Update [Tue 19th Nov, 2024 15:00 GMT]: Bleem is being relaunched as “the largest retro gaming project” via a crowdfunding campaign, according to rights holder Piko Interactive.
“This project is the culmination of 11 years in the making for our company,” says the Kickstarter page. “We have been collecting the rights of video game IP and pop culture IP like Cartoons, Toys, and comic books. And we are working on this incredibly weird and awesome project that we call Bleem.net.”
Original Story [Fri 4th Oct, 2024 11:00 BST]: Remember Bleem? If you were active during the Dreamcast years, then you just might, as it allowed you to play select PS1 games on your Sega console – a fact which Sony naturally took issue with.
In the resultant court case, Sony lost, reinforcing the legality of emulation; as long as no copyrighted material is being distributed – such as BIOS files – then emulation doesn’t break the law.
Sadly, winning the case didn’t stop Bleem from going under in 2001, crippled by legal costs – but the name would be picked up by Piko Interactive founder Eli Galindo in 2018, and it has now returned from the dead not as an emulation platform, but as a publisher.
Earlier this year, Galindo posted a blog which suggested that Bleem would be resurrected as the online “nostalgia portal” Bleem.net, which would allow Piko to leverage the vast amount of IP it has hoovered up over the years, as well as sell merch, digital ROMs, physical releases, digital comics and more.
At the time of writing, Bleem.net is still under development, but the name appears in the publishing credits for Rage of the Dragons, a Neo Geo fighter which is getting re-released on modern systems.
As spotted by GamesRadar, Bleem.net is listed as a separate company to Bleem, which has already released a bunch of retro titles on Steam, including Glover, Super Noah’s Ark 3D and The Immortal. Bleem.net previously released Top Racer Collection on Steam; Rage of the Dragons will be its second release (just to confuse things even more, Rage of the Dragons has the standard ‘Bleem’ logo, and not ‘Bleem.net’).
Why split the Bleem name into two brands? Perhaps Galindo’s plans for Bleem.net are so grand that he wants all of the attention to be on that particular site. Whatever happens next, it’s comforting to see such an iconic name in the public eye once more – even if it’s a little detached from its original purpose.
Go on.... treat yourself to a new game.
