With the official return of Battle Nations coming soon thanks to Madrona Games, its clear that the community has always wanted to see this beloved game return. This post is aimed at looking back on the history of what has happened since the closure of Z2 and the games servers. Lets preserve this piece of community history as we move onto the next chapter and the imminent return of Battle Nations!
Current Projects[]
Battle Nations (Rewritten) and its evolution into Madrona Games[]
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Original Project Logo
The largest project and community whos story can best be told in three distinct phases.
First was a very small group of friends who loved the original Z2 classic and tried to build the game themselves all the way back in 2018. Pretty quickly the community began to flock to them and thanks to some support through Patreon they even managed to hire a proper coder. Redpal, the at the time project leader, was doing a great job at keeping expectations reasonable as the community reached new levels of growth as more heard about the revival project. A working combat alpha was even completed! But then the coder stopped contact and never sent over what was apparently a nearly functioning alpha of the game.
This led to the second phase in 2020, as a transition was made from a small, closed group of friends into an open project. The community had many volunteers jumping in to keep the project alive, offering their own time and resources to help code. This shift caused Redpal to give the reigns over to two of the other original project group named Andrew and Alex39 that were comfortable with the less controlled approach . After some initial chaos the project was moving again and growth reached its absloute highest point, with even original Z2 member joining the community. A working alpha of combat was released and things were going great until the base sandbox. Then legal issues began to appear.
New Horizons Team Logo
Microsoft's legal team fighting back against the teams attempt to gain the legal rights to the Intellectual Property for a game they likely barely know exists. For those unaware, Z2 was bought by King (known for candy crush) who pulled staff and resources until it was shut down. King was then bought by Activision Blizzard who was then bought by Microsoft. And it was this corporation that was now pressuring the Battle Nations team out of the IP and Trademark. It left the project unsure for a short time, there became a plan for Battle Nations "New Horizons", a spiritual successor rather than a true remake. Luckily, things would take a sudden and positive shift.
Then came the big announcement: Battle Nations was officially being licensed to the team. This was a massive step forward and gave the group official legitimacy. Now renamed Madrona Games, the dev team could promise a full 1-to-1 remake and the ability to add new content to help complete the story. The old sandbox is soon to return and the team moves towards a full release. We enter into its third phase with extreme excitement. What this will entail is unknown, but it marks the official end to this segment of the communities history and the start of a bright new future.
Frontier Chronicles[]
Frontier Chronicle Logo
This project started in 2018 as an attempt to create a non-copyright infringing version of Battle Nations. With a strong focus on reviving every part of the game possible while staying within the law, the group made the spiritual successor to battle nations a reality. Both visually and gameplay wise players will quickly find themselves at home with this game. Perhaps most importantly, they have a fully functional version of the game currently released on Android and soon on IOS. Check out their community links if you would like to learn more
Failed Projects[]
Rebirth's Logo
Battle Nations Rebirth[]
The first ever attempt at reviving Battle Nations, this project was one more of excitment than of content. While a lot of what was known about this particular group has been lost, we know they formed sometime late 2017. To help build support and awareness they made twitter and facebook accounts in addition to commenting and posting links to them wherever possible. They were determined to revive the game by 2018.
However, almost as quickly as they started they seemed to fizzle out and disappear back into the void. Their links would stay up for years before their facebook was eventually taken down for unknown reasons. At the time of writing, their Twitter is still available though is simply a link back to their facebook page
Example of their Self-Promotion