Watchmen: Justice is Coming (lost promotional massive multiplayer mobile game for superhero film; 2009)

The app icon for Watchmen: Justice is Coming.

Status: Lost

Watchmen: Justice is Coming was a mobile game based on the comic book limited series Watchmen by the British creative team of writer Alan Moore, artist Dave Gibbons, and colorist John Higgins. The game was released on March 6th, 2009, to coincide with the release of the Watchmen film, directed by Zack Snyder. Watchmen: Justice is Coming was an online multiplayer game developed by Last Legion Games and released exclusively for the iPhone and iPod Touch.

Watchmen: Justice is Coming takes place in New York City in 1975 before the film’s central story unfolds. During this time, masked adventuring has been outlawed, crime is rampant and citizens must take matters into their own hands to survive. Players would create their own personal avatar and enter the city of Manhattan, with a lot of interlocking and overlapping spaces that include: the seedy and saturated neon Red Light District; a rundown Financial District and its dark waterfront; the downtown back-alleys of Lower Manhattan; a wide open City Park and more.

Development

Watchmen: Justice is Coming utilized "cloudMMO", Last Legion's patent-pending cloud-based multiplayer technology that leveraged Amazon.com web services. The developers had access to pictures and art resources from the film production while creating the game. Version 2.0 of Watchmen: Justice is Coming was released in early September 2009 that added a completely new story entitled "We Are Compelled." Also, there was now a journal for tracking the player’s progress, new criminals to fight, and a new setting (the Rooftops) to explore. Lastly, the developers had built a Facebook application that displayed the character and progress on the player’s Facebook page.

Release history (2009)

• March 2: Watchmen: Justice is Coming was announced by Warner Bros. Digital Distribution.
• March 6: Watchmen: Justice is Coming was released on the App Store.
• March 16: A game guide was published.
• March 26: Version 1.1 was released.
• May 2: Version 1.1.5 was released.
• September 1: Version 2.0 was released.

Reception

Watchmen: Justice is Coming was met with mixed reviews. While critics were impressed by the game's visuals and the scope of what Last Legion had created, the game had connectivity and crashing issues that made it unplayable for some, and unstable for many.

During an interview with the COO (chief operating officer) of Last Legion Games, Gregory Milken, he said the following regarding the reception of the game: "As with any MMO [massively multiplayer online game], there are unexpected issues that arise upon launch that just cannot be anticipated. In addition, the iPhone was a new platform, and this was the first time that anything like this had been attempted on the device. We fixed a lot of issues on the server side in the first two weeks related to crashing, so we have not had those issues again. In regards to connectivity, we have done our best to communicate with the players when their connection is lost. However, just as phone calls are dropped from time to time, the connection for 'Watchmen: Justice is Coming' can also drop, and this is not something that we can control."

Availability

It is unclear exactly when Watchmen: Justice is Coming was delisted from the App Store. Last Legion Games, that was founded in 2008, changed their name to AltEgo in 2010. The studio seems to have been shut down sometime on or after June 2013. It might be so that Watchmen: Justice is Coming was delisted around this time.

The website for the game (www.watchmenjusticeiscoming.com) was still available in October 2016, however the website for Last Legion Games (www.lastlegiongames.com) was shut down sometime between June 2012 and May 2013. By November 2020 Watchmen: Justice is Coming was for certain unavailable, though the game had in all probability been delisted from the App Store many years prior.

Footage

The trailer for the game.

An interview with Last Legion Games on G4.

A review on CNET by Tom Merritt.

Some in-game footage.

Images

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  Ad for the game (1/15).

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  Screenshot from the game (2/15).

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  Screenshot from the game (3/15).

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  Screenshot from the game (4/15).

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  Screenshot from the game (5/15).

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  Screenshot from the game (6/15).

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  Screenshot from the game (7/15).

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  Screenshot from the game (8/15).

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  Screenshot from the game (9/15).

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  Screenshot from the game (10/15).

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  Screenshot from the game (11/15).

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  Screenshot from the game (12/15).

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  Screenshot from the game (13/15).

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  Screenshot from the game (14/15).

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  Map of the game (15/15).