Stones of Arnhem
Stones of Arnhem (aka Wizardry IIX: Stones of Arnhem, not to be confused with the later released final Wizardry installation Wizardry 8) is a vaporware game that was developed in 1992 and never released by Sir-Tech.
Development
Stones of Arnhem was the first and only product of Sir-Tech Canada's to be developed in Australia. It was helmed by actor Max Phipps and filmmaker Phil Moore [1] The project grew costly and bogged down.
"At the end of the day, we were losing our patience because there was a whole lot of graphical work but no software algorithms system architecture for the game itself." - Robert Sirotek
In a move to save the project, the company brought in a highly skilled programmer on a below-market rate contract that totaled approximately $12,000 by the end of the project [2]. Robert Sirotek described Cleve Blakemore as a "crackerjack programmer" who was brought into the project to save it. Blakemore subsequently flew from Australia and met with executives to explain the progress of the game and the culture of the Australia team. Shortly thereafter the game was cancelled.[3]
Artwork and Gameplay
The game is notorious due to information divulged by Cleve Mark Blakemore nearly 15 years after the project was cancelled. On the RPG Codex message board, Blakemore made what seemed to many to be outrageous claims and fabrications about the game itself. He asserted that the management team openly engaged in a wide variety of perversions and outsourced $50,000 worth of artwork based on gay pornography. The game featured "fully animated and colored cell frames of a giant throbbing penis monster and a living rectum with legs," conceptualized by Max Phipps. The beta testing team consisted of underaged homeless runaways. Player character portraits were derived from gay pornography magazines. The storylines were centered on the murder of transsexual furries, or murders committed by transsexual furries. Also according to Blakemore, one plontline involved the confiscation of a magical diamond ported in a non-player character's anus, which had to be "smelled out" with an magical totem.[4] In one of several posts in response to Sir-Tech, Blakemore wrote, "Well, if there is ANY untruth I have posted up here WHATSOEVER, then your company should get their lawyer to send mine a cease & desist order, I would if somebody was making stuff like this up about my company. Cross-dressers, pedophiles, thousands of dollars spent on gay porno character portraits, giant penis creatures and bumhole monsters?"[5]
Years later, however, Blakemore's story received physical confirmation in the online sale of abandoned artwork from the Stones of Arnhem project. The artwork included all of the type original described by Blakemore. Online bids for the now infamous pieces of game history reached as high as $1000 on ebay before the entire collection was purchased by the Strong Museum and Brenda Romero (formerly of Sir-Tech Canada). [6]
