Rockstar has announced that the original Manhunt will be released on PSN next week, May 14th. For $9.99 / €9.99 / £7.99 it will join nearly all of Rockstars' PS2-era games - including Grand Theft Auto III through GTA Vice City Stories, Midnight Club 1 & 2, Red Dead Redemption and Bully.
The announcement also mentions that The Warriors will be joining Manhunt on PSN in the near future.
The only remaining PS2-era titles in Rockstar's backlog now are Manhunt 2, Max Payne 2, The Warriors and State of Emergency. I've mentioned before that I can't see State of Emergency being re-released, however Max Payne 2 is near guaranteed to be seen on PSN in the future - it would complete the collection.
Manhunt 2, on the other hand, could be more tricky; if they re-release the censored version I can't see an issue, however with the controversy surrounding the game, it's hard to say whether it's a contender or not. That being said, the original Manhunt had no easy ride on the market either, and they've made is PSN ready, so let's be optimistic. Manhunt 2 was originally released uncut and adults-only on PC, until the reseller was acquired by another company who chose not to store AO games.
We'll keep you informed of any new announcements. Until then, be sure to download your copy of Manhunt on PSN May 14th.
UPDATE: Manhunt has since been removed from the Australian Steam store, less than 3 hours after this story was originally posted in fact. Interesting to note that the Trailer for Manhunt was also removed, which was available through the Australia Steam store prior to the accidental release of Manhunt yesterday - as you can see in the screenshot we posted bellow, the trailer had been in the store since January 2008.
Prior to today Australian gamers could only purchase Grand Theft Auto IV, Episodes from Liberty City and - recently - Bully: Scholarship Edition. When Steam refreshed its catalog this morning though, it was a different story. Out of nowhere the entire Rockstar Games Steam catalog, that which US gamers are able to purchase, was made available to Australian gamers digitally, for the very first time. This includes:
- Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas
- Grand Theft Auto 3
- Max Payne
- Max Payne 2
- Midnight Club
- and Manhunt?
UPDATE: Some may have also noticed that no classic Grand Theft Auto games, nor Grand Theft Auto: Vice City, are amongst those released. The reasoning for this is unknown, but perhaps we can expect to see them gracing the pages of the Australian Steam store in the near future.
See, what is interesting here is that Manhunt was actually Refused Classification, effectively banned, in Australia way-back in 2004. This means that distribution of the game is against the law.
I held off on posting this article until I was able to find some clarification from other sources, because upon original investigation I was unable to find the records for it's refused classification on Australia's rating boards' website. Last this afternoon however, GameSpot AU contacted director of the Classification Board of Australia, Donald McDonald, who reiterated that the game was, in fact, still banned:
"The game Manhunt was refused classification on 29 September 2004,"
"It is an offence in all states and territories of Australia to sell, hire or demonstrate a computer game classified Refused Classification (RC)."
"A computer game classified RC would also be a prohibited import under Regulation 4A of the Customs Import Regulations. Any person importing an RC computer game into Australia needs to consider whether they are committing an offence."
A Rockstar Games representative in Australian offered no comment on the matter when contacted by GameSpot AU, and as far as we can tell the game is still available for purchase. For how long though, remains to be seen.
Whilst it appears that Valve may have accidentally released the game to Australian gamers, some users have a more sinister train-of-thought. Given Valve's history with the Australian Rating Board, which has been similar to Rockstar's in some ways, could Valve have done this to prove a point? Seems far-fetched, but we'll have to wait and see what their response is over the coming days...
Ever dreamed of owning every single PC game Rockstar has put out? This week Steam is bringing you one step closer with it's Rockstar Games sales week. All week you'll be able to buy the Rockstar Games collection pack featuring every Rockstar PC game except for Oni and Manhunt 2 for the low price of the answer to life, the universe and everything....$42.49. Need only a single game? No worries as there will be a game each day of the week that will be discounted. Today's game discount is Grand Theft Auto: Vice City for the insanely low price of $2.50.
Direct2Drive is offering a free copy of the first Manhunt when you pre-order the PC version of Manhunt 2. Remember Vista/7 users, once you get Manhunt 1 downloaded and installed, you'll need to run the patcher for it to run.
Pre-order: Direct2Drive
Last year I released a patcher that patched Manhunt to run on Windows Vista and Windows 7, however, the patcher used a hex edit method which relied on the executable being the same executable that I used. This caused problems with people that got their game from Direct2Drive, US retail, etc. In this newer patcher, it uses a Microsoft created way of changing the DLLCharacteristics of a compiled executable that's not dependent on hex editing and as such should work with every version of Manhunt.
Download: Manhunt Patcher
This weekend Steam is offering a 50% discount off of all Rockstar Games on Steam. The titles include:
Max Payne is now $4.99
Max Payne 2 is now $4.99
Midnight Club 2 is now $4.99
Manhunt is now $4.99
Grand Theft Auto 3 is now $4.99
Grand Theft Auto: Vice City is now $4.99
Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas is now $9.99
Not sure which ones you want? No problem! You can get them all for only $29.99! Hurry up as the deal will only last until this Monday.
Buy Now: Rockstar Games on Steam
A user called "Smucker" over at the Steam forums discovered that if you changed a couple of bytes in the exe, the game would run on Windows Vista with out crashing. However, to make the edits, you would need to use a hex editor and potentially screw up your exe in the process. To make things easier, I have created a simple little tool in VB that will do the edits for you. Just download the patcher, put it into your manhunt folder, and run the program. At the current time, only the Steam version of Manhunt has been tested. It is most likely that the patcher will work with other versions. If you have a version of Manhunt other than Steam and the patcher works, please contact me at aj@rockstarwatch.net.
Official Site: Manhunt on Windows Vista Patcher
A few discussions have been taken place all over the web on Manhunt being available on Steam. Obviously with Manhunt being banned in the UK, Australia, New Zealand and Germany it was to be expected that people would see the recent addition to Steam to be a godsend, sadly though many underestimated the entire thing. Rather then being purchasable by anybody, anywhere, Australia has been blocked from purchasing Manhunt on Steam. It's believed this is the same for the UK, Germany and New Zealand however this has yet to be proven.
This does come as a shock, I myself expected the game to be freely purchasable by anybody, being it online and all. Seems censorship of games is slowly becoming a huge annoyance in all cases, be it purchasing from your local Target store to purchasing online.
As we discussed in the past, it is completely legal for persons of the UK to download games that have been banned or refused classification. It's unknown but believed that Australia follows a different guideline in response to downloadable games.
This comes as bit of a surprise. Rockstar has acquired the Manhunt3.com domain from Joel Reed, a Rockstar Games fan. Now this could be just a case of Rockstar and Take Two making sure they protect their trade marks, but they haven't done this to any of the fan sites for other games which feature trade marks Rockstar's games. Though it doesn't confirm the game is coming, it is interesting. Only time will tell if Rockstar will make a Manhunt 3.
Source: GameOfTheBlog
