Although the once-revolutionary Stonekeep had been released in '95 on PCs to some fanfare and critical acclaim complete with a hardcover novelette, its grid-based gameplay still felt outdated when compared to the free-roaming worlds of the Ultima Underworld series and Bethesda's The Elder Scrolls: Arena. Game stopping bugs on release required players to dial into Interplay's BBS (Bulletin Board System) if they wanted to finish the game. After four years of development and several million dollars, it wasn't quite the blockbuster that everyone expected it to be.

Consoles were also busy making their own marks with Japanese RPGs such as Earthbound andChrono Trigger on the SNES in '95, and those proved to be more popular than CRPG ports.

Strong titles such as Descent and their Star Trek-based adventure games had also shifted Interplay’s focus away from CRPGs, especially in the wake of flubs such as Descent to Undermountain, which attempted to adapt Descent's engine into a CRPG setting with grim results. I remember killing a lich -- something like an undead über sorcerer that no eighth- or ninth-level character should ever solo -- simply because it was stuck behind an object and couldn't get to me.

Even though Interplay had critical successes with several of its titles, the company continued to bleed money. Since '95, Interplay reported a stream of losses. And then in '98, Fargo decided to take the company public to drum up funding. It would also be (as some might put it) the beginning of the end. Despite a strong showing in the early months of its (reduced) IPO following June, the company's stock went into a tailspin in October after reporting massive losses of about $15.5 million dollars -- nearly half of its already depressed value.

And then in '99 in walked Titus Interactive with deep pockets, buying enough of Interplay's stock to appoint Titus founders Herve and Eric Caen as leading board members. But who were these guys? Answers vary on who you ask. Some simply regard them as investors, while others look at them as the sole reasons for why Interplay imploded.

Titus Interactive was a powerhouse when they focused on PC games in Europe, but among the console crowd I remember them for their largely awful library. Both my friends and I would simply have to see a Titus symbol on a game to know that it would probably be horrible -- kind of like a lot of the older Acclaim titles. Still, someone must have liked them. They had enough cash to gain a small (and then a controlling) interest in Interplay a few years later in 2001 -- literally seizing the company. Yet, even it couldn't stanch the flow of money from Interplay as losses and debt continued to mount.

Moving into the console space ultimately proved to be a late and unsuccessful move for Interplay, something that several of its rivals, such as Bethesda Softworks and Bioware, had already tasted success with. Even with critically acclaimed hits such as Volition's fantastic Freespace 2 in '98 on PCs along with the Descent series, its PC audience -- their main source of income in better days -- continued to dwindle.

Interplay's meager attempt to refocus on consoles also gutted its PC presence even further. Among the casualties were those at Black Isle whose work included Bioware's Baldur's Gate series, Planescape, Icewind Dale, and a canceled prototype of Fallout 3 (codenamed Van Buren). But its developers would land on their feet elsewhere at such places as Troika and Obsidian Entertainment.

In 2002, Brian Fargo would leave the company he had founded. Speculation at the time cited differences between himself and the new bosses at Titus -- Herve Caen in particular -- which turned out to be true to some extent. But it was clear that Interplay's golden days were far behind it as it struggled to find its place in the changing market.

Fargo would eventually go on to found a new company, inXile Entertainment, where in 2004, they released The Bard's Tale as an action RPG. As humorous as it was and despite the name, it had little to do with the original series. Part of the reason is that EA is still holding on to its Bard's Tale ball (though they apparently allowed inXile to use the name). Surprisingly, EA did sell the Wasteland rights to Fargo in 2003, though, nothing has come of it other than the potential for another post-apocalyptic playground (and, hopefully, not another ARPG like Brotherhood of Steel).

Unlike a few of those on this list that simply disappeared into history, Interplay's "end" was riddled with a series of financial mishaps. In 2002, Interplay's stock was delisted from NASDAQ. In the years since Fargo's departure, Interplay had been subjected to a number of embarrassing incidents, which included failing to pay its employees for several weeks and eventually being evicted from its own property in 2004. Parent company Titus Interactive would then declare bankruptcy (and was later liquidated) in 2005. But it wasn't the end. Interplay miraculously clung on to life like a rotting, undead corpse that refused to die when it returned to the web with a new look in the same year.

In 2007, Bethesda bought everything Fallout related from Interplay, though, Interplay claims to have licensed the right to make a Fallout MMO that has led to some contention between both parties in the courts. But the company that had ruled the late eighties into the late nineties as a shining CRPG paladin had long left the dungeon.

Check back next week for FTL Games: Less Was More.