We know what you're thinking: "Did they actually release that Dirty Harry game in the end or not?" Well, to tell you the truth, in all this excitement, we've kinda lost track. Not long after the success of The Godfather and Scarface games, which revived the classic seventies movies using the likenesses of their incredibly famous stars, Warner Bros aimed to do the same with Harry Callahan and his glorious Clint Eastwood-shaped visage. Rather than simply adapting the films to video game form, however, they opted to produce a sidequel that would bridge the original Dirty Harry film with its sequel, Magnum Force, hoping to fill in some details about the iconic character along the way. Developers The Collective, Inc have done basically nothing excepted licensed games, so we assumed they knew what they were doing. Especially since early images from the game were so promising, and reports matched up with that anticipation. Developed for the Xbox 360 and PS3, Clint Eastwood was going to lend his voice and likeness as well as consulting and giving creative input to what looked like a pretty spiffy open world third-person shooter which would've given you the whole of seventies San Francisco to explore. Harry himself therefore looked perfect, the idea sounded perfect - playing through famous scenes of The Godfather actually ended up being more surreal and tedious than an exciting prospect for film buffs - and the genre of game perfectly suited the character. There was a fun morality mechanic to do with Harry's good cop/bad cop persona, too, with criminals not taking you seriously if you were too soft and colleagues recoiling if you got too scary. It was officially cancelled after "trouble" with The Collective, who haven't made a game since.
Tom Baker is the Comics Editor at WhatCulture! He's heard all the Doctor Who jokes, but not many about Randall and Hopkirk. He also blogs at http://communibearsilostate.wordpress.com/
