Since we don’t see much chance that Electronic Arts or Peter Molyneux will ever return to this IP, it was once again up to the fans to take the necessary steps to make it run on modern hardware…
A fan-made, open-source engine port of the first Black & White episode has recently surfaced. Openblack has been in development for five years and recently made its first public release. This is only version 0.1.0, so we’re still a long way from reporting on 1.0. Windows, macOS, Linux… everything is supported, so you can even become a god on Steam Blanket (because Black & White is a god simulator), but iOS and Android are also “experimentally” supported.
Of course, it’s not just a matter of going to Github, downloading the pack and playing, as you’ll need the original game files. So it’s similar to what we see in the OpenMW of The Elder Scrolls III: Morrowind. Since Black & White is not very legally available online at the moment, you’ll have to dig out your disk. (That’s the problem, by the way: there are a lot of games you can’t legally buy digitally…)
Black & White was released for PC in the spring of 2001, followed by a Mac version in January 2002 by Lionhead Studios, published by Electronic Arts on PC and Feral Interactive on Mac. Two console ports of Peter Molyneux’s game were planned, but one of them would have been a technical miracle. The PS1 port was being worked on by Blade Interactive Studios and would have been published by Midas Interactive (budget kings…) and Bethesda Softworks, and would have been released sometime in the summer of 2001; the SEGA Dreamcast port was planned for late 2001, but neither was released. PS2 and Xbox ports were planned for the end of 2002, but there were also ideas for a port for the GBC and GBA, the two Nintendo handhelds, but in the end these remained just plans.
So for now the PC remains, but it will run on more modern machines.
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