You’ve probably never heard of Genepool Software, the developer of  X2: Wolverine’s Revenge  — a video game tie-in to the 2001  X-Men  sequel.

From X-Men to Iron Man: The Strange Tale of Genepool Software

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2021-08-01 17:30:12

You’ve probably never heard of Genepool Software, the developer of X2: Wolverine’s Revenge  — a video game tie-in to the 2001 X-Men sequel. Based out of a Victorian manor house in the middle of a picturesque park in Manchester, UK, Genepool was only active for a couple of years — just long enough to release one game and start work on another, a potential tie-in for an unreleased Iron Man movie. But though it never won any accolades or achieved any long-lasting success as a studio, its story is fascinating nonetheless: from Genepool’s dramatic formation, to its bizarre setting, chaotic development, and eventual closure.    

The story begins in 2000 at Warthog Games, another Manchester studio, where Genepool’s co-founders, brothers Dave and Mike Anthony, and designer Haydn Dalton, had just finished working on  Star Trek: Invasion together. At release, publications like EGM, IGN, and Game Informer all gave the game positive reviews. But behind the scenes some members of the team had started to feel at odds with Warthog’s direction and wanted to break away.  

As a result, the founders of Genepool Software, alongside a good chunk of the Star Trek: Invasion team, left the studio to strike out on their own, with the aim being to continue working with publisher Activision on projects independently. “It’s a very typical situation in the game development world,” Dave Anthony tells me. “There’s a lot of creative people and there were a lot of egos involved, but I think both sides were at fault. The relationship just wasn’t working. So, we decided to leave, a group of us, [to form Genepool].”

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