cover Gecko (again, there was a difference in titles; released for PS1, N64 and GBC) came. There was supposedly a 4th part for PS2, but it was cancelled. The last sign of life? A book from 2000.

The character was voiced by different people depending on the region: while Dana Gould provided the voice-over for North American players, in Europe, in addition to Gould, Leslie Phillips and Danny John-Jules also provided voice-overs throughout the series (and for completeness, in Japan, the second part was also dubbed locally by Mitsuo Senda).

It’s been four years since then, so there’s a good chance no one has taken a shot at it. But what did Square Enix do with the franchise? In 2017, Square Enix Collective made a few Eidos rights available to developers, and Gex was part of the package. The games were developed by Crystal Dynamics, which Eidos Interactive acquired in 1998, and then Square Enix absorbed Eidos in 2009…

Source: PSL